THE TELEGRAPH: Baroness Warsi, Britain's first Muslim cabinet minister, has returned to her Pakistani roots to be feted as a heroine in her grandmother's village.
More than 2,000 people cheered and threw fragrant rose petals in the air – not the sort of reception usually afforded the chairman of the British Conservative Party – as she addressed them deep in rural Punjab.
"My grandmother, she was living in this village of Bewal and no one thought that her granddaughter would ever be a minister in the United Kingdom," she said in Urdu, to cries of "zindabad", which means live-long.
Her father left Pakistan in 1960, arriving in Britain with only £2 in his pocket.
He went from working in a mill to running a bed manufacturing business with a turnover of £2m, providing the inspiration for Baroness Warsi's Conservative politics.
Her appointment to the cabinet in May attracted banner headlines in Pakistan, where people are enthralled by her family's immigrant-to-minister story. >>> Rob Crilly in Bewal | Monday, July 19, 2010
