The Sunday Times, October 1988

Who’s Who list of high-flyers dispels old image Success Stories,
by Amit Roy

Academic high-flyers are well established in the new Who’s Who of Asians in Britain, due to be published this Friday.

They include Keith Vaz, 31, Labour MP for Leicester East, tipped to be named Asian of the Year. The title is awarded to the person considered to have made the most significant contribution to the status and welfare of the Asian community.

Last year's winner of the title, Swraj Paul, 57-year-old businessman, also demolishes the image of the corner-shop grocer who has become wealthy simply by working long hours. Paul, chairman of the Caparo industrial group, which has a £200m turnover, is a product of the Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The number of entries has risen by nearly 40% from 520 in 1987 to 720 this year. The directory is compiled by Jasbir Singh Sachar, 51, a Sikh newspaper publisher in Ilford, Essex, who listed only 200 names in the first edition in 1975, and 250 in 1978.

By the time the third edition was published last year, Britain's Indian, and to a lesser extent, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, now totalling 1.6m, had started to reveal patches of real prosperity.

Some of the academic high-flyers are already well known. They include Partha Sarathi Dasgupta, 45, professor of economics at Cambridge, and Indraprasad Patel, 63, who took a first at King's College, Cambridge, and is now director of the London School of Economics.

But younger academics are elbowing their way in. Among them are Inderpreet Singh Dhingra, 28, research fellow at Cambridge, and Quassim Cassam, 27, senior scholar at Keble College, Oxford (first in philosophy, politics and economics) and a lecturer in philosophy at Oxford, where he says "there are quite a few Asian faces around".

Tucked away in the small print are many names likely to become entries in the next few years. For instance, Kanwaljit Kaur Singh, headmistress of Stonebridge Infants' School, in Brent, London, notes in her entry that her daughter Rema is a medical student at Cambridge.

Vaz was born in Aden of Goan parents. After a public school education at Latymer Upper, Hammersmith, he left Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, with a first in law. He was the only Asian MP to enter parliament last year. “I am encouraged by the way the community is progressing 20 years after Enoch Powell's rivers of blood speech," he says.

The Asian of the Year will be named at a dinner at London's Portman Hotel. Vaz is not the only contender for the title, first awarded last year.

Other names which have emerged from Sachar's consultations with the community include: Professor Bhikhu Parekh, deputy chairman, Commission for Racial Equality; Yaqub Ali, whose cash-and-carry business in Glasgow is claimed to be Europe's largest; Mohammed Ajeeb, former lord a mayor of Glasgow; and Mota Singh, the only Asian judge in Britain.

Sachar has been keen to ferret out "young, promising talent", especially among women, who are doing well in non-traditional areas.

For a Muslim model to have displayed her curves on the catwalk would have been unthinkable once. But Safira Nazli Afzal, who came to Britain from Pakistan at the age of six and was educated at Hendon County Grammar School, north London, has made it in a highly competitive business. She has been "a Bond girl" and appeared in videos and commercials.

The move into new areas is also evident in the entry of Sujata Jolly, 40, who owns a health and beauty club in Maidenhead. "Asian women tend to give up when they have children - I tell them they should remain concerned about what they put their expensive saris on."

Other women listed include: Nasreen Munni Kabir, Channel 4's Indian film consultant; Mohini Kent, a film director, designer and author; and Mavis D'Souza, editor for the past 10 years of Lloyd's Law Reports.

The directory shows how the ambitions of the young are altering, with many now setting their sights on the media in preference to accountancy, law or medicine. Prominent in television are Narendhra Morar, 35, producer of Network East, the BBC television programme for Asians, and Samir Shah, 35, deputy editor, news and current affairs, BBC Television.

Among well-known names entered for the first time are Imran Khan, Pakistan's cricket captain, who spends much of the year in London, and Tariq Ali, the author, broadcaster and former student leader.

Eccentric touches are provided by C R Jayachandra, 59, a consultant paediatrician in Oldham, who claims to have found a cure for very young babies who cannot stop crying ("you must understand them as human beings").

Also included is Mohammed Abdul Ghani, 65, who mends marriages by using "emotional and sexual astrology". He teaches wives to be "more responsive" to husbands.

Community leaders who try to peer into the future are concerned by one aspect of the publication: the success of a few may mask the problems of the many.