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Metro
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Love is Blind tackled a dating taboo - and I was thrilled
As a Pakistani Muslim, distrust between Indian and Pakistani communities has been drilled into me from a young age. My childhood best friend, who is Indian, once told me in those very early days her dad took time coming round to the idea of his kid befriending me. From my own parents, I had heard stories of family friends whose children's relationships had been torn apart because one or both of the parents simply refused to accept their Indian partner. Or, in the rarer-than-rare case where they stayed together anyway, they were quickly ostracised from the community. I can't pinpoint the exact moment it clicked, but at some point in my youth, I sadly accepted that Indians and Pakistanis weren't meant to mix. Outside of these circles, very few understand how wide this yawning chasm remains among second and third-generation immigrants to this day, even as we mark 78 years of partition this week. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. But aside from some fleeting discourse on the BBC's A Suitable Boy adaptation, which tackles this topic from a historical lens, I have never seen it discussed or represented in mainstream media – until now. In the most surprising turn of events, it was Love is Blind UK season two, of all places, which has brought it to the fore. Spoilers ahead for season 2 of Love is Blind UK. During their time in the pods (where participants must date without seeing one another), 32-year-old contestant Kal, who is half-Pakistani, and 29-year-old Sarover, who is Indian, make an instant connection. A few dates in, they broach the topic of their heritage and quickly acknowledge 'there could be conflict' with Kal asking Sarover if her family would ever accept him. I thought that might be the end of it, but the show shocked me by really giving this tension the time and space it deserved to explain and work through. As Kal tells the audience in a voiceover: 'I've come here to find love, definitely, and I wouldn't have expected to find it in Sarover. She's got Indian heritage. I've got Pakistani heritage. 'Historically, there's been conflict and a massive divide between India and Pakistan. Ten, 15 years ago, me and her probably wouldn't even be having a conversation. 'Especially for the older generation, I know from experience, a parent with an Indian daughter would not want them dating a half-Pakistani or Pakistani guy. They just did not get on.' It was heartening to see someone perfectly summarise the crisis that has been facing us for decades, and ruined people's lives. What is even more heartening is Sarover's response, as she opens up to Kal: 'Undoing so many years of upbringing, it took a long time. Over the years, even my grandparents are so open and we have so many mixed marriages in the family now.' The pair get engaged and, although we are yet to see if their relationship can survive the prejudices of the outside world, even just getting this far feels revolutionary. I couldn't believe my eyes. This kind of representation on one of the most popular dating shows around could genuinely change perceptions of Pakistani-Indian relationships. Of course, on a global scale, it's always been known that the two countries have bad blood that runs as deep as the gaping wounds left by centuries of British colonial rule and the partition of India in 1947. Just a few months ago, the neighbouring nations were on the brink of nuclear war due to the ongoing dispute over the territory of Kashmir. It was a repeat of a situation my family had been trapped in when they visited Pakistan in 2019, while I stayed home in London. I was sitting terrified on the other side of my phone as the airspaces overhead shut down while both nations prepared for nuclear war. Thankfully, it didn't come to that. But this volatile political divide has permeated into the personal, impacting millions of diaspora across the world, 78 years on from partition. One of my close friends is being forced to hide her relationship with a Muslim man from her parents out of fear of outright rejection, and vice versa. Meanwhile, any relationship of this nature is still the subject of scandal and gossip in my local community, although it has become easier over the years. This is far from a black and white issue. There's religious prejudice, misguided national pride, and the rejection of 'other' in whatever form, stemming from both communities, which makes this a minefield wherever you land. More Trending Online misinformation makes this a modern problem – not least as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi continues to fuel Islamophobia and perpetuate the concept of love jihad – a false claim of Muslim men of converting Hindu women by marriage). Love is Blind proves that this is a problem my community cannot afford to ignore, and for those far removed from this experience, I hope it proves an education for just how big this struggle remains for people like Kal, Sarover, and me. At one point, Kal jokes to Sarover: 'Yeah, but listen, we can bridge the gap. We can mend the peace,' to which Sarover quips: 'Are we just gonna solve history?'. I laughed; it's the same jokey conversation my Indian friends and I have had time and time again. View More » I'm under no illusions that Love is Blind will heal decades of bitterness but it's a small salve that I hope one day grows into something bigger. Or even just kickstarts a conversation in someone's house. Do you have a story you'd like to share? Get in touch by emailing Share your views in the comments below. MORE: Netflix unveils major return for Peaky Blinders legend in 'stressful' new film MORE: Inside Emma and Matt Willis' 20-year romance as Love Is Blind UK returns to Netflix MORE: Elephant tramples tourist 'who took its photo with flash on'
Mint
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Britain's Labour Party Needs to Listen to Its Social Conscience
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Progressives on both sides of the English-speaking Atlantic have focused much of their energy and attention on championing minority rights and indulging in identity politics. Standing up for groups who've suffered historic discrimination is laudable; removing barriers to Black employment and giving gay people the right to marry are hard-fought achievements. Transgender people deserve protections too, with trade-offs necessary given the clashes of biological sex and gender ideology. But whether by preference or distracted by such concerns, social evils which used to fire up the liberal-left conscience — class inequality, lack of economic opportunity and cohesive societies — have been in danger of being overlooked or even downgraded. In the UK, a horrific, decades-long scandal of grooming and rape gangs of mainly Pakistani Muslim men who preyed on young white women has revealed the pitfalls of this lopsided approach. The story is distressing enough in itself, but it has wider resonance for Britain's governing Labour Party, which prides itself on caring for the less fortunate in society but has failed them — both under Tony Blair's administration when the crimes first became apparent, and due to a sluggish response under Keir Starmer. This doesn't absolve the previous Conservative governments from carrying a large share of the blame. As the cross-party peer Baroness Louise Casey pointed out in an audit published this week, one of the main reasons for ducking the issue was oversensitivity about ethnic and religious groups from a Muslim background. Starmer, an alumnus of London's top human rights legal chambers, is an exemplar of the progressive mindset. He also successfully prosecuted grooming gangs in his former role as head of the crown prosecution service. So the appalling detail isn't unknown to him. And yet, in January, the prime minister accused opposition figures calling for a national inquiry into gangs who preyed on underage girls of 'jumping on the bandwagon of the far right,' Elon Musk had wrongly tweeted that millions of young women were being targeted by Asian gangs; in the social media echo chamber, the populists of Reform UK were taking up the cry. But that didn't invalidate the fact that the matter had been buried too quickly and with insufficient attention to the causes. The PM's words have returned to haunt him – but the underlying omission is far more important. Across the country and in the areas where the gangs operated for years with impunity under the noses of Labour councils and indolent police forces, men of Pakistani descent have been vastly overrepresented among the gangs. This mix undoubtedly requires sensitive handling — but not downright evasion. On Monday, however, the PM was forced to give way after Casey found that the authorities had 'shied away' from investigating the horrific crimes and avoided its ethnic and cultural character. The government finally agreed that a national inquiry was urgently required. The trouble is, it was urgently required a very long time ago. Even Starmer's U-turn was couched in flat, emotionless language; he would 'accept' Casey's recommendation. His Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was more forthcoming: These rapes were 'a stain on our society' and she would initiate a new round of criminal investigations. But, in truth, none of this would have happened if it wasn't for pressure from those on the right of the political spectrum — and in some case the far-right — on a center-left government. Many of the most notorious gangs operated in Labour-held areas, and the councils who 'shied away' were Labour too. Alarmed by the potential threat to a fragile social peace in areas where large groups of incomers are often living lives wholly separate to the White communities around them, Labour had another reason to downplay the matter — concern about the reaction of a substantial Muslim voting bloc. Local councils urged the police to play down the systematic nature of the abuse. Overindulging group rights has also cornered the PM in the fierce debate over the rights of trans people and protections for women's spaces. When the Supreme Court ruled this year that 'sex' in Britain's Equality Act unequivocally meant 'biological sex,' Starmer's bloodless response was to welcome 'the clarity' of the judgment. We are none the wiser about what he really thinks about the issue. I have firsthand experience as a journalist of this reluctance of a liberal mindset to face inconvenient truths. At the Sunday Times, we published a magazine article in 2007 by a feminist writer Julie Bindel, exclusively detailing the abuse of girls by groups of Pakistani-origin men in the northern counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The article had been offered first to the liberal-leaning Guardian newspaper, which turned it down. Andrew Norfolk, a journalist on our sister paper the Times, was also subsequently accused of racism when he investigated the ethnic gang phenomenon. A few brave Labour MPs, mostly women, also tried to bring the problem to the attention of a wider audience but initially found little support from male colleagues in Parliament and local parties. And while a degree of discipline is necessary in politics, lack of curiosity about opposing or challenging views leads to problems getting parked and evils left to fester. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington more than 60 years ago, Martin Luther King spoke of his dream that his children would 'one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.' There's an enduring lesson here for all: The implication of the declaration is that wise progressives should not be blind to good and evil among Whites, Blacks and Asians, and steadfast in their willingness to confront the consequences. The price of ignoring wrongdoing, whoever the culprit, is much higher — and more painful for all concerned. More from Bloomberg Opinion: This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Martin Ivens is the editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Previously, he was editor of the Sunday Times of London and its chief political commentator. More stories like this are available on
News18
21-06-2025
- Politics
- News18
‘South Asian' A Term Coined To Bury Pakistanis' Crimes & Indians' Feats
Last Updated: If one wanted to be historically accurate, Indian subcontinent is a more precise term because almost all of it was once part of undivided India that was broken violently into parts Whether one should call the Indian subcontinent 'South Asia' is a debate that keeps getting regurgitated. There have been two latest triggers. First is the coverage of the sordid Pakistani gang-rape saga in which Leftist mainstream media in the West has repeatedly referred to these grooming gangs as 'Asian', in spite of the fact that these groups almost entirely comprise Pakistani Muslim men. It is as if by hiding their real identity, these newspapers and channels are shielding these monsters' sentiments from getting hurt. Whether you call a group of men 'Asian" or 'South Asian", you are erasing the national heritage with an obvious political motive. You are also intentionally hiding the truth. That is what led to the wokism getting the bad rap that it did. Deservedly so. — Anurag Mairal (@mairal) June 17, 2025 Second was a post by Neal Katyal, US Supreme Court lawyer who calls himself an 'extremist centrist". He posted approvingly about Meenakshi Ahamed's book titled Indian Genius: The Meteoric Rise of Indians in America. But guess what? He said the book was about the 'success of the South Asian diaspora". Amused netizens immediately started asking Katyal where he found the reference to 'South Asia', when Ahamed's book is clearly and specifically titled Indian Genius? They asked why this attempt to dilute and nullify the Indian identity? If one wanted to be historically accurate, Indian subcontinent is a more precise term because almost all of it was once part of undivided India, broken violently into parts as a direct aftermath of the British divide-and-rule policy. It was as if the brown, Indian-origin Neal Katyal was enthusiastically furthering the colonial project. In case of the Pakistani rape gangs, by calling a group of men 'Asian" or 'South Asian", one is erasing the national heritage with an obvious political motive and intentionally hiding the truth, people pointed out. I'm sick and tired of hearing the expression 'South Asian" in relation to the ethnicity of the Pakistani Muslim gang rapists of young, vulnerable, white British girls. Asia has over 60% of the world's population. Pakistan, has around 3%. They should not be homogenised. — Chris Davies 🏴 🇬🇧 🇺🇸🟣 (@justchrisdavies) January 15, 2024 Different writers have held up different motives and aspects of the 'South Asia' descriptor. Samyak Dixit, for instance, writes in The Emissary: It's a small insight into how western academia builds consensus over topics and terminology, till the point where you as the subject of categorization are now being described using a term that you've never heard of before. The emotionless nature of the term itself (described by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal as 'politically neutral", which is a phrase worth exploring in itself), seeking to pull out any possible emotion or sentiment (that usually accompanies history) from the description of a region, also displays the American Regime's impulse towards sterility. This, of course, is an obvious extension of the impulse that renames blind people as 'visually impaired", or civilian casualties during war as 'collateral damage", or one that measures strontium radiation levels after a nuclear fallout in 'sunshine units". Like most Americanisms, 'South Asia" is cold, sterile, and designed to be so. The imposition of the term 'South Asia' received the maximum pushback from Indian-origin Americans who took on Western 'Indologists' who propagandised it without having any relationship with India and the subcontinent beyond an academic one. 'South Asia' seeks to describe the land mass that has historically been known in English as the 'Indian subcontinent', usurping 'Jambudvipa' and 'Bharatam' in Sanskrit, and 'Barr-e-Saghir' in Urdu. Venu Gopal Narayanan argues in Swarajya that from an ideological standpoint, it is so much easier to ensnare a pliant young mind if the old links are broken first. 'The forced popularisation of 'South Asia' over all other toponyms, including 'Bharata', was, thus, a key tool in breaking links with the past. Someone somewhere astutely understood that peddling atheism alone wasn't enough in the East, where a non-Abrahamic existence drew moral, spiritual and cultural sustenance as much from its history and geography as it did from a deity," he writes. 'East of Arabia, religion isn't the only opium of the masses; a civilizational ethos and a sacred geography too, join the list. And what better way to change that than by going to the root and changing the descriptor itself?" Indic entrepreneur, publisher, and author Sankrant Sanu had done a Google Ngram search across many scanned books and journals tracing the use of the term 'South Asia'. Squarely blaming CIA for this, he writes in his piece, 'How South Asian is a racist trope of cultural erasure': So, South Asia as a term is negligible till the 1940s, and really starts to be used in the late 1950s and 1960s. This is when the CIA is setting up 'South Asia Studies' departments in US universities. The premise of 'South Asia' is that India was never a nation or civilisation and is simply composed of different 'sub-nationalities' to be grouped together. This is, of course, ahistoric. Even in the Western consciousness, India has been a far more prominent term than 'South Asia'. Shadowy anti-India interest groups took over the cause. In 2015, the South Asia Faculty Group in California brazenly sent letters to the California Department of Education arguing for several changes in the curriculum. It demanded 'most references to India before 1947 be changed to South Asia" and also asked references to Hinduism to be changed to 'religion of ancient India". Thirty-six of these edits had to do with simply eliminating the words 'India' or 'Hinduism' from the curriculum. These diabolical changes would have sneaked into the syllabus, as the California education department was quite amenable. But a massive Hindu backlash began. The Hindu American Foundation collected more than 25,000 signatures of professors, scholars, students and parents under the 'Don't Erase India campaign. It forced the Instructional Quality Commission to retain the word India in every instance with the curriculum framework. While the old civilisation triumphed on that occasion, it underlined how one has to be constantly vigilant against attempts at its erasure by the Left and Islamists. Because words can sometimes inflict much deeper damage than ballistic weapons. Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views. tags : Indian subcontinent pakistan south asia United states Location : New Delhi, India, India First Published: June 21, 2025, 11:08 IST News opinion Opinion | 'South Asian' A Term Coined To Bury Pakistanis' Crimes & Indians' Feats
Fox News
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
New York City mayoral candidate finds it 'remarkable' DHS agents who arrested him were both immigrants
New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander said on Tuesday that it was "remarkable" to him that some of the officers who arrested him outside an immigration court were themselves immigrants. Video footage of Lander's arrest appeared to show him hanging onto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as they escorted a defendant out of immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza, repeatedly asking officials if they had a judicial warrant. "I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant," Lander said in the video. "Where is it? Where is the warrant?" Lander described how "angry" and "sad" he was at the experience on MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes," pointing out what he seemed to consider an irony that some of the arresting officers were immigrant New Yorkers. "I got to say about who two of the agents were, because this was kind of remarkable in itself," Lander said. "The arresting officer is a Pakistani Muslim who lives in Brighton Beach, and the second officer is an Indo-Guyanese immigrant who lives in South Ozone Park in Queens. Both immigrants." He added, "Immigrant New Yorkers, whoever they are, have a lot of the same issues. And some of that is affordable housing. And some of that is knowing that Donald Trump is coming for New York City. And we need elected officials who will stand up." Hayes asked what it said to him that the arresting officers were both immigrants defending an ICE operation. "It says to me that what Trump is trying to do is to drive a wedge into our country," Lander answered. Lander was released after being detained for a few hours. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a press conference after his release that the charges against Lander were dropped. In response to the incident, a DHS spokesperson said, "Our heroic ICE law enforcement officers face a 413% increase in assaults against them—it is wrong that politicians seeking higher office undermine law enforcement safety to get a viral moment." "No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences," the spokesperson said.
Spectator
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Why liberals ignored the grooming gang scandal
For many years, liberals refused to talk about the grooming gangs scandal. The systematic sexual abuse and rape of hundreds, possibly thousands, of vulnerable children by offenders from ethnic minorities was a story that too many people were happy to ignore. There was an effective prohibition on discussing it in left and liberal circles. Grooming gangs was a subject guaranteed to silence a dinner party. So, we decided to pretend that it wasn't happening. Finally, the so-called great and the good have woken up to a scandal that was happening in plain sight Finally, the so-called great and the good have woken up to a scandal that was happening in plain sight in towns and cities across Britain. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused those calling for an inquiry into grooming gangs of jumping on a 'bandwagon of the far-right'. Now, his government is promising a national inquiry. It's about time. The damage is done, of course: victims' lives have been ruined. And while some offenders were brought to justice, many weren't. Those in positions of authority who should have stopped the abuse did not do so. Too many of those people are still in their jobs. Too many have retired to enjoy their public sector pensions, having utterly failed the most vulnerable people in society. I can't excuse the refusal to listen up to the victims, but I think I can explain what happened. The truth is that too many liberals like me are guided by an instinct to protect ethnic minority communities from being targeted. That, in itself, is not a bad thing. We feared that, if a certain group of people was blamed for the abuse, then that group could become the victims of racial hatred, perhaps even violence. The thinking was this: 'I don't want blood on my hands, let's close this conversation down, now.' But what is clear to see now is that the desire to keep people safe meant that we became blind to the evils carried out by a small minority of people from the Pakistani Muslim community. In our desire to avoid offence, and keep people safe from violence, liberals turned a blind eye to an industrial scandal. Call it 'woke', call it what you like, but the essence of this mode of thinking that was too common among liberals was that white people are the oppressors, while ethnic minorities are the victims. This lens through which people viewed the world removed class and even economic inequality pretty much entirely from the mix; it allowed upper-middle class people to feel good about themselves, while not having to worry about the poor any longer. This is relevant to the grooming gangs scandal since, by this ideological framework, ethnic minority men were perceived as victims, when they weren't. And young white girls were viewed, absurdly, as the oppressors. The fact that these children – and, remember, that many of them were children – were utterly powerless was of no consequence to the people that mattered. Only by exposing this absurd characterisation can we begin to understand why liberals ignored this story – and why those in positions of authority in the police, on councils and in schools didn't see what should have been obvious: that these girls were being abused and, in many cases, those responsible were from ethnic minority communities. The crimes inflicted upon the victims of the grooming gangs – the real victims, just to be clear – were the end result of a horrible ideological experiment. 'I was following through on a child's file in (the) archive and found the word 'Pakistani' tippexed out,' Baroness Casey, whose national audit on grooming gangs was published on Monday, revealed this week. There is a real world, non-woke term for this sort of thing: racism. In other words, the judging of someone's moral character via their ethnicity. Liberals, and those on the left, will try and equivocate over the coming weeks. They will say things like 'White Britons engage in this behaviour too, so targeting ethnic minorities who do this sort of thing is racist'. That, of course, completely misses the point. No one other than the most ardent racists are saying that all Muslim or Pakistani men are child rapists. But what is clear is that some people who fit this description have committed horrible crimes and got away with it. No one rational is saying that the men who perpetrated these crimes should be punished because of their ethnicity. We are saying that child rapists should not be allowed to escape censure because of their culture or skin colour. If we want our multi-ethnic society to survive – and I desperately do – we cannot have any type of person treated differently because of their religion or the colour of their skin. Sadly, what is now clear to see is that too many people weren't colour blind in how they saw things. Their perspective was essentially to try and avoid offence by ignoring the mass abuse of white, working-class girls by sexual predators from minority groups. The whole episode is disgusting and should be a wake-up call for the left. Sadly, I doubt it will be. We need to discard the twisted ideology that decides innocence and guilt along racial lines. What happened with the grooming gangs scandal is possibly the clearest ever example of why that is the case. Too many children have paid the price for the silence of liberal do-gooders.
