Multiculturalism’s categories and transnational ties: the Bangladeshi campaign for independence in Britain, 1971

Abstract

Accounts of the changing categories operative within British multiculturalism have commonly focused upon the gradual division of identities. Analysing the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War’s effects in Britain, this article suggests that a narrative of categorisations in British multiculturalism must be more complex, sensitive to shifts in time and both bottom-up and top-down factors. Whilst the mobilisation of second-generation British Bangladeshi community organisations in the 1980s firmly established Bangladeshis as a distinct constituency of multiculturalism, the 1971 campaign, conducted in a context less sensitive to the internal diversity of ethnic minorities, contributed to a more partial recognition of Bengalis as distinct. Such categorical shifts, the article suggests, are therefore the result of both domestic and transnational politics. In the British Bangladeshi community, ‘homeland’ political issues, particularly those centred on the relationship between Bangladeshi culture and Islam, have mapped heavily onto British struggles about how the community is framed. The transnational mobilisations, by bringing British Bangladeshis into increased contact with mainstream institutions, have often assisted rather than frustrated integration. Nevertheless, the importation of Bangladeshi political conflict to Britain has at times been resisted by British elites, reflecting again the importance of the dialect between bottom-up and top-down action in producing multiculturalism’s structure.