I had a fascinating conversation whilst waiting for a flight home from Cyprus with a lad of Indian descent. He was an Officer and was immensely proud of this fact, which I thought was great, as many are not.
The conversation progressed and he said with a heavy heart that his family pretty much disowned him for the first 5 yrs of his career and only his brother attended his graduation from IOT ...
I had a similar experience in my shop, chatting to a chap who mentioned he was an RAF engineer officer. He was second generation Indian (born and brought up in the UK) and he had almost the same experience as your chap. They didn't exactly disown him but made it clear that they thought he had let the side down by joining the armed forces. This was some years ago, and I have no idea if these ideas are still prevalent in the Asian community in Britain, but I suspect things are little different now, which makes the task of enticing talented people of Asian origin into the service all the more difficult.
On a lighter note, back in the 60s I knew a black Lightning pilot, a very
rara avis in those days. He used to come and join our poker school from time, and although I am sure he was an ace pilot, he was a terrible poker player, and we used to welcome him with open arms as we knew we were going to take money off him!