London, Dec. 9 :    London, Dec. 9:  British home secretary David Blunkett wants Asian immigrants to learn English as a way of improving social cohesion and avoiding the kind of riots that occurred in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley and Bradford earlier this summer. Blunkett was disclosing government thinking on how to enhance a sense of belonging and British identity ahead of the publication of a number of reports by the home office on the riots, which involved mainly Muslim youths of Pakistani origin. But the proposed government action, revealed today, is much more sweeping than simply dealing with the riots. For example, Blunkett condemned as 'unacceptable' such practices as forced marriage and female genital mutilation. 'Enforced marriages and youngsters under the age of 16 being whistled away to the Indian subcontinent, genital mutilation and practices that may be acceptable in parts of Africa, are unacceptable in Britain,' said Blunkett, who has the reputation of being a hard-hitting home secretary. 'We need to be clear we don't tolerate the intolerable under the guise of cultural difference,' he added. 'We have norms of acceptability and those who come into our home - for that is what it is - should accept those norms just as we would have to do if we went elsewhere.' It is not entirely clear whether immigrants who apply for British nationality will have to pass an English language test. But Blunkett has no doubt that immigrants would benefit by learning the language. 'The Nationality and Immigration White Paper will deal with the issue of how to ensure people have the tools to be part of that regeneration, including being able to obtain sufficient grasp of the English language for their own well-being and that of their children and grandchildren,' he said. 'What I want to get across in the White Paper is that this is not a threat, it is a promise,' he went on. 'When we touched on this at the time I issued the statement on asylum and immigration in October, someone from the Council for the Welfare of Immigrants abused it as linguistic colonialism. I reject that entirely.' He argued: 'People who talk in that language fail to grasp that if you are to build a cohesive nation, then it's the job of all of us to make an effort to take responsibility for doing that.' The government's aim was 'to build diversity not separation'. 'We recognise there are historic divisions between communities that have separated Asian from white and Afro-Caribbean from Asian and that it will take many years to overcome,' said Blunkett. Posing a number of questions, Blunkett asked: 'How do people in the Asian community help the second and third generation feel British, belong and identify with Britain, and at the same time retain the right to contribute their own culture?' Another question was: 'How do they avoid a conflict between embracing the history and identity of someone born and identifying with Britain while being able to contribute to those cultural norms which go to make up the country we are today?' Those who are better informed about Britain's ethnic minorities than Blunkett, who has been home secretary for five months, say that he has made the classic mistake of lumping all Asians together. The Indians, who number about a million and a half, have become increasingly middle-class and prosperous and, by and large, do not become involved in either rioting or acts of violence. The rioting was by second and third generation British-born youths of Pakistani origin. In a sense, their problem is that not that they do not speak English but that they speak it only too well - in the local accents of Lancashire and Bradford. It is just that they do not want to be as subservient, as they see it, as first generation immigrants. The problem of forced marriage again applies mainly - although not exclusively - to Pakistani Muslims, and especially those from Mirpur who are the most orthodox.