Indian Immigrants in Britain

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32803, 31 December 1971, Page 8

Indian Immigrants in Britain

Rampal and His Family. By Ursula Sharma. Collins. 222 pp. Ursula Sharma is a sociologist married to an Indian and she tells the story of a Punjabi and his family living in England. She has pieced the book together from tape recordings and so in a sense it is Rampal and his wife Satya who tell their own story. It. proves to be a very effective way of getting across the particular problems of an immigrant family in Britain. Rampal tells of the disillusionment that came with the collapse of his family’s fortune in India. He firmly believes that some families are doomed to suffer tragedies and that his was one of these. In order to make a better life for his own family he saved enough money to go to England. Rampal thought that a pass into the country meant also that he would be met at the airport and taken to lodgings and found a job. He was in for a great shock and it was over a year before he could afford to bring his wife and children over to join him. He says that in his experience there are no honest men in this cut-throat world and he wishes that he were of a less peaceable and forgiving nature because

he has found that unless you stand up for yourself everyone will take advantage of you. He supposes English people have lost their religion because they lack no comforts. In fact he and his wife make some very shrewd observations. They think that marriages in India arranged between parents are very firmly based unlike the love marriages of the west. As Satya observes,. until you live with a person you find - out only superficial things about them and many people make bad mistakes that way. Another discovery she makes is this: “If you are after money then this country is a fine place, but if you are looking for affection, then there is much more of it to be found in India.” As a Hindu Rampal is very tolerant of other ways of living but he would like to see his own children following in the devout Hindu tradition of their ancestors. The book is a simple and direct plea to make an effort to understand the cultures of other races and after glimpsing many delightful pictures of Indian village life one is left pondering whether it is not better to be happy but poor rather than well-off and yet lacking the riches of a more simple,, less ambitious life.