Leicester and Birmingham are all set to become the first European cities with non-white majorities, thanks largely to contemporary migration from India and its neighbouring countries.
Local officials in councils of the two cities say the next census scheduled for 2011 is likely to record non-white majorities there.
The forecast is based on number of children in schools, where non-whites are already in a majority.
Although several city neighbourhoods have had minority white populations for decades, but unlike the US, there are not yet whole towns or cities in which the ethnic minorities constitute the majority.
The last census in 2001 revealed that Leicester is the most ethnically diverse of all UK cities, with a white population of 60.5 per cent.
It is expected to be the first European city with a non-white majority.
The 2001 census also recorded that Leicester had a large population of people of Indian heritage: 25 per cent.
This figure ranks Leicester as having the largest Indian population of any local authority area in England and Wales.
The large population of Indian-origin has resulted in Leicester having significantly high proportions of residents giving their religion as Hindu, Sikh or Muslim.
In 2001, Birmingham had 70.4 per cent white population, compared with national and regional averages of about 90 per cent.
Almost 20 per cent of the Birmingham's population was from one of the Asian groups.
Residents from the Black groups made up about six per cent of the population.
"Already 50 per cent of school children of five years age are non-white, and by 2011 we are talking of a non-white majority," Paul Winstone, Race Relations policy officer of the Leicester City Council told PTI.
"Nowhere has this happened peacefully, and we are proud of what we have achieved in Leicester over the last 30 years. We dont want anybody to see this as a threat to the English way of life, since the majority will consist of several minorities," he said.
"Leicester is now a permanently multi-cultural society. Today the Asians have political power, economic power and cultural discipline. The sky is the limit for them," Winstone stressed.
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, said that the eyes of Europe were also on Birmingham as it becomes one of the continents first-ethnic majority city.
The prospect of the city's ethnic minorities becoming the majority soon was a "very, very big deal", he said, adding, "I think it's a very important issue. It's important because in Europe this won't happen in the way it has happened in US, where one lot of people takes over from another.
There will be a lot of groups of different ethnicities, and that is going to take a new kind of thinking. This is what most European cities in 15 or 20 years' time will look like, and that's why I'm so interested in what's happening in Birmingham," he added.
