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Identity Politics of South Asian Enclaves
59
The first two stages correspond to the views of defensive
multicultural policies and those of their opponents regarding
ethnic minority immigrants as either victims to be protected, or as
aggressors to be feared. The third stage
—
the social equilibrium
between victim and aggressor implied by “desi”
—
can be argued to
be developing in Malkani’s novel in the more recently formed
ethnic enclave in Hounslow, a suburb in West London. Although
enclaves “have traditionally been viewed as existing only in inner
cities,” as Mark Abrahamson points out, “communities with all the
features of enclaves have recently formed in otherwise
conventional suburbs” due to the fact that “the metropolitan areas
around cities have grown in size and complexity” (2006: 2). In
general, the suburban enclaves “tend to be newer, physically more
attractive, with wealthier residents, and more economic
opportunities” (2006: 2). Malkani similarly notices in his reading
guides on the website of the Penguin group that, in comparison
with the better known South Asian community in East London, as
seen, for example, in the Bangladeshi ethnic community in Ali’s
Brick Lane
, the desi community in West London is “more
economically affluent, thereby reducing the role of class or racial
struggle” (n.d.). Thus, although the novel opens with a beating
scene, the narrator Jas has actually verbally exaggerated it, for, as
he later admits, “[y]ou hardly ever saw a brown-on-white beatin
these days, not round these pinds anyway” (Malkani, 2006a: 12).
It is not only because the “[r]ising levels of education and
income have enabled upwardly mobile Blacks [and Asians] to
choose where to live rather than having the choice imposed on
them” (Varady, 2005: xiii) but also because the internal diversities
formed in Hounslow’s ethnic enclave give its residents a wider
sense of belonging that the novel attests to the emergence of
interculturality in contemporary British society. According to
Cantle, as opposed to the earlier forms of multicultural policies,
“interculturalism” can be adopted as a new model to accommodate
the super diversity of the more complex multicultural society in