Tan Dhesi meets Ilhan Omar

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi and Ilhan Omar are trailblazers in their own ways.

Tan Dhesi, as he’s known, became the first turban-wearing Sikh MP after the 2017 UK snap elections. He won again in the recent general elections which were his party unable to oust the Boris Johnson-led Conservative Party.

Ilhan, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, is the first person ever to wear a hijab in Congress.

Tan Dhesi, Labour MP for Slough, understands the law of firsts: the 41-year-old is the first member of parliament to wear a turban and, like Omar, has a reputation for speaking out against anti-Muslim sentiment in government. In September, during prime minister’s questions, Dhesi called on Boris Johnson to apologise for his remarks about Muslim women looking like “letterboxes” which, to cheers from the chamber, he called “derogatory and racist”.

The two politicians meet for the first time in November via Skype – Dhesi from his constituency office, Omar from Washington DC. As minority ethnic members of government, the MP and the congresswoman are both keenly aware of what is at stake in their respective countries’ forthcoming elections, and of what happens when political rhetoric lurches to the right.

These are difficult times and the two politicians seek, in their discussion, to reach across the Atlantic in a spirit of progressive solidarity.

“In our own way, we helped to break a glass ceiling,” says Tanmanjeet in the conversation.

Ilham says: “It’s not that we get elected because we’re different and special and interesting. We get elected because we speak to the heart of the challenges many of our constituents face.”

Read their full conversation, ‘Ilhan Omar meets Tan Dhesi: ‘We helped to break a glass ceiling’ (The Guardian, 21 Dec 2019), here.