England and Wales are now home to 983,000 Hindus, with London’s graveyards showing Hindus have been coming to the UK from India for 500 years.
London: Hindus in the UK are “smart, rich and very well behaved” with just 0.4 per cent found in the country’s prisons in 2021, the lowest of any religious cohort, according to a media report, days after Rishi Sunak became Britain’s first Hindu Prime Minister, a PTI report in the Indian Express, says
Hindus have been coming to the UK from India since the past 500 years, a truly immigration success story. England and Wales are now home to 983,000 Hindus. Another significant fact is that there are just 329 Hindus in prisons in the UK, said the report in The Times newspaper says.
“They are better qualified than Christians and earn more. Now Rishi Sunak, a second-generation son of a doctor is in No.10,” the report noted.
Hindu migration to England first began in 1947, soon after India’s independence and in the aftermath of the mayhem and bloodshed that followed the Partition of the sub-continent, fuelled by UK’s postwar labour shortage
The second wave followed in East Africa in the 1970s, when Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s Asian population. While 4,500 members of the diaspora fled to India, 27,000 resettled in Britain. A third wave came after the UK relaxed immigration laws for foreign students in the 1990s.
Hindus tend to gravitate towards large cities: 47 per cent of British Hindus live in London, accounting for 5 per cent of the capital’s population. The East Midlands, with concentrations around cities such Leicester, is home to 10 per cent of Britain’s Hindus.
Yet, However Hindus have dispersed to most corners of the country over the past 50 years, the report said.
“There’s been a general spreading-out effect over the last generation,” says Sunder Katwala, founder of the British Future think tank.
“In the next census, we will see that there is a bit more diversity everywhere,” he said. He says that after two or three generations, immigrant populations tend to become more suburban.
Indian General Practitioners, newsagents and cornershop owners striking out into new areas helped the spread.
Babita Sharma, 45, is a former BBC journalist who grew up above her parents’ shop in Reading.
“The corner shop put people of colour into every white community. It was a golden opportunity but . . . you stuck out like a sore thumb,” she said.
In 2018, 59 per cent of British Hindus reported having a degree of higher education, nearly double the 30 per cent of Christians, the report said.
Only 7.8 per cent of British Hindus have GCSEs as their highest qualification, compared with 20 per cent of Christians. Just 5.5 per cent of British Hindus have no formal qualifications, it said.
The cliche of the demanding Indian parent — as satirised in the 1990s sitcom Goodness Gracious Me — seems to have a grounding in reality, it added.
The early cohorts of Indian migrants were paid poorly to fill holes in Britain’s unskilled labour market. Many set up their own businesses to escape the poor wages and workplace discrimination.
By 2012, Hindus living in London had a net wealth of 277,400 pounds (including property), second only to the Jewish community.
Only 7.8 per cent of British Hindus have GCSEs as their highest qualification, compared with 20 per cent of Christians. Just 5.5 per cent of British Hindus have no formal qualifications, it said.
Hindus have the third-lowest poverty rate, behind Jews and Christians. Hindus receive the second-highest hourly earnings among religious groups in the UK behind the Jewish community, earning 13.80 pounds an hour.
A recent census showed that 15.4 per cent of British Indians, nearly 50 per cent of whom are Hindus, were in professional and higher managerial roles, the highest proportion of any group.
In 2018, more than 40 per cent of British Hindus were in “high-skilled employment”. Again, only Jewish people ranked higher, with British Sikhs third, it said.
In 2021, only 0.4 per cent of prisoners in the UK identified as Hindu, the lowest of any religious cohort.
Trupti Patel, president of the Hindu Forum of Britain, says the faith itself, along with strong community ties, also deters crime. Hindus tend to live in large households — 3.2 people in Britain, compared with the average of 2.4 — with extended families bringing stability to young people.
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