Midnight reminds India's lost children of their other world

Sylvia came to Britain from India in the 1950s

Sylvia came to Britain from India in the 1950s. Parvati Shankar moved to London when her husband's employers offered him a new post. Both women will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Indian independence at midnight tonight, with their thoughts firmly on the families and friends they left behind. Sylvia, a Catholic, says that despite the years spent in London, she still feels "very Indian" in her outlook. Despite the westernised lifestyle - the clothes, the food and the fast pace of the city - she has been able to maintain some level of connection with her previous life. Difficult though it may be, Sylvia says: "I still think like an Indian. I am philosophical. If you can't do anything about a problem, then live with it. It is known as the `Gandhi principle'.

"Whenever she has the chance, she wears the traditional Indian dress shalwar khameez, but when she worked in a London office it was frowned upon. "They didn't like it," she says, so the shalwar khameez was only seen on rare occasions.

The daughter of a civil servant who worked for the British government in India, Sylvia's schooling in a Catholic convent in Mangalore, southern India, was typical of a child in her position.

Before independence in 1947, she was told by the nuns at the convent not to look at the pictures of Mahatma Gandhi in her schoolbook. With the convent funded by the British rulers, the nuns "had rules to follow because the British government had allowed them to open the schools".

READ MORE

"If his picture was on a page they would say to us `turn the page, there is a naked man'. It was so silly. We were not allowed to speak of Mr Gandhiji" [a term of respect].

Sylvia grew up resenting the repression of Indian culture in her homeland. Many members of her family, including her uncle, joined Gandhi and the independence movement on the long marches and in the prisons when they were arrested. When, as a young woman she came to live in London, she expected the British to be "polite", "honest", just the same way they had spoken of themselves in India, "but all my illusions of honesty and other things were destroyed one by one when I came to England.

"We were always treated like second-class citizens, even in our own country. Even my father was passed over for promotion many times until the British left. When I came here, it was very disillusioning for me."

Sylvia and Parvati have never met but they have much in common. Both ascribe to what they call the "Gandhi principle" of life now that they are free to practise it. Mahatma Gandhi once said: "Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit." However, Parvati is quick to add that independence has not brought an end to the basic problems facing India.

Walking through the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan - the Institute of Indian Culture - in west Kensington, where Parvati teaches Bharatanatyam, a classical temple dance from southern India, she describes the poverty and illiteracy which still blights the lives of Indians. "Independence was an achievement, but the basic problems haven't changed. That is poverty and illiteracy. The gap between the rich and the poor remains the same."

Parvati and the hundreds of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who attend classes at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan will celebrate independence with a music and dance festival. Many of their relatives in Bradford, Birmingham and Leicester will no doubt do the same, but will the celebrations rekindle the confused identity with which many children of Indian immigrants say they struggle? Parvati says the number of young people attending her classes, and those teaching the ancient language of Sanskrit, is testament to the "hard work to keep hold of our culture".

The crisis of identity and the racism experienced by the Indian community in Britain can be difficult, but while Parvati makes no excuses for racists, her solution is typical of the gentle, understanding woman she is. "We have to bear in mind that we don't have the right to ask the host country to change because we don't like this or we don't like that, but if everybody lives by the rules, then it will wipe out racism."

When we meet, Mr Mathoor R. Krishnamurti, one of the cofounders of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, is dressed in white linen and open-toed sandals.

He is keen to tell me he once officiated at the wedding of an Irish woman and an Indian man.

He explains he is not a "priest", rather a student of Indian philosophy and culture and this allowed him to conduct the wed ding ceremony. "Independence was very welcome," he says, "and it has enabled us to bring the best of India to Britain to teach our children something of their heritage."