LONDON, ENGLAND, February 19, 2002: The great sub-continental divide is alive and well, 7,000 miles away from India and Pakistan as Britain digests the news that people like 12-year-old ethnic Indian Abhay Patel and his Pakistani classmate Ahmed Rasul will grow up to be painfully different. According to an interesting new government study of U.K.’s one-million Indians and 700,000 Pakistanis, boys like Patel are more likely to be white-collar workers and pillars of British society. For Rasul, the future may be bleak and in the dole queue. The study, commissioned by Prime Minister Tony Blair, is stark about the impact of ethnicity, religion and class on life, livelihoods and living standards. It says that Britain’s Pakistani Muslims are three times more likely to be jobless than Hindus. Sociologists say there is no contest at all. Patel is from an environment that pushes him to succeed. If Rasul does well, they say, it would be despite his circumstances. The study appears to be uncompromising about the role of religion, warning that “the odds of being unemployed do vary with religion,” but it also finds racism to be a huge drawback.
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