NEW YORK -- Sikh children facing harassment can find resources for help from a new website, reports India Journal. "Khalsakids.org” was launched after it was found that 75 percent of Sikh students in Queens in New York City face some kind of harassment, usually because of religious symbols they wear like the turban. The Sikh Coalition has launched the site to help Sikh children find others of their age to chat with. Teachers are invited to use the site to find out more about Sikhism. The site also documents hate crimes against Sikh children.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2234fe30632c885b6062852975488a52

Saturday, 20 October 2007, 2:39 pm
Press Release: Caritas
People of all faiths to gather to Pray for Burma

October 20, 2007

 Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and people of all faiths and spiritualities will join in solidarity with the people of Burma this Sunday October 21st.

“Following the recent upheavals in Burma, led by courageous monks and nuns, Australians will come together for a day of cultural celebration and reflection. They are responding to an invitation issued by the National Council of Churches in Australia and Caritas Australia to participate in a National Day of Prayer for Burma”, said Jack de Groot, Caritas Australia’s CEO.

“Around the country, faith communities will include special prayers for the people of Burma during their weekend services,” Mr de Groot said.

An interfaith gathering will be held in Sydney’s Martin Place. Buddhist monks will commence the main event with incantations, followed by a cultural reflection of dance and traditional music.

Leaders of major faiths in Australia will then lead a prayer or reflection from their respective traditions in remembrance of those people affected by the brutal Burmese regime. A silent procession to St James Church in Phillip St will follow and culminate in Hyde Park with a symbolic water ritual of solidarity for the people of Burma.

Participants will create a wave of red as they dress in a colour to express solidarity with the monks and nuns who have been killed, injured and interred following their courageous calls for an end to oppression in their country.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2234fe30632c885b6062852975488a52

NEW DELHI (AP) India's government has failed to fully investigate and prosecute officials who allegedly took part in thousands of killings and disappearances during a counterinsurgency campaign against separatists in northern India, rights groups said Thursday.

Throughout much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Sikh insurgents waged a brutal campaign to establish their own country in India's Punjab state, massacring civilians, bombing crowded markets and attacking Hindus. India's security forces responded by allegedly killing thousands - many of whom were suspected militants, many others later described as innocent. To this day, about 3,000 people remain missing, many after being detained by police.

In a report released Thursday, two rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Ensaaf, a Punjabi group, said India's government had failed to properly investigate the alleged killings and disappearances by the security forces.

The report highlights a long-running investigation by India's National Human Rights Commission into accusations that police killed thousands of people from 1985 to 1995 and secretly cremated the bodies.

The commission, which is investigating the cases at the request of India's Supreme Court, has examined evidence from just three of Punjab's thousands of crematoriums and is only seeking to identify the dead - not who killed them, the rights groups said.

Officials at the National Human Rights Commission were not immediately available for comment, and officials at the Home Ministry, which oversees India's domestic security forces, said they could not comment on the report because they had not yet seen it.

The allegations from Human Rights Watch, based in New York, and Ensaaf, based in Fremont, Calif., are the latest in a series of accusations against security forces in India, a democracy whose leaders say the rule of law prevails.

In Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim Himalayan region that has been wracked by an Islamic insurgency for nearly two decades, police this year began investigating five cases of allegedly staged shootouts in which security personnel are suspected of killing innocents and then claiming they were rebels to earn rewards and promotions.

On Tuesday, a court convicted 10 policemen of murder in the deaths of two businessmen slain in a hail of bullets in downtown New Delhi in 1997. The policemen claimed they had opened fire in self-defense, but the court found the shooting had been an unprovoked attack on a car that the officers believed was carrying a gangster.

There have also been a handful of prosecutions of police accused of excesses during the insurgency in Punjab. But most cases, in Punjab and elsewhere, have slowly faded away.

Sikhs make up just 2 percent of India's 1.1 billion people and are concentrated in Punjab. The insurgency left an estimated 25,000 people dead, including 1,700 police. Since it tapered off in the early 1990s, calls for a separate Sikh state have all but disappeared.

http://www.adn.com/24hour/world/story/3721671p-13169211c.html

Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Thursday October 18, 2007The Guardian

The families of thousands of civilians "disappeared" during the Indian government's violent suppression of a campaign for a Sikh homeland more than a decade ago are still waiting for perpetrators of the crimes to be brought to justice, human rights monitors have warned.

In a new report entitled Protecting the Killers, Human Rights Watch says the Indian government needs to "hold accountable members of its security forces who killed and tortured thousands of Sikhs" during counter-insurgency operations in Punjab that ended only in 1995.

By then the unrest, sparked by a call for Khalistan, or a Sikh nation, had lasted more than 10 years. Democracy was suspended as the Indian army occupied the state.

The security forces eventually crushed the Khalistani movement by adopting a "bullet-for-bullet" policy of extra-judicial killings in which more than 40,000 people died. The embers of resentment have not completely burned out: a bomb blast on Sunday in Punjab, which killed seven, was blamed on Sikh separatist groups.

One of the key cases highlighted by Human Rights Watch is that of the mass cremation of 2,097 bodies in Amritsar, the Sikh holy city. The country's human rights commission, civil rights groups say, has for more than a decade failed to investigate a single case of the "mass crematorium" and explicitly refuses to identify any responsible officials.

The scale of the deaths was uncovered by a local civil rights lawyer, Jaswant Singh Kalra, who was later murdered. Five policeman were convicted of abducting and killing Mr Kalra.

His widow, Paramjeet, is still campaigning for the "missing thousands". "It took a decade for these men to be found guilty," she said. "What about the thousands of others?"

Rajinder Bains, a civil rights lawyer in Amritsar, estimated that 25,000 people were "still missing".

"There were 35 police and officials charged but none were prosecuted," he said. "The charges were set aside by the supreme court on technical grounds. The state has the money and the power to protect its own."

Human Rights Watch says India is fostering a "culture of impunity" around its counter-insurgency operations, giving a free hand to its security services to act without supervision.

However, senior Indian officials dismissed the report, describing it as "propaganda worthy of Goebbels". KPS Gill, a former director of police in Punjab during the counter-insurgency, said the New York-based organisation was "ill informed and biased", asking: "Do these people think about the innocents killed by terrorists?"

Mr Gill, who Human Rights Watch claim has led "the attack against the pursuit of justice", said the bodies in the crematorium in Amritsar were those of "beggars, vagrants, possibly some Bangladeshi migrants. In India, unclaimed and unidentified bodies found by the police must, by law, be cremated."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2193909,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

New procedure sensitive to Sikh turban and other religious head coverings

Washington, DC - Oct 16, 2007 (PRN): This afternoon the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced a new security screening policy that will go into effect at U.S. airports on October 27 and apply to all religious head coverings. The change is a direct result of collaboration between TSA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and other Sikh organizations in response to the concerns of the Sikh American community over a procedure implemented on August 4, 2007.

The August 2007 procedure disproportionately targeted Sikhs for secondary screening due to their turban, an article of faith, like the Jewish kippah (yarmulke) and Muslim hijab. The turban is an integral part of the Sikh faith and identity, and removal of the turban in public is akin to a strip search. The procedure resulted in Sikh travelers being forced to undergo an invasive pat-down or removal of the turban.

The turban was the only religious article listed as potentially requiring additional screening. Furthermore, the procedure may have resulted in a misallocation of national security resources due to the heightened focus on Sikh passengers solely because of their religious practice of wearing a turban.

"The new policy is encouraging and addresses most of the concerns of the Sikh American community," said Kavneet Singh, SALDEF's Managing Director. "Our collaboration with TSA has resulted in a solution that strengthens TSA's ability to protect our nation's airports, while also respecting the civil liberties of all travelers of faith. We will continue to work closely with TSA to ensure that the implementation of the new procedure does not result in the inappropriate profiling of Sikhs and other travelers of faith."

Under the new procedure, a Sikh traveler's turban will be accommodated during the screening process by providing additional options to satisfy the security requirements. According to TSA, the revised procedure states:

"TSA will now include the screening procedures for headwear within the overall category of bulky clothing and will not call it out as a separate category. Removal of all headwear is recommended but the rules accommodate those with religious, medical, or other reasons for whom removing items is not comfortable. Transportation security officers have several options for screening passengers who choose not to remove bulky clothing, including headwear."

Additionally, all 43,000 TSA screeners will undergo Sikh cultural awareness training before the Thanksgiving holiday travel season. The trainings will include two tools developed by SALDEF in collaboration with the US Department of Justice:

1. A training video: On Common Ground: Sikh American Cultural Awareness Training for Law Enforcement [watch video]; and
2. A poster called, Common Sikh American Head Coverings [view poster], that TSA is distributing to all 450 airports across the country.

SALDEF thanks TSA Administrator Kip Hawley for his leadership along with officials at TSA and DHS for their collaborative efforts in finding a solution that balances both national security and protects the rights of all travelers going through America's airports.

About SALDEF:
Founded in 1996, SALDEF is the nations oldest and largest Sikh American civil rights organization. SALDEF protects and promotes the civil rights of Sikh Americans through legal aid, advocacy and educational outreach. SALDEF's mission is to create a fostering environment in the United States for future generations of Sikh Americans. Sikhism is a distinct religious faith that is over five hundred years old. There are approximately half a million Sikhs living in the United States.

For more information, contact:

Navdeep Singh
Tel: 202-393-2700 ext. 27
Email: media@saldef.org
Website: http://www.saldef.org

http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com/prnindex.phtml?link=newsroom/news_view.phtml?news_id=2287

Washington, Oct 17 - Sikh air passengers will no longer have to remove their turbans at US screening checkpoints if doing so makes them uncomfortable under new guidelines coming into force Oct 27. The new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) guidelines announced Tuesday give airport screeners the option to pat down headwear at the metal detector if a passenger does not want to remove it for personal reasons. Experts say mixing up the screening techniques is good security. 'We must use security measures that are unpredictable, agile,' TSA Administrator Kip Hawley told a Senate panel Tuesday. New York based Sikh Coalition, a leading US Sikh civil rights organisation, welcomed the change because it both protects national security and is respectful of religious pluralism. But it also asked the TSA to create safeguards that provide better protection against religious profiling. Under the new policy, a Sikh, or any person wearing religious headwear can pat down his or her own head covering, and then have their hands swabbed with a cotton cloth to check for chemical residue. The new policy is a direct response to Sikh concerns, raised after the TSA in August listed 'bulky' headwear such as cowboy hats, berets or turbans should be patted down. The TSA has now removed turbans from its screener guidance. In addition, the TSA will provide all its field employees with mandatory cultural awareness training about Sikh practices. The Sikh Coalition said it nevertheless remains concerned that screeners have sole discretion to decide when to perform additional screening. Screeners may pull aside passengers for additional screening if they believe the person's head covering to be 'bulky'. 'While the TSA has assured us that trainings and supervisor oversight will stem improper use of this discretion, the Sikh Coalition is unconvinced that this is the best solution,' It said. Asking TSA to collect data with regards to additional screenings in US airports to ensure that screeners are not profiling, the coalition said it was also concerned that Sikh travellers have to assert that they do not want their turbans touched by a screening officer. 'As we understand it, the TSA is not requiring screeners to inform passengers that they have a right to conduct a self-pat-down, although this is the stated policy. 'We are encouraged that the TSA has found a solution that does not single out turbans for additional screening. Indeed, it is possible to secure America's safety and be true to the principles of religious freedom,' said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/125551.html

AT least six people were killed and 30 injured today in a suspected bomb attack in a packed cinema hall in northern India, police and witnesses said.

The explosion occurred as hundreds of people - mainly poor migrant workers - were crammed into a theatre in the industrial city of Ludhiana in northern Punjab state to watch the late-night screening of a new Bollywood comedy.

Police officials in Amritsar, the main city in Punjab, put the toll at six dead and around 30 injured, many of them seriously.

"We were watching the film when I suddenly heard a huge blast and I rushed outside. I saw some four or five bodies inside," an unidentified eyewitness told the Hindi-language Aaj Tak news channel.

Indian television news footage showed at least one body lying on the floor of the cinema, which was strewn with shards of broken glass and bloodstains. Shoes and pieces of torn clothing also littered the blast site.

Indian media reports said the likely cause was a bomb attack, although the Home Ministry in New Delhi said it was still "too early" to draw any conclusions.

India has been hit by a wave of unsolved bomb attacks in recent months that officials have blamed on Pakistani-backed Islamic militants. Punjab, however, was also the scene of a bloody Sikh insurgency in the 1980s.

"We are waiting for the state government and the police to give us a report. The situation is being monitored," a Home Ministry official said, adding that forensic teams were examining the blast site.

News reports said most of those in the cinema hall were young labourers from the impoverished northern states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Security at bus and railway stations and important buildings across the state has been tightened, a Punjab police spokesman said.

The latest blast comes days after two people were killed and nearly a dozen injured on Thursday in a bomb attack near one of India's most revered Islamic shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan.

India sounded a nationwide alert after that attack, which came ahead of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, today, and the Hindu festival of Dussehra on October 21.

In August, 42 people were also killed in twin blasts in the southern technology hub of Hyderabad, while in May 11 people died when a bomb tore through the city's main mosque.

In February, 68 people were killed when bombs hit the "Friendship Express" linking India and Pakistan - another unexplained attack.

The latest blasts come ahead of a scheduled October 22 meeting in New Delhi of senior Indian and Pakistani officials on efforts to combat cross-border militancy.

India accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent Islamic extremists from using its soil as a springboard to launch attacks, especially in Kashmir where a separatist revolt has claimed more than 44,000 lives since 1989.

Pakistan, which launched peace talks with India in 2004, denies the charge.

However the Press Trust of India news agency said officials were "puzzled" by today's cinema blast, and were "unable to ascertain so far whether is was a resurgence of Sikh militancy or a handiwork of Pakistan-based militant outfits".

Punjab, India's only Sikh-majority state with a population of about 25 million, was wracked by a separatist revolt in the 1980's which claimed thousands of lives.

The unrest was fanned after prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered troops into the Golden Temple at Amritsar to evict a Sikh militant sect in 1984. Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her dead later the same year.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22586587-5012761,00.html

NEW DELHI: A priest, Dhyan Singh Komal of the Bangla Sahib Gurdwara, was suspended from the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee for flouting the ban on lavish weddings.

With the wedding season just beginning, the DSGMC is monitoring the situation through all its members across the city. While the code came into effect from October 1, heads of gurdwaras and DSGMC members were bound by it from July 28, Singh said.

While only the wedding season will show how far the moral code is executed, some families have already changed their wedding plans.

Harjinder Singh Khanna, who has an electrical goods business and is a member of the DSGMC, was holding his son’s baraat and the pre-wedding dinner at a farmhouse on the evening of November 17. After the committee’s order, Harjinder has now planned a simple affair on the morning of November 18. "I see a lot of sense in the moral code," Singh told Timescity.

Committees comprising 11 members each have been set up in most of the 46 circles that the capital is divided into under the DSGPC to monitor the execution of the resolution. Also, 400-odd boards requesting people to follow the code will be put up at gurdwaras over the next few days.

The code has a six-point agenda. To begin with, it states that marriage ceremonies like the baraat should not be held at night. Pointing out that these days, there are too many functions surrounding the wedding — the sagan, cocktails, the reception — the committee resolved that these should be restricted to a simple wedding ceremony to be held in the gurdwara only and that too preferably, before noon. A day’s wedding is what the code asserts upon, minus liquor and non-vegetarian food.

At the most, a family can hold one more function besides the wedding.

The code also calls upon families to avoid going to weddings which flout the morally binding norms.

The DSGMC had on July 28, after a meeting with heads of about 173 Singh Sabhas from across Delhi, set out the moral code by way of a resolution for the way a Sikh wedding should feel and look minus ostentation. There are over 300 Singh Sabhas in Delhi.

The DSGPC justifies a "simple wedding" as an attempt to curtail the rise in cases of dowry harrassment and female foeticide. While committee president Paramjit Singh Sarna said families would only be persuaded to follow the code, he clarified that those flouting the norms would not get a marriage certificate from the gurdwara. Those who organised baraats in the evening would not be allowed to marry in the gurdwara while members of the gurdwara committee would boycott the wedding, he said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/City_Sikhs_tone_down_wedding_plans/rssarticleshow/2440727.cms

HARDEEP SINGH KOHLI

Last week I wrote about my immigration check/terrorist hijinks at Madeira airport. My refusal to remove my turban seemed to be on the verge of becoming an international incident. I was e-mailed via the SoS website and roundly chastised by a reader who accused me of being uncooperative and of "exacerbating racial tensions" during these trying and febrile times. Just let me be clear about this: I, the innocent, slightly overweight Glaswegian Sikh, have exacerbated racial tensions because I refused to remove my turban? What else am I guilty of? Maybe I should come clean. It was me who suggested that Scotland forgo its independence and sign the Treaty of Union in 1707. It was me who decided invading Iraq was a good idea. And it was me who hurdled the barrier at Celtic Park and cuffed the Milan keeper on Wednesday night.

Keeping it together for India's Partition

I got a call from my son's school in July. A phone call from the school is rarely a good thing. But this was one of those rare occasions when it was. His history teacher had heard a wee documentary series I had made for the wireless looking back on 60 years of the partitioning of India and he wondered whether I might just pop in and have a wee chat about it. No worries, I thought. A wee chat with what I imagined to be half a dozen A-Level history students; there'd probably be a glass of wine and a curly sandwich.

All was well and good until I checked out the school website a few days before the chat to find out that it was in fact billed as a lecture; but no ordinary lecture: the Richard Dimbleby Inaugural Lecture. It was to be delivered in front of 150 students and guests. And that's how I spent my Wednesday evening, nervously trying to seem knowledgeable hoping that the spirit of Mr Dimbleby senior was otherwise engaged.

Let's grasp the thistle at the Stade de France

Some hours after you read this I shall be sat in the Stade de France in my best kilt, over-sized sporran and darkest blue turban waiting for the hairs on the back of my neck to make themselves known as we prepare to go into battle. I then will be on the pitch (spiritually at any rate) joining the wall of blue, white and thistle as we get in among the Pumas and try to cause an upset at the Rugby World Cup.

My friend Andy called me and asked if I was Scottish enough to be interested in going to the game; he had a spare ticket. Scottish enough? It led me to ponder degrees of Scottishness. Are the Proclaimers more Scottish than me because they sing in a Scottisher accent? With my Glaswegian burr am I Scottisher than Alastair Mackenzie, once Monarch of all our Glens, who sounds like an Englishman even though he was born and brought up in Perthshire? And what about Archie Gemmill or Annie Lennox or Alex Salmond? Are they the Scottishest of the lot?

How do you convey what you feel about your nationality? It's a strange one. I interviewed some people in the British National Party a few years back. Bless them. I was offered the leader of the youth wing of the party, a boy barely old enough to shave, who had decided that Britain was solely for the use and enjoyment of the ethnically white. I was more than happy to help him enforce his policy if the rest of us could have Australia, America and South Africa back.

Anyway, I asked this lad whether he regarded me as Scottish. Obviously I feel very Indian, but I grew up in Scotland. He was quite firm in his opinion that I could never be Scottish. Ever. This was because I was not ethnically Scottish.

This lad from the BNP was not for moving. I tried to explain to him that even if my skin and my ancestry are not "Scottish", my heart and my soul are. I cannot control the quickening of my heart when I hear 'Flower Of Scotland'; I have no ability to stop my soul yearning for the Highlands when I hear the pipes played; I cannot stop shedding a tear when I watch Braveheart and Mel Gibson is on the rack.

(Incidentally the wee boy from the BNP said he would have been left cold by the prospect of an evening of chicken dhansak, aloo gobi and a peshwari naan all hand-served by Beyoncé Knowles and Halle Berry. Maybe he didn't like curry.)

I'm gladdened by the new dawn in the politics of a contemporary, SNP-skewed Scotland. The nation has never felt so inclusive, never felt so forward-looking, never felt so exciting. And I have never been so proud to be a Scot. I feel part of our future in a way I could only have dreamt of as I grew up.

Now all we have to do is send the Argentinians home tae think again. One dream at a time...

Musician who'll never sell his sole

My pal Neale has changed my life a little. We were having a battle of the singer/songwriters the other day, each championing different artists. I had made a convincing case for KT Tunstall and the Cowboy Junkies, when he uttered two words to me: Ray LaMontagne. Neale gave me the first album, Trouble. Now, in the old days, you would buy someone a CD and hand it to them or else purchase a voucher that they could redeem themselves. In this instance the album was purchased and gifted in a completely virtual way: the wonder of the interweb. This wholly modernistic approach to music buying couldn't have juxtaposed more sharply with the nature of the record itself. Having heard a song by Stephen Stills, LaMontagne quit his job making shoes in a factory and started touring. Five years later he had 10 songs and recorded Trouble in two weeks in Los Angeles. The album was done on the cheap with the producer playing most of the instruments, the painfully shy LaMontagne offering his fragile vocal to the mix. And flawed and raw as it is, it does what all truly great music does: it offers tragedy and beauty. For once in my life I am happy that there are fewer shoes in the world.

Take note, Mr Cameron

David Cameron's speech to the Tory conference was done without referring to notes. Can you remember anything he actually said in this script-free event? No, me neither; but I will never forget that he spoke without notes. Because last week everyone kept banging on about it. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure that's such a big deal. I'd hope that the prospective leader of one of the world's most influential countries might be able to have the vision to know what he believed in without needing to be reminded.

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=1602432007

Catherine Bennett
Thursday October 4, 2007The Guardian

Alone among practitioners of world religions active in this country, Buddhists enjoyed, until this week, the distinction of not having tried to ban anything. The Christians did for Jerry Springer. Sikhs took against Bezhti. Muslims, following up their historic success with the Rushdie fatwa, forced the suppression of the Danish cartoons, are standing firm against Brick Lane and reported to be extra busy this week, trying to banish disrespectful atheists from Facebook. Not to be left out, Hindus finally got their own censorship act together, a couple years ago, with a successful protest against some Christmas stamps that were - one forgets - too Christmassy, or too Hindu, and subsequently saw off an entire exhibition of paintings by MF Husain, India's most renowned artist. They complained that his "offensive paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses in sexual poses have caused outrage over the years amongst Hindus around the world". After threats of violence, Husain's gallery, Asia House, closed the show down.

Admittedly, Buddhists do not seem to have been challenged to the same degree. They have not been ridiculed in musicals or scandalised by popular Booker-shortlisted novels depicting their womenfolk as fractious. But, this week, police in Norwich were called after local Buddhists spotted a Buddha in a gallery window, whose lap area had been disrespectfully customised by the artist, Colin Self, with genitals composed of a pair of shining eggs and a vertical golden banana. Anyone who visited the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition this year will probably remember it. "We have had a complaint in respect of the prominent exhibition of this statue on the basis that it causes religious offence," reported a police officer. "We have liaised with the management of the gallery in order to reach a solution which both upholds the principles of freedom of artistic expression but also prevents any offence being caused to any general member of the public or faith group."

But the police solution - to turn the figure round, so that the banana and eggs could offend only those faith groups actually in the gallery - did not satisfy the gallery owner with whom he had liaised, David Koppel. He said an officer told him, "in no uncertain terms, that if I turned the sculpture around again to face the window he would be coming to arrest me and the sculpture may be destroyed".

From what one understands of the Buddhist perspective, calling in the police might seem to conflict with a conviction that all existence is filled with suffering. Moreover, for practitioners of a creed in which karma generally counts for more, in the long run, than the artistic judgment of DS Ian Fox, of Norwich's Hate Crime unit, you might think it would be a simple matter to cross the street, look the other way, and await the torments of Colin Self when what goes around finally comes around. But it is unfair, of course, to characterise a religion by the behaviour of its most censorious members. Many more tolerant Buddhists must have uncomplainingly endured the sight of this same Buddha, with its eye-catching banana, when it was on show at the Royal Academy, alongside two companion sculptures - Christ on an aeroplane-shaped cross, and Ganesh wearing a Nazi helmet. On the other hand, it might be that would-be censors, visiting the academy, suspected that to complain about the images would be to act out the intentions of their maker, Colin Self, who had entitled the piece, A Trilogy: The Iconoclasts. In Norwich this week, David Koppel said, "I think Colin has been proved right. This is exactly what he is saying. Religion causes arguments. People are so predictable."

Koppel also objected that, recently, when he himself called the police for more orthodox, crime-related reasons, the Norwich constabulary reacted with indifference. "But offend the Buddhists and the police are there." The police might reasonably respond that while they are often unsuccessful in catching thieves, removing a potentially offensive banana from display gives them a chance of earning the respect of the local Buddhist community.

It is debatable, however, whether our overstretched police have the manpower, even with their new hand-held computers, for the kind of intensive artistic supervision that is rapidly becoming necessary, as religious communities outdo one another with claims to special protection. What happens when Norwich's Hindus see Self's Ganesh? Even if complaints from religious groups are already leading to widespread self-censorship by individuals and organisations who prefer to avoid persecution, and thus help save police time, there will always be some inadvertently offensive work, or more deliberate piece of mischief requiring investigation, prior to the issue of a ban, or special guidance, which as the Norfolk Inquisition puts it, "upholds the principles of freedom of artistic expression but also prevents any offence being caused ..."

If this enforced prevention of offence is not to be the monopoly of large religious groups, particularly those able to support their demands with the threat of violence, or yet more effectively, a global death sentence, the time has surely come to formalise arrangements with the appointment of some sort of official censor, tasked with extending rights of artistic suppression impartially, to all. Something like the old lord chamberlains, but much more so. Though diligent enemies of artistic freedom, the activities of those busybodies, stipulating when a character should keep his vest on, and so on, seem feeble, looking back, compared with the unpredictable demands of our various faith groups backed, where necessary, by officers from the local hate-crime unit.

· This week Catherine read Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist: "Ingeniously done - and just about survives the presence of one of literature's most irritating love interests." Catherine also read newspaper extracts from Eric Clapton's autobiography, "which, given the state they were in, cross-refs wonderfully with those just published by his ex-wife, Pattie Boyd"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2182849,00.html