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the UK terror plot in the summer of 2006.
2
Having set the novel
around the neighborhood of Hounslow, Malkani delineates the
lives of a gang of Indian British teenage boys headed by
body-builder Hardjit. Just as Huq has pointed out, “Whereas
Karim is a rarity in Kureishi’s historical account of 1960s/70s
Bromley, in
Londonstani
’s twenty-first century Hounslow, Asians
are the norm” (2012: 9). These youths call themselves “rudeboys,”
a slang which, in contemporary Britain, refers to the youths who
are involved in street culture like “gangsta” or to “tough,
style-conscious male” (Malkani, 2006a:
340), although the term is
originally from Jamaica and was used in the 1960s for juvenile
delinquents and criminals. In the first thirteen pages of the novel,
these rudeboys beat a white boy, whom they claim called them
“Paki.” While retaking their A-levels, the rudeboys often skip
classes to hang out on the street and find trouble with
“goras”
—
white males
—
and with “coconuts”
—
South Asian
immigrants who have assimilated into white British society and
2
For more information, see Hounslow Council (2007). It is the report of a study
commissioned by the Hounslow Council “to consider the underlying causes of
youth disengagement from mainstream society and the significance of any
tendency to support extremist views and turn to extremist organisations” (5). The
report is available online at
http://www.hounslowhomes.org.uk/a_window_on_extremism.pdf. Although it is true that extremist groups operate in Hounslow, the
issue is, as the report makes clear, “not unique to Hounslow,” but “a reality for
many cities throughout Europe” (3). Most importantly, the report cautions people
not to link “the discussion of ‘community cohesion’” with “tackling violent
extremism and counter-terrorism,” for “[s]uch an approach will do even more to
marginalise certain groups in our communities and increase the resentment about
apparently unequal treatment” (6-7). Even if the official report attempts to strike
a note of caution in the beginning, it continues to point out how problematic
“clustering” is, namely “people choosing to live with or near those of similar
backgrounds,” when clustering “creates or gives rise to ignorance, fear, and
hostility towards ‘others’” (6). As I will elaborate later in the article, it is against
such fear of clustering and hostility towards others that
Londonstani
can be read
as an attempt to redirect the reader’s attention from the problems of clustering to
the diversity that people can often find in an ethnic enclave and to the vitality that
ethnic minority groups can bring to the city.