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Good morning. On Friday, a Sikh couple from Berkshire won their legal battle against an adoption agency when the Court found they had been discriminated against on the grounds of race. The agency had told them that they shouldn’t bother applying to adopt any children because of the couple’s ‘Indian background’. In the words of one of the couple, “It did not matter that I grew up here, as long as I was not white, I could not be British”. This question of whether it’s possible to be brown and British is one that many of us of South Asian heritage have encountered at some point, - it’s explored in the Radio 4 series Three Pounds in My Pocket which started last week. For all our successes as a diverse society, racism and discrimination persists - the monkey gestures made by a Manchester City supporter against a black footballer at the weekend shows just how commonplace this has become. Couple that with accusations by certain faith communities of discrimination against them from those in positions of authority, and it’s clear that there are definite challenges in building an inclusive British identity. When my grandparents’ generation came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, many Sikh men thought the best way to fit into British society was to abandon the turban, shave their beards off and get a haircut. It was an awful decision for them to make, and many of them regretted sacrificing elements of their faith for the sake of being able to get a job and earn a living. Today, younger Sikhs are increasingly embracing outwards displays of their faith such as the turban as a means of celebrating their identity, and being British is an integral part of that. Addressing questions of identity and modern Britishness isn’t something that comes with a simple or easy solution, and I’m reminded of the words of Guru Arjan Dev, the 5th Guru, who said “People want to lift up the mountain with mere words, but it just stays there”. If we want to make a change to how things are in society today, then we need to do more than simply talk about it in our own echo-chambers. The place has moved on since the 1960s, and there are extensive legal protections in place to prevent discrimination based on someone’s religious and ethnic background. And yet it can at times feel like society is regressing when it comes to attitudes regarding difference. Britain is a deeply divided place, and whoever finds themselves in Number 10 on Friday morning will find that there is much to do when it comes to reassuring the public as to who we are and what we stand for as a country. What it means to be British will, in my view, be an inevitable part of that.