Is British Indian a Redundant Term? A case study of Indians in England.

Masters Dissertation

Abstract:

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Conversations on ethnicity and belonging are current, which is why this research looks at
why the term British Indian is redundant; through using ethnicity from a cultural perspective,
with little focus on race. In order to evaluate the question, topics of colonialism and control
are addressed; how the Indian diaspora ‘fits’ into modern British Society – and discrimination
faced, and how unrepresentative BAME (Black, Asian Minority Ethnic) is. This research is
necessary because British Indians are a under researched group, and the 1928 Institute have
started to uncover who British Indians are, but ethnic categorisation – which varies by
generation - has come into question by academics such as Peter J. Aspinall and Anne
Berrington.

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As this research was conducted during the Coronavirus pandemic, participants were recruited
via snowball and purposive sampling and invited to take part in an online questionnaire and
interviews held over Zoom. This breadth of research means the results of this research are
valid and reliable – as a total of 245 people participated, meaning the variables were gender,
generation, and religion.

In order to analyse the results, thematic analysis rooted in grounded theory was used. This
was chosen due to the wealth of data collected and allocating codes was the best way to make
sense of the data. Trends included generational and religious difference in attitudes towards
the Black Lives Matter movement and voting behaviour. This in turn impacted the results on
how people feel about the term British Indian; but a general consensus is that British Indians
are proud of their heritage but do recognise it might be time that this description of them
changes to something else.