Opening a discussion on Asian communities and others of different backgrounds living in Britain is recalling a mixture for of past and present. It a mixture of nostalgia for the home country and a reflection on having a balanced lifestyle in which background and integration don’t cause identity crisis.
Having communities from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds living in the UK is a reminder of the days in which UK was the biggest empire in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries. Regardless of the colonial period which must have had some controversial aspects, it was beneficial for UK and its colonies to come into contact. Britain enriched itself culturally and economically from these colonies. The British were exposed to different lifestyles, with which they were influenced and which must have influenced by modernising if not civilizing these colonies. A striking example is the famous police hat, whose shape originated from Indian traditional turban. Summer carnival is another example of Britain’s cultural heterogeneity.
The British left many of their colonies. But in those colonies they left their legacy. Their “colonies” accompanied them through immigrants. Now there are mainly Asians and African immigrants living in it.
Now we can see the overseas parts of the British Empire severed from it, as they have disintegrated in independent states, but they are still keeping a link with Britain through the Commonwealth. There is also a miniature of the British Empire is in the UK through the Mosaic of immigrant communities from these former colonies.
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