(In)Tolerance and Multiculturalism in the UK: The Case of British South Asians

Against the backdrop of the critical debate on tolerance based on Wolff, Marcuse, Adorno and Žižek’s ideas, this paper examines how (in)tolerance and multiculturalism interact in the UK by drawing a comparison between Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane (2003) and Hanif Kureishi’s essays in The World and The Bomb (2005). In their emphasis on South-Asian migrancy, these key-works epitomize how the issues of fundamentalism and alienation within the London South Asian (Muslim) community are symptomatic of the socio-cultural changes triggered by globalization. First, I explore how globalization and pluralism have made the boundary that separates tolerance from intolerance a tenuous one. Second, I discuss the feeling of nostalgia for the lost empire, wittily termed “postcolonial melancholia” by Gilroy, which afflicts British multiculturalism. Following this theoretical framework, I intend to show how Brick Lane and The World and The Bomb illuminate the conflicts that South Asian migrants undergo in their attempts to integrate into the controversial multicultural British project, above all in the aftermath of September 11.