The Bangladesh Caterers Association (BCA) the leading umbrella organisation of the 12,000 British-Bangladeshi restaurants across the UK, has uniformly condemned the article ‘Why does Indian food not get the respect it deserves?’ published in the Hindustan Times Saturday 14th May, 2016.
Written by Vir Sanghvi, the lengthy article praises the success and popularity of Indian chefs and restaurants both here in the UK and the US and then gives historical context of how Indian food had its beginnings in the UK and even how superior the cuisine was considered during the heyday of the Raj.
However, Sanghvi then addresses the core point of his article’s header by stating that the blame for Indian food in England having a “downmarket curry-house image” is entirely the fault of “Bangladeshis”. In particular, he cites the people of Bangladesh’s Sylhet region.
“We firmly and utterly condemn this article,” said Pasha Khandaker, President of the BCA. “Not only is Sanghvi’s article insulting and demeaning to the British-Bangladeshi community as a whole, it completely repudiates the hard work and success of the restaurant owners who come from Sylhet and have made the UK restaurant industry what it is today.”
The majority of high street ‘Indian’ restaurants in the UK tend to be British-Bangladeshi owned with many of the owners being able to trace their roots back to Sylhet, a city which lies in the east of Bangladesh. It was during the 1950s and throughout the post-war period that with so many Sylhetis working on British ships as boatmen, they decided to settle in the East End of London. With little in the way of their own cuisine to be found anywhere, the Sylhetis gradually started to open small cafes and restaurant units primarily serving their own people and eventually even attracting interest from the local, indigenous population who began to enjoy the “exotic” flavours of the cuisine on offer. It gave birth to the curry house, a uniquely British concept.
“Without their considerable achievements that have gone on for decades,” noted Khandajker, “quite simply, Indian restaurants as a whole would simply not have the standing that they do today. Curry house cuisine is the nation’s favourite food and the Bangladeshi community has been at the very heart of it. To deny that is merely denying the facts which are plain to see.”
The spices are the same as used across the Indian sub-continent, but the cuisine is wholly a British creation and the much-loved dish of Chicken Tikka Masala amongst other dishes, a triumph of that style of cuisine. The food culture in India has its roots in vegetarianism due mainly to the Hindu religion. What the British curry house has offered for decades in its own, inimitable style is an alternative to that, meat-orientated menu, which again makes the food uniquely different. So rest assured, the curry house and its cuisine is very much a British custom.
There are in the region of 12,000 Indian restaurants in the UK – the majority of which are curry houses employing in excess of 150,000 people and generating over £4b in revenues, which is a significant amount being poured into the economy. In recent year, the ethnic restaurant sector has been going through as acute skills shortage, particularly when it comes to chefs, due to the strict immigration restrictions which have been imposed by the UK government. This in turn means that there are curry houses actually closing down every week up and down the country and that has a real and very negative impact on people’s livelihood.
“In addition to that,” added Khandaker, “there has been a rise in VAT, the cost of ingredients has been steadily rising and competition from non-Indian restaurants is always there. So what you have is a severe curry crisis and yet the British public still flocks to curry house restaurants in droves and that makes me very proud. What we don’t need is a newspaper article which makes an unfounded, one-sided, perceived claim of blaming Bangladeshis and especially Sylhetis for making Indian food have a’terribleimage’. That’s unacceptable.”
“It’s very gratifying to learn that because of those Sylhetis,” pointed Khandaker “and all the struggle and painstaking work they put in to build their small restaurant businesses, the UK began its never ending love of curry house cuisine, which continues unabated even today. So for the article in the Hindustan Times to lay blame against the Sylhetis and British-Bangladeshis in general, isn’t something we can accept at all. We have written to the newspaper Editor and requested that an apology be made.”
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