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Dr Subir Sinha, Director of the South Asia Institute at SOAS London, has issued a stark warning that race relations in Britain have deteriorated to their worst level since the 1970s.

In a hard-hitting interview with broadcaster Pervaiz Alam on the Cineink podcast London Varta, Dr Sinha said minority communities are facing unprecedented danger.

“The threat is quite serious. In my view, minority communities have not faced danger on this scale since the 1970s. It has been particularly acute over the past ten years, and especially the last five,” he said.

Dr Sinha identified three major sources of pressure: street violence, political exploitation, and failed government policy.

“Every immigrant community faces two broad categories. First, street violence. Sometimes it is centrally coordinated, but mostly it is everyday racism,” he explained. “You’ve probably seen the clips — people being harassed on trains, especially those with beards or wearing hijabs.”
He warned that the South Asian community is particularly vulnerable because it is deeply divided and has imported bitter domestic politics from the subcontinent.

“The sense of togetherness — eating together, celebrating festivals together — has gradually faded. Brexit has further fractured communities, setting Indians against Pakistanis, immigrants against newer immigrants, and youth against their parents,” Dr Sinha observed.

Leicester Unrest
Dr Sinha led a major independent inquiry into the 2022 Leicester clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups. The two-year investigation, involving LSE academics, anti-racist organisations and UN-experienced jurists, faced threats and attempts to get him sacked from his university.

“Leicester was important because such open Hindu–Muslim street violence had not been seen before in the UK on this scale. It could easily have happened in Bradford or Birmingham,” he said.

He pointed to stark neighbourhood segregation as a key factor: “There is an old Indian community there, but the physical separation of neighbourhoods is stark — some areas overwhelmingly Muslim, others Hindu. I haven’t seen such clear segregation in Manchester or Bradford.”

Dr Sinha warned that an aggressive “us and them” mentality is now openly visible.
“This ‘us and them’, friends-and-enemies mindset — which underpins right-wing politics — was on full display in Leicester,” he concluded.

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