To the outside observer, the Golden Mile in Leicester appeared to teem with its usual, colourful life this week.
By day, the silk and saree shops, the jewellers and the money exchanges, did a demonstrable brisk trade. By evening, the neon lights of the countless vegetarian restaurants and desert parlous glittered as they always do.
But to those in the know, the hustle and bustle of this, the city’s Belgrave Road, was much mooted.
“People are scared,” said Dharmesh Lakhani, who runs Bobby’s deli here and is a committee member with the Belgrave Business Association. “My takings are down 30 per cent. Everyone’s staying indoors with their curtains closed. They don’t feel safe to come out.”
This was the aftermath of a weekend that saw tensions boil over into violence.
More than 500 young Hindu and Muslim men clashed with each other – and with police – during two nights of violence stretched across a swathe of Leicester’s east end. Cars were smashed, bottles and stones thrown and 20 arrests made.
At least 25 police officers were injured. So bad was the violence that patrols had to be redirected from the Queen’s funeral – the biggest policing operation ever undertaken in the UK – to deal with it.
Now, Leicester finds itself blinking at a sudden reputational crossroads.
After a half century in which its peaceful diversity has become acknowledged as a model of integration across the world, city leaders fear one weekend of violence could have undone five decades of hard work.
What on earth went wrong? How did no-one see it coming? And can calm be brought back to a city still simmering with tension?
When trouble first flared on Saturday night, Darmesh Lakhani himself was in the nearby Baps Swaminarayan Hindu temple. The congregation were told by police to stay inside for their safety but the 54-year-old father-of-two couldn’t help himself. He went out to look.
“This is my city, my area,” he said. “I had to see it with my own eyes. All these young buggers, running around and throwing things. I was numb. Embarrassed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This in Leicester? I was lost.”
He wasn’t the only one.
Restaurant owners have described having to shut curtains and turn out lights as the mob rampaged. The owner of a local car wash rushed to his business, only to find hundreds of thugs had been kettled there by police. “Very bloody nice, it was,” he said on Wednesday. “Glass and horse sh** everywhere.”
The shock here feels acute because Leicester is fiercely proud of its reputation for harmonious cohesion.
Yasmin Surti says grievances need to be recognised to be addressed
Immigration and tolerance are bedrocks of the city’s reputation. Its finest moment is often said to have come exactly 50 years ago when it opened its doors to 10,000 Asian Ugandans fleeing Idi Amin’s expulsion.
In the half century since – a time period in which the Asian-heritage population has grown to almost 40 per cent – it has experienced no real racial or religious clashes.
Until last weekend.
Precisely how events on Saturday unfolded is unclear, distorted by claim, counter-claim, social media speculation and deliberate misdirection. Some say trouble was initiated by a large group of Hindu men marching towards the mainly Muslim Green Road Lane area.
Residents and community leaders have expressed their concerns after the recent clashes
Diwali on Leicester’s Golden Mile
