BY ALEXIA JAMES
This rather silly viral story about Indians ‘owning London’ in the Mint newspaper from earlier this year is a classic case of a statistic being weaponised to feed a narrative, while completely obscuring a far more powerful and entrenched reality. The ‘karma’ jibe it refers to is not just simplistic; it is mathematically and economically illiterate.
The report states that Indians are the largest group of foreign property owners by nationality. This is a true and significant milestone that speaks to the wealth of India’s successful diaspora, but it is a far cry from the headline’s implication of dominance.
The true, unspoken truth is that the vast majority of London—its land, its historic estates, and its most valuable portfolios—is not owned by any individual foreign buyers, Indian or otherwise. It is held by:
The British Aristocracy & “Old Money”: Entities like the Grosvenor Estate (Duke of Westminster), the Cadogan Estate, and the Portman Estate own vast swathes of Mayfair, Belgravia, and Kensington. Their ownership is measured in acres, not square feet.
- The Church of England: Through its asset manager, the Church Commissioners, it holds a property portfolio worth billions of pounds, making it one of the largest landowners in the country.
- Institutional Investors & Corporations: Massive pension funds, REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts), and global corporations hold the commercial heart of the city.
- The British State and Crown Estate: Owns huge amounts of property and land.
The idea that Indian ownership represents a ‘takeover’ or a reversal of colonial history is therefore absurd. The power structure of property ownership in London remains overwhelmingly British, white, and often aristocratic. The new Indian apartment owner in Nine Elms, mentioned in the story, is a tenant of this system, paying ground rent to the ancient estate that ultimately owns the land, not a challenger to it.
This narrative is a distraction. It allows a conversation about individual, hard-won success to be hijacked by a misleading colonial scorecard, while the actual, quiet concentration of wealth and land in the hands of a few, deeply British institutions continues unchallenged and unexamined.
The real story isn’t ‘karma.’ It’s that a new class of global elite, which includes some successful Indians, has been permitted to buy a small slice of a pyramid that was built—and is still firmly controlled—by the old one. Celebrating this as some kind of victory is like a new player buying a few chips and claiming they now own the casino, while the house still holds the deeds and makes the rules.
Celebrating this as ‘karma’ diminishes the profound suffering of the colonial era by suggesting it can be balanced out by real estate deals. It doesn’t; it just makes some individuals wealthy landlords.
Furthermore, this ‘karma’ jibe is a two-edged sword that misdiagnoses the actual situation in London. The influx of foreign capital, while a sign of London’s global appeal, is a point of intense domestic debate within Britain. Many young Britons are priced out of their own city’s housing market. The narrative of ‘Indians buying London’ risks framing Indian success as a cause for local resentment, rather than a symptom of a complex global economic system that also challenges average Londoners.
The most ironic twist is that this dynamic ultimately benefits the British economy. This investment:
- Fuels the UK construction industry.
- Generates significant stamp duty and tax revenue for the British treasury.
- Supports property values and the financial sector.
The appropriate response to this news is not a tribalistic cheer for ‘beating the English at their own game,’ a sentiment that ironically mirrors the colonial mindset it seeks to condemn. The mature and accurate response is to see it as a symbol of a transformed world order. India is no longer a subject nation but a global economic powerhouse whose citizens now invest in the very heart of the former empire—legally, peacefully, and for mutual benefit, but that is not helping most Indians. Indeed, on the prosperity index, India is way down at 103 while the UK sits at a comfortable 12.
Indians (diaspora or otherwise) buying UK property isn’t karma; it’s capitalism. And it isn’t a reversal of history; it’s the writing of a new, more complex chapter where the lines between coloniser and colonised are blurred by global finance and shared economic interest. We should celebrate Indian success on its own merits—as a sign of national prosperity and global influence—without needing to dress it in the outdated clothes of colonial grievance. True progress lies in moving beyond that binary, not in simply inverting it. Open up the Indian property market to British investors – that would be a start – and reduce real estate capital lending to UK rates, then there might be something to rejoice about.