Walking around East Ham and Tooting in London, S Kalyana Ramanathan finds that Tamils driven out of Sri Lanka have made London their home.
On June 14 this year, Channel 4 aired a shocking documentary titled Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields. This 50-minute documentary, presented by veteran British journalist and TV anchor Jon Snow, was a modern-day reminder of the Holocaust. The documentary provided video evidence of war crimes with blood in the hands of the Sri Lankan government. The reason for a British television channel to take this step could be anybody’s guess — there are 300,000 Sri Lankan Tamils living in UK and, therefore, 300,000 reasons why it must be aired in the country.
Sri Lankans (mostly Tamils) constitute a small part of the South Asians in UK (South Asians are four per cent of the 62 million people in this country). Though spread across UK, they are in dominant numbers in two locations in London: East Ham at the east end and Tooting in the south. About half of the Sri Lankan community in UK can be found in London.
Sri Lanka, like India, won its independence from British Raj in 1947. The flow of Sri Lankans into UK has very much followed the same pattern of flow of Indians into UK, albeit in smaller numbers. The post-independence influx of Tamils was mostly as students who later became professionals. The change in the profile happened in the 1970s, and more so in the 1980s, when second-generation Indians began to sell their small businesses such as post offices, grocery stores and off-licences. The hardworking Tamils stepped in with their entrepreneurial streak and transformed the profile of the community as the dominant businessmen in these areas. The surge in their numbers really started in the mid-1980s when civil war broke out in Sri Lanka between the Tamil separatists under the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sinhalese government.
Walking around Tooting and East Ham gives a visible Indian feel. But what you will hear is not completely Indian. The Tamil spoken here has that distinctive Sri Lankan accent to it — a bit more musical and with a sense of purity to it. Namasivayam Sathiya Moorthy, a practitioner of alternative medicine in Tooting, is one of those several thousand Sri Lankans who came to UK in the 1980s. He says Tooting and East Ham were good landing spots for the Sri Lankan Tamils — the presence of South Asians in large numbers made it easy for them. “When the first settlement happened, it was around 15-20 per cent of the present numbers. There were no temples and no (Sri Lankan) shops,” he says.
Moorthy says Tamils flocked to these localities for food. He could be right. Food has indeed made all the difference to the settlers, but they have adapted too. Very few of these eateries call themselves Sri Lankan, even though the country has its own distinctive cuisine. It’s mostly called south Indian food or simply Indian. It’s much like how the north Indian eateries, though dominantly run by Bangladeshis, call themselves Indian or tandoori food. It’s simply a question of appealing to a wider population; as an ethnic group Indians dominate among the South Asians here.
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South Indian chain Saravanaa Bhavan today has more branches in London than it has in Delhi. From its three locations in London, it is expanding to two more by the end of this year; its largest outlet is coming up in Ilford which will seat up to 250 people. When the year’s expansion is over, Saravanaa Bhavan alone will have over 700 seats in London and a yet-to-be-opened restaurant in Leicester in the East Midlands.
It would be difficult to distinguish between the Saravanaa Bhavan in Chennai and the ones in London. Karthik Nalligounder, the manager at the newly-opened Tooting branch, says though UK branches are a joint venture between the principals in India and local entrepreneurs here, the chefs in each of these branches are sent in by the principals from Chennai. “We make the dosa batter and the sambaar twice, even thrice a day, to keep it fresh. Leftover food is never ever carried over to the next day,” he says. Chennai Dosa, owned by an Indian businessman from Salem in Tamil Nadu, has by far the largest number of south Indian restaurants in UK. The chain has seven branches in London and three more in other locations in UK. Unlike Saravanaa Bhavan, this serves non-vegetarian food, though it does have a couple of veggie-only branches.
East Ham and Tooting are also famous for the south Indian grocers. A first-time visitor to the high streets of these two areas would find it hard not to find something the Tamil taste buds are used to. It is not just the products but even brands. Popular brands like Idhayam sesame oil, Narasus coffee powder and Bindu papad, along with Kingfisher and Cobra beers, adorn the narrow-aisled stores. The high density of Tamils in these locations also affords the luxury of fresh curry leaves in these stores, something which is difficult to find even in cities like Delhi. In less than four decades, some 10 South Indian temples have sprung up in London. One of the most prominent ones is the Sri Mahalakshmi Temple in East Ham. The trustees of this temple are planning yet another and bigger, one in London.
Ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils says it’s too early to discuss going back to their country. The social security and relative peace still make London a safe haven. At the peak of the civil war in Sri Lanka, London was one of the most important foreign centres for LTTE to collect money. Sri Lankans, then and now, do not hide their sympathy for the pro-Tamil cause in Sri Lanka. Pacifists like Moorthy say the only road home is one with peaceful dialogue with the Mahinda Rajapaksa government.
Moorthy fondly recollects his conversation with late Princess Diana when she asked him if he misses home. “I simply told her I see home when I close my eyes,” says Moorthy. He says he cannot distinguish between Chennai and Colombo. To him, it is one and the same, strongly connected by the tongue — both taste and words.
