London: London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith has come under fire for targeting British Indian voters with ‘patronising’ campaign literature containing stereotypes about the diaspora in the British capital.
At the weekend, the Conservative hopeful’s office sent out personalised letters — apparently from Prime Minister David Cameron — to some households describing how friendly the party is to India and its people, but making the mistake of presuming all British Indians were supporters of PM Narendra Modi, who held a rally at a packed-out Wembley Stadium while on a high-profile visit to the UK last year.
The letters came just a few days after Goldsmith’s team were criticised for producing leaflets implying that members of the Tamil community were most interested in protecting their ‘family heirlooms’ from burglars, while attacking Labour opponent Sadiq Khan — the son of Pakistani immigrants who is favourite to succeed Boris Johnson following the May 5 election — for supporting a ‘wealth tax on family jewellery’.
The letter from Cameron told recipients: “The British Indian community makes London great. The British Indian community makes an extraordinary contribution to London and to Britain.
“Closer ties between the UK and India have been a priority for me as Prime Minister. I was pleased to join Zac Goldsmith and thousands of others in welcoming Prime Minister Modi to the UK last year, at Wembley Stadium. I am backing India’s claim for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.”
But Kavya Kaushik, a former parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats in Ealing South, criticised the wording. “Not only was it offensive to treat us as one homogenous block, the content of the letter suggested that we’re all pro-Modi, and previous letters suggest we’re all obsessed with our family jewellery. It suggests that there are no mainstream political issues which I would care about as a British Indian,” she told The Independent.
“As someone with a great interest in Asian community engagement, it’s not a bad thing to try and engage with a political community. Except it was a botched and lazy attempt to treat all South Asians as one homogenous block.”
Social media users were also quick to condemn the letter, with Anita Singh posting on Twitter: “Dear Tories, please stop sending me this patronising [expletive] just because you’ve seen my surname on the electoral roll.”
Labour party adviser Uma Kamaran, who is a Tamil, described the Goldsmith campaign literature a friend received as ‘the very worst of the Tory party in action’, adding: “Tory campaign for Mayor pathetic. Trying to divide communities, inflammatory language and scare-mongering. Londoners are better than that.”
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Daily Sikh said: “In what can only be described as an ill-informed and arrogant mailshot, Goldsmith’s team targeted the postal addresses of tens of thousands of Londoners of ‘Indian’ origin. For some bizarre reason, Goldsmith assumed all the 120,000 Sikhs were middle-class Hindus, running family businesses, concerned about burglaries and possessions whilst welcoming Modi’s UK visit last year.”
With seven weeks to go until the election, a ComRes poll has revealed that Khan currently leads Goldsmith by six points, 53 per cent to 47.
— The writer is a freelance journalist based in the UK
