Interview Luton: Fighting for diversity and equality with Dr Nazia Khanum OBE

Reporter @CarlMungazi is on a mission to uncover the hidden stories of Luton. His aim: to interview at least one person from every nationality represented in the town.

 “I BELIEVE in democracy, I believe in humanity, and that’s how I want to be remembered, if anybody remembers me.”

Dr Nazia Khanum OBE is a Bangladeshi-born consultant who has spent her life championing equality and diversity.

Ever since she moved to the UK in the 1970s to do her PhD, all her work and activities have been linked to promoting ‘good community relations and cohesion’.

She moved to Luton in 1974 with her husband Dr David Cheesman (whom she met at the London School of Economics) and now calls the town ‘home’.

In that time she has been a lecturer, civil servant, consultant and activist.

How did she end up where she is today?

She says: “As a child growing up, I had a big family.

“We were six children, and I was towards the lower end.

“There was my elder sister, my brother, and then there was another sister who I never saw.

“She died when she was young.

“And then there was another sister, and then me. So I was the fifth.

“And then there was a brother and a sister.

“Out of all of these people, my role model was my eldest sister because she already had her masters in economics then.

“She was a brilliant person; everybody liked her, and she was like a star.

“Because I was just that little, when I used to look up to her I used to think, ‘My God, I have to really be like her, otherwise I’ll be condemned by the whole family’.

“The benchmark was set and we had to really go after that standard.

“So everybody went to university and everybody went through education.

“She was such a brilliant student that if we didn’t get very good marks and were first in the class, it would be a disaster in the family – we had to look up to her.”

Dr Khanum’s father died while she was young and her mother passed when she was in university.

She says this made her more determined to finish her education and ‘fulfil their dreams that we all would go as far as possible in terms of education’.

Before coming to the UK Dr Khanum was a lecturer in political science at the University of Dhaka.

She hoped getting a PhD would help her secure a more senior post.

What were her first impressions of the UK?

“Extremely positive because the university had all these students who were very idealistic”, she says.

“That age is an idealistic age for every individual, if you have some backing of course.

“If you’re very, very poverty-stricken, your idealism just gets killed.

“But because I had this scholarship and the backing was there financially, and my family supported me, I saw all these international students, and I thought, ‘My God, this is it!

“This is a mini-world one can live in’.

“And I wanted the diversity so much in life, because in Bangladesh, I missed that.”

Why did she choose Luton as her base?

She says: “David and I bought a house, and you know, when you buy your home, your house, you put down your roots as well.

“And I think I knew these communities, I saw the changes, new people coming in, making the diversity more diverse – what a thriving place it is in terms of this mixture of people.

“Who would go away if you love diversity?

“Who can go away from Luton?”

How would she summarise her life in a sentence?

“I can’t do that because I’m still growing, believe me.

“Because I believe in lifelong learning, absolutely.

“I’m learning still and I’m learning a lot from people when I go to provide training courses or advice, because I advise a lot, many people come with problems, domestic violence, forced marriage and all kinds of things, they come to me.

“And also, some people come asking how to integrate their children into the right sort of environment or what environment they need.

“I find that I’m learning from them far more than they’re learning from me.

“So if life is like this, a continuous learning process, then I can’t summarise my life in one sentence, can I?”

How would you like people to remember you?

“I think I’m a very caring person, really.

“I do care for people, and I do care for good community relations and cohesion.

“If people in Luton ever remember me after my death, it will have to be the person who was a champion of peace, community cohesion, and valuing diversity until the end of her life.

“That’s who I am.”