As the U.K.’s July 4 general election approaches, a Conservative politician has appealed to Asian voters along religious lines, hoping to appeal to sentiments around contentious issues in India.
A letter posted on social media site X, purportedly written by Marco Longhi, the former MP for North Dudley, in the West Midlands region, and addressed to British Pakistani/ Kashmiri voters, warns that the rights of Kashmiris would be compromised if people voted for his Labour Party opponent. The Hindu reached out to Mr. Longhi to authenticate the letter.
Mr. Longhi is running again as the Conservative candidate for North Dudley. Just under half of Dudley’s population identifies as Christian and 6.2% as Muslim, according to the 2021 census. Over a third said they did not have a religion, while 1.6% identified as Sikh and 0.7% as Hindu. Ninety-two percent said they were born in the U.K. Mr. Longhi had comfortably beaten the Labour candidate with approximately twice the number of votes to win the constituency in 2019
The letter claims that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election would mean “even tougher times” for Kashmiris and would impact their rights.
“I have always condemned India’s continuous illegal actions in Kashmir,” Mr. Longhi wrote, adding that he had been at the forefront of speaking against the (Indian) government’s “atrocities towards the people of Kashmir”.
“Will it be me, or Labour candidate, Sonia KUMAR?” Mr. Longhi wrote, capitalising and underlining the word ‘Kumar’ and pledging to raise, “even more”, the issue of Kashmir in Westminster if they voted for him.
“…Marco Longhi has highlighted and underlined the name (ethnicity) of his Labour opponent ‘Sonia KUMAR’ in a letter specifically targeting voters of British Pakistani/Kashmiri heritage in the constituency,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank that studies questions around race, migration and identity.
Mr. Katwala authored ‘Culture Clash’, a joint report with Labour MPs in 2023 on how Labour and the centre-left can approach identity issues and reduce polarisation.
‘Anti-Modi message’
Mr. Katwala posted an image of a Labour leaflet for a 2021 by-election showing former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson shaking hands with Mr. Modi with the message “The risk of voting for anyone but Labour is clear.”
“This new Longhi letter has a similar anti-Modi message, but combines it with a directly prejudiced challenge to a rival candidate,” Mr. Katwala said.
However, the messaging has worked in the opposite direction as well. For instance, there were reports of WhatsApp messages being circulated around the 2019 U.K. election warning Hindus not to vote for the Labour party as it was “anti-India” and “anti- Modi”.
‘Shameful attempt’
“This is a shameful attempt to divide communities and is offensive to both Muslim and Hindu communities. There should be zero tolerance of the dog-whistle politics Mr. Longhi is engaged in,” Rajesh Agrawal, Indian-born Labour parliamentary candidate for the Leicester East constituency said in a statement about the letter.
Mr. Agrawal appealed to U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to withdraw the Conservative Party’s support for Mr. Longhi and to “put country before party”.
Polarisation along religious lines in British Indian communities has been on the rise in recent years. Leicester was home to clashes between Hindus and Muslims in September 2022.
In 2019, the Overseas Friends of the BJP group had told The Times of India that it was actively campaigning on behalf of the Conservatives in 48 seats.
In a 2023 review of the relationship between faith and the government, independent government adviser Colin Bloom, in a section on Hindu Nationalism, had warned the U.K. government to “be attentive to the possibility of nationalist movements exploiting religious rhetoric to incite prejudicial views that may destabilise British society”. Mr Bloom had also noted that many faith communities are likely to take an interest in geopolitical disputes outside the U.K.
