ECB is about differentiating Sikhs
from the word 'Asian.'
Its a Vision to help raise awareness
of Sikhs in the Western World,
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Peel Region's Sikh community played a key role in establishing Brampton's gleaming new hospital. It has played an equally major role in the troubled institution's first major crisis. Depending on who you ask, two recent deaths illustrate the danger of pu
Dec 22, 2007 04:30 AM
Francine Kopun Feature Writer
The opening of Brampton Civic Hospital was supposed to be an occasion for celebration, especially among the city's burgeoning Sikh community.
They had been actively courted by the hospital foundation, and responded with tremendous enthusiasm, raising $2.8-million with a Punjabi radiothon and an incredible $200,000 during a 48-hour Sikh prayer ceremony in July.
The new $790-million facility, built in a field in northeast Brampton, was meant to take pressure off the aging Peel Memorial Hospital downtown, with its water leaks and occasional blackouts, and offer the community an improved level of health care.
Instead, the new hospital, which opened two months ago, has become a public relations nightmare for staff and administrators, with unproven allegations of mismanagement and substandard health care sparking street protests among the very community that worked to help raise funds for the project.
The deaths of two hospital patients, both Sikhs – one of them a man whose family donated $25,000 to the foundation – have been held up as examples of how the hospital is failing the community. Hamstrung by privacy legislation that prevents them from talking about individual cases, hospital administrators have been forced to limit their response to press releases outlining hospital procedures.
Responding to community pressure, the province appointed a supervisor to oversee the hospital in a bid to restore public confidence in the new facility. How it went wrong is a puzzle. In five pieces.
The press Rajinder Saini was listening to a local Punjabi radio program about Brampton Civic Hospital when local MPP Vic Dhillon called into the show to say one his close family friends had recently died there.
As the publisher of the Parvasi Weekly newspaper, Saini had been receiving complaints for years from readers about the quality of health care in Brampton. Things were supposed to be different at the new Brampton Civic Hospital, a state-of-the-art facility that had opened on Oct. 28.
Dhillon, Saini remembers, described how his friend had waited eight or 10 hours in the emergency room at the new hospital, and that during the man's subsequent 10-day stay at the hospital for pancreatitis, his family complained that he was not properly cared for.
Saini called Dhillon, who put him in touch with the family. The next day, Nov. 20, the family's story was front-page news in Parvasi Weekly, which has a circulation of 20,000 in the GTA, Vancouver and India.
Local Punjabi radio shows picked it up, and Saini talked about it on his own radio show, which runs on CJMR 1320 AM. The Times of India picked up the story, says Saini. He was invited to talk about it on television.
"It was big news," says Saini. "Everybody talked about this story. There was big outrage in our community."
Saini regards himself as an investigative reporter. A story he wrote for his paper in 2003 about a company that was stealing thousands of dollars from customers trying to wire money back home to India was picked up by the national press and launched an international police investigation.
"It's a very small kind of community newspaper, but still I am trying to run it very professionally," says Saini, who operates out of a small office opposite a strip mall in Mississauga.
"We have nothing against the hospital staff or management. We are trying to raise the voice. The voice of the people."
The doctor By the time stories of what was happening in the emergency department of Brampton Civic Hospital reached the ears of the man who runs the place, the facts had been distorted beyond recognition.
"`I know somebody delivered a baby on the sidewalk outside the emergency department...while this man was dying on the floor of your waiting room,'" Dr. Naveed Mohammad was told at a dinner party.
"There was a lot of misinformation out there," says Mohammad. "That was one of the most painful parts for me. It really painted our hospital and the emergency department in a negative manner and that wasn't the truth."
Neither of the two cases that became lightning rods for controversy involved medical error in the emergency room, says Mohammad.
"Nobody waits 10 hours in emergency to see a doctor. Everyone is assessed in a timely fashion"
The problem was one of expectations, says Mohammad. The community was expecting that the hospital would open at full capacity, with 608 beds. It has 479. The remainder will open over the next four years. Physicians, nurses and staff didn't anticipate the challenges that would come with moving to a spanking new hospital, from mastering the computer system to finding the stairs.
They didn't anticipate that demand would soar as it did – the new facility drew 20 per cent more emergency-room traffic than predicted, and the number of very sick patients to emergency doubled. Mohammad is Punjabi. He says he understands the culture. He understands why members of the community are upset. He even understands why the same people who told him they understand his position took to the streets in protest.
"A lot of community leaders had to decide whether to support the hospital or the community," says Mohammad. "The community is large, it's what's around you all the time. If you're someone who has to depend on the community for business...it's difficult."
The patients The first patient death to draw media attention was Harnek Sidhu, 52. His family told Parvasi Weekly that he was not properly attended to in the emergency department at Brampton Civic Hospital, despite the fact that Sidhu was vomiting and in acute pain.
His son Sandeep later told the Star that it took 12 hours for his father to be assigned a bed. His father died 10 days later of pancreatitis.
Sandeep blamed it on the fact that the hospital was built and is operated as a public-private partnership, with the private sector operating non-clinical services, such as housekeeping.
He said the hospital is understaffed and the focus is not health care, but on moving patients through the system as quickly as possible.
The family had donated $25,000 to the hospital.
Amarjit Narwal was home when he suffered a stroke that paralyzed his right arm and leg. He was treated at Trillium Health Centre in Mississauga, the regional centre for acute stroke care.
Early Saturday morning, Narwal was transferred to Brampton Civic Hospital. Friends and family visited with him all day and were reassured by the fact that he was talking and asking for juice. Sunday morning, his cousin, Inderjit Nijjar, returned to find him in a coma.
"I started acting up. I started calling the nurse, asking her to call the doctor and look at him," says Nijjar.
The nurse paged a doctor at home. The doctor called back, but did not come to the hospital, not even after Narwal began having seizures, according to Nijjar. Finally the nurses brought a doctor down from the intensive care unit. He read the file and told the family that nothing could be done.
Narwal, 42, with a 2-year-old son in India, died that night.
Nijjar said he tried to get help for his cousin – he called someone he knew on the hospital board, he called someone he knew involved in fundraising for the hospital committee.
"`Do me a favour, there's no point in screaming. Write up a written complaint, give it to me Monday. I will follow up,'" Nijjar was told.
The opposition
Some of the groundwork for community discontent was laid down by the Ontario Health Coalition, which began calling members of the Punjabi press in September to organize a series of town hall meetings on the topic of health care in Brampton.
The Ontario Health Coalition is opposed to hospitals built on the Brampton Civic Hospital model – so-called P3s – which involve partnerships between the private and public sectors.
The coalition represents, among other community groups, the Council of Canadians and several powerful unions, including health-care unions. Executive director Natalie Mehra says that under P3 models, hospital profits are siphoned off to the private sector, at the expense of health care.
The town-hall meetings, which took place a month before the hospital opened, were designed to bring attention to the issue in time for the provincial election in October, Mehra said.
"We wanted to push the province to make some promises leading into the election and coming out of the election," she said.
It was through the Ontario Health Coalition that journalists like Parvasi Weekly publisher Rajinder Saini learned that the newly opened hospital would have fewer beds than originally thought and that the old Peel Memorial Hospital would be closed once the new hospital opened.
"Until then, I don't believe that anybody in the community knew that if we are getting this new hospital, they are snatching away Peel Memorial hospital, too," says Saini. "That's how it started simmering around, you know. People started complaining that, `Why are they closing down Peel Memorial?'"
The community
Brampton is home to a large and politically important South Asian population.
South Asians make up 83,245 of the 206,185 immigrants in the city, which now has a total population of 400,000.
The overall population of the suburb northwest of Toronto has grown by 60 per cent in 10 years, to 400,000, resulting in gridlock, crowded schools and, critics say, social and community services that have failed to keep up. The accusation that there aren't enough services, including libraries and community centres, to serve the growing population is a frequent topic of heated debate on local Punjabi radio.
Health care has long been an issue in the city – until the new hospital was built, one-third of patients seeking emergency care travelled outside of Brampton to get it – to hospitals in Etobicoke and Mississauga.
The hospital foundation has actively sought the support of the Sikh community, says Anne Randell, president and CEO of the William Osler Health Centre Foundation, which includes Brampton Civic Hospital, Etobicoke General Hospital and Peel Memorial Hospital. A radiothon in the community two years ago raised $2.8-million.
This summer, 15,000 people attended a weekend Akhand Paath ceremony at the hospital – a continuous reading of the Sikh scripture from beginning to end. In all, $200,000 was raised.
The new emergency department was named for Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism. Two Sikhs sit on the foundation board and three on the hospital board.
"This was a collective effort by a portion of our community to do a lot for the hospital, so it's not that person who donated $10-million that expects you do to something for them, it's the whole community," says Dr. Naveed Mohammad, corporate chief of emergency services.
A court asked India's federal police to reinvestigate anti-Sikh riots in 1984 after a witness surfaced to implicate a former minister in the violence that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The riots in New Delhi, among India's bloodiest in modern times, were in retaliation against the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. Most of those killed were Sikhs.
About eight cases related to the riots are either the subject of tortuous trials or are still being investigated. Around six have resulted in convictions.
But the one most keenly followed involves former federal minister Jagdish Tytler, a leading member of the ruling Congress party, who is accused of inciting violence against Sikhs.
He was forced to resign as a junior minister in 2005 after protests sparked by an inquiry that said he might have instigated the riots. Tytler, implicated by two judicial commissions, has denied the charge, and this month the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) told a Delhi court it did not have any evidence against him and that a lone witness was untraceble.
It had asked that Tytler be exonerated of all charges.
But the Indian media quickly traced the witness, Jasbir Singh, who said CBI did not contact him despite being aware of his whereabouts.
On Tuesday, the court asked the CBI to reinvestigate Tytler's involvement, record Singh's statement and file a report by January 16.
"The judge said reinvestigate Tytler's involvement and record Jasbir Singh's statement and any other statement the CBI wishes," H.S. Phulka, counsel for the riot victims, said.
Singh, who lives in California, told the CNN-IBN television channel that he saw Tytler incite a mob and lead an attack on a Sikh temple in November 1984.
"I can come anywhere I am asked to depose against that killer," Singh told the news channel.
Gandhi's assassination, in October 1984, was carried out in revenge for her decision to send the army to flush Sikh separatists out of the Golden Temple - Sikhism's holiest shrine - in the northern city of Amritsar in June 1984.
The raid damaged the shrine, enraging Sikhs.
The government says nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in the riots following her death, while human rights activists say the figure was closer to 4,000.
Activists accuse Congress of having turned a blind eye to the killing of Sikhs and say some of its leaders helped orchestrate the rioting. Sikhs make up around two percent of Hindu-majority India's population of more than 1 billion.
Chandigarh, Dec 16 - The burst from a malfunctioning automatic weapon may have injured her but not her spirit to be where the action is. Ranbir Kaur, 21, a Jat-Sikh girl born in India, is headed back to Iraq - one of the most troubled spots in the world - to make up on lost work as part of the US armed forces.
Being in the middle of hotspots is nothing new for Kaur, who is attached with the US National Guards.
She was assigned duty in war-ravaged Iraq earlier this year after having done a stint in patrolling the streets of another hotspot, Kabul city in Afghanistan.
After her injury in November, Kaur rested for four weeks and on Saturday she headed back for Iraq.
'She is very determined. The accident in Iraq meant a cooling off period for her in the US. But she is now headed back to work in Iraq. She seemed quite enthusiastic about going back there,' Hoshiarpur-based horticulturist-author Khushwant Singh, who featured her in his book 'Sikhs Unlimited' this year, told IANS after speaking to her in the US this week.
Kaur's new assignment in Iraq will be as a trucker and a gunner at an undisclosed Iraq city.
The dauntless Kaur slung an M-16 rifle on her shoulders when she was 17. At 20, she patrolled the streets of Kabul in 2006. 'I have test-fired almost every weapon in the US Army now,' Kaur told the author in his book that featured successful Sikh men and women among the Indian diaspora. He referred to her as 'Specialist Kaur' - a name she acquired in the US forces.
She was the first Sikh girl to join the US Armed Forces, becoming one among the over 200,000 women soldiers in the force. That was in 2003. Her work in Afghanistan and Iraq has ranged from protecting airports, streets of Kabul and heritage and religious buildings.
For a girl whose favourite conversation line is 'If I gotta go, I'm gonna go', things were not as easy even after she joined the US Armed Forces. She received hate mails and one criticism levelled against her was that she found it convenient to join the US forces in order to get citizenship. The truth, however, is that she got her citizenship before she joined the forces.
'In countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, everything is frontline. If death does not deter me, nothing else can,' she told Khushwant. She took an 'awesome' fascination for the uniform while still in high school where marines and regulars from forces used to distribute fliers to students outside the school career centre.
Born in Nijjran village of Punjab's non-resident Indian (NRI)-dominated Jalandhar district, the young girl reached US shores as a seven-year-old after her father Mahan Singh, pursuing dollar dreams, secured a US green card in 1990.
Singh, who lives with his large family in San Joaquin Valley, Earlimart-California, is now a grape-grower.
Ever since 18-year-old Ishmeet Singh won the glitzy American Idol-inspired Voice of India contest on Star TV last month, the phone hasn't stopped ringing at his family's home in Ludhiana, the busy industrial hub of Punjab. But the kudos is about more than Singh's impressive singing prowess; he has earned it by the fact that he is a keshdhari (turban-wearing) Sikh. "It is his sabat-surat [appearance conforming to the Sikh ideal] that has brought him where he is today," says his proud father Gurpinder Singh. "He has shown other Sikh boys that they don't need a trendy hairstyle to attain stardom." At a time when more and more young Sikh men are relinquishing the turban — considered the very core of a Sikh man's cultural and religious identity — community leaders have hailed Singh's win as, literally, a godsend. Sikh blogs have been pointing out that Singh was declared a winner on Guru Nanak Jayanti, the anniversary of the birth of the founder of Sikhism. And he has been honored by the Akal Takht, the highest seat of the Sikh clergy.
Founded by Guru Nanak in northern India during the 15th century, Sikhism drew from Sufism, Islam and Hinduism, but rejected what it saw as their worst traditions, such as the Hindu caste system. It later incorporated the teachings of nine other Gurus, or teachers, which are collected in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book revered as the eleventh Guru. The religion claims 23 million followers today, 76 percent of whom live in the Indian state of Punjab. Although they comprise only 2% of the wider Indian population, they are a close-knit and prosperous community with a strong cultural affiliation. But the battle to preserve the turban may well be the toughest facing the Sikhs since they were first rallied as a martial nation by their tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, in 1699, to fight the oppressive Mughal rulers of India. A rehatnama, or book of ordinances, dating back to this period enjoins Sikh men to wear their hair long and sport a turban. But Sikh scholars estimate that in some regions of Punjab — home to 60% of India's 14.6m Sikhs — as many as 80% of Sikhs no longer comply. And that may reflect the generational conflict in many a Sikh household, between conservative parents and children who want to break free. Dr Rajesh Gill, a sociologist at Panjab University whose 18-year-old son sports a turban, speaks for many Sikh parents when she says, "A turban is a Sikh's pride, and I don't want my son to shear his hair once he becomes more independent."
Cutting one's hair is not new among Sikhs, but the number of turban-less, clean-shaven Sikhs has grown astronomically in the last two decades. "Thanks to the onslaught of satellite TV, there's a drive towards mainstreaming," says Gill. "Women aspire to marry men who look like Bollywood stars, and men aspire to look like the men these women want. 'The look', unfortunately, doesn't include a turban." As young people travel far for work, they feel less obligated to adhere to the demands of their culture. Jitender Singh Sandhu, a young management professional who hails from Punjab and now lives in Bangalore, cut his hair following a head injury four years back. He has since kept his hair short. "It's great not to have to tie a turban every morning and maintain long hair," he says. "It helped that I didn't have to deal with disapproving looks from my family and neighbors." Convenience is a huge factor for Sikh mothers, too — young, working mothers have no time for the elaborate, early-morning practice of tying turbans and washing boys' long hair on weekends. Moreover, community leaders feel, efforts to preach their values to young Sikhs have lagged. "In India, education has become so secular that even Sikh schools do not preach Sikhism," says Dr. Kharag Singh, editor of the journal Abstracts of Sikh Studies. "As a result, children don't realize the philosophy behind wearing a turban."
The euphoria over Ishmeet Singh's victory reflects the need of the Sikh community's elders to find turbaned role models. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, always seen with a spiffy turban, is an obvious example, Sikh leaders also hail pop culture icons such as the "turbanator" — cricket hero Harbhajan Singh — and popstar Daler Mehndi, whose glittering turbans are said to have inspired many a short-haired Sikh to take to the turban. Sikh organizations from Vancouver to Melbourne are renewing efforts at prachar, or preaching, to the 3 million-strong Sikh diaspora. Schools to teach young Sikhs how to tie a turban have opened in many cities, and an organization called Akal Purakh Ki Fauj has brought out "smart turban software" to help users identify the style of turban that would best suit them. Turban-tying competitions are held across Punjab on Baisakhi, the Sikh New Year, and a Mr. Singh International contest is held for turbaned Sikhs every year — as all Sikh men use the surname 'Singh', which means lion — in which participants get points on how well they tie their turbans. Sikh clergy are to meet this week for an annual convention at which their battle plans will be refined in the escalating culture war to restore the turban to its place atop the head of the Sikh male.
Amritsar, Dec 11 (IANS) Bowing to pressure from various quarters, the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) Tuesday removed the portrait of British General Reginald Dyer, who had ordered his troops to open fire on innocent Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in 1919, from the Sikh museum inside the Golden Temple complex.
Hundreds of unarmed men, women and children fell to the bullets of the British soldiers in the unprovoked firing ordered by Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh, an enclosed garden inside the walled city, located close to the Harmandar Sahib (Golden Temple), on April 13, 1919.
He has been labelled as the 'butcher of Jallianwala Bagh'.
Dyer's portrait remained in the Sikh museum for several years before a local organization, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Youth Forum, objected and forced the SGPC to remove it.
The forum has questioned how the SGPC never thought of installing a portrait of freedom fighter Bhagat Singh in the museum instead. SGPC sources here said Bhagat Singh's portrait is likely to be installed shortly.
Bhagat Singh's birth centenary is being celebrated this year. The Parliament House in New Delhi will also soon have his portrait.
The SGPC is already facing criticism for the controversial installation of a portrait of separatist Sikh leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale in the museum recently. He has been mentioned as a Sikh general who fought the Indian Army. In official records though, he remains a terrorist who was killed in the army's Operation Bluestar here June 1984.
Chandigarh, Dec 11 (IANS) A descendant of Sai Hazrat Mian Mir, a Muslim Sufi saint from Lahore in Pakistan who laid the foundation stone of the holiest of Sikh shrines - 'Harmandar Sahib' (Golden Temple) - demanded that area in the one-kilometre radius of the shrine should be declared a holy zone.
Sai Makhdoom Syed Chan Pir Qadri, the 19th descendant of Mian Mir, called on Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal Tuesday, and demanded that shops selling meat, wine and tobacco should be banned in the one-kilometre holy zone around the shrine in view of the sanctity of the shrine.
Qadri was here on a visit from Pakistan.
Qadri showed a few belongings of the fifth Sikh guru - Arjan Dev - to Badal. These included a prayer beads, a necklace and another necklace belonging to the guru's wife.
He also demanded the setting up of a visa office at Amritsar to facilitate people wanting to visit shrines and other places in Pakistan.
Mian Mir had laid the foundation stone of the Sikh shrine in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in 1588. The shrine, under the supervision of guru Arjan Dev, was completed in 1604. Mughal emperor Akbar donated the land for the shrine in 1574.
Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims joined Britain's equality watchdog in urging Britons to enjoy Christmas without worrying about offending non-Christians.
"It's time to stop being daft about Christmas. It's fine to celebrate and it's fine for Christ to be star of the show," said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
"Let's stop being silly about a Christian Christmas," he said, referring to a tendency to play down the traditional celebrations of the birth of Christ for fear of offending minorities in multicultural Britain.
Suicide bombings by British Islamists in July 2005 which killed 52 people in London have prompted much soul-searching about religion and integration in Britain, a debate that has been echoed across Europe.
The threat of radical Islam, highlighted by the London attacks, prompted reflection about Britain's attitude to ethnic minorities and debate about whether closer integration was more important than promoting multiculturalism.
LONDON (Reuters) - Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims joined the country's equality watchdog on Monday in urging people to enjoy Christmas without worrying about offending non-Christians.
"It's time to stop being daft about Christmas. It's fine to celebrate and it's fine for Christ to be star of the show," said Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
"Let's stop being silly about a Christian Christmas," he said, referring to a tendency to play down the traditional celebrations of the birth of Christ for fear of offending minorities in multicultural Britain.
Suicide bombings by British Islamists in July 2005 which killed 52 people in London have prompted much soul-searching about religion and integration in Britain, a debate that has been echoed across Europe.
The threat of radical Islam, highlighted by the London attacks, prompted reflection about Britain's attitude to ethnic minorities and debate about whether closer integration was more important than promoting multiculturalism.
Phillips, reflecting on media reports of schools scrapping nativity plays and local councils celebrating "Winterval" instead of Christmas, feared there might an underlying agenda -- using "this great holiday to fuel community tension."
So he joined forces with leaders of minority faiths to put out a blunt message to the politically correct -- Leave Christmas alone.
"Hindus celebrate Christmas too. It's a great holiday for everyone living in Britain," said Anil Bhanot, general secretary of the UK Hindu Council.
Sikh spokesman Indarjit Singh said: "Every year I am asked 'Do I object to the celebration of Christmas?' It's an absurd question. As ever, my family and I will send out our Christmas cards to our Christian friends and others."
Their sentiments were echoed by British Muslim leaders, who were also forthright last week in condemning Sudan for jailing a British teacher for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Mohammad.
Muslim Council of Britain spokesman Shayk Ibrahim Mogra said "To suggest celebrating Christmas and having decorations offends Muslims is absurd. Why can't we have more nativity scenes in Britain?"
More than 70 percent of Britons -- some 41 million -- said they were Christians, according to figures from the 2001 census.
Muslims were the largest religious group after Christians -- at the time there were 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, while there were over half a million Hindus and Sikhs numbered just over a third of a million.
A prominent Sikh businessman told the Air India inquiry Friday he's concerned his cultural community has become unfairly associated with terrorists since the high-profile 1985 bombing.
Gian Singh Sandhu, founder of the World Sikh Organization of Canada, said the bombing of Air India flight 182, which killed 329 people, devastated the Sikh community in British Columbia — but they were also stigmatized in its wake.
"The Sikh community as a whole was torn apart.... The majority of the Sikh community was categorically against these type of events," he testified in Ottawa.
However, the onslaught of news coverage and allegations of Sikh involvement in the bombing tainted his community, he said.
Sandhu described to inquiry commissioner John Major being approached while taking part in a parade in B.C. one week after the disaster.
"Kids were asking me when was the next plane going to go down," he testified.
A prominent Sikh businessman told the Air India inquiry Friday he's concerned his cultural community has become unfairly associated with terrorists since the high-profile 1985 bombing.
Gian Singh Sandhu, founder of the World Sikh Organization of Canada, said the bombing of Air India flight 182, which killed 329 people, devastated the Sikh community in British Columbia — but they were also stigmatized in its wake.
"The Sikh community as a whole was torn apart.... The majority of the Sikh community was categorically against these type of events," he testified in Ottawa.
However, the onslaught of news coverage and allegations of Sikh involvement in the bombing tainted his community, he said.
Sandhu described to inquiry commissioner John Major being approached while taking part in a parade in B.C. one week after the disaster.
"Kids were asking me when was the next plane going to go down," he testified.
The inquiry is looking into the investigation of the bombing of flight 182, which exploded off the coast of Ireland as it was flying from Canada to India on June 23, 1985. The disaster claimed the lives of 280 Canadians — the country's worst mass murder.
The luggage carrying the bomb and another explosive that killed two baggage handlers at a Tokyo airport was loaded at Vancouver International Airport.
Investigators believe the bombings were carried out by extremists who wanted India to create an independent Sikh homeland.
Sandhu testified Friday that in 1985, no more than "two to three dozen people" from the 200,000-strong Sikh community in B.C. espoused violent acts against the Indian government.
He named one such organization, Babbar Khalsa, a group of Sikh radicals founded by Talwinder Singh Parmar, the suspected ringleader in the Air India bombing.
But that sentiment was held by the minority, Sandu said.
"Respect for life is paramount in the Sikh religion.... Incidents of this nature are not only abhorrent, but are taken to task in the Sikh community," he said.
Only one person has ever been convicted in the plot. Inderjit Singh Reyat pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2003 and received a five-year sentence.
Parmar died in India in 1992. The RCMP's two main surviving suspects, Ripudaman Singh Malik and Ajaib Singh Bagri, were both acquitted of conspiracy and murder in March 2005 after a 19-month trial.
SIKH students would be allowed to carry small daggers to school under a plan that has outraged teachers and principals.
A Victorian parliamentary committee has also given the green light for Muslim students to wear hijabs in the state's classrooms.
The inquiry into uniforms found all schools should accommodate clothing or other items that are religiously significant.
The Education and Training Committee report recommended that schools should work with the Sikh community to allow male students to carry a kirpan - a small, curved ornamental steel dagger carried by all initiated Sikh men.
The committee found there were concerns from principals and teachers about students carrying the kirpan - which is hidden under the school uniform - but the item was important to the Sikh community.
Victorian Association of State Secondary School Principals head Brian Burgess said kirpans should not be allowed in schools.
"It is potentially very dangerous and should not be brought to school," he said. "If it was misused, it could hurt kids. And it may not be the students that bring it to school but others who know about it and misuse it."
Mr Burgess said other weapons were not allowed on school grounds and the kirpan should not be the exception.
The Sikh Interfaith Council of Victoria did not want to comment but previously told the committee that only a small number or Sikhs have been initiated and an even smaller number of students carry the kirpan. The kirpan, carried in a sheath and worn on a strap, is one of five articles of faith that initiated Sikh males have to carry. It is not allowed to be used as a weapon.
The council rejected suggestions by the Department of Education that students carry a replica or pendant to school.
New York, Dec 6 - Sikhs are set to get prayer facilities at John F. Kennedy airport here.
At a meeting convened last week for the community by New York City assemblyman Rory Lancman, the Port Authority agreed that there was a need for a prayer room for Sikh travellers.
Lancman, who represents the Queens borough said: 'The Sikh community is growing in Queens and many Sikhs go back and forth to India regularly. Sikh travellers deserve a place to worship at JFK airport alongside those currently set aside for other faiths.'
So far, there are four prayer rooms at JFK airport - for Catholics, Protestants, Jews and a multi-faith room. The Port Authority has agreed to subdivide the multi-faith prayer room to cater for the needs of Sikh travellers.
'It will take more than a fortnight for the Port Authority to finalise their plans,' said Diane Barrett, Lancman's chief of staff.
The participation of Sikhs at the meeting was coordinated by Amarjit Singh, multi-faith coordinator for the United Sikhs, an activist group based in New York.
Balbir Kaur, community services director of United Sikhs, said: 'Most airports have 'meditation rooms' used for prayers by passengers. After JFK, we hope that other port authorities in the US will also accommodate the need for prayer facilities for Sikhs travelling through.'
