Paramjit Dhanda, 33 youngest MP in UK.
From cleaner’s son to House of Commons

P. Jayaram, Indo-Asian News Service
London (IANS)

His mother was a hospital cleaner and father a truck driver, but, at 33, Paramjit Dhanda is already a member of the British House of Commons, one of its youngest MPs.

Dhanda is the new face of the successful young Asian in Britain - sophisticated, forceful and totally British except for looks.

He is the other end of the spectrum represented by Lord Swraj Paul for instance - the leading industrialist whose contribution to the British economy and society has been acknowledged with his nomination to the House of Lords.

While the ethnic Indian community in Britain has been known as the most prosperous among all other ethnic groups, it has mostly stayed away from politics, barring a few exceptions.

Even today, out of 659 members of the House of Commons, only 12 are non-whites, of which six are of Asian origin.

"I come from a working class background. My mother was a cleaner in a hospital and my father was a lorry driver," said Dhanda proudly in an interview with a group of Indian journalists in his office room in Parliament.

His parents had migrated to London from Jalandhar in Punjab in the early sixties in search of greener pastures.

The parents, like most Asians, invested in their children’s education and "luckily I also had the opportunity to go to a university," he said. His brother is an executive in IBM and his sister a manager in an automobile company. His wife Rubi is a solicitor.

Dhanda said it was his mother’s involvement with the trade unions that instilled political consciousness in him even as a student.

Unlike other Asian MPs elected from constituencies with large ethnic populations, Dhanda represents Gloucester, an overwhelmingly white constituency.

"I wasn’t the favourite," he recalls the day he appeared before a group of Labour Party leaders appointed to choose the candidate for Gloucester for the 2001 elections.

More than 100 prospective candidates had applied for nomination, but Dhanda was the unanimous choice after he forcefully told the panel that it is not enough for a party to have good policies; it is also important to have a strong organisation with young and energetic leaders who could implement them. As an Asian MP, he is often pressured to take up ethnic and race issues. "I also feel I have a responsibility to take up these issues."

However, he said, issues like Kashmir and the Gujarat sectarian strife did not directly relate to his constituency, although when a killer quake struck Gujarat in 2001, he mobilized a campaign and raised a million pounds as relief for the affected people.

Dhanda, who has been to India three or four times, feels something should be done about the inequities in Indian society.

"There is need to address the issues of growth versus distribution," he said.

When Home Secretary David Blunkett called for immigrants to speak English at home to prevent "schizophrenic rifts" between generations, it created a row with Keith Vas, former Europe minister of Indian origin, branding it as the "silliest remark" by a home secretary.

Dhanda however defended Blunkett, saying it was the kind of issue that ordinary people talked about and politicians should not be afraid of airing.

Indo-Asian News Service