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Standing up to deliver his maiden speech in the House of Commons after being elected as Britain’s first turban-wearing Sikh MP last year, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi’s sense of responsibility was acute.

“The hand of history, the huge excitement, anticipation and sheer expectations weigh heavily on my shoulders,” the MP for Slough told his new colleagues. “A glass ceiling has truly been broken and I sincerely hope that many more like me will follow in the years and decades to come.”

Within days, the speech had gone viral online, with millions watching his Commons address. While the majority of commenters praised Dhesi’s achievement as a positive symbol of multicultural Britain, others used the moment as an opportunity to air racist and - somewhat bizarrely - anti-Islamic views.

“There are those advocating the politics of hate and division,” Dhesi laments as he reflects on his first seven months in Parliament. “It’s so prevalent now it’s unreal. You’d think it should have lessened over the last decades… but unfortunately many individuals are talking about dividing people.

"You say in politics you’ve got to develop a thick skin, but sometimes it is disappointing and disillusioning.”

Dhesi’s journey to Parliament is not an ordinary one. His parents emigrated to Slough from the Punjab, India, in the late 1970s, and sent their son back to their homeland when he was four years old.

“They wanted me to get the best of both worlds,” the MP, dressed in a blue Fred Perry jumper and a sky blue turban, explains. “During holidays I used to come back to England, and they used to come back to the Punjab as well. It wasn’t a case of you were away for four years and that’s ‘see you later’.

“Even to this day I’m appreciative of that move. I know it must have been very, very difficult to part with their child at such a young age, but they did what they felt was right, and in hindsight I appreciate that.”

Aged nine, he came back to Britain, this time joining his parents in their new home of Gravesend – and the readjustment from his life in India was initially a difficult one. “When I was at school, someone tried to pull my turban off. But, fortunately, I didn’t let those events scar me.”

When Dhesi left his local grammar school, he did so with six A-levels and a place at UCL to study maths and management awaiting him. After graduating, he went on to study Applied Statistics at Oxford before completing an MPhil in the history and politics of south Asia at Cambridge. Now 39, he speaks seven languages - Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, French, German, Latin, Italian - as well as his broad, south-east accented English.

Was he a swot at school? “I tell ya what, nah. I liked studying and thankfully I was good at it so I ended up getting lots of As and stuff, but that was also to do with the teachers as well.”

This self-effacement is a recurring theme during the course of a conversation with Dhesi - something he attributes to working for his dad’s construction firm on building sites as a teenager.

“My dad was old school, in the sense that for the first two weeks on site, even though he’s the gaffer and so on…. What he got me to do was to broom the site.”

His personable nature is in marked contrast to many others in politics today, and could explain his success in the race for the Tory target seat of Slough last June.

In many ways, the constituency summed up the Conservatives’ nightmarish election campaign in the run-up to June’s poll. Cabinet ministers descended on the area, and Prime Minister Theresa May chose it as her last stop on her campaign tour on the night before polling day, hinting at the Tories’ confidence in their chances at overturning large Labour majorities.

The plan - as did so many of the Tories’ others during the campaign - backfired, and Dhesi managed to increase his party’s share of the vote.

Despite his successes to date - Dhesi also set up his own business and served as Mayor of Gravesham in Kent - the pressure that comes with his position as a pioneer of the British-Sikh community is not lost on him.

“If I make a complete fool of myself, or don’t deliver what I’m trying to say, then that wouldn’t just reflect on me, that would be a representation of an entire community for some people. So there’s a lot of responsibility there.”

In a mark of the challenges faced by MPs of all stripes in the social media age, he admits he has been taken aback by the abuse he has faced since taking office.

“That’s one of the things I wasn’t expecting actually, the extent of abuse. No wonder they say a lot more people don’t think about coming into elected office.”

His constituency voted to leave the EU, despite Dhesi’s own backing for Remain, and he insists “that ship has sailed” when asked whether he still sees any route out of Brexit.

Instead, he plans to focus his energies on tackling discrimination. “You have got an amazing platform, where your views do get listened to, whether people agree with you or not. That’s a very privileged and powerful position to be in. That’s why it’s important we don’t let other people monopolise that.”

Judging by his maiden speech, Dhesi is up for that fight.