PIO Labour activist quits, says Labour is overrun with Marxists and party is institutionally 'anti-Indian'

LONDON: An Indian-origin former Labour councillor and parliamentary candidate has accused the party of becoming “institutionally racist and anti-Indian” in a strongly worded personal blog he published after quitting the party after 20 years of activism and service.
Sundip Meghani, a solicitor who works for the Independent Office for Police Conduct where he investigates serious allegations made against the police, published his reasons for quitting, saying he could no longer stomach the “rise of anti-Indian bigotry” in the party. He claimed Labour has come to embrace authoritarian socialism “whilst pretending to care about the working class”.
In his blog, Meghani (38), who was born in Leicester to East African-Gujarati-heritage parents, narrates how the party has in his view abandoned the social democratic ideals of New Labour and moved much further to the left, embracing authoritarian socialism with neo-Marxist identity politics, thus replacing “the original social struggle between classes with a new power struggle between identity groups”.
“I have had lots of Indian heritage Labour councillors and politicians contact me to say privately how a lot of what I have said rings true with them. But they are reluctant to speak out. No one from Labour HQ has bothered to respond,” Meghani told TOI.
“They are not listening to feedback and criticism. Maybe they are prepared to lose the Indian vote in Britain. It is very sad,” he said.
According to Meghani, the fact British Indians have climbed the socio-economic ladder in one generation has meant they are “routinely bullied by Labour activists” who brand them with the “Hindutva” label. He himself was often accused by other Labour members of having “some affiliation with the current Indian government” even though he is not involved in Indian politics. “This kind of supposition, that dual-identity people have competing loyalties and hidden agendas, is part of the anti-Indian racism now embedded in Labour,” he wrote.
“Labour falsely equates the generic success and wealth of the diaspora, with that of an oppressive ‘ruling-class’ identity group. Consequently, in the minds of many Labour members, British Indians are a legitimate target for racial abuse and prejudicial treatment,” wrote Meghani. He told TOI that also explained the anti-Semitism within the party.
He said the Labour party was now made up of far-left socialists, anarchists, Marxists and leftist intellectuals who come mostly from privileged backgrounds but pretend outwardly to be working class who seek to “tear down the British establishment”.
“Labour has a visceral hatred of British Indians and our values, and contempt for our beliefs,” he wrote.
“The success of the Indian diaspora to adapt and integrate in Britain poses a threat to the socialist narrative that ‘right-wingers hate minorities and would never let them prosper’,” he said in the blog.
“Whenever an Asian refuses to play their historic role of victim they get branded a coconut or Uncle Tom by the authoritarian leftists. It is literal shorthand for a person of colour ‘acting white’ — revealing that in the one-dimensional minds of far-left racists, only white people can… be successful, outspoken, free-thinking, or politically right-leaning,” he wrote, giving the way home secretary Priti Patel is treated by Labour MPs as an example.