The film is set in the year 1976, five years after the original film East is East. Little is known about most of the Khan children, except that they seldom communicate with their parents. Tariq is now a hippie (looking like George Harrison) who runs a new age shop with older brother Nazir and has an English girlfriend who is unaware of his true ethnicity, and Maneer is living with his extended family in Pakistan where he is searching for a suitable wife. Sajid, the youngest who no longer wears a parka, is a truant who is constantly bullied due to his Pakistani background, although the headmaster – a former British soldier who had served in the Punjab – is sympathetic and encourages him to embrace his heritage. After Sajid is caught shoplifting, his father George, who has somewhat retained his bullying nature, attacks him at home. When Sajid retaliates by calling him a “dirty Paki bastard,” a devastated George states all of his other children in England have become British and he cannot lose Sajid as well, so he decides to take him to Pakistan to meet his extended family and show him that life there is better, though Ella openly disapproves.