Many among Britain's minorities - at 1.6 million Indians are by far the largest minority in the country - had suspected all along that on the back of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union would come riding another; for those seen as foreigners to leave Britain.
These fears were dismissed as misplaced paranoia, and con concern over an unleashing of racist abuse since the referendum is still being so dismissed. But the evidence coming from all over the UK is as clear as it is worrying. Many seen as foreign-looking are facing abuse and are being asked to "leave".
Almost none of them really are foreigners, they are British, and born British. Easy to spot if they are black or of Indian or Pakistani origin. Poles are a little less obvious at first glance, but it is easy enough to tell a Pole or a Bulgarian apart from an Anglo-Saxon white Brit.
Abuse is too ‘mild’ to be recorded methodically, and not all cases are being reported to the police. But anecdotal accounts are mounting by the day, even by the hour. A former parliamentary candidate of Pakistani origin tweeted to say she was asked to go back five times in 25 minutes; she was born in Britain. A Muslim girl in a veil was abused and told to go back, “because we voted Leave”. A new hashtag has been created, a new word coined: postrefracism, describing post-referendum racism.
Britain was led into this by the Leave group. Nigel Farage, head of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) announced in public that Syrian refugees would rape British women. He apologised for being two hours late at one meeting because he said there were too many migrants on the roads of Britain.
Former mayor Boris Johnson, the principal flag-bearer of the Leave group said staying in the EU would bring in 80 million Turks. A united Europe, he said, was the failed dream of the likes of Napoleon and Hitler.
These are today’s victorious leaders. And the people who handed them that victory are celebrating in the tone their leaders set – or, those leaders talked the language they had sensed a groundswell of.
In that same breath, they had spoken of possibilities of getting more professionals from India to take the place of Polish and Bulgarian migrants from the EU. Really? Would they speak both the racist language, and talk about bring in more Indians when the reason for their success is their hysterically declared opposition to foreigners?
The show of racism that has erupted across Britain certainly is not new. It sat smothered under a culture of political correctness. Now, it is out there on the streets, and speaking. It is an ugly sight, and potentially dangerous for anyone not Anglo-Saxon white.
What we are beginning to see, very rapidly now, is not the Great Britain everyone thought it was, but the Real Britain everyone thought had been consigned to the past.
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