India

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, for initiating this debate and offer him my apologies for arriving a tad late in the Chamber. The joy of Divisions is that you get talking to a colleague or two outside, and it is funny how time flies, but there we are. Life is like that sometimes.

The noble Lord spoke very eloquently about the importance of the relationship between India and Britain. There are many in this Chamber and in our country, and I count myself among them, who have a very strong love and affinity for India. In my case, it is very personal. Both my parents were born in pre-partition India. My mother is from Jodhpur and my father is from Gurdaspur, so the cultural and family ties to the great country of India remain very strong. I am also reminded that we as a country share many strong ties with India. The Indian diaspora is very strong here in the United Kingdom. It is one of the strongest ethnic communities, if not the largest, here in Great Britain, but with that comes responsibility. The Indian diaspora here has responded most positively. If you look around Britain today, there are success stories in every field. In commerce, business, education and, dare I say, even in politics, you will see the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi diaspora—the subcontinent that was greater India—today flourishing in every element of British society.

One cannot move forward and talk about India and Britain without mentioning sport. If one reflects, the noble game of cricket resonates in both India and England, although if we reflect on the current results between the two countries, the less said the better.

In the time I have today, I wish to focus briefly on business and commerce. When my right honourable friend David Cameron became Prime Minister, one of the first trips he made, along with leading lights from Britain, was to India. One of the things you do in government is give a very strong statement of intent. That intent is very clear: Britain believes not only in commercial ties with India, but in India itself. It is the largest democracy in the world. It has shown inspiration in its culture, history and people.

If you look at the Indian economy, many would be proud of it. I was reading a recent report that said that India’s growth rate slowed somewhat this year. When you see that it slowed to 7.7 per cent, you perhaps reflect on the strength and vitality of the Indian economy. When we read about India, we look towards its emerging middle classes. It is a very aspirant and ambitious nation and is making great strides in IT and technology industries. In the past week or so, I have had the good fortune to attend a couple of events. One was the Institute of Directors event that was organised by the Indian IOD. It was most heart-warming to see that one of the key areas of focus for Indian business is climate change. That again shows that Indian commerce and Indian business are responding not just to the needs of their nation but to the global challenges of climate change.

Yesterday, I attended an event organised by India800. It is not an organisation that I was that familiar with, but it kept my attention. It focused not only on the successes in India, which are many, but did not forget that poverty is still an important challenge facing India. There are between 270 million and 450 million people still living on a dollar a day in India, so the challenges are immense, but that is where business and commerce count. Therefore, I believe that it is incumbent on the British Government to extend their ties to India: ties of culture, education, to which the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, referred, and, most importantly, business. We in Britain have a large stake in India, but let us not forget that India has a large stake in Britain as well.

Ultimately, when we reflect on the two nations that are India and Britain, we are tied together by history, by culture and, most importantly, by people. It was the noble Mahatma Gandhi who said:

“A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people”.

And India resides in the hearts and in the soul of Britain.