ECB is about differentiating Sikhs
from the word 'Asian.'
Its a Vision to help raise awareness
of Sikhs in the Western World,
their history,beliefs and identity.
LONDON: Incitement to religious hatred will become a criminal offence in England and Wales with the commencement of a new Act from Monday that will extend the protection to Hindus, Muslims and Christians, hitherto enjoyed by only Sikhs and Jews.
The Racial and Religious Hatred Act creates a new offence of intentionally stirr-ing up religious hatred against people on religious grou-nds, closing a gap in the current legislation.
Existing offences in the Public Order 1986 Act legislate against inciting racial hatred. Sikhs and Jews have been deemed by the courts to be racial groups and are protected under this legislation, but other groups such as Hindus, Muslims and Christians are considered to be religious rather than racial groups, and have therefore not previously received any protection under the law.
The new Act will give protection to these groups by outlawing the use of threatening words or behaviour intended to incite hatred against groups of people defined by their religious beliefs or lack of belief.
Home office minister Vernon Coaker said: "This Act closes this small but important gap in the law against extremists who stir up hatred in our communities. To be attacked or targeted because of your race or religion is wholly unacceptable."
"It can have a devastating effect on victims who can find themselves on the receiving end of bigotry and hatred."
"We are committed to protecting everyone in our society and legislating against this abhorrent behaviour. Our overarching goal is to build a civilised society where we can all achieve our potential free from prejudice," Coaker said further.
NEW DELHI: Scores of Sikh activists staged a protest demonstration here today against the closure of the 1984 Sikh riot case against Congress leader Jagdish Tytler.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday closed the case saying that most of the witnesses in the case are either dead or do not want to testify.
Angry protestors lashed out at the CBI decision.
"By closing the case they have betrayed the Sikh Community. They say they don't have evidence against him. I am ready to give evidence. I am ready to give copy of all the documents which were submitted to the Jain-Banerjee Committee, which was enquiring the riots," said Gurcharan Singh Babbar, President, All India Sikh Conference.
Tytler was appointed as Minister of State for Non-Resident Indians' (NRI) affairs after the Congress came to power in 2004, but he had to quit later.
Tytler has always denied the allegations levels against him saying, it was a political stunt by the opposition BJP.
Thousands of Sikhs were killed in one of the worst communal riots following the assassination of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.
Congress leaders accused of leading the mobs have been absolved of the charges by lower courts.
People accusing Muslims of drugging, beating and raping Sikh women should be prosecuted for inciting religious hatred, an expert on religion has told Guardian Unlimited.
Philip Lewis, who is the Bishop of Bradford's aide on interfaith matters, was responding to claims posted by a group on the social networking site Facebook.
The group is called STOP OUR SIKH SISTERS BEING DRUGGED, RAPED, BEATEN AND USED FOR PROSTITUTION and claims that Sikh, Hindu and white girls from the ages of 13 to 22 are "being held against their will, drugged and gang raped" for the "pleasure" of Muslim extremists.
There is no evidence on the site to support the claims and Singh Kaur, the group's creator, provides no information about sources. But the group has attracted 2,900 members with nearly all of them young British Sikhs.
Dr Lewis said: "If there is a serious concern being raised then it's a matter for the police. If there is not a case to be answered, people need to be prosecuted.
"It is pernicious rumour-mongering that needs to be exposed. It's a form of slander. It is exacerbating relations between communities."
He said the issue was not on the radar of religious groups in Bradford, one of the "hotspots" cited by the group.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said there was no evidence that such activity was taking place in London, another allegedly "affected area".
One anti-racism activist urged people to either come forward with evidence or stop agitating.
Rob Deeks works for Aik Saath, a project that brings together Sikh, Muslim and Hindu youths from the Slough area, in Berkshire. It was set up after clashes between young people from different Asian communities.
He said: "Whoever is behind it is doing a good job of stirring up ill feeling. What's more worrying is there are 3,000 people who believe these claims."
The Facebook row is the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute between Hindu, Sikh and Muslim communities about forced or aggressive conversions.
Senior figures from Hindu and Sikh groups have accused Muslims of using underhand, sometimes violent, methods to convert girls to Islam. There has never been a formal investigation and there is no official complaint on record.
However one Sikh organisation said there was evidence of "heavy proselytising" on university campuses. Indarjit Singh, from the Network of Sikh Organisations, said: "The community is very concerned."
BANGKOK (dpa) - The alleged abduction of a wealthy Thai-Sikh businessman turned out to be a case of "runaway groom," Thai news reports said Tuesday.
The parents of Sutheep Sajjadev, a 38-year-old Sikh with a successful drapery business in Bangkok, informed police last Thursday that they suspected their son had been abducted.
Sutheep's abandoned Toyoto Lexus was found the next day with bloodstains, an unwound turban, pieces of a smashed mobile phone and a note saying: "You have caused trouble to our family, so we have taken your child."
Bangkok police, however, smelled something fishy about the alleged abduction when tests proved the bloodstains were from an animal, not a human.
The case was wrapped up Sunday night when a sheepish Sutheep returned home and later confessed to police that he had concocted the abduction ruse in an attempt to avoid an arranged marriage being forced upon him.
Police have been assigned to keep a close eye on Sutheep for fear he may harm himself. It was not immediately clear whether charges will be brought against the family for lodging a false complaint.
Amritsar • Angry family members and sympathisers of a four-year-old girl yesterday blocked traffic and demanded police action against the erring doctors for allegedly removing a kidney that led to her death the previous night.
Sonia Dubey, a resident of Gonda district of Uttar Pradesh had been undergoing treatment for a tumour in her belly at the government Medical College here. The family members have blamed the doctors that a kidney was removed from her without their knowledge. The girl died in pain at a private nursing home after her belly swelled rapidly.
Parents found out about her missing kidney only after she was admitted to the nursing home, where her condition deteriorated. Doctors at the hospital informed the parents that one of her kidneys had been removed.
Family members protested outside the office of district authorities, demanding that a murder case be registered against the principal of the government medical college, J P Kaur Shergill, and other doctors who had operated upon Sonia and removed her kidney recently.
Shergill and another doctor, who performed the operation, were suspended last week by medical education and research minister Tikshan Sud. A probe panel of senior doctors was set up to investigate the matter.
"My child was killed by these doctors. They should be punished for this," an inconsolable Shridhar Dubey, father of the girl said.
A grandmother and her son were jailed for life yesterday for ordering the murder of his wife, who they claimed had disgraced their traditional Sikh family by having an affair.
Surjit Athwal, 27, was lured to India where it is thought she was strangled and thrown into a river nine years ago. Her body has never been found.
Judge Giles Forrester sentenced Sukhdave Athwal, 43, and his mother Bachan Athwal, 70, to life imprison-ment for the “heinous crime” of plotting her murder.
Mrs Athwal, a grandmother of 16, wept in the dock as she was ordered to spend a minimum of 20 years in jail. Her son was told that he must serve at least 27 years behind bars. The pair were convicted of murder earlier this year after family members, who had initially been threatened against speaking out, came forward to police.
The court heard that Surjit, a mother of two, “disappeared off the face of the earth” after going to India with her mother-in-law to attend a family wedding in December 1998.
The Customs officer had been having an affair with a colleague at Heathrow, and had been planning to end her unhappy, ten-year arranged marriage.
When she failed to return to England, the killers, from Hayes, West London, told worried relatives and the police that she was a “slag” who had run away with another man. It is believed that she was strangled while in the Punjab and her body was thrown into the River Ravi.
Before sentence was passed yesterday, Kalyani Kaul, for Bachan, said that the grandmother, who suffered a small stroke during the trial, may die in jail.
Jonathan Rose, for Sukhdave, a Heathrow bus driver, said he was a good father to his children.
But Judge Forrester said: “You can hardly be a good father if you have killed their mother. This was a heinous crime characterised by great wickedness. The crime was premeditated and there was a significant degree of planning.”
In a victim impact statement read in court yesterday, Surjit’s brother Jagdeesh Singh described how the disappearance had left her family “stricken with anxiety”, made worse by the fact that her body was never found.
“The Athwals had managed to murder my sister and it appeared that with their manipulation and planning, they were going to get away with it. Surjit’s murderers were going about their lives as if nothing had happened,” he said.
Mr Singh said that in reaching justice, his family had battled with the “incompetence and disinterest” of the Indian police, Foreign Office apathy and a slow initial response from the Metropolitan police.
After the hearing at the Old Bailey, Surjit’s family and Asian women’s campaigners delivered a letter to Gordon Brown attacking the “double standards” of intervening when white Britons such as Madeleine McCann go missing, but failing to take action after Surjit’s disappearance.
It may be one of the most polluted cities in India, but investors are scenting a profit in Amritsar
Dean Nelson
From the road, the yellow wheat fields that spread from the border with Pakistan to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar look like a Bollywood film set waiting for the dancers. It’s classic Punjabi pastoral, with turbaned farmers tilling the fertile land. The mistake is to open the car window: the black sludgy river in the foreground is an open sewer that doubles as a rubbish tip and chemical-waste dump.
Given the stench, it is few people’s vision of a place in the sun. But Britain’s Indian community detects a whiff of opportunity in the air, and is pouring its money into the area’s booming property market.
Amritsar is at the heart of the extraordinary boom that has seen the Indian economy growing at almost 10% a year – up from 3% a decade ago. The city has grown rich on the rise of call centres, IT outsourcing and textiles, and the money is beginning to flow into its property market.
“The residential property market has grown rapidly over the past two years, by an average of 60%-70% in Mumbai, 70% in Delhi, 60%-75% in Bangalore, and 95%-100% in Chennai [Madras] and Hyderabad,” says Harvesp Mehta, the national director of investments for the Indian office of the estate agency Knight Frank, which expects prices across the country to continue to rise over the next two years, albeit at a more modest rate.
Analysts expect that such growth will soon be replicated in “second-tier” destinations such as Amritsar, where Knight Frank says prices have gone up by 40%-60% over the past two years. “Some of these small cities, such as Baroda, in Gujarat, will grow by 5m people over the next 10 years,” says one British-Indian merchant banker in the City of London. “That makes them a good bet for British-Indians to invest in.”
Most of his Indian friends, he says, are hunting for “the next Bangalore” - a small Indian town with “worthless rice paddies”, he says, that became “multimillion-pound residential plots” when the city became the heart of India’s IT revolution. His picks have been in Goa and Calcutta.
There is no doubt that India needs more homes - about 20m more by 2012, according to government figures. Need is only a part of it, though; also crucial, in terms of the market, is desire. As India’s 300m-strong middle class gets richer, there is an increasing desire to escape the appalling infrastructure, the stench of the sewers, the erratic power supply and the squalid streets.
In general, the ideal property is a flat in a modern, gated community, where residents can show off the latest computerised lighting systems and wireless hi-fi, and have guaranteed electricity and water, and access to smart shops, pools and health clubs.
Happily for investors, the demand for such homes is easily outstripping supply, which is why leading western investment banks such as JP Morgan, Citigroup and Credit Suisse have raised £500m to invest in new building projects in India.
It is also why smaller entrepreneurs are betting on cities such as Amritsar. Take Amar Sodhi, managing director of Avatar International, in London. Last week, the first 48 off-plan flats from the company’s Windsor Apartments, about a mile from Amritsar airport, went on sale, with prices starting at £39,000 for a two-bedroom, 113-square-metre flat. The properties would not look out of place in the London Docklands. Designed to suit the taste of British-based Indians, they boast “gourmet kitchens” and whirlpool baths. There is also a club with pool, spa and squash courts.
The apartments are in one of India’s worst pollution blackspots. Yet half of the first batch have been reserved by investors confident of doubling their money before the keys are handed over in 2009.
“There are 25m wealthy Sikhs around the world, and Amritsar is the home of the Golden Temple,” Sodhi says. “There are 600,000 Sikhs in Britain alone, and they like to travel to Amritsar, but good accommodation is limited.” He is particularly encouraged by the decision of the Radisson chain to build a five-star hotel next door.
Joginder Nijjar, and his wife, Nirmal, both solicitors from Walsall, agree with Sodhi’s analysis. Over the past 18 months, they have remortgaged their UK home and thrown in their life savings to invest more than £1m in residential and commercial projects in Amritsar and Delhi.
Nijjar says he had considered investing in India in the past, during visits to relatives, but was put off by fear of corruption. “You always think you’re going to get ripped off, but now there are good companies coming into the market,” he says. “I’m hoping for a rise of a couple of hundred per cent.”
Dilip Patel, 47, a knitwear manufacturer from Leicester, and his wife, Illa, signed up two years ago to buy a two-bedroom flat in the Ozone development, in Goregaon, Mumbai. They paid £60,000; similar properties are expected to go for double that when the complex is completed towards the end of next year. “Now I’m looking for another flat,” Dilip says.
British-Indians can buy under special provisions for those classed as people of Indian origin. By contrast, those without an ethnic link to the country can do so only if they have spent 182 days in the previous financial year living in India on a nontourist visa.
The rules have already been relaxed for commercial property, and there is speculation that the government could follow suit for flats and houses. In the meantime, you can get around the curbs by establishing a company in India and buying a property in its name to rent out as a holiday flat.
Free with every purchase is the unmistakable smell of the subcontinent - but Sodhi, for one, does not expect it will put off the buy-to-let investors he’s targeting. “Some of these places do stink,” he admits. “As a child, I used to get asthma in nearby Ludhiana, but today it has more Mercedes cars than anywhere in India, and some of its houses sell for £1m. The smell won’t harm the investment.”
Tom Lantos, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned the Transportation Security Administration about religious profiling after it changed its screening procedures to include searches of turbans reports Rediff.com. The 14-term California Democrat said the new policy to pull aside airline passengers with headgear had led to harassment of Sikh passengers. Sikh Americans have been asked to remove their turbans, a fundamental symbol of their faith, at the airport. Since the new policy was instituted August 4, more than 50 such incidents have been reported across the country. "The lack of religious sensitivity and inconsistency in implementing this revised policy is astounding and disturbing,' Lantos complained in a letter to TSA Adminstrator Kip Hawley adding that he could not understand how 'an agency that took pride in working with religious and community groups after the tragic events of September 11, 2001 be so cavalier and discriminatory in its policy that affects those same groups just six years later.' He asked for the TSA to quickly enact changes. Three Sikh organizations, SALDEF, the Sikh Coalition, and UNITED SIKHS submitted a joint memorandum to TSA expressing their concern that the new procedures give screeners to much latitude.
Eastnor Castle, near Ledbury, is joining a nationwide cultural project this Sunday (September 23).
The castle is holding activities from 11am to 4.30pm as part of the Anglo Sikh Trail, which highlights connections between the Sikhs and Britain.
Musicians and dancers will perform Bhangra at 1pm before a lecture surrounding the castle's collection of Sikh war armour and weaponry starts at 2pm.
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Harbinder Singh from the heritage trail said: "Eastnor Castle's participation in Anglo Sikh Heritage Week will bring to life the remarkable history which represents its connection with Britain and the Sikhs."
For more information visit www.eastnorcastle.com or call 01531 633160.
A group of local Sikhs have been allowed to carry out a cremation in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The authorities intervened after Muslims in the Old City stopped Sikhs burning a body at their traditional cremation site in the Qalacha area.
Sikh mourners carried the body to the presidential palace and UN headquarters until the chief of police escorted them back and the cremation went ahead.
Muslims near the site had complained about the smell from funeral pyres.
The long and fascinating history of the connections between Sikh and English cultures is to be celebrated during the forthcoming Anglo-Sikh Heritage Week.
Running from September 15-23 2007, this year will see an extended programme of events spread right across the country.
From an introduction to Sikh arms and armour at London’s Wallace Collection to Rangoli art workshops at Soho House in Birmingham, the events aim to show the shared history of British and Sikh people.
Other highlights include stories of the magnificent Koh-in-Noor diamonds in the Tower of London, a showcase of the Royal Geographical Society’s unique collection of original maps and photos from the Punjab and an exploration of the complicated relationship between deposed rebel prince Maharajah Duleep Singh and the Empress of India Queen Victoria at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.
Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail (ASHT) Project Manager Hema Raull said: “Exciting, informative, stirring and fun are some of the words used to describe the range of activities that took place last year during ASHT week.”
“This year is no exception. During ASHT week you can learn about Sikh history, culture and tradition through a variety of activities and by learning more about a range of fascinating characters.”
The week has been organised by the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail, a project of the Maharajah Duleep Singh Centenary Trust, which exists to promote Sikh heritage in Britain. The Trail covers a range of sites and institutions throughout the UK was launched in July 2004.
Visit the Anglo Sikh Heritage Trail websiteto download a programme of events, learn about the trail and for more information about Sikh history and culture.
Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, September 9, 2007; Page A08
Like all practicing Sikhs, Gurpreet Singh Tuteja wears his turban as a sacred symbol of his faith and its values of discipline and austerity. Every morning, the Arlington County business consultant winds a long bolt of black or saffron cloth tightly around his uncut hair, where it remains until he returns home. He has worn the turban on hundreds of business trips, without incident.
But several weeks ago, when he was boarding a flight in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to return to Washington, Tuteja, 24, said he felt shocked and humiliated when a Transportation Safety Administration screener pulled him aside to "pat down" his turban as part of a new policy, even though he had passed through the metal detector without incident
"For us, the turban is a sign of respect for God. It is not like a cowboy hat. It was very uncomfortable having someone touch it," Tuteja said Friday. "I am all for the security of the United States. I am an American, too. But it should not come to the point where civil liberties are denied. I want the airways to be safe, but I also want my rights."
The new TSA policy, enacted Aug. 4 along with other rule changes, gives airport screeners additional discretion to search passengers' headgear, including turbans, which could conceal plastic or other nonmetal parts of explosive devices. Agency officials said the policy is not meant to single out any groups.
"We were looking at where people can hide" bomb components, TSA Administrator Kip Hawley said of the policy in a recent interview. "Whether it's a cowboy hat or a turban, this is what it is. And it was not directed at any one type of person or religion. It was directed at keeping bomb parts off of airplanes."
The measure set off an uproar in the country's well-organized Sikh community, whose members are sensitive to religious slights and are on guard against being unfairly suspected as terrorists. To many, the new rules seem to cross a line from inconvenience to insult, from prudence to prejudice.
About a half-million Sikhs live in the United States, with 10,000 in the Washington region. Many are technology and science professionals, and most are first- or second-generation immigrants from India, where Sikhism was founded several centuries ago as an offshoot of Hinduism.
"Our religion is one of peace and harmony, and our turbans stand for everything that is against terrorism," said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition in New York. "By saying that our turbans should be subject to additional screening, the federal government has equated our most precious article of faith with a terrorist implement."
Sikh groups, who say that about 50 Sikhs have had their turbans inspected since Aug. 4, said that the policy change goes against an agreement they made with TSA officials after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Under that agreement, Sikhs were allowed to wear turbans through airport detectors when other passengers had to remove their hats. If the machine did not beep, the traveler could continue. If it beeped, the turban would be screened with a wand, patted down, or removed and examined in a private screening area.
Under the new rules, even if there is no alarm, a TSA screener can ask to examine a turban.
"The procedure we came up with in 2001 was working fine. It was respectful of religious practice while also allowing airports to do screening," said Ranjit Singh, an official with the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund in Washington. The new procedure, he said, is misguided and subject to abuse. "A Sikh's turban becomes like part of his body. To have it removed is like being strip-searched."
As a result of the outcry, TSA officials have spoken with Sikh groups and plan to meet with them this week. Officials said they would normally have alerted Sikh groups to the changes but were focused on other adjustments, such as loosened restrictions on carrying lighters and breast milk.
"It wasn't intentional," Chris White, a TSA spokesman, said last week. "It was just an oversight."
The turban controversy is not the first clash between public safety and Sikh culture, which also requires male devotees to carry a small ceremonial dagger, called a kirpan, as a symbol of martial traditions. After dozens of post-9/11 confrontations over carrying kirpans in airports or courthouses, Sikhs have become accustomed to putting kirpans in checked luggage.
Muslim headscarves, crucifixes and Sikh bangles should be banned at schools unless they can be incorporated into the dress code, most parents polled in a survey by Reader’s Digest said.
Eighty-three per cent feel such religious symbols are unacceptable, while more than half (52 per cent) of parents also disapprove of faith schools, according to the poll by Reader’s Digest. The YouGov survey, of 565 parents with children at state school, shows disillusionment with the comprehensive school system. Parents want more homework to be set, are in favour of increased testing and would like to be more involved in their child’s schooling. If they could afford to, 59 per cent would send their children to private school.
At least 20 people were injured Monday, including 11 seriously injured, in a clash in Indian state of Punjab between a group of Sikhs and followers of a cult leader, who had triggered an angry row with the Sikhs some four months ago by dressing up like one of their faith's revered founders.
The incident erupted in Punjab's Mansa district when Sikhs objected to a prayer event organized by followers of Gurmeet Ram Raheem Singh, who heads the cult called Dera Sacha Sauda.
Singh's followers and Sikhs pelted each other with stones and used bamboo sticks, the Press Trust of India (PTI) quoted police as saying from Punjab, the Sikh-majority state.
In May, newspaper advertisements showing the Dera head dressing up like Guru Gobind Singh, the revered Sikh figure, sparked fierce clashes between Sikhs and the cult followers in Punjab.
The Golden Temple, in Amritsar [Images], Punjab, glowed like a jewel on September 1, the 403rd anniversary of the installation of the revered Guru Granth Sahib in this Sikh shrine.
The Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, was declared equal to a living guru by Guru Gobind Singh, the last guru of the Sikhs in 1708.
Guru Gobind Singh said that on his death the Guru Granth would become the next Guru. This book of 5,000 hymns and 1,430 pages is the receptacle of all Sikhs teachings as well as words of wisdom of other saints like Kabir and Tulsi Das.
From the 16th century onwards these hymns or couplets of religious discourse from all the Sikh gurus were gradually collected and assembled. It was finally complete in 1604 and installed in the Golden Temple
To mark this special day a procession, that ended at the Harmandir Sahib, was organised by the priests of the Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee. Wearing colourful robes devotees chanted hymns as they proceeded to the temple.
Photograph: A Sikh boy lights an oil lamp in front of the Golden TempleImage: Narinder Nanu/AFP/ Getty Images
Sikhs with turbans, Muslims who cover hair protest against policy they say discriminates
Sep 03, 2007 04:30 AM
Neil MacFarquhar NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON–A new U.S. government policy that subjects travellers who wear any type of head covering to possible additional screening at airport checkpoints has prompted vociferous protests from Sikh organizations, who say they are being singled out for ethnic profiling.
Muslim women who veil their hair are also expressing concern that the change – particularly because further screening is at the discretion of each screener – will single out Muslims.
"The federal government has equated our most precious article of faith with terrorism," said Amardeep Singh, the executive director of the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group for Sikhs, whose faith dictates that men wear turbans, though some women do as well.
"To send a message that the turban is dangerous sends the wrong message to society."
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which adopted and is enforcing the policy, said that it was aimed not just at turbans but at any headgear and that it was one of the periodic adjustments made to address changing threats. It addresses nonmetallic threats including some explosives.
The change allows for screeners to pat down anyone who is wearing a hat or other head covering, even if the person clears a metal detector.
"It is a matter of when the security officer cannot reasonably determine that the head area is free of a threat item," said Amy Kudwa, a spokesperson for the agency.
The change was part of several adjustments made on Aug. 4, including allowing passengers to carry cigarette lighters and small quantities of bottled breast milk.
But the change regarding headgear was not publicized and came to light only after many Sikh passengers underwent additional screenings.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, which co-ordinates security policy across the country, has no plans to introduce similar guidelines.
"At this point the directive remains we search headgear only for cause," spokesperson Brigitte Caron told the Toronto Star's Robyn Doolittle. "It could be a cowboy hat. (All) headgear is treated the same."
Back in the United States, a Sikh businessman, Prabhjit Singh, said he was made to leave the screening line when he balked at the secondary search before an early flight on Aug. 17 from Baltimore/Washington International Airport.
Singh was not told of the new policy until after his turban was inspected by hand in a private room.
"The supervisor made me feel like I had done something wrong," said Singh, 27, a motivational speaker from Maryland. "I felt for the first time in America that I had been targeted, and it was because of the way I looked."
The fact that the policy was put into effect without consulting Sikhs also rankled the Sikh Coalition, which puts the number of Sikhs in the United States at 280,000, part of about 21 million in the world.
Kudwa said the Transportation Security Administration was now discussing the policy with Sikh leaders.
The owner of an upscale Salt Lake City private club is apologizing for turning away a Sikh man because his turban violated its no-hats policy. The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund wrote a letter to Club Habits complaining that in July, Harpreet Singh Multani of Sandy tried to gain entrance to the club at 832 E. 3900 South but was told its no-hats policy applied to his turban. For Sikh men, the turban is a part of their religious identity. "It's a religious requirement for practicing Sikhs," said Rajbir Singh Datta, associate director of the Washington, D.C., organization. Club owner Bill Carter said Tuesday he had received the letter and that the club would issue an apology, and invite Multani to visit again. "We apologize to him . . . through our ignorance we didn't know there was a religious-type problem with anyone." Multani said he and several friends went to the club on July 14 and waited in line to get in. "The lady at front door, the only thing she said [is] you cannot have any head coverings and you cannot come in," he said in an interview Tuesday. Multani said he found no sign with a dress code posted outside the club or on the club's Web site, leaving him wondering if he had been singled out. Carter said the club, which will amend its dress code, is trying to be an upscale dinner-and-dancing establishment and, therefore, prohibits dress such as T-shirts and hats, including baseball caps. Utah liquor statutes don't cover issues of discrimination in establishments that have state licenses, but Salt Lake City attorney Brian Barnard said Utah's civil rights laws do. Barnard won a 1992 Utah Supreme Court ruling that he says forced all liquor-license holders to meet state civil rights standards. They say that establishments licensed by the state cannot discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, ancestry, religion or national origin. Barnard had sued the Elks Club in St. George because it held a liquor license but didn't allow women to be members. "Clearly a private club with a state liquor license cannot discriminate on the basis of religion," said Barnard. Datta said he was pleased to hear Club Habits would apologize and that his group would send Carter information explaining various types of religious headgear. Datta said the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund gets hundreds of complaints about religious discrimination, including from Sikhs who are denied access to courtrooms because of prohibitions on hats and headgear. tharvey@sltrib.com
Irish Police Commissioner Noel Conroy has agreed to meet Sikh community leaders to discuss the ban on turbans imposed on officers.
The move comes after a Sikh trainee officer was told that he could not wear the turban on duty.
Members of Ireland's Sikh community are hoping to convince police to change the ruling.
But police say that religious symbols could lead the public to believe that they are not acting "impartially".
The man, who had already passed three stages of his training, was told of the ban before starting the fourth - in which he would have been working with members of the public.
The Republic's police force, known as An Garda Siochana, requires all officers to wear standard issue uniform - including a cap.
A statement issued on behalf of An Garda said that the public may view variations of the uniform as an indication that the force was not "policing all sections of society equally".
A spokesman for the force told the BBC that they were currently "examining" their policy on all religious symbols, including crucifixes and pioneer pins.
But the president of the Irish Sikh Council, Harpreet Singh, told BBC Radio Five Live that the turban was "a mandatory article of faith that a Sikh cannot take off".
He argued that the rules meant that An Garda were "asking the whole Sikh community to stay out of the police force".
Philip Watt, from the Irish Republic's National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, also told BBC Radio that he thought the police had got it wrong.
"They've perhaps not thought it through full enough, and I think they should go back and review this decision now," he said.
Sikh boy holds a placard against the French ban of turbans in New Delhi, India (File Photo)
The largest civil rights organization of American Sikhs has expressed outrage at a new U.S. airport security policy that allows random searches of turbans.
The Sikh Coalition said it had been informed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration that under new guidelines the religious headdress could be subject to pat-downs even if the turban wearers had passed a metal detector test.
On its website, the Coalition says it is concerned that the new policy amounts to religious profiling. The organization urged Sikhs to sign a petition to the TSA to demonstrate grassroots concern with the new procedures. It also asked all Sikhs to document their experience with the new headgear screening procedures.
The TSA said on its website it does not conduct ethnic or religious profiling.
The Irish Sikh Council (ISC) has denied weekend media reports that it is considering a High Court challenge against An Garda Síochána over the wearing of turbans.
The row broke out after it emerged a Sikh recruit to the Garda Reserve was told he would not be allowed wear his turban on duty.
It had been reported that the ISC had sought advice from representatives of a police officer who successfully overturned a similar ban in New York.
But ISC president Harpreet Singh said no decision has been made on a legal challenge. "The Irish Sikh Council is very much hopeful that the issue can be amicably resolved," he said.
Members of the Sikh community are to meet Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy next week to discuss the issue.
The Garda has rejected claims that its decision to ban the turban from its official uniform was religiously or racially motivated.
Mr Conroy said last week that the Garda sought the advice of UK police forces and met representatives of the approximately 1,000-strong Sikh community in Ireland before deciding that Sikh gardaí in Ireland would not wear a turban.
The issue has forced the Garda to say it will review the wearing of ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, of crucifixes and of pioneer pins with the official uniform. "All religious items are being reviewed," a spokesman said.
26 August 2007 By John Burke The Irish Sikh Council is considering mounting a High Court challenge aimed at overturning Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy’s ban on Sikhs wearing their traditional turban while on Garda duty.
The Sikh council has also confirmed to The Sunday Business Post that it made contact with representatives of a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer who successfully overturned a similar ban in the New York police force.
President of the Sikh council, Harpreet Singh, said the council intended to ‘‘take the necessary steps in the event that there is no change of position from the Garda’’ after a Sikh Garda Reserve recruit was told he could not wearing his turban while on duty.
The wearing of the turban is considered a religious act by members of the Sikh faith.
Sikh police officers in Britain, Canada and New York are permitted to wear a turban on duty. Singh said the council was examining the issue from a European law perspective but that it would not launch a legal action until meaningful dialogue had ended.
Conroy released a statement late last week re-affirming Garda management’s decision to ban Sikhs from wearing a turban instead of the traditional Garda cap.
In a strongly-worded statement, Conroy said he believed a variation to standard Garda uniform and dress, including those with religious symbolism, ‘‘may portray an image of the force that the public would not want’’.
The statement outlined that the policy was binding on all members of the force, irrespective of religious beliefs.
Sikh Turbans, A Mandatory Article of the Sikh Faith, Listed as Item to be Screened at U.S. Airports
NEW YORK, Aug 25, 2007 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The Sikh Coalition, the nation's largest Sikh civil rights organization, strongly opposes new headwear screening procedures put in place by the Transportation Security Administration on August 4, 2007. TSA officials told the Sikh Coalition that the new Standard Operating Procedure includes a guidance recommending that America's 43,000 airport screeners pull aside turban-wearing travelers for secondary screening, based solely on their headwear.
The turban is the only form of religious garb specifically identified by the TSA as an example of headwear that could lead to secondary screening at security checkpoints. Other examples include cowboy hats and berets. The TSA's policy accounts for no difference between the turban, a religious requirement, and fashion headwear.
"Telling screeners to search people in turbans is the same as telling them to search black people or Arabs or Muslims. The policy allows screeners to single out travelers on the basis of their religion. The message this sends to the public is that people who wear turbans are dangerous," said Amardeep Singh, Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition. "That attitude challenges the spirit of religious pluralism on which our country was built."
The new policy revokes standard procedures, created in November 2001 to address Americans' national security concerns, while safeguarding religious freedom. That policy required TSA screeners to search Sikhs' turbans only when they had not successfully cleared a metal detector. Screeners were required to do as much as possible to avoid physically touching the turban. The new procedures recommend physical pat-downs of the turban, without acknowledging the religious sensitivities involved, and do not include any guidance on how to perform these manual checks.
In addition, these procedures were implemented without input from community groups, and the text of the policy is now being kept secret. Earlier policies had been the result of a joint effort between the Sikh Coalition and the Department of Transportation.
Since September 11, 2001, hundreds of Sikhs have been harassed, beaten, and even killed because of the association of their turbans and beards with terrorism. The TSA procedures put an official stamp of approval on this harmful stereotyping by the public.
CARLSBAD – A religious civil rights organization has complained to the U.S. Justice Department after a member of the Sikh religion was denied entry into two Carlsbad Village nightclubs because he was wearing a turban.
Dave Bindra, 22, said the Ocean House restaurant and Coyote Bar & Grill would not let him in July 27 because they have rules against do-rags, beanies, bandannas and other head wear associated with street gangs.
Bindra also said that when he explained to Ocean House manager Steve Town that his turban was not a do-rag but a religious expression that he never removes in public, Town said, “ 'Beanie, do-rag or turban, you still have a towel on your head and you're not going in.' ”
Town denies he made the “towel” remark and said Bindra and his friends were denied entry because they were being aggressive.
Bindra, a Los Angeles native and a student at Carlsbad's Gemological Institute of America, said that after he was denied entry at Ocean House, he went to the nearby Coyote Bar & Grill. The bar would not let him in, so he asked for the manager's name and phone number and decided to call it a night.
Coyote general manager Aaron Williams said, “It had nothing to do with attacking his religion. We have a no-hat, no head wear policy when we have a DJ.”
Told that Sikhs wear a turban as an expression of their faith, Williams said, “I'm not judging anyone for their religion. Anybody can come in here and say, 'I'm wearing this because it's my religion.' ”
Bindra said that after the Coyote refusal, three female friends had gone back to the Ocean House, which is in the same shopping center as Coyote, and demanded to see the manager.
At that point, Town and Bindra agree, things spun out of control.
“He was with three females who were going ballistic,” Town said, adding that Bindra threatened his employees physically and used profanities.
“I said, 'We're not going to let you in because you're attacking us,' ” Town said.
Bindra said his friends were yelling profanities, but he did not.
“I did not get aggressive,” Bindra said. “I didn't want to give a bad name to Sikhs by reacting aggressively.”
Bindra said he was not wearing a traditional peaked turban but a patka, which uses less material and is more skull-tight. He said he also has a full beard, in observance of his religion.
Town said Bindra's head wear did not look like a typical turban, and bouncers at the club told Bindra that he would be allowed into the club, but every club employee would question him because of the strict rules against head wear.
Bindra said, however, that he saw the club admit patrons wearing baseball hats and didn't understand why a rule against do-rags applied to him.
The Sikh religion is one of world's newer faiths, having been founded about 500 years ago in Punjab, said Rajbir Singh Datta, a spokesman for the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Datta said incidents of discrimination against Sikhs have increased since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
He called the turban “the uniform of the Sikh religion” and compared it to a Jewish yarmulke.
Datta said his organization has contacted the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Justice Department, which mediates in instances of racial and ethnic discrimination.
If the restaurants did deny Bindra service because he wore a turban, he would have a strong claim against them, said David Steinberg, a professor of civil rights law at San Diego's Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
Steinberg said the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly prohibits discrimination in “public accommodations” – such as stores, hotels and restaurants – based upon race or religion.
“The reason this person can't come into the restaurant, unlike a hatless person, is because of his religious beliefs,” Steinberg said. “I don't see any justification for a no-hat policy that would outweigh the very legitimate rights of the man to practice his religion.”
Staff writer Steve Liewer contributed to this report.
US Sikh organisations have expressed anger over changes allowing airport security staff to "pat down" turbans.
Until now turbans have been searched or removed only to resolve an unexplained alarm from an airport metal detector.
But now security will have greater discretion to inspect turbans so that they can be manually checked for objects such as non-metallic weapons.
However Sikh groups have responded to the new measures by describing them as outrageous and discriminatory.
Sikh men wear turbans to cover their hair, which they leave uncut in accordance with their religion.
Organisations representing Sikhs have only recently completed a publicity campaign to explain the significance of the kirpan, or religious sword, to security officials.
The Transportation Security Administration insisted the new policy was necessary to counter the threat of improvised bombs and chemical weapons.
In Britain, the government said recently that private searches of turbans might be necessary as part of airport security.
Monty Panesar has been named the Wisden Cricketer of 2007. He is the first Sikh to play cricket for England and is the face of Walkers new Chilli and Lemon flavour crisps.
If I weren't talking to you right now I'd be ...
Relaxing somewhere with my friends and family.
A phrase I use far too often ...
"Tiga, tiga" which means "okay, okay" in Hindi. Or I use "How's that?" when I'm appealing a call.
I wish people would take more notice of...
Being able to play cricket
The most surprising thing that happened to me ...
I never imagined I'd see my face on a double-decker bus. It's shocking to see such a large picture of myself.
A common misconception of me is ...
People think that I can rap. I have done it, but I am not really good. I'm not Eminem.
I'm not a politician but if I were ...
I would have more national holidays and I would also extend the Christmas holidays.
I'm good at...
Jumping high and missing high fives with my team-mates. I can also make my friends and family laugh.
I'm bad at...
Cooking. I tried at university but I had to end up buying a card for meals because I was so bad.
You know me as a cricketer but in another life I'd have been...
A musician. I would have been a pianist, even though I don't play now.
The parents of a Sikh girl want to convert her to Roman Catholicism to win a place at the school of their choice.
Baljit and Bal Singh say they will change their four-year-old daughter's religion if it means she can attend their favoured school next month.
Maya Kaur has been attending a nursery at St Paul's Roman Catholic School in Wolviston, Cleveland, for the past two years.
But her parents have been told there is no place available for her when she starts full-time education in a few weeks.
After losing an appeal, the couple say they are seriously considering changing her religion in the hope she may be allowed into the school, which gives priority to Catholic children.
Mr Singh said: "We think Sikhism is similar to Roman Catholicism so we put her in that school. She's been there for two years, she goes to church with them, she says a prayer before she eats her dinner.
"I'll baptise her as Roman Catholic so she can go to the school."
St Paul's admissions policy gives priority to children who have been baptised Roman Catholic, have been formally received into the Catholic church and live in the catchment area, or who have a sibling at the school. Priority then goes to other Christian denominations before children of other faiths.
The Singhs' extraordinary proposal is likely to be frowned upon within the Sikh religion, which takes some of its identity from ancestors who were persecuted and martyred for refusing to convert to other faiths.
Among the stories taught within the faith is that of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth of the founding gurus of Sikhism who was beheaded in 1675 by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for refusing to convert to Islam.
The Singhs insisted that they were doing nothing wrong in trying to get the best for their daughter.
"Two years ago when they took her into the nursery why didn't they say she wouldn't get a place straight away in the primary school?" said Mr Singh.
"I would have got her baptised then - or I'd have put her in another school."
Maya has been offered a place at William Cassidi School, a nearby Church of England school. But her parents claim she is upset and wants to remain with her friends.
Catherine Connelly, head at St Paul's, said the school had received 34 applications this year, compared to the norm of 24. The class size had also been expanded to the legal limit of 30.
"We are proud of our school's inclusive nature and we have children of several different faiths and ethnic groups," she said.
"We allocated the places according to our published admissions criteria which all parents had access to."
VANCOUVER -Passport Canada will issue an apology --and travel documents -- to three Sikh children whose passport applications were rejected because they were wearing religious headgear. The federal agency will also offer remedial training to passport staff to ensure a similar incident doesn't happen in the future, spokesman Fabien Lengelle said yesterday. "It is resolved," Mr. Lengelle said. "As soon as we became aware of the issue, we called the parents and offered corrective measures." Lakhwinder Kaur Sidhu had mailed passport applications to Ottawa for herself and her husband along with their three children, Gurleen Kaur, 9, Ravneet Kaur, 7, and Gurmant Singh, 4, on May 15. All five had included passport photos in which they were wearing their religious headgear. Although Ms. Sidhu and her husband, Hardip, received their passports last week, the children's applications were denied because their photos did not meet the specifications, as the wearing of a "head covering is unacceptable." Her son was wearing a patka, which is knotted at the top to keep the hair intact, while the girls were wearing head scarves. Sikhs wear head coverings as part of their religious observance after they are baptized.
Sixty years ago this week India and Pakistan were granted independence from British rule. Independence meant that Pakistan and India were separated into two different countries, one for Muslims, the other for Sikhs and Hindus.
The struggle to make sure you were in the right country led to riots, murder and bloodshed, which affected the families of many people now living in Peterborough. Jemma Walton heard their stories.
Despite having much in common – like history, culture and languages – Pakistan and India have struggled to live peacefully together since they were granted independence from Britain in August 1947.
Much of south Asia came under direct control of Great Britain in the late 18th century. The British Raj over the Indian subcontinent lasted for almost two centuries.
But The Muslim League proposed the Two Nation Theory in the early 20th century, and a campaign for partition gained pace in the '40s.
According to the Two Nation theory, Hindus and Muslims shared little in common and India should be divided into countries, one for the Muslims and the other for the non-Muslims.
The Partition of India created two countries, the Republic of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Both were part of the Commonwealth, with their own democratically elected governments and Prime Ministers.
Pakistan received independence from Britain on August 14, 1947, and India achieved independence the next day.
Tens of millions of Hindus living in Pakistan emigrated to India, while several million Muslims living in the Union of India went to live in Pakistan, but two million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs died amid the chaos of mass emigration.
And that was just the start of the region's troubles.
According to the British plan for the partition of
India, all the 680 princely states were allowed to decide which of the two countries to join.
With the exception of a few, most of the Hindu-majority princely-states acceded to the Union of India, while most of the Muslim-majority princely states joined Pakistan.
However, the decisions of some of the princely-states – such as Kashmir – would shape the Indo-Pakistani relationship for years to come.
Each country claims Kashmir as a part of its territory. Today, as a result of a rebellion in 1947 and subsequent wars between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the area is separated by a cease-fire line.
After years of bloodshed, tensions between the two are beginning to simmer down. Both countries have made steps towards peace, including more high-level talks and the easing of visa restrictions.
They have even come so far that the odd game of cricket isn't out of the question, either.
ROLY-poly Carole Vincent lost her inner peace in a string of rows yesterday – yet she once converted to Sikhism.
Carole, 52, explored her spiritual side when she joined her local temple in the 1990s.
But yesterday she exploded with rage in the house — over FOOD.
She had a spat with Gerry, when the gay Greek rapped her for controlling the house’s grub. Carole protested: “I’m not controlling anything, Gerry. You shouldn’t just go around taking other people’s stuff.”
And then she had a run-in with Liam after admitting having a secret tea bag stash. The Geordie branded her a hypocrite after she had earlier warned housemates: “If there is food hidden there’ll be serious consequences
Her tantrums was a far cry from when she visited her local temple in traditional garb.
Daughter Ebony Vincent said: “Mum did a course about inner spirituality and as part of that people had to learn about a new religion. She chose Sikhism and often went down to the temple in the full outfit.
“Mum is a very spiritual person and has a lot in common with the Sikhs. She finds them very calm and peaceful.
“Whenever they have big celebrations she often will put on her Sikh costume and go join in. She has lots of Sikh friends.”
London, Aug. 14: A Sikh man belonging to a volunteer reserve police force in Ireland has been banned from wearing his headgear.
The Sikh man, who has not been named, is a qualified IT professional who decided to join the Garda Reserve, the volunteer reserve section of Ireland’s police force Garda Siochana.
Ireland’s integration minister Conor Lenihan on Monday said that immigrants to the country must accept Ireland’s culture but acknowledged the importance of the turban in the Sikh community.
"If we are to take integration seriously, people who come here must understand our way of doing things. When the President and ministers travel to West Asia, they accept cultural requirements of the country and the culture they are operating in. It is a vice versa situation with regard to Ireland," he said. Male Sikhs are required by religion to cover their hair at all times by a turban, an article of faith and an intrinsic aspect of their identity.
As turbans are worn by Sikh police officers elsewhere, most notably the London metropolitan police, a compromise may be reached, news portal independent.ie, a website reported.
In June, Sikhs in France filed a case before the (ECHR) in Strasbourg challenging a French law that demands that turbans be taken off while being photographed for identity cards after Shingara Mann Singh, 52, a French national for over 20 years, was denied a replacement driver’s licence in 2005 and again in 2006 because he refused to remove his turban. (IANS)
London, Aug. 12: Sikh taxi driver Davinder Singh, who complained to police after allegedly suffering a torrent of racial abuse from an aristocratic customer — the Marquess of Blandford — would have understood all, forgiven all and perhaps even sympathised with his tormentor if only he had been familiar with Satyajit Ray’s depiction of the crumbling of a once great zamindari family in Jalshaghar.
Although he belongs to one of the noblest families in the land, the 51-year-old Marquess of Blandford could have inspired an evocative film on the last days of an old aristocratic English line had a person such as Ray existed in Britain.
To the tabloids, Charles James Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford, born November 24, 1955, and heir, as his eldest son, to John George Vanderbilt Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough, has long been a ridiculous figure.
Marquess he might be and a distant relative of Sir Winston Churchill, but “Jamie Blandford” is now considered the upper class equivalent of Jade Goody, the reality television character with whom Shilpa Shetty clashed on Celebrity Big Brother. However, Jamie appears to have few of Jade’s redeeming qualities.
All of Britain, with the exception of Davinder obviously, also knows that Jamie’s main claim to fame is that he is the UK’s best-known upper class drug addict.
In fact, Jamie’s father is so fed up with his son that he has announced that his inheritance will pass not to son but his son’s son, George Spencer-Churchill.
The boy was born in 1992 to Jamie and his first wife, Rebecca Mary Few Brown, (Rebecca, Marchioness of Blandford), whom he married in 1990 and divorced in 1998. George, incidentally, is called the Earl of Sunderland.
But there is nothing that the 11th Duke can do to stop Jamie becoming the 12th Duke of Marlborough when he dies.
To complicate matters and make all this sound though it was all taken from the pages of a P.G. Wodehouse novel, Jamie’s second marriage to one Edla Griffiths (Marchioness of Blandford), took place on March 1, 2002, at Woodstock Register Office. Although Jamie and his second wife have been living apart since 2004, their daughter, Araminta Clementine Megan Spencer-Churchill (Lady Araminta Spencer-Churchill) was born on April 8 this year.
The latest drama in the life of Jamie took place when one morning recently he summoned a cab from his ancestral home in the Blenheim Palace estate, Oxfordshire, to go to Coventry Crown Court where the heir to the Dukedom of Marlborough was facing a charge of dangerous driving and cutting up, of all people, a policeman on the M42. full Story...........................
The Irish Independent reports today that a Sikh member of the Garda Reserve will be prohibited from wearing his ceremonial headdress (turban) while on duty. Minister for Integration, Conor Lenihan, has backed the ruling.
The decision is in contrast to the positions of other forces, such as the London Metropolitan Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who allow Sikh members to wear their turbans, a vital part of the rules of their religion. Sikh men are prohibited from cutting their hair or appearing in public without the turban.
It is not clear whether the Garda Reserve member in question will continue with the force or resign his post.
His court appearances for a string of driving offences have been steadily mounting.
Now it seems that even getting to court is causing problems for the troubled Marquess of Blandford.
He is facing more hot water after being accused of racially abusing a Sikh taxi driver who had driven to collect him for an appearance at Coventry Crown Court.
The revelation comes just days after the wayward aristocrat faced Oxford Crown Court for an unprovoked road rage attack.
It was in July that driver Davinder Singh responded to a booking to take Charles James Spencer-Churchill, known as Jamie Blandford, to the West Midlands for a morning appearance on a different driving matter.
The 51-year-old peer, son of the 11th Duke of Marlborough, called for a cab to pick him up from his farm home, in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, to take him to Coventry.
Mr Singh, 46, said his problems began when he rang to check the exact location of the rural residence. He claims they escalated when he arrived and was greeted by a torrent of abuse. Blandford never made it to court that day.
The shocked driver contacted police and Blandford was arrested and questioned on suspicious of racially-aggravated behaviour the following day.
Last night Mr Singh told how he had been 'paralysed' with shock by the incident.
"It was just unbelievable," said the father-of-four. "I can put up with rudeness but not racism. There is just no excuse for it.
"I was having trouble finding his house so I called him and he said 'Why are you f***ing ringing me? You are the taxi driver you should know where you are f***ing going'."
The driver claimed that when he arrived he was greeted by even more derogatory racial remark and called a Hindu.
"He said I should remember I was a guest in this country and I replied that I was British," said Mr Singh.
"He looked me up and down and said 'You? British?'.
"I was just completely shocked."
Mr Singh, who has been a taxi driver for almost 25 years, said it was then that he turned down the £120 fare and drove off.
They woke me just after 3am. A Muslim refugee train had pulled into the railway sidings outside Amritsar after being attacked by Sikhs. Dawn was breaking when I arrived to find a slaughterhouse.
Blood was pouring from every compartment. We pulled out 270 bodies, pregnant women among them: throats cut, skulls smashed, stomachs ripped open, children with their legs hacked off.
A mile away, Sikh mobs were attacking a Muslim neighbourhood in the narrow streets of the city. On the other side of the new divide between Amritsar and Lahore, Muslim mobs were attacking Sikhs and Hindus. Refugee trains started to arrive from West Punjab after being attacked by Muslims. In Lahore, Sikhs were locked inside a Temple, which was then set on fire. India had gone mad.
This was Independence Day in the Punjab, 15 August 1947. I was staff captain in the Punjab Boundary Force, which was given the task of preserving order. Both the British and Indian armies had been withdrawn from the Punjab, and the Force consisted largely of my own division, 4th Indian.
The Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, gave it a mandate which guaranteed failure. Just 15,000 officers and troops were supposed to protect an area of 37,000 square miles, with 18,000 villages. He had been warned by Punjab's Governor that at least 60,000 troops would be needed (though with characteristic deviousness, he afterwards denied it).
At least a million people died and 15 million became refugees: columns as long as 25 miles made their way on foot from one side to the other. It was ethnic cleansing on an unbelievable scale. Disastrous floods added to the chaos, followed by inevitable outbreaks of disease.
The refugee trains became the prime target, with trains ambushed at any point during their journey. Railway engineers were bribed or forced to stop at a prescribed spot so that the train could be attacked.
An impression has been created that Monty Panesar is the first Sikh cricketer to represent England. The idea is fast gaining ground because even the hallowed compendium of cricket, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, mentioned in its 2007 edition that no Sikh cricketer has played for any nation other than India.
This statement, however, is not based on facts. The first Sikh cricketer to play for England (then MCC) was Bhupendrasingh, the Maharaja of Patiala. In 1926-27, Bhupendrasingh played in two unofficial Tests under Arthur Gilligan against India. The matches were held in Bombay and in Calcutta.
Bhupendrasingh was not a left-arm spinner in the mould of Monty Panesar but a hard-hitting right-handed batsman, exceptionally strong with the cut and the pull. In 1911, at the age of 19, he had toured England with the Patiala’s All-India team and had created quite an impression.
After representing England in unofficial Tests in 1926-27, he was billed to lead India in the inaugural official Test match. Actually he was selected to captain India in England in 1932, but official duty made it impossible for him to make himself available. As a result, Natwarsinhji, the Maharaja of Porbandar, was nominated the captain. Ultimately, both Natwarsinhji and his deputy, Ghanashyamsinhji, the Maharaja of Limdi, stepped down voluntarily, which enabled the talented C.K. Nayudu to lead India in the inaugural Test.
Bhupendrasingh of Patiala lost his chance to be the leader of the team in an official Test match. Ironically, the same fate befell his son, Yadavendrasingh, the Yuvraj of Patiala. Yadavendrasingh was a batsman of class. He had immense power in his stroke-play and was a magnificent driver of the ball. Like his father, he had a rasping square cut and could be relied to pull the ball high and handsome.
Fathers and sons
He made his debut in the official Test in Madras in 1933-34 against Douglas Jardine’s team. In the first innings, he was India’s highest scorer with a superlative 60 against the likes of Clarke, Nicholls and Verity. In the next innings, he had another creditable outing, scoring 24 runs. That was the last Test of the series and Yadavendrasingh got no other opportunities that season.
However, in 1935-36, Jack Ryder’s Australia came to play a four-Test unofficial series against India. In the first Test, Yadavendrasingh led India but in the following two Tests, he played under the leadership of Nayudu and WazirAli respectively. Thereafter his career paralleled that of his father’s. In 1932, Bhupendrasingh had not been able to lead India in an official Test match. This time around, his son failed to do the same, although he was the favourite, along with Nayudu and WazirAli, for the captaincy.
Indian cricket, even then, was a hub of corruption and parochialism. The undeserving Maharajkumar of Vizianagram, ‘Vizzy’ for short, was appointed India’s captain to England in 1936 while deserving candidates such as Nayudu and Wazir Ali went as ordinary members.
Worse, Yadavendrasingh could not make it to England. If he had gone on that tour, the whole history of Indian cricket would have been written differently. On that tour, India had a fine set of players. But Vizzy’s inept handling of players led to failure. Unlike Vizzy, Yadavendrasingh would have made a wonderful captain. He would have been able to harness the talents of his players and led them to success. Unfortunately, it was not to be.
Both father and son, though deserving, missed out on captaining India in an official Test. However, the fact remains that Bhupendrasingh was the first Sikh cricketer to have played for England. Monty Panesar is merely following in the great man’s footsteps.
For millions of Sikhs around the world, the names Singh and Kaur are imbued with religious significance. Every baptized boy is given the name Singh and every girl the name Kaur to symbolize unity and to remove names used to identify social standing in India's caste system.
But none of that symbolism mattered to Citizen and Immigration Canada. Until this week when a Calgary woman complained publicly, officials in the New Delhi office of the Canadian High Commission routinely told Indian immigration applicants the surnames were too common to process quickly and would have to be changed.
An Immigration Canada spokeswoman first said the policy had been in place for 10 years to help officials with the paperwork and allow them to identify files accurately. But when the story became public, the department quickly tried to call it a misunderstanding based on a "poorly worded letter" and insisted no such practice existed.
But the letter from the high commission office that Tarrinder Kaur of Calgary received was very clear: "The names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada," it said. Kaur's husband Jaspal Singh was forced to legally change his name in India so his immigration application would be processed in time for the birth of their child next month.
While Ottawa deserves credit for finally eliminating this disgraceful policy, it must ensure that bureaucratic convenience never again takes precedence over people's customs or religious beliefs.
At the same time, Ottawa and its officials abroad must never forget the power they wield over would-be immigrants and their relatives who are already here. The fact that few Sikhs in Canada ever complained openly about the policy is a telling sign of their fear of jeopardizing the immigration hopes of their relatives back home.
Canadians have learned that cultural and religious sensitivity are essential in a nation that prides itself on being one of the most multicultural in the world. One that score, our government would do well to follow the example of the people.
Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla says she's received about 500 complaints in the past three years from constituents as their relatives apply to immigrate.
After a storm of complaints from Sikhs, Ottawa reverses New Delhi office's 10-year decree that `the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada'
Jul 26, 2007 04:30 AM
San Grewal Staff reporter
One of the most common surnames in Canada, imbued with religious significance for millions of Sikhs around the world, is now, after yesterday's reversal of a 10-year policy, deemed acceptable by the Canadian government.
For the past decade, Indian immigration applicants with the surname Singh or Kaur were told by the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi that their names, too common to process quickly, would have to be changed.
Twenty-four hours after the World Sikh Organization raised the issue, Citizenship and Immigration Canada yesterday announced it was dropping the policy, calling the whole thing a misunderstanding based on a "poorly worded" letter.
It's not known how many people have been affected. Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla (Brampton-Springdale) says in the past three years she's received about 500 complaints from constituents whose family members were told to change their names when applying to immigrate.
The New Delhi immigration office is one of the busiest in the world. Immigration Minister Diane Finley refused to comment, but according to statements from the department, the policy asking for a different name was meant to help speed up applications and prevent cases of mistaken identity due to the commonness of Singh.
It said its New Delhi visa office had reported "very few complaints" about the request and explained that most Singhs or Kaurs often have an additional family name, even if it is not often used, that can be easily added to their passport.
Most of the world's 30 million Sikhs are given the name Singh, for men, or Kaur, for women, usually as a middle name.
But for those Sikhs who choose to be baptized, or initiated into the orthodox order of the faith, their previous surname is dropped for Singh or Kaur to symbolize unity and to remove names used to identify social standing within India's caste system.
"If you have to change your name to come here, we have to ask ourselves, `Are we really celebrating all the great things that are hallmarks of this multicultural country?" said Dhalla, whose riding has one of the largest Indo-Canadian populations in the country.
When asked why the immigration department's policy in New Delhi hadn't been challenged before by politicians, lawyers or the public, Dhalla said she has brought it up to immigration officials.
But she admitted the issue had never made it to the floor of the House of Commons.
"At least not to my knowledge."
Brampton lawyer Harinder Gahir, who routinely takes on immigration cases, says he's had about 100 clients complain.
"But the problem is they are family members already here complaining on behalf of family members in India they are sponsoring.
"The applicants themselves don't want to complain and most comply because they don't want their chances for immigration to be jeopardized."
When asked if he believes the immigration department's claim that the policy was just a misunderstanding and that people with the surnames Singh or Kaur were actually allowed to apply, Gahir said, "They were told, unequivocally, `You can't apply with the surname Singh or Kaur.'"
A follow-up story on the CBC's website includes what appears to be a letter from the High Commission in New Delhi, dated May 17 and addressed to Jaspal Singh.
It states:
"The names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada."
But the department's statement yesterday said that "Permanent resident applicants with the surnames Singh or Kaur are not required to change their names in order to apply.
"In no way did CIC intend to ask applicants to change their names. The letter that was previously used to communicate with clients was poorly worded. We are making changes to ensure there will be no misunderstandings in the future.
"CIC recognizes that previous communications with clients may not have been clear on this issue and regrets any inconvenience this may have caused."
"That's outrageous," said Sat Gosal, a lawyer at the firm RZCD in Mississauga who has helped challenge human rights violations against Sikhs for more than two decades.
Gosal, who was aware of the policy, is glad Sikh organizations finally complained publicly.
"This goes back to my father's days in England, during the post-colonial days of the '50s and '60s, when administrative convenience was the justification for changing names that were too common or hard to pronounce." Anglicizing or at least simplifying names was once also common in Canada.
A Calgary woman waiting for her husband to arrive in Canada is upset by a long-standing immigration policy that forces people with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their last names.
Tarvinder Kaur, who is pregnant, said her husband Jaspal Singh's application to become a permanent resident has been delayed for well over a month because of his last name.
He has no choice but to legally change his name in India so he can get to Calgary before she gives birth next month, she said.
CBC News has obtained a copy of a letter sent from the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi to Singh's family stating that "the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada."
"Why are we needing to make a different last name?" said Kaur. "You choose what your last name is going to be and if it's always been a certain way, then why should you have to change it?"
Traditional Sikh names
Singh and Kaur are common names in the Sikh community. In a tradition that began more than 300 years ago, the name Singh is given to every baptized male and Kaur to every baptized female Sikh.
The names are used differently by different people. Some use Singh or Kaur as middle names, while others use them as their last names.
Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the policy preventing people from immigrating to Canada with those last names has been in place for the last 10 years.
"I believe the thinking behind it in this case is because it is so common. [With] the sheer numbers of applicants that have those as their surnames, it's just a matter for numbers and for processing in that visa office."
Citizenship and Immigration Canada says there is no such policy against other common last names.
Kaur, who was born in Canada, says that's unacceptable.
"If it's going to be a standard policy it should be standard with all common last names. Why is it that it's only Singh or Kaur that's being attacked by this?"
A Sikh-Canadian group is slamming the long-standing immigration policy that forces people with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their last names.
Jasbeer Singh, of the World Sikh Organization, said the policy is incredibly out of synch in this day and age.
"The reason we should be concerned is this is a very sneaky attack on our individual rights and freedoms and persona," Singh said. "Today they are challenging or don't like Singh or Kaur. Tomorrow they will not like Mohammed. And how soon will it be before they are asking all Browns and Smiths to change their names?"
The policy came to light after a Calgary woman waiting for her husband to arrive in Canada learned her husband's application to become a permanent resident has been delayed for well over a month because of his last name.
The Citizenship and Immigration department says the policy to ask people to provide a third name has been around for 10 years. It's used only in the New Delhi visa office and does not apply to any other last names.
Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people's files quickly, efficiently and accurately
A Sikh-Canadian group is slamming the long-standing immigration policy that forces people with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their last names.
Jasbeer Singh, of the World Sikh Organization, said the policy is incredibly out of synch in this day and age.
Immigration Canada sent a letter to Jaspal Singh stating "the names Kaur and Singh do not qualify for the purpose of immigration to Canada." (Click the link, right, for a larger, PDF version.)
"The reason we should be concerned is this is a very sneaky attack on our individual rights and freedoms and persona," Singh said. "Today they are challenging or don't like Singh or Kaur. Tomorrow they will not like Mohammed. And how soon will it be before they are asking all Browns and Smiths to change their names?"
The policy came to light after a Calgary woman waiting for her husband to arrive in Canada learned her husband's application to become a permanent resident has been delayed for well over a month because of his last name.
The Citizenship and Immigration department says the policy to ask people to provide a third name has been around for 10 years. It's used only in the New Delhi visa office and does not apply to any other last names.
Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people's files quickly, efficiently and accurately.
"You can imagine you wouldn't want your file to be confused with someone else's," she said.
Singh and Kaur are common names in the Sikh community. In a tradition that began more than 300 years ago, the name Singh is given to every baptized male and Kaur to every baptized female Sikh. There are millions of Singhs and Kaurs around the world.
Shadd-Evelyn said that while the department recognizes the tradition of having the names Singh and Kaur, it's their understanding that it is already a common practice for people in the Sikh community to have a third name.
"Generally, when we ask for that, they are accustomed to that and are used to providing a third name," she said. "They have it. It's not something that they're just making up on the spot."
Immigration lawyer Peter Wong said the policy is enforced only some of time. None of his clients has ever officially complained, he said.
"Most people don't find it worthwhile to do and are, quite frankly, scared that they're going to be hurting their immigration applications for their loved ones."
NEW DELHI: Endless buffets, rivers of alcohol and extravagant decorations have become staples at upper-class Indian weddings — but Sikh leaders are considering creating guidelines to tone down the glittering events, a newspaper reported Saturday.
A group of Sikh leaders called for a July 28 meeting of representatives from New Delhi's more than 400 Sikh gurdwaras, or temples, to discuss ways to rein in over-the-top weddings, the Times of India reported.
"The committee feels that ostentatious weddings are leading to increasing competition among families to outdo each other," Paramjit Singh Sarna, president of the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, said in the report.
"A lot of money is being wasted," he said.
India's economic growth has surged in recent years, with the gross domestic product — the total value of goods and services produced in the country — growing by more than 8 percent annually in the past four years.
The boom has created a new class of incredibly wealthy Indians who can afford palatial homes, imported luxury cars and wildly elaborate weddings, often at five-star hotels.
The religion of Sikhism was founded in the 15th century by Guru Nanak, who broke from Hinduism, India's dominant religion. He preached the equality of races and genders, and the rejection of image-worship and the caste system.
Sikhs make up less than 2 percent of India's nearly 1.1 billion people.
The Sikh leaders said the deluxe wedding trend puts an unfair burden on brides' families, who traditionally pay for the parties.
"Our fight is against this exploitation by those who pose demands on the girl's family to organize elaborate weddings," the newspaper quoted the group's general secretary, Balbir Singh, as saying. "The ceremony should be simple."
Sarna said it was more a matter of values than taste.
"The idea is to create moral responsibility within the community," he said.
The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee could not immediately be reached for comment on the report Saturday.
SACRAMENTO — The state Board of Education declined to act Thursday on new complaints from the Sikh community about a seventh-grade textbook the Sikhs say is offensive.
The board voted in March to ask a textbook publisher to remove a picture of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, that many followers said was offensive and inaccurate.
The controversial image in "An Age of Voyages: 1350-1600" shows Guru Nanak wearing a crown and with a closely cropped beard. The depiction runs contrary to Sikh faith, which requires observant men to wear a turban and not to shave their facial hair.
Many of the same people who argued at the March meeting were back before the board Thursday, unsatisfied with publisher Oxford University Press' plan to reprint the textbooks and replace the approximately 520 copies that have been distributed so far to 16 California school districts.
The Sikhs argued that the inaccurate picture should have been replaced with a more accurate one, not removed entirely. The revised textbook will have no picture at all accompanying its description of the Sikh faith, further worsening the problem Sikhs said they face when people confuse them with members of other religions, such as Islam.
The book is "wonderfully, lavishly illustrated," so the absence of an accurate picture of Guru Nanak is even more glaring, said Jeff Brodd, a religious studies professor at Sacramento State University who testified at Thursday's hearing.
Those who spoke at the meeting also objected to the title accompanying Guru Nanak's name in several places in the book, in which the word 'devi' is used. Devi is a feminine title, not for men, they said.
"It's like calling a king a queen, a Mr. a Mrs.," said speaker Prubhjot Parhar.
The board didn't take a vote on the Sikhs' request, but Tom Adams, director of curriculum for the state Department of Education, said he would contact the publisher immediately and try to have the title corrected if the new texts have not yet been printed.
Oxford plans to distribute the new books to the school districts this summer, he said.
In other action, the board voted to oppose AB1177, a bill by Assemblyman Jose Solorio, D-Santa Ana, that would set up a three-year pilot project to create alternative instructional materials for about 25,000 English learners.
Board members were concerned the program would undermine their authority to approve all instructional materials used in California classrooms.
San Grewal Staff Reporter In response to what it describes as a “dishonest and highly offensive” characterization made by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a $110 million civil lawsuit was filed today on behalf of the World Sikh Organization against the national broadcaster.
The lawsuit, filed in the Ontario Superior Court in Toronto also names reporter Terry Milewski and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh for comments they made in a June 28, 2007 feature story titled “Samosa Politics” that aired on The National.
A similar version of the story, which linked Sikh extremism to the WSO and highlighted its ties to the mainstream Canadian political scene, also aired on CBC Radio, with a print version posted on the CBC News website.
The WSO describes itself as a non-profit human rights group established in 1984 with national bodies around the world that defend not only Sikhs but the rights of all people. Representatives would not say how many members there are in Canada or worldwide.
“It is the WSO’s view that the CBC documentary contained significant and numerous factual misrepresentations about the World Sikh Organization,” said Gian Singh Sandhu, a policy advisor with the group’s Canadian body, who spoke at a press conference held today in downtown Toronto.
“The WSO’s lawsuit for defamation, libel and slander arises from the airing of the documentary noted above.”
Sandhu added that the story, which he says was written about in Indian newspapers and mentioned by media in other parts of the world, has resulted in, “significant damage to the reputation of the WSO and the Sikh community.”
A CBC spokesperson said the broadcaster was not aware of the suit until it was informed about the press conference yesterday and that “if and when” the suit was received it would be given “due consideration.” Until then, the CBC will not make any comment.
A spokesperson for Mr. Dosanjh, MP for Vancouver South, said he had not been served as of 4 pm eastern time and had no comment about the suit, but stood behind his statements made in the CBC news story.
When asked what Mr. Dosanjh specifically said in the story that the WSO objected to, Mr. Sandhu said it was obvious that the MP was making a connection between the WSO and Sikh extremism.
A segment of the story included comments by Dosanjh, stating that at the Dec. 2006 Liberal leadership convention in Montreal the WSO exercised significant influence. He then states that a Sikh delegate told Dosanjh’s wife, not knowing who she was, not to vote for Bob Rae.
Dosanjh then states in the story that the delegate said Rae, in a 2005 report to the federal government, was openly critical of Sikh extremists behind the 1985 Air India bombing, and should not be supported.
As for factual errors that the WSO believes were included in Milewski’s reporting, Sandhu said after the press conference that, contrary to what appears in the news story, a man with alleged ties to convicted Air India-bomb maker Inderjit Reyat, named Daljit Singh Sandhu, was never the leader of the WSO.
Another mistake, according to Sandhu, is the CBC news story’s assertion that the WSO released a 2000 press release with the title: “Sikhs did not bomb Air India 182”, which, according to the CBC “claimed that a cargo door fell off the plane.”
“There was no such press release from the WSO,” Sandhu said.
He added that the story’s characterization of a 1984 convention at New York’s Madison Square Garden where Sikhs were videotaped calling for violence, as a WSO event is factually incorrect.
“That was not a WSO function. Mr Milewski needs to do his homework.”
England cricket ace Monty Panesar, the England team’s first Sikh, has been signed as the latest celebrity to front Walkers crisps.
Panesar will promote the new chilli and lemon crisps, which will launch this week, aimed at Britain’s 2.5 million strong Asian population.
The new flavour will include product information in Hindi on the packa
Jon Goldstone, vice president of marketing for Walkers, said: “This is our first flavour developed specifically for the tastes of the Asian market. Chilli & Lemon flavour is already a favourite within the Asian community and, although we believe this new flavour will have mass appeal, we are targeting the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian communities that make up the UK’s biggest ethnic market.
“Walkers Chilli & Lemon packs stand apart from the rest of the range with a ‘New’ flash written in both English and Hindi - a first for Walkers. They also feature an attractive Asian-inspired Henna design. Panesar is this summer’s cricket hero and his involvement will really help us get the message across to our target audience. We’re thrilled to have him as a partner.”
Panesar added: “I’m really excited about my new relationship with Walkers. It’s a new challenge for me and I’m certain Chilli & Lemon will be a huge success within the UK’s Asian communities and beyond.”
Panesar joins football legend and brand ambassador Gary Lineker who has been the face of the crisps brand since 1995. Other celebrities who have appeared in campaigns for the brand include Paul Gascoigne, Sir Steve Redgrave, Michael Owen, Charlotte Church and Victoria Beckham.
Walkers is also launching a £7.5 million campaign in August to promote its decision to end imports and manufacture its crisps solely from UK potatoes.
Earlier this year Walkers Crisps was named the official supplier of snack foods for Wembley Stadium until July 2010.
Walker’s brands include Doritos, Wotsits, Sensations, Monster Munch and Quavers.
Last year, the crisps maker posted sales of over £465 million and became the fourth biggest grocery brand in the UK.
TORONTO - Paramount Canada's Wonderland awarded compensation to a Sikh man after he complained he was discriminated against for refusing to take off his turban and wear a helmet to drive a go-kart.
The amusement park has since asked the provincial regulator to allow it to exempt turban-wearing Sikhs from the helmet requirement, which is standard at go-kart operations throughout the country for insurance purposes.
Gurcharan Dran bought tickets for the Speed City Raceway attraction but was not allowed to ride because of a helmet use regulation, the Ontario Human Rights Commission reported last week.
He filed a complaint with the commission but due to a backlog, the case -- dating from 2001 --did not go to tribunal until last year. Mr. Dran reached a settlement with Paramount Canada's Wonderland last October, which included payment of an unknown amount.
Mr. Dran could not be reached for comment but Kevin Fox, his lawyer, said Mr. Dran "thinks [Paramount Canada's Wonderland] could have handled it a bit better when they told him to get off."
Mr. Fox said he did not know the details of the confrontation, but said Mr. Dran was in his fifties at the time.
Adam Hogan, a spokesman for Paramount Canada's Wonderland, located in Vaughan, said he was unfamiliar with how much Mr. Dran had been compensated and the details of the incident because it occurred in 2001.
But he did say the helmet requirement has not changed at the amusement park since the incident.
"Nobody can ride the ride without a helmet," Mr. Hogan said. "When it comes to safety, we don't make exceptions."
Paramount Canada's Wonderland and other businesses with go-kart tracks are required to enforce helmet use by the Technical Standards and Safety Authority, an arm's-length government agency.
The regulation is part of Ontario's Technical Standards and Safety Act, which also regulates roll bars and seat-belt use in go-karts.
As part of the settlement, Paramount Canada's Wonderland agreed to request an exemption to the helmet requirement for Sikhs from the Ministry of Government Services and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. Both parties are in the process of reviewing the request, said Tom Ayres, a lawyer with the organization.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission is also seeking an exemption for Sikhs at all go-kart tracks in the province.
"We do take the requirements of the Ontario Human Rights Code very seriously, but this is a complex issue," said Sam Colalillo, a spokesman for the Ministry of Government Services. He said it was too early to speculate if and when an amendment would be made to the helmet law.
Hart Schwartz, the director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission's legal branch, suggested alternatives to the law such as designing safer cars or asking patrons to sign a liability waiver.
But in order to get exemptions to any regulations, there would have to be a safe alternative, Mr. Ayres said.
"No one's been able to give us a measure that will serve the same purpose as a helmet from a safety perspective," he said.
Similar laws for go-kart racing exist in other provinces, but not all. Richmond Go-Kart Track in Richmond, B.C., asks patrons to wear helmets, but only because the business's insurance company instructs them to, said employee Jack Picken.
"If someone with a turban came in, we'd encourage them to wear the helmet, but we wouldn't force them," he said.
Peter Primdahl, underwriting director at K&K Insurance Group in Mississauga, said he would be very reluctant to insure an amusement ride business if they allowed some patrons to ride without helmets -- even if the helmet law is amended.
"Any breach of [safety regulations], should it cause injury, would certainly have an impact on the insurance pricing and would be a very difficult insurance claim to defend," he said.
Religious freedom and helmet use legislation have come head-to-head before.
In November, a case is scheduled to be heard in Ontario involving a Sikh man who was charged with riding his motorcycle without a helmet.
In Manitoba and British Columbia there are exemptions to motorcycle helmet laws for Sikhs who wear turbans.
THE SIKH community has reacted angrily to the selection of Cllr Virendra Sharma for the Ealing Southall by-election.
The Sikh Federation, who lobby for more Sikhs to take part in UK politics, say the absence of women or turban-wearing members of the religion has denied local residents a proper choice.
Jagtar Singh, vice-chair of the Sikh Federation says the process has imposed Ealing Southall residents with a Piara Khabra clone - and had thwarted another chance to get the first visible Sikh' - one who wears a turban - or Sikh woman into the House of Commons.
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"Our vision is for many Sikhs, born and brought up in the country, to start to taking an active part in politics," he told the Ealing Times.
"We expect the Labour party to not only to look to Sikh candidates but also to ensure in safe Labour seats that we will see a Sikh in the Houses of Parliament.
"We were hoping the Labour Party would have put forward a shortlist including women and visible Sikhs so that Labour members could decide - that would have been the best thing in terms of democracy.
"We feel the Labour members haven't had much of a say - the Labour party aren't giving the opportunity or much of a choice.
"The mould is the same; we have a fairly old Asian MP. I'm not saying he is exactly the same as Piara Khabra,but he is a councillor from the same sort of area or background.
"People are not happy there was a shortlist of two."
The federation has now also warned some of the candidates they feel should have been in the final shortlist may now stand as independents.
They say it has not been overlooked that young professional Sikhs have been overlooked by an "aging non-Sikh" from the long list of possible candidates.
The Golden Temple, in Amritsar [
