Commonwealth

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, and congratulate him on introducing this debate. We know his interest in the Commonwealth; he has spoken about this on several occasions in this House in the past. He will forgive me if I give a slightly different view and raise questions that have not been raised before about the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth is basically a legacy of the British Empire—of course, not entirely so, because it includes states that were not part of the British Empire, such as Rwanda and Mozambique, and it excludes states that were once part of the British Empire, such as Ireland and even the United States. Nevertheless, it remains the fact that it is primarily a legacy of the British Empire. Given this, we cannot understand it unless we understand the British Empire. What was the character of the British Empire? What was it about? What did it do to those 54 or 56 colonies out of which the Commonwealth came to be constituted?

The British Empire was very different from the other great European empires, such as the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Belgian and many others. That is the first thing to note about the British Empire. However, the second and most important thing about the British Empire is that it was never a cosy affair. Empires involve brutality, genocide, a great deal of violence, and humiliation of the ex-colonies and subjects of the empire. The memories of this brutality and genocide may be forgotten and forgiven by the imperial power, but they are never forgotten by the victims, by those who suffered them; they continue to remember them, with the result that we are often surprised that they do not seem to show sufficient gratitude. For example, many ex-colonies—six in the West Indies—do not wish to be members of the Commonwealth and want to be republics, and we are surprised. They raise questions about slavery during the British Empire and we are surprised. We are constantly surprised by many of the awkward but realistic questions they raise. The question to ask, therefore, is whether our view of the Commonwealth is based on adequate recognition and acknowledgement of what actually went on in the name of the British Empire.

To think of ourselves as a kind and generous people who went thousands of miles to other countries to civilise the natives and came back having done our job, sometimes angry that they were not sufficiently grateful, is not really a proper understanding of what we actually did. So, before we talk about the Commonwealth as a viable force, we ought to understand what the British Empire was about. In the three minutes I have left, or even less than three minutes, I want to set out a very brief agenda in the hope that, in the future, we might be able to take it up.

The first thing I suggest is that there has to be a broadly agreed Commonwealth view of the British Empire. Britain has one view of the British Empire; India has a very different view—partly good, partly not so good; South Africa and other countries have a totally different view. I think the time has come for historians and others from different Commonwealth countries to get together, debate and form a just estimate of what the British Empire really did. That is very important: unless the truth is faced, we are in danger of allowing the Commonwealth to become an irrelevance or a pointless and ornamental appendage.

The second thing it is important to recognise is that, if it is going to be a Commonwealth and not the British Commonwealth, it should not be seen as a property or an extension of British foreign policy. We cannot expect Commonwealth countries to do what we would like to do, in Ukraine or anywhere else. We see the Commonwealth through our eyes; have we tried to look at ourselves through Commonwealth eyes and asked ourselves how we look from that perspective? I therefore suggest that the Queen or her successor should not automatically be the Head of the Commonwealth. As for the modus operandi we should operate, that is something that can be sorted out later.

The third important thing we need to do is to build up an institutional infrastructure, to which the noble Lord, Lord Howell, rightly referred, so we can have co-operative institutions and practices at the level of journalism, sport, education, and so on.

Fourthly and finally, the Commonwealth consists of transcontinental countries. It is the only association I know, other than the United Nations, whose members come from every continent, so it is very important that it should be a pressure group for important global issues such as climate change and others.

My simple conclusion is that, as Britain stretches out to explore its relations with other countries in the context of implementing the Brexit policy, it is very important that it should face the truth, recognise its past and come to terms with it; otherwise, we are in danger of talking about a wonderful picture of the Commonwealth which matches no reality.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I respectfully remind noble Lords that the Back-Bench speaking time is five minutes.

Human Rights Situation in India

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Parekh (Lab) [V]]

I am happy to participate in the debate initiated by my good friend, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, on the human rights situation in India, especially as it relates to academics, Muslims, Christians and Dalits. I will take these four groups in the order in which I mentioned them.

I need hardly remind the Committee that human rights have long been an integral part of the Indian constitution and inform every Indian citizen’s political inheritance. The Supreme Court of India has acted as the custodian of those rights and been vigorous in enforcing them. Religious minorities enjoy far better rights in India than elsewhere. They enjoy religious freedom and the right to set up educational and constitutional institutions, and are governed by their own personal laws.

However, this is the formal side of it only; at a more substantive level, Hinduism, Islam and other religions have interacted and created a composite culture, to which they all have contributed and in which they all participate. For example, the law of karma, which is supposed to be a Hindu doctrine, is shared by 77% of Muslims. As a result, it has become ridiculous to talk about Muslims or Christians “in India”; they are Muslims or Christians of India because India has shaped them.

Obviously, in a country with a population of 1.3 billion, incidents are bound to occur when minorities—and even majorities—feel oppressed or treated unjustly. The task is not to exaggerate those incidents but to ask whether the system has the robustness to deal with such situations. The Indian institutions—the Supreme Court and others—have robust capacity to deal with these situations.

I come to Dalits, who for centuries have been subjected to high caste oppression. Independent India devised a host of policies for their uplift, including positive discrimination in government jobs and university admissions. Dalits have occupied positions of power and influence, and have fought for their rights with determination. Obviously, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, pointed out, India still has a long way to go in this direction and could do with a greater sense of urgency, but public opinion will not be silenced. It is beginning to mount and put pressure on the Government. It is also worth bearing in mind that even after 200 years the Americans are still struggling with the legacy of racism, as witnessed by the Black Lives Matter movement.

I turn to academics. There have been cases of government agencies leaning on university authorities to harass or get rid of inconvenient academics. My good friend Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who had to step down as vice-chancellor of Ashoka University, is a good example of this. Some professors have suffered in this way. But although I regret all this, it is worth bearing in mind that these cases have been very few in number. Many academics have freely criticised the Administration of Mr Modi, but none has come to grief. My own family foundation has given 3 million rupees to Jawaharlal Nehru University and we have not come to any grief, nor have we done so for giving 1 crore rupees to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. We must also remember how much Edward Said had to suffer—or how much my good friend Henry Louis Gates has to suffer now—at the hands of Harvard University for supporting the Palestinian cause.

All I say to my good friend, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, by way of ending is that we are not on opposite wavelengths. How can we be? We are on the same wavelength. We all feel grieved and pained when things happen in India that should not happen, but it is a society with a great civilisational depth, a great heritage in the shape of Gandhi, Nehru and others, and shaped by certain values. That kind of society cannot be swept off its feet so easily or be dominated by a single, simplistic ideology. That kind of situation was shown recently when the Prime Minister, who is immensely popular, could not carry the state of West Bengal in the recent elections. He was defeated by Mamata Banerjee.

India welcomes critical advice—if not, it should welcome critical advice—provided that advice is accompanied by humility, is not condescending or patronising, and is based on a sympathetic understanding of India’s problems and predicament. It is very important that India should remain true to its democratic and pluralistic legacy, which can happen only if the watchful eye of Indians abroad and their good friends remains critically focused.

United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States: Leaked Messages

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, it is obvious that the leaks were contemptible and that they were intended to corrupt the process of deliberation within the British Embassy in the United States by giving the impression that the embassy is leaking and therefore cannot be trusted. If one looks at the leaks, it is striking that there is nothing worrying there. No state secrets have been leaked; all that has been leaked is somebody’s view of somebody else. The view leaked is that the ambassador thinks that the American President, or his Administration, is dysfunctional, and asks the British Prime Minister to be careful. I am sure that the American President does not need our ambassador to tell him that—he is smart enough to know what people think of him. What seems to have happened is that he took those charges seriously, not in order to answer them but to use them as a stick with which to beat the British people, and the British Prime Minister in particular, who had dared to question him on one or two occasions, and to make abusive remarks.

The first thing to bear in mind is that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion at one level, because the American President, who is thin-skinned and rather touchy, decided to take absolutely ordinary, normal remarks by a professional ambassador as an occasion for abuse. That is the first point I want to make: we should not get these leaks out of proportion. They are not leaks involving state secrets or anybody’s personal life.

My second point is that these leaks are not systematic, nor can they be compared to whistleblowing. Sometimes we have leaks which are intended in the public interest to disclose things that are going on. This is not a case of whistleblowing, because the leaks are the product of a systematic attempt over a period of time to gather together a particular kind of case against the British Government. Since this is the intention behind the leaks, a question arises. I do not want to question the freedom of the press but to look at the morality of it. Somebody leaks these things to a journalist. What is the responsibility of that journalist? If somebody sells or passes on to me stolen goods, what is my responsibility? Is it to say, “I didn’t know”, when of course I knew that they were stolen? Am I completely free to do what I like with them? This is what liberal society tends to think, but many of us who are critical of liberal society want to ask: what about the ethics of the individual recipient of these secrets? Could he or she not alert the Government or say that they will not accept them? Should the journalist be completely absolved of any responsibility for dealing with these leaks?

That second point is just as important. Leaks become public because a newspaper or a public medium takes them seriously and prints them. Does the newspaper editor have absolutely no responsibility? After the leaks have been published, they say that the leaks have damaged the country—but they did so because they were published. Should an editor not have asked themselves that question earlier? I hope that I am not talking as an enemy of liberal freedom; I am simply saying, let us introduce some sense of ethics and personal morality into public life, and ask ourselves what the obligations of a journalist are. If it is a case of whistleblowing, it is fair enough that things might have to be disclosed, but it must be justified. Can a journalist or newspaper justify publishing this in the public interest?

Anti-Semitism

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 20th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I come from a country with no history of anti-Semitism, namely India. In the 11th century, the maharajah of Travancore-Cochin made a declaration to Joseph Rabban, who was leading Jews from Syria into India, offering him all the facilities of a local potentate. He could collect taxes and ride in a palanquin, and his people could follow their own customs. As a result, Jews have flourished in India, and I was taught by a Jew who was a professor of English literature. In business they have flourished too.

There are Jewish characters in the literature, and they are always represented as decent, well-behaved, clean and tidy, good at making money and loyal to the country. These views of what it is to be Jewish spread, and it is also striking that Mahatma Gandhi’s closest friends were Jewish—Polak and Kallenbach. In the 1930s, he even suggested that several Jewish refugees could come to India as, he said, “In a population of 300 million, what is a few hundred thousand?” The British Government said they could not come because they needed work permits. Anyway, this was my brief history, not having been exposed to the history of the Holocaust and systematic Jewish persecution. I heard about that when I came to England about 45 years ago, and I have been very bothered about this whole question.

This systematic persecution of a whole people lasted over 2,000 years, culminating in the Holocaust, when millions were humiliated, despised, made into the objects of stupid experiments and dehumanised. The question that I have asked myself is: why is there anti-Semitism? What are its causes? From where does it spring? Some light was thrown on this in the 1980s, when people said that Indians will have a Jewish future and Afro-Caribbeans will have an Irish future. That set me thinking about whether the Indian experience of being thrown out of four countries—Sri Lanka, Myanmar and all that—can throw some light on what happened to the Jews. In trying to understand this, I will submit a few observations that I have made over the years.

Anti-Semitism springs from a variety of factors. Some are specific to a particular historical period; some are common to all historical periods. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester said, the Jews have been accused of killing our Lord—deicide—and this is not assuaged by simply talking about Judeo-Christian tradition, because to talk about Judeo-Christian tradition is to reduce Judaism to a mere precursor to Christianity. It is to assimilate it into Christianity and not to appreciate its autonomy and identity.

There is also the intolerance of difference. Jews, in my view, were the first multicultural people who asked for their laws, dress and other things to be respected. In a society where multiculturalism was resented, obviously, the Jewish community was resented. Then, of course, a highly successful community, in all walks of life, is resented for obvious reasons. There is also a deep sense of guilt about what happened in the Holocaust. Every European nation was involved in this, not just Germany. Other countries also co-operated in rounding up Jews and treating them abominably. There is a sense of guilt—every time they think of the Jews, they think of the Holocaust and they note there is a sense of guilt. Nobody likes to be reminded of a horrendous period in one’s history.

There is another factor that is specific to our age, which is Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which should not go unmentioned. The relationship between the two is basically that between the lion and the mouse. What are Palestinians? If Israel wanted, it could snuff them out in a few seconds. Here is a country with enormous soft power and enormous strength. It should have the sense of security and self-confidence to say to helpless people, “You send out rockets and do silly things, but we are prepared to be magnanimous and forgiving. Let us open a new chapter in a peaceful relationship”. Such an act of generosity and self-confidence would do a great deal. A community that has suffered so much could easily turn its suffering into a signal of sympathy with suffering elsewhere.

Commonwealth Summit 2018

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on securing this debate and introducing it with such charm and erudition. Anything that is done to improve the role and functioning of the Commonwealth is to be greatly welcomed, especially if it brings it closer to the people who live within it. We have learned this lesson particularly painfully in the case of the European Union, which has become increasingly detached from the people and therefore no longer commands—as it should—the loyalties, sentiments and affections of its people. The Commonwealth, however, is increasingly setting up people’s forums and parliamentary forums, which are intended to draw people into its own working and give them a certain stake in and emotional commitment to it. I greatly welcome this and I very much hope—as the Question set out—that the final programme of the summit will include a people’s forum and parliamentary forum.

These forums do two things. First, they provide networks across countries and, therefore, make the Commonwealth a genuine reality. Secondly, they bring people into direct contact with policymakers and the people in power, so that the people in power are able to listen to those who would suffer from the consequences of their actions.

I welcome all this, but I want to say something briefly about why the Commonwealth is so important. It has to be dusted and taken off the shelf where it has been lying ever since we joined the European Union, and I want to say something about the consequences of having neglected it for so long and now having to dust it down. It is a most valuable organisation with 52 members and 2.4 billion people, half of whom are under 25, so the future belongs to them. Rwanda and Mozambique are already members, although they were not part of the British Empire. There will be trade within the Commonwealth worth £1 trillion by 2020. The UK exports £60 billion-worth of goods to various Commonwealth countries and the combined GDP of the Commonwealth is no less than $10 trillion. That is the organisation we are talking about. This organisation somehow fits in with the British character and is naturally close to Britain: first, because it is an association of nation states and has no intention of seeking ever-increasing union; secondly, because it is an association left behind by Britain as part of its legacy, and therefore Britain can take a kind of parental pride in it without hammering that home too often; and, thirdly, because Britain has the largest economy of the Commonwealth and therefore is able not only to command respect but to feel a certain sense of pride and superiority. Therefore, there is no doubt that the Commonwealth remains an organisation close to Britain’s history and traditions.

I want to explore why many of the opportunities that the Commonwealth offers have not been fully tapped and mention three or four in passing. It would be a wonderful idea to have a Commonwealth university. Just as there is in India, for example, Nalanda University, which includes people who were part of the Buddhist empire, a Commonwealth university would include students and faculties drawn from within the Commonwealth. Those students would be able to study together and get to know each other. Likewise, just as the European Union has its own newspaper, I cannot see why there cannot be a Commonwealth newspaper and TV channel, whose job it would be to get each country interested in the affairs of the others.

As Britain is short of doctors, there is no reason why a delegation from here could not go to India, advertise, recruit, say, 100 doctors and bring them here for two years. That would meet Britain’s need and that of the Indian doctors as they would be given two years of training before they have to go back to India. There is no reason why in our times of need we cannot draw upon Commonwealth countries in this way.

Likewise, I think exporting democracy is a silly idea but we could export concepts such as the rule of law or human rights, which can easily be grasped. That kind of concept can easily be cultivated, and Britain has an important role to play in that regard.

While saying all this, I want to alert us to the dangers that we face if we are not careful about how we conduct our relations with the Commonwealth. There is a fear in Commonwealth countries of being used after Brexit. Some of our Ministers have talked about using the Commonwealth for this or that purpose, as if it is an instrument to be used. I do not think that is a particularly good idea or particularly useful rhetoric.

I share a thought that I picked up when I was talking to an Indian diplomat. There is a certain degree of unease at Britain’s claim to be the sole spokesman of the Commonwealth at the European Union or other places, as if Britain is saying, “Look, if you want to know the Commonwealth, we are the conduit through which it speaks”. I do not think that is a good idea, certainly not as regards countries such as India, Canada and Australia, which have their independence and pride.

Likewise, I think that readjusting trade will not be easy because trade, like any kind of business, requires decades to settle in. Therefore, if Britain expects to pick up trade in India or elsewhere, it should not expect that to be easy. Britain’s obsession with reducing immigration at any cost will also stand in the way. It will not be easy to rejuvenate the Commonwealth when people start coming in and we say, “No, there are too many of you. You can’t come in”. So some difficulties arise from Britain’s attitude as well as the context in which we are likely to rejuvenate the Commonwealth. It is dangerous to expect a smooth sailing.

Middle East: Jihadism

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, for securing this debate, and congratulate him on introducing it with such eloquence. Rightly, he referred to the war on Iraq. I shall not talk about that at length, but I will begin by saying that, although Mr Blair led us into the war, the Conservative Party had already agreed to support it. Therefore, it was not merely the Government or the Labour Party; the two major parties agreed on that. It is also rather pathetic and saddening to see ex-Ministers falling over each other, trying to tell us that they regret that mistake. That is depressing for two obvious reasons.

First, if they were capable of making that kind of mistake, because of which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, can they ever be trusted to make sensible judgments in political life? In classical Athens, there was a tradition that if a politician misguided his people or was guilty of an egregious mistake of that kind, he would be sent into exile, because he was unfit to be a fellow citizen. We should find some way of dealing with people who are capable of making that kind of mistake. Secondly, if they could make that kind of mistake, why did they do so? It is no use telling us that Mr Blair lied—he said the same thing to all of us, and some of us were simply not taken in. We opposed the war in Iraq at the time, and some of us felt so strongly that we almost resigned our party Whip. All that suggests that nobody misled innocent people. Those leaders were prepared to believe certain things and were simply willing accomplices to what was going on.

Having got the question of Iraq off my chest, I turn to the question we are debating today. Since the early 1980s, it has been a practice for Muslims to go to foreign theatres of war to support those sides with which they sympathise. That started with Afghanistan when the Soviets were involved there, then spread to Iraq a few years later and has now spread to Syria, and at every stage the numbers have increased. In Afghanistan, the number of foreign Muslims who fought there was around 3,000 to 4,000. In Syria today, the number is estimated to be about 11,000, and although some are leaving, others are coming in. Those who leave do not outnumber those who come in, so the number remains pretty much the same. It is estimated that, of the 11,000 foreign Muslims who are fighting in Syria, about 400 are Britons.

That is not the end of the story. With the turmoil in Egypt, I expect that something worse will happen. The army has declared war—not a virtual war, but a real one—on the Muslim Brotherhood. That simply will not work. The Muslim Brotherhood has global appeal among Muslims and, being highly ideologically motivated, it will not be crushed or put aside as easily as others might. Therefore, as far as I can gaze into my crystal ball, in two or three years’ time, we will see a situation in Egypt that will be no different from what we now see in Syria and Iraq. That will pose some very acute problems, because Egypt is one of the largest countries in the Middle East and faces some very acute problems.

Those who fight abroad get good training; they are angry because they have gone through the suffering of fighting in a war and they build up global networks. When they return home, therefore, they pose a danger—although not necessarily. It is a mistake to think that, when those who have fought in Syria come back, they will necessarily engage in terrorist activities. If I think of students with whom I have had some dealings, sometimes the opposite happens. Having fought in a war in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere, they have seen enough suffering and do not want to be involved any more, or their family put pressure on them not to. Nevertheless, generally, when people who have fought in wars abroad come home, they have a slight tendency to be part of a certain network and to engage in terrorist activities in the domestic sphere. The two recent cases bear this out. The 29 year-old Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot and killed three people at a Jewish museum in Belgium, had been in Syria for more than a year. In our country, Mashudur Choudhury, who was convicted of terror offences in Syria, had of course been there.

MI5 informs us that about half of its casework involves preventing Syria-related terrorist activities. About 200 Britons have returned from Syria and we are told that dozens of them are suspected and have been arrested. Even if all these conflicts—including the one that I foresee in Egypt—were to end tomorrow, the world in which we live would not be stable. Historical memories of the wars that were initiated by the West, historical memories of the shady business deals in which we engaged in Iraq and elsewhere and memories of the humiliation we inflicted on a lot of people, not only in Abu Ghraib but in lots of other places, will linger, and rightly so. How can one expect people to forget what they have seen and what they have heard? As long as these memories last, we cannot afford to assume our world is entirely safe simply because that world over there is safe. It is not safe now; it was not safe for 40 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said. During those 40 years we did lots of things we should not have done.

That is the situation and the question is what our response should be. In the minute and a half I have at my disposal, I want to prescribe my remedy. New wars, limited or unlimited, will not help. The kind of thing that Mr Blair has been trying to press upon our attention will only exacerbate the situation. We should provide help when that is asked for—that is right—but at the same time we should remember that we should not get caught up in domestic rivalry and domestic conflict. If the Government make a complete mess of the situation and alienate people and there is a civil war, as in Syria, and they ask us to help against ISIS, we need to be careful that we are not being manipulated.

Secondly, we must keep a keen eye on the terrorist activities in Britain but should not presume that everybody who has been to Syria, Iraq or elsewhere is necessarily a potential terrorist. That can lead to heavy-handed activities and could alienate the Muslims.

Thirdly, we should do nothing to demonise the entire Muslim community or to alienate it in a variety of ways, as we have tended to do, as in the case of schools in Birmingham. Ofsted produced one report and two or three months later there was a completely opposite kind of report. There is also the constant mistake of equating conservative views with extremism. This is only done in relation to Muslim schools. What about other faith schools where similar things might be going on? Those of us with some experience would know that it does. To single out a particular community and its schools can create an estranged, deeply alienated, deeply bitter community, and that is to store up trouble for the future.

Finally, unless the problems in the Middle East are brought under control—not solved; they will not be solved—we will not be able to find much peace there or here. If they are going to be dissolved, that cannot be done bilaterally by the Americans linking up with the Iranians in order to counter the Iraqis. That game has been going on for the past 40 years and it has not taken us anywhere. We should be thinking in terms of some kind of regional conference where all the parties involved are represented, where we can work out some kind of mechanism for conflict resolution and where we can lay down certain principles which no side would violate, whatever its grievances. Then we can think of an Arab peacekeeping force or an Arab reconciliation commission of the kind we have seen in other parts of the world. In other words, we need to decentralise the way these things function, try to organise a regional conference within a global context and aim for a long-term strategy based on good sense and wisdom, which I am afraid has been so rare in the past few years.

Afghanistan

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who has introduced the subject with the characteristic fairness which we have come to expect of her, and with a great deal of historical learning. If I disagree with her from time to time those disagreements are largely minor and serve only to correct—as I see it—certain interpretations.

The UN-mandated military operations have been going on since 2001 and, as far as I can see, we have little to show for the past 12 years. Violence continues on all sides; rampant corruption is startling and visible. Afghanistan today is rated as 180 out of 183 countries; seven years ago, it had the honour of being 140 out of 183. There is a huge waste of resources. Money everywhere is wrongly used or used to buy people and corrupt the cultural life of the country. Violence has become a profitable industry. You only have to set up a little insurgent group and there are people who are ready to buy you or to offer you all kinds of services.

Ethnic divisions, happily, have abated a little, but they remain just as acute, and there is no stable political system. This has tended to happen despite the enormous amount of money and the enormous amount of political wisdom pouring in from all parts of the world—including from countries which cannot manage their own affairs but are very generous with advice. In spite of all that, why have we not succeeded in creating a reasonably stable political system in a small country?

I think that part of the reason is that we have been ignoring certain basic realties of Afghan life. Some 80% of it is rural, and 87% of its people earn their livelihood through agriculture-related activities. Many communities are separated by mountains and it can take days to reach them. There is an informal power structure based on ethnic, regional, tribal, clan and village loyalties. The centralised governance which the modern state presupposes and which everyone has kept recommending since the Bonn conference is simply not possible.

Afghanistan needs to evolve its own political structure and that structure cannot be imposed or propped up by outsiders. Afghanistan cannot relive somebody else’s history. We discovered that very painfully in India when the Constituent Assembly was trying to draft the constitution and realised that the modern nation state is simply not an option for India, and India did not opt for it.

One of the important things to bear in mind, therefore, is to stop outside interference except for the kind of aid and advice that it might need. We need to trust the people of Afghanistan to sort out their own differences. After all, they have lived together all these years; they want to live together; they share a future; they know—as the Minister said—that they have trillions of dollars that they can make proper use of; and they have their own children whom they would like to see educated. We need to trust the people of Afghanistan to evolve a structure which is appropriate to their own history, traditions and culture. A traditional loya jirga, for example, can be a good starting point.

In all this negative publicity we tend to forget that there are some powerful civil society movements in Afghanistan. In spite of having been a student of politics, I had not been aware of them until a few weeks ago, when I was addressing an important “Festival of Ideas” in Goa. I spoke on one day, and the person who addressed the meeting the next day was Dr Yacoobi, an Afghan professor of education in the United States who decided to return to Afghanistan and to take on the Taliban on her own. She said that girls will be educated—they will be sent to schools and the schools will not be touched. She relied on persuasion, on power and on organisation, reaching out to the daughters and wives of the Taliban leaders themselves, telling them that the future was theirs if only they would go to school. Slowly and slowly, despite threats to her life, she has been able to create a fairly powerful movement. It is not surprising that she, along with many others, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Movements of this kind exist. Society has a certain vitality, if the Taliban would only allow it to breathe—which they do not seem to be doing.

I am sorry to say that Pakistan’s role, which could have been and should be useful, has not been terribly helpful. It has provided backing, safe haven and even military training to insurgent groups, including the Taliban. It is using those groups, particularly the Haqqani network, to attack Indian interests and targets in Afghanistan; for example, the Indian embassy in 2008 and 2009 and even the United States embassy in 2011. Not surprisingly, the recently retired chief of staff of the United States called the Haqqani network the “veritable arm” of Pakistan’s ISI. Sadly, if you try to provoke violence of this kind, or support terrorism in other countries, it has a blowback effect on your own. The result is that the Pakistan Taliban uses Afghan territory as a safe haven and a springboard to launch attacks on Pakistani troops, which we all bitterly regret. In other words, Pakistan, by supporting insurgent movements in Afghanistan, is paying the price in terms of its own stability and the security of its own people.

This happens in international politics—there is no use in being sentimental or sanctimonious about it—but what are Pakistan’s reasons? It argues that Afghanistan offers strategic depth against potential conflict with India. However, you cannot think of other countries simply in terms of conflict, and you cannot think of India simply as a country with which you are eternally condemned to fight one war or another. And even if you do, Afghanistan cannot provide strategic depth.

There is also the argument that India is using Afghans, or Afghanistan, to foment trouble in Pakistan. Again, I have seen no evidence of this—and if there is, India deserves to be condemned. So far, however, I have not seen it. I do not think that it would be in India’s interests. Talking to Indian diplomats I get the feeling that it would not be in India’s interests to use Afghanistan to foment trouble in Pakistan, because one Afghanistan is enough. Half a dozen Afghanistans in the heart of Pakistan would hardly be the way for India to be stable.

I think that Pakistan needs to recognise that India has a legitimate interest in Afghanistan: first, to maintain trade with central Asia and beyond; secondly, to prevent militants from attacking Indian targets in Afghanistan; and thirdly, because it has close historical and cultural ties that need to be maintained. It is very striking that India has signed an agreement that it would not use its troops or combat personnel in Afghanistan. Its activities, as the Minister rightly said, are largely developmental. It is the fifth-largest provider of development aid, giving over $1.5 billion to various projects.

I sometimes wonder whether our own Government’s policy is as even-handed and transparent as it could be. On the one hand they seem suspicious and critical of what Pakistan is doing; but on the other hand they organise meetings such as the trilateral summit in February this year, where they seem to be supportive of what is going on and give the impression, certainly to Indians, that they want to keep the Indians out and that they think we can maintain peace in the region simply by establishing some kind of relationship with Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is not the way to go. I very much hope that the British Government will make it absolutely clear that, as the noble Baroness said, all the regional powers in the neighbourhood have a legitimate role in maintaining a stable Afghanistan —they all need to be involved. Bilateral or trilateral summits simply arouse Indian suspicion and are not the answer.

United Kingdom: Future Demographic Trends

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for securing and introducing this debate. During the 13-odd years that I have been in your Lordships’ House, this is the second time that I have spoken in two debates in a row, and the first time that these two debates have been within 20 minutes of each other. If today’s experience is any guide, I would not want to repeat it and I would not commend it with much enthusiasm to anyone in the House.

We are talking about the impact of demographic trends. Within the UK, the population as of 2010 is 62.3 million, expected to rise to 67.2 million in 2020 and 73.2 by 2035. These predictions cannot always be relied upon, but by and large there is reason to believe that the margin of error will not be very large. It is also expected that the median age will rise from 39.7 today to 39.9 in 2020 and 42.2 in 2035. Today people over 75 constitute 4.9% of the population; by 2035 that is likely to rise to 8.9%, almost double. Those who are 85 or over constitute 1.4% of the population, and that is likely to rise to 3.5% by 2035. The working age of 30 to 60 years is also likely to rise, but rather slowly, from 24.8 currently to 26.7 in 2035.

These figures make sense only if seen in a comparative context. The picture in France is roughly the same. The population today is 64.7 million, likely to rise to 67.8 million in 2020 and 71.3 million by 2035, an increase of 10%. In Italy, again, there is a likely increase between now and 2035 of 8%. The only major country—other than Poland, Lithuania and others—that is a striking exception is Germany, where the population is likely to fall by 6% between now and 2035. The current population is 81.7 million, likely to fall to 80.1 million in 2020 and then 76.3 million by 2035.

As the population rises, that has an impact in terms of who is falling and who is rising. The number of Christians, for example, declined between 2001 and 2011 by 13%. The number of those with no religious affiliations increased by 10% during the same 10-year period and there is reason to believe, so the experts tell us, that the same trend is likely to continue, so that by 2035 the number of Christians will have fallen dramatically and those with no affiliation will have risen.

The percentage of Muslims and ethnic minority children is likely to rise, partly through immigration and partly because of fertility and an increase in the number of children. It is also expected that there will be an increase in qualifications at level 4 and above, so more and more of our people are going to acquire higher qualifications. Rather surprisingly, the report says that childlessness is on the increase, and the number of children per family is falling. However, it is falling unevenly: in white communities, the size of the family is much smaller—1.5 or 1.6 children, sometimes even less—while among the ethnic minorities the families are larger, and their population is therefore likely to rise faster than that of the rest of society.

So far, we have relied on migration to provide skills that we have lacked. Increasingly, it is expected that by 2035 the sources of migration will dry up. Indians will have no reason to come here; in fact, more and more of our people will want to go to India, China, Pakistan or elsewhere. If some migrants are available, more European countries will be competing for them, and our share is likely to fall because we might be less attractive than other countries. These are the broad trends over the next 30 years, so what are the likely consequences?

I shall concentrate on three or four that follow directly from what I have said and are not cultural factors that might be contingent and may not happen. It is striking that the percentage of south Asian doctors is rising. Currently it is about 23%, and it is likely to rise to 35% by 2020. By 2035, the proportion of south Asian doctors may be 46% to 48%; every second doctor will be of south Asian origin. By and large, they will be working not as GPs but in hospitals, and many of them will be women. Here I rely on evidence given to me by two distinguished doctors, Dr Ashtok Pathak and Dr Karam Marwah, a consultant and a GP, who have access to some interesting details.

As the population gets older, medical care will be costly. It is said that those over 75 demand more than twice the amount of medical services and money than those between 35 and 44. More chronic illnesses and expensive drugs will have to be taken care of.

In the next three decades, because of family breakdown, growing loneliness, chronic aliments, weak family structures and less familial and social care, there is likely to be an increase in mental health problems, far more than we have seen in our hospitals, which will have to be taken care of. At a slightly different level, the entire NHS structure will have to be looked at very carefully because the distinction between hospitals and GPs cannot be continued in the way it is. Local hospitals will have to go. Instead, we are going to have distant specialist hospitals and more care will be provided at home and in the community.

As the population gets older, politics will change. Voting patterns will change. One never knows how they will change. It depends on the state of the world by 2035, but voting patterns will change, as will the issues that matter to people. For those between 30 and 45 or 50, certain issues matter far more to them than to the elderly population. As the number of people over 75 increases, the issues that matter to them will be different and they will dominate our cultural and political life, and political parties, including my own, will need to take notice of that.

One of the important impacts will be a profound change in national identity. If, according to projected figures for 2025 and 2035, there will be more ethnic minorities, more Muslims, more elderly people, more women and more south Asians and others in visible positions of power, what it means to be British will have to be defined very differently.

Kashmir

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I begin by thanking my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, for securing this debate and introducing it with the passion and eloquence that we have come to associate with him. He has been a good champion of his people and I admire him for that, although I do not agree with most of the things that he has said.

Relations between India and Pakistan have passed through several stages. It was Pandit Nehru who suggested, within five years of taking office, that there should be a confederation between the two countries, a proposal he reiterated on several occasions. Relations have passed through various phases because the two countries do not seem to be able to make up their minds on exactly how much to co-operate, at what pace and in which direction.

In Pakistan there are institutions and agencies that would like the two countries to get together; there are others that think differently. Ever since the military has been a dominant force in Pakistani politics, relations with India have remained rather tense, although I see that Pakistan is beginning to show a more ambiguous, nuanced approach. Given the penetration of the military into the economic sphere, and the fact that the economic sphere offers the opportunity for Pakistani business to flourish, there is a great deal of demand for closer ties between the two countries, including the proposal for giving India most favoured nation status.

At the same time, terrorist attacks such as those on the Indian Parliament and the Taj Hotel in Bombay have been occasions when the relations between the two countries seemed to point in the direction of hostility. In other words, there are gestures in both directions and one will have to see how things move and at what pace.

Our concern today is not to talk so much about India and Pakistan in general—this is not a summit between five noble Lords, one from Pakistan and the rest of us from India—but rather to concentrate on Kashmir. I know that the noble Lord has been preoccupied with Kashmir for quite a while.

I have taken a stand which has not been very popular in the Indian community or the Indian establishment. I have always argued that to talk about Kashmir “belonging” to India is an ambiguous expression. If “Kashmir” refers to land, land can belong to another country. But if “Kashmir” refers to people—which it does—no people can belong to another, short of slavery. Therefore, to say that Kashmir belongs to India is a very dangerous proposition if it is taken to mean that the people of Kashmir can be held hostage by the people of India.

I have wondered how best to handle the question. A plebiscite is not the answer. If I were the Prime Minister of India—which happily I am not—I would go for it because I would know that I would be able to organise a plebiscite but Pakistan would not. The 1948 resolution requires that both sides should withdraw their armed forces. Under Pakistan’s constitution, Pakistani-occupied Kashmir is already an integral part of Pakistan and therefore it is not open to Pakistan to cede Pakistani-occupied Kashmir or allow it to become separate.

It is also the case that in order for the United Nations resolution to be implemented, Kashmir will have to be whole, which means that the territory of Kashmir that Pakistan has ceded to China will have to be restored. In order for the 1948 resolution to go through, Pakistan would have to vacate Pakistani-occupied Kashmir and regain the land it has ceded to China. Neither of these conditions can be met, so India could easily say, “Let’s have a plebiscite”, knowing full well that the other side would not be able to meet those conditions.

There are other reasons why I can imagine India not agreeing, because if you agree to a plebiscite in Kashmir, you might have to do that in the north-east and other parts of India, and that is a non-starter. In addition, if the plebiscite went the other way one could not be entirely sure how the 148 million Muslims in India would respond and no Government could risk the disorder that this might cause. So a plebiscite is not an option.

At the same time, the existing situation is not an option either. It is absolutely right to say that India has behaved badly in Kashmir in recent years. Its forces have been responsible for violations of human rights. However, this has been recognised by the Indian media, as the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed, pointed out. There are plenty of groups in India that have campaigned against this. The National Human Rights Commission of India has campaigned against this. There is a tremendous amount of Indian opposition—people like myself, Arundhati Roy and lots of others have written about it. Within India itself there are enough alternatives available to put pressure on the Government to do something about it—the kind of thing, I am afraid, that does not seem to obtain in Pakistan.

What should we be doing? India cannot continue as it is doing now. At the same time, one cannot expect that the two halves of Kashmir can remain as they are, for all kinds of reasons. For the time being at least, one must respect the line of control; expect and require the Indians to behave much more sensibly in Kashmir, as they used to do but have not done in recent years; and hope that the compulsions of democracy in India and Kashmir will force a course of events resulting in an increasingly relaxed climate in Kashmir and India, and between India and Pakistan, so that the situation can be handled much more intelligently than it is being handled now.

Israel: Arab Citizens

Lord Parekh Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter on securing this debate and on introducing it with great passion and erudition. I would make one small point of clarification. In the Motion, as well as in what has been said so far, Arab citizens of Israel are all being referred to as “Israel’s Arab citizens”. It is worth bearing in mind that they do not identify themselves or wish to be identified in this way. The Arab citizens of Israel prefer to call themselves Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Arab minority as a Palestinian minority in Israel. In matters of this kind, if we want to respect people I think we need to make sure that we accept their self-identification.

These citizens do that for two reasons. First, by calling themselves Palestinian citizens of Israel they want to remind themselves and the world of their history: that they are a minority but not an immigrant minority or an indigenous minority, like the original nations in Canada and Australia. They are a majority that have been reduced to a minority. Their second reason for wanting to do so is to show that they are part of a diaspora or global community, in exactly the same way as the Israeli Jewish community is. Although I might from time to time slip into the language of talking about Israeli Arabs, I wanted to make that point clear and put it on record that we need to bear this in mind.

Although my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Bew, produced statistics to show that the picture is not as bleak as some have made out, let me make it absolutely clear that there are many areas of life where Israeli Palestinians suffer from considerable discrimination. I did not want to produce those figures but he has produced some on medical students. I could explain those figures in other ways, because they have been the subject of considerable analysis and are contradicted by figures in other areas, but I shall not do that. All I need to say here is what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter said. Justice Or’s commission reported in 2003 that there had been a “neglectful and discriminatory” treatment of Israeli Palestinians. It went on to say that state resources were not allocated “in an equal manner”.

These conclusions of the Or commission have been supported by various independent research bodies. Let me mention half a dozen figures to give some picture of what I have in mind. Fifty per cent of Israeli Palestinians are classified as poor. Only 1.3% of Arabs who graduate in high-tech fields find work in their fields, although Israel is short of technical manpower. In fact, the recent report of the Bank of Israel said that not hiring Arabs costs Israel 31 billion new Israeli shekels a year in lost production. The average per student allocation in an Arab junior high school is one-fifth of that in the Jewish junior high schools. Less than 2% of academics are in tenured or tenure track positions. There is discrimination in areas relating to planning permission, housing, zoning regulation, urban development and civil rights.

Moving to the political area, to the best of my knowledge no Arab political party has ever been a part of the ruling coalition. There is constant talk in any negotiations about voluntary transfer or expulsion and territorial exchanges which treats Arab citizens of Israel as if they are dispensable—not a permanent part of Israel but one that can be got rid of in any negotiations. I would find it very difficult to live in a country if I were constantly told that I was dispensable and could be negotiated out of existence.

One might also look at the national anthem of Israel, which speaks very movingly, of course, of Zion and the yearning of the Jewish soul. That is fine, but imagine how you would feel singing the national anthem if you were an Israeli Palestinian? In October 2000 there was the Al-Aqsa intifada, in which protests took place and 13 Arabs were killed. To the best of my knowledge, no policeman has so far been indicted. It is also striking that there was no Arab Minister in the Israeli Government until Raleb Majadele was appointed Minister without portfolio in 2007, and a few months later, Minister of Culture, Sport and Science. As a result, there is a deep sense of alienation and withdrawal from the political process and electoral participation has gone down considerably—from about 75% at one time to 48% or 49% now. If one is not careful there is a danger that people might turn to other methods.

While that is one side of the picture, the other side is also striking which is that many Israelis recognise this. Having been to Israel on two or three occasions, lecturing and debating precisely these questions, I am struck by the way in which many progressive groups in Israel feel strongly about what is going on. In the 1999 elections, Ehud Barak talked about “a state for all”, implying thereby that it had not been a state for all. As a result, 95% of Arabs voted for him. When nothing happened, there was a grave sense of disappointment and when elections took place two years later, they boycotted them and 80% did not vote. The Supreme Court of Israel has constitutionally often stood up against the resolutions of the Knesset and pointed out that they are inconsistent with Israel’s commitment to democracy and equality. As a result of this internal self-correction and self-criticism, there is the remarkable figure in a recent survey that showed that 45% to 50% of Israeli Palestinians are proud to call themselves Israelis.

In other words, I suggest there is a very complex picture. On the one hand there is the systematic marginalisation of and discrimination against Israeli Palestinians. On the other, there is constant criticism of this, with institutions like the Supreme Court constantly providing correcting mechanisms. How do we explain this? I suggest there is a deep tension at the very heart of the Israeli state’s identity. On the one hand, it sees itself as a Jewish state. On the other, it is committed to democracy, to working—as the declaration of independence says—for the benefit of all its citizens and pursuing the ideas of liberty and justice. On the one hand, the Jewish state: on the other, democracy, liberty, equality and justice. How do you reconcile these two—not quite contradictory but conflicting—impulses at the very heart of Jewish identity? That is at the root of the marginalisation of its minorities.

When one talks about a Jewish state—something that I have talked and written about—what does one mean: a state of the Jews, by the Jews, for the Jews? It cannot possibly be that, because Israelis are already committed to some form of democracy. It could be “of” the Jews, but not just “by” them because there are Arabs; it cannot just be “for” the Jews, because it is committed to the benefit of all. I am not trying to preach, but I simply suggest that Israelis need to resolve this tension at the heart of their identity. In so far as it defines itself as a Jewish state, there is a constant thrust towards turning Israel into an ethno-cultural state, majoritarian, a state owned by its majority. In so far as they see themselves as committed to democracy, they recognise that it is a liberal, civic or multi-communal state. My suggestion would be that although this temptation to become ethno-cultural exists in every state, including our own where people want to see it as a white Christian state, they recognise that it is not possible. In India, they tried to see it as a Hindu state and recognised that this was not possible. Some such move needs to be made in Israel itself.