"We have to constantly work to keep community cohesion because there are forces at play who do not want that to happen.”

Following violent unrest in Leicester, in which hundreds of Hindu and Muslim men clashed with each other – and with police – during two nights of violence, Labour MP Tan Dhesi has urged the government to do more to guard against extremism, including that which is imported from other parts of the worlds.

Britain’s Hindu and Muslim communities have lived peacefully side by side with one another for decades, although tensions which have been boiling in the city, erupted into violent clashes between young men following a cricket match between India and Pakistan.

Community and faith leaders have urged “the inciters of hatred” to stop the “provocation and violence – both in thought and behaviour”, and urged troublemakers from outside to stay away.

The trouble had been caused by some “very distorted social media stuff” as well as people coming from outside to “have a bit of a set-to”, Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Others, including British Muslims, have also been raising the alarm over Hindutva extremism, an ideology that is closely associated to right-wing extremism and Hindu supremacy, with some of its activist increasingly emboldened since Indian PM Narendra Modi’s election in India.

At the heart of the Hindu nationalist movement in India is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an all-male Hindu nationalist group, often described as a paramilitary organisation. Indeed it was out of the RSS, that India’s ruling political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to which Mr Modi belongs, emerged.

Discussing the violence in Leicester in an interview with LFF at Labour conference, Tan Dhesi, MP for Slough said: “We need to make sure that we do not let those who are looking to divide our communities to succeed. We need to build on community cohesion, it was great to see community leaders from Hindu and Muslim communities and other communities come out with leaders of the Sikh community and other communities and say we do not want this in Leicester.

‘I also want to commend the good work of Leicestershire police to quickly arrest the perpetrators.’

Dhesi added: “We do not want to import some of the negative aspects of the polity of the sub-continent. We want to make sure we want to take on board the positive aspects of community relations their where people who are looking to build bridges rather than walls.

“We have to constantly work to keep community cohesion because there are forces at play who do not want that to happen.”

Dhesi also highlighted how many of those arrested in Leicester were from outside the city and had come to harm community cohesion.

Asked whether he thought the government had underestimated the threat of extremism, including Hindutva extremism, Dhesi said: “It is Important that the government do not downplay such things, that they deal with such issues, we don’t want to import toxicity of polities from other parts of the worlds, whether it’s India or Pakistan whether anywhere else, extremism whether its faith based, whether it’s fascism, we need to bring to book individuals who want to divide. If the government is asleep at the wheel, that isn’t going to help.’

Experts have also warned that religious and ethnic violence in different parts of the world could increasingly spread to UK towns and cities.

Professor Neil Chakrobarti, director of the Centre for Hate Studies at Leicester University, told the Independent: ““There is no doubt in my mind that the religious tensions in India and the actions of a hard-line, violent, nationalist government there has had a direct influence on what we have seen [in Leicester].

“Without the BJP in power in India – without their demonisation of minority groups – it is difficult to imagine the same tensions here.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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