I have never been to Leicester. It is supposedly one of the oldest cities in England, going back to Romans and the Iron Age, but I hadn’t heard much about it until a few weeks ago, when some good-natured sloganeering by a few of my fellow countrymen prompted a bit of violence on its streets. A few communal statements were innocently made in public, apparently, and managed to anger a lot of people. I don’t know if there was a trigger for this behaviour, but it was probably just their way of spending an evening. It could have been a cricket match, or something equally earth-shattering related to balls.

The English media were horrified that people could attack each other for no rational reason. Their reaction surprised me, given how long the English have spent on our shores. How could they have been here for a few hundred years and not noticed the intolerance that is endemic to the Indian experience? How could they not have noticed that we struggle with basic things like tolerance, empathy, or understanding? How could they not have noticed what occurred in 1947 because we had a few minor issues about whose god was the right one?