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.
Published: January 25 2008 18:17 | Last updated: January 25 2008 18:17
A few months ago in Punjab, as grain farmers set fire to harvested rice fields to clear their land, Jagroop Singh spent the afternoon reflecting on his good fortune farming cows. Singh, a tall Sikh who tends his herd in a white tunic and pale pink turban on a farm near the north Indian village of Aliwal, owns 60 somewhat bony brown animals, which he keeps in an open-air shed on the edge of the fields behind his house.
Keeping cows, like farming wheat, has been an immensely profitable business during the past year, because Singh gets paid a lot more for his milk than he used to. He receives about Rs15 a litre – a third more than two years ago – from Nestle India, which collects the milk and blasts it through machines at a nearby factory, evaporating the water and creating a fine white powder.
“The prices are very good, we are very happy,” says Singh as he looks over his herd. He’s planning to build a new shed soon, as he’s running out of room to house his cows. By this time next year, he aims to have 150, which would be exactly 148 more than he owned a decade ago.
Not far away, another Sikh farmer, Jatinder Singh, is equally optimistic about the future. He started his farm a decade ago with just one cow but today has 65, which are kept outdoors in concrete-paved yards and dirt paddocks. Over the next few years, he plans to breed cows and double his milk production.
But what’s good for the farmers is hard on consumers. In India, where milk has traditionally been bought fresh every day and boiled to make tea and curd (this stops it going bad in a country where electricity is intermittent and many people do not have refrigerators), people are now paying around Rs24 a litre – Rs3 more than six months ago.
And milk is not the only basic foodstuff rising rapidly in price, nor India the only country in which people are spending more money on food. Bread, pasta, eggs, coffee, chicken, pork and beef – it is difficult to find a staple food that has not become more expensive over the past year, or a country in which food prices have not gone up.
British food producers increased prices by 7.4 per cent last year – the biggest annual increase since the country’s National Statistics office began tracking them 15 years ago – due to big jumps in the cost of producing bread, butter, eggs, milk and meat. In Russia, prices went up so sharply – milk rose by some 30 per cent and bread went up 22 per cent – that the government froze prices towards the end of the year. This month, China warned it may take similar action after food prices soared 18 per cent last year.
The speed at which food prices rose in 2007 has shocked not just farmers and consumers, but also governments. “Rarely has the world witnessed such a widespread and commonly shared concern on food price inflation,” the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation says.
Why are food prices going up so fast all over the world? For a start, the world’s stocks of grain have been falling, partly thanks to droughts in Australia and Ukraine (both countries are among the world’s-biggest wheat exporters). This has helped push up prices. Higher grain prices make food derived from animals – such as poultry, pork, eggs and milk – more expensive, because farmers who buy grain to feed their animals pass on the extra costs.
Meanwhile, biofuels are also having an effect. As global demand for non-oil-based sources of energy rises, some farmers are choosing to turn their crops into biofuels rather than food.
But the biggest cause of higher food prices is not biofuels or the fall in grain stocks: it is the remarkable changes occurring in the kinds of foods people eat, particularly in the fast-developing nations of India, China, Russia and Brazil. These changes are so big – and so swift – that their impact is being felt all over the world.
This is particularly acute in India, as is clear at New Delhi’s Khan Market branch of Cafe Coffee Day. Khan Market is a dusty group of shops, boutiques and restaurants on the south side of the city that attracts affluent locals and foreigners, and Cafe Coffee Day is one of the most popular places to meet.
On a Thursday morning in October, a group of men and women in their early twenties sit outside on the cafe’s balcony smoking, while inside, an older couple ignore the flat-screened television on the wall and talk over a glass-topped table. Other customers sit on cane lounge sets and read the paper or talk on their mobile phones. As the Cafe Coffee Day chain has expanded (there are now almost 500 in India), it has developed an extensive food menu. Along with a cappuccino, patrons can now order a chicken burger, a teriyaki chicken ciabatta, nachos with salsa, fish and chips, Greek salad, pasta in Alfredo sauce, apple pie, a blueberry muffin or dozens of other savoury and sweet snacks.
A few years ago, such a diverse menu would have been rare. But as Indians have become wealthier, they are travelling abroad and eating out more often, which exposes them to a wider variety of food.
“People have a lot more money to spend and people are a lot more adventurous,” says Naresh Fernandes, editor of Time Out Mumbai. “Until 20 years ago, we had rationing and food shortages. Going out to enjoy yourself didn’t exist until recently.”
Every fortnight, two or three new independent restaurants open in Mumbai, charging between Rs500 and Rs1,000 per person for a meal; Indians can increasingly afford these prices because incomes are rising quickly. About a third of India’s population live in cities. During the next 15 years, three-quarters of these are expected to earn enough money to join the country’s middle class, each earning between Rs200,000 (£2,600) and Rs1m per year, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, the economic research group. Only 10 per cent of urban Indians earn this much today.
This means that by 2025, India’s consumption of food and other products will quadruple to $1,500bn, creating the world’s fifth-biggest consumer economy after the US, Japan, China and the UK (India now ranks 16th, trailing Spain, Canada and Italy).
The new shopping mall Select Citywalk, a concoction of steel and glass in south Delhi, shows how closely the consumption habits of Indians are starting to mirror those of people in more developed countries. Inside the mall, which is so vast that it is impossible to see from one end to the other, most of the shops are expensive international brands such as Tissot, Esprit, Lancome, Mac, Mango and L’Occitane.
Familiarity with fashionable clothing brands and restaurants is being encouraged by new magazines such as Vogue India, which declared India’s “arrival” on the global fashion scene when it launched its first issue in September, and Time Out, which has a Delhi edition as well as a Mumbai one and shortly plans to start publishing in Bangalore.
Meanwhile, restaurants are now doing so well that many are opening up branches in different cities. Some are fast-food chains that have emulated McDonald’s, which has been in India for more than a decade and is one of its most established foreign restaurants. It remains a popular destination: in the evenings its restaurants are full of families queuing for Chicken Maharaja Macs, McAloo Tikki burgers and Paneer Salsa wraps – now made with “multi-cereal” bread for the health-conscious diner.
But these days McDonald’s is facing more competition. Newcomers include Jumbo King, which has taken a popular street food called vada pav, a spiced potato patty topped with chutney and served in a bun, and created a fast food chain around it, and Yo! China, which markets itself as “Chinese food, Chinese prices”.
Rachna Singh, a 34-year-old doctor who lives in Delhi, is one of the new generation of Indians who eat out regularly. She and her husband, who works in IT, go to restaurants three or four times a week and prefer non-Indian food when dining out, particularly Thai, Chinese, Middle Eastern and Italian. On weekends, Singh gladly drives for an hour to eat at her favourite Thai restaurant. But she restricts her three-year-old daughter, Avaka, to once-weekly sessions of junk food such as chips.
New food that was unheard of until recently has also found its way into Singh’s home. “We didn’t know what a kiwi was two or three years ago,” she says. She has also taken to buying foods that her mother would have made when she was growing up. Indian families traditionally make roti (round flat bread) by hand with a small rolling pin. But Singh buys frozen roti and parantha, another type of bread. She swears they taste like homemade ones. “They are excellent! You can’t tell the difference.” But she admits: “My parents think I am crazy.”
Singh often dines with her parents, Dipak and Anju Khannee, in their home in the south Delhi neighbourhood called Greater Kailash I. On a recent evening, they sat at a long dining table laden with typical Indian dishes. Big bowls were filled with kali dhal (black lentils), paneer (Indian cheese in sauce), rasala (a salad of cucumbers, red onions and coriander); chicken, raita (a type of yogurt) and roti.
The meal is traditional, but there are some new twists. Singh’s parents spoon pickle on to their plates from a store-bought jar. Singh’s mother used to make this tangy condiment of peppers herself but now finds it is easier to buy it.
Does Singh ever make pickle? “Me? No!” she shakes her head. “In our generation, no one would know how to make pickle. I’d rather buy 10 different kinds. It’s impossible to make a small amount.”
A glass dish of butter slices sits on the table, and Singh spreads some on her roti. A generation ago her mother would have made butter at home, but these days the family buys it too. “No one has got time or inclination to do so much stuff,” she says, even though both she and her parents employ housekeeping staff.
Indians have typically bought their fruits and vegetables in outdoor markets, and packaged foods in small stores with limited selections of products. But supermarkets, where young professionals such as Singh can find rare fruits like kiwis and chilled foods like butter, are now popping up around the country. In Gurgaon, the booming business district on the outskirts of Delhi, where cows wander along dusty streets between newly built office blocks, shoppers walking into a Spencer’s supermarket will find a pizza stand, Chinese food “X-press” and shelves filled with many of the same brands that they would see in London or Paris.
Lurpak butter, Red Bull energy drinks, and Tropicana orange juice are just some of the foreign brands available, and there is an entire aisle dedicated to foods such as peanut butter, pancake syrup and cranberry sauce beneath a sign saying “Taste America at Spencer’s”. Every month, 40 new Spencer’s supermarkets open around the country.
India, which is still trying to lift millions of people out of poverty, is having problems satisfying its appetites. One of the reasons the Punjabi dairy farmers are doing so well is that demand for milk, and milk-derived products, is increasing so quickly that farmers can’t keep up. India, despite being the world’s largest producer of milk, temporarily halted exports of milk powder last summer to try and stop domestic milk prices from rising too fast after some dairy farmers were tempted by record high global prices and sold their product to exporters rather than local food producers.
Milk isn’t the only hot commodity. After restarting wheat imports in 2006, for the first time since the late 1990s, India banned wheat exports last year. The country can, of course, try and produce more food. But Ajay Shankar, a government secretary in the ministry of commerce and industry, says that while India wants to increase its agricultural yields (which are low compared with the rest of the world), expanding the amount of land farmed is difficult in a country already struggling to support more than one billion people. In Punjab, the state that produces a hefty chunk of India’s wheat, rice and milk, decades of intensive farming and heavy fertiliser use have taken a heavy toll on the land, and water tables are falling sharply.
Although India’s economy is expanding at about 9 per cent a year, its agricultural sector is slowing, with growth declining from 4.7 per cent between 1992-1997 to just 1.5 per cent between 2002-2006.
If India can’t produce enough of its own food, it will have to import more. Shankar says it is unclear how much more food India will need, but acknowledges that significant increases in imports would affect the global economy. “If we become a major importer of food grains as some fear, clearly it will have an impact on global prices,” he says over tea in his Delhi office.
And India is not the only country expected to import more food in coming years. Over the next decade, per capita income in China is expected to triple, which means the Chinese will be eating more – and better. They are already each eating twice as much meat as they were in 1990 and the country now accounts for one third of all meat eaten in the world, according to research by Goldman Sachs.
Even in India, with its large vegetarian population, people are eating 40 per cent more meat. In Brazil, the amount of meat eaten by each person has risen by more than one third over the past 15 years. Brazil is better placed than most countries to meet its own needs due to its fertile soils and vast land mass, but many other countries will need to find more arable land if they are to satisfy the appetites of their citizens.
For dairy farmers such as the two Singhs, the implications of these global shifts are good news: after a decade of poor returns, farming appears to have a bright future. For everybody else, it’s a different story: get used to paying more for what you eat.
Jenny Wiggins is the FT’s consumer industries correspondent. Additional reporting by Amy Yee.
For an online special report on food prices, go to www.ft.com/food
United Sikhs, a UN affiliated international advocacy NGO, joined other civil rights organizations over the weekend in asking Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to discuss the Sikh turban issue in France with President Sarkozy.
Mr Sarkozy's high profile visit to India began on 25 January 2008. Last week, Sikh organizations across the world mobilised for a change in the 2004 French law prohibiting all overt religious dress or symbols in schools and certain other public places.
“No Sikh organization has been granted a meeting with Dr Manmohan Singh or the External Affairs Minister, but we will persist in our request for a meeting so that we are able to effectively apprise him of the issues,” said Mejindarpal Kaur, the United Sikhs director who is leading the legal challenge to the French ban on the Sikh Turban in schools and on ID document photos.
“We are concerned that the details of the problems faced by French Sikhs and the legal arguments that have been presented in the French and in the International courts are not known to Dr Manmohan Singh,” she told a press conference at the Meridien Hotel in Delhi.
“We understand that Dr Manmohan Singh may be preoccupied presently, but we hope that he will grant us a meeting by next week,” said Daljeet Singh, chair of the Dharam Parchar Committee of DSGMC.
“Dr Singh, a Turban-wearing Sikh, cannot turn a blind eye to the injustice suffered by Sikhs in France," he added.
"Since the law was passed, France has also not issued passports, driving licence and residence cards to Sikhs who refuse to remove their turban for their ID photos,” said Gurdial Singh, an Indian national living in France, who has traveled to New Delhi to campaign for the Sikh Turban ban to be lifted in France.
On 16 January 2007, United Sikhs director, Gurpreet Singh, and other members of a Sikh delegation presented a memorandum, addressed to Mr Sarkozy, to the French Ambassador in Delhi, Jerome Bonnafont.
The ambassador informed the Sikh delegation that the French government takes a serious view of the concerns of the Sikhs and he will raise with Mr Sarkozy the issues raised in the memorandum.
The memorandum stated forcefully that the Sikh Turban is the most recognizable feature of a Sikh. Unlike other head coverings, it is an inextricable part of the Sikh identity and is worn by Sikhs at all times to cover their unshorn hair, a mandatory article of their faith. As a part of the core identity of a Sikh, this law essentially has the effect of banning the practice of the Sikh religion in France.
As a top presenter on TalkSport radio and star columnist on The Sun, Jon Gaunt has the reputation as the most rabid right-wing ranter in British media. He tells Ian Burrell about being the scourge of the liberal press and his college friendship with Simon Le Bon
Monday, 28 January 2008
He used to dye his hair five different colours with his friend Simon Le Bon. He read drama at a red brick university before becoming the toast of liberal theatre-goers, with his avant-garde plays. He heads off to Stratford-upon-Avon to watch Shakespeare at weekends. When he was younger, he marched in sympathy for the women of Greenham Common and stood on the picket lines in solidarity with striking miners. And he likes it to be known that when he goes to watch his favourite football team he sits with three pals who are respectively Muslim, Sikh and Hindu.
Meet Jonathan Gaunt, 46, the most rabid right-wing ranter on British radio, the bogeyman of the liberal media and the bete noir of this newspaper's Matthew Norman. "You don't get punished in this country," wails "Gaunty" to listeners of his weekday morning show on TalkSport radio, in a familiar lament over a nation turned soft, before pining for the return of the Poll Tax. "It was fair!" he screams, blaming the demise of Margaret Thatcher's hated levy on the "great unwashed, the students, the layabouts and the lefties", who, he claims, never pay their taxes anyway.
In his column in The Sun, where he is a replacement for Richard Littlejohn, he rails against lax immigration controls and castigates the Home Secretary's lack of support for the police, describing her as "Jacqui Spliff...dopey old bird", because of her university toking.
Never mind that he makes no secret of having inhaled industrial quantities of amphetamine sulphate and cocaine as a young man. A complex character is Gaunty. Such are the apparent contradictions that if a psychiatrist was ever so misfortunate as to have to diagnose what makes him tick, the session might end with the shattered shrink lying on the couch while Gaunt lectured him from an armchair.
As he sits now in a studio at TalkSport, dressed in a black shirt, just as his detractors would imagine him, he makes no apology, setting about other media figures from as far apart in the political spectrum as Johann Hari and Simon Heffer.
His confidence is born of his success. "I'm Jon Gaunt. I've got a column in The Sun, which gets the biggest reaction, a national radio show and I'm constantly on telly."
He says that he is not a shock- jock, which is strange when his autobiography is titled Undaunted: The true story behind the popular shock-jock. "I'm not a shock jock. It's an easy term to use but I don't set out to shock and I don't think the great talk jocks in America do, they just say what they feel. I say what I think and don't care whether it's to you or David Cameron."
The Tory leader has been a guest on Gaunt's show three times, though the presenter does not regard himself as a Tory ("No. I would vote one way locally and another way nationally.") Although he never misses an opportunity on air or in print to stress his working-class credentials, he says he has no problem with Cameron's Old Etonian background. "If he starts saying things that I agree with I'm not going to disagree just because he's a posh boy."
Indeed, Gaunty has sent his own children private.
Yet his sworn enemies in life are the bourgeoisie, the "Jeremys and Mirandas", as he calls them. "It is always white middle-class twits (with an A) who cause trouble within our disunited kingdom," he opined in a recent Sun piece on English identity.
Gaunt sees himself as the ally of the ignored masses, from whence he came. "My whole career has been aimed at talking to people who aren't represented in mainstream media and aren't involved in the democratic process. I've always seen myself as some sort of conduit for them to speak," he says. "My audience are ordinary guys and women who are struggling to turn a pound."
Gaunty himself, of course, is not struggling financially. He gleefully tells listeners of his "Jag-waar" car and his "big house" in Northamptonshire, so big that it is a running TalkSport on-air joke that he needs an Albanian worker to keep the grounds in order. "I don't think my audience, my fans, resent that. I'm the clever kid from their neighbourhood who went to college. But I'm the one who hasn't forgotten where I came from, "he says. "The only people that don't like you talking about being successful are middle class twerps – Jeremy and Mirandas whose mummy and daddy did everything for them and now they haven't quite made it."
His distaste for the middle-classes stems from his time at the University of Birmingham, where he studied drama and moved in a circle that included Le Bon and senior BBC television executive Kate Harwood. By comparison with most of his fellow students, Gaunt had a harsh upbringing in nearby Coventry. His mother had died of a brain haemorrhage when he was 12, leaving his father, an old-school, hard-drinking, hard-smoking Detective Constable of the pre-politically correct era, to bring up three sons alone.
Gaunt spent his early teens in a care home. He won a place at university after becoming a member of Coventry's Belgrade Youth Theatre, where he began long-standing friendships with Clive Owen, now a celebrated Hollywood actor, and Laurence Boswell, the respected director.
At Birmingham, Gaunty felt gauche. "I remember asking Le Bon, 'Why are we having spaghetti on toast for a dinner party?' He had to explain to me that spaghetti comes in a packet and you make a sauce that goes with it.
He must have told the others because they all took the piss. I realised that at university you can either pretend that you are one of them or you are the clown and I was not going to be either."
Nonetheless he felt obliged to sign up to the anti-Thatcher student political consensus that emerged after the 1979 election. "When I was at university all my politics came out of one file. I was left-wing, so I had to be pro CND. I walked round Coventry city centre with a fucking coffin on me shoulder when the Greenham Common missiles arrived. I can't believe I did those things," he remembers.
But it was also the era of British ska, when bands such as The Specials and The Selecter put the concrete jungle of Coventry on the musical map.
When Gaunt returned home after university he set up a theatre co-operative called Tic Toc (theatre in Coventry, theatre of Coventry), inspired by The Specials's original record label Two Tone and working with original members of that band, Jerry Dammers and Lynval Golding. Tic Toc became a hub for the city's musical and acting talent and Gaunt plays, such as 'Meat' and 'Hooligans' ("very anti Thatcher and that dole culture she had created") became nationally successful.
But the dream ended when the venture went bust. Gaunt lost his home and, disillusioned and angry, became the kind of layabout that he now rants about. "I spent six months doing nothing, staying in bed until about noon, having a bath for about three hours, then sitting around, drinking cheap lager from the off licence."
Persuaded by his wife Lisa to scrape some change from the back of the sofa and go into the city centre, he met an old acting friend, Moz Dee, who persuaded him to audition for the local BBC radio station for which he worked.
The radio microphone gave Gaunt the outlet he had been seeking, an opportunity to find his own voice and unleash some pent-up invective against the Jeremys and Mirandas.
"On air one day, I just looked up and the red light was on. It was like my road to Damascus moment," he says, a little misty-eyed. "I thought this was why my mum died, this was why my dad was a bastard to me, why I was an outsider at university and why I went bust, this is why I had my house repossessed, this is it, this is what I was born to do." Gaunt moved from Coventry to Luton's BBC Three Counties Radio where his show won three Sony Gold awards.
He was hired by BBC London but knew that his phone-in style put him on borrowed time with the corporation. "I knew full well that the moment the figures dropped those lefty liberals would have me out of the door quicker than they could order their next skinny latte," he writes in his book.
The end came in 2005 when he was offered a job on The Sun. Gaunt says the decision that he could not work for Rupert Murdoch's paper and the BBC at the same time was taken at the top. "I said what about [Jeremy] Clarkson? What about Vanessa Feltz? They said 'But she doesn't do current affairs.' It was just nonsense."
Still, he is happy enough with his current set up.
He tries to write his Sun column in the manner he delivers his TalkSport show, which he started in May 2006, shooting from the hip with minimal preparation. He reads the liberal press but detests its "Londoncentric, metropolitan view" and what he sees as its predictability. The Independent, for example, will always cover transport from a green perspective.
The "Jag-waar" driver is hardly enigmatic on this subject. When "Ed", a caller to his TalkSport show, last week suggested that cars with bigger than 3-litre engines were unnecessary, Gaunty cut the "plonker" off, telling him: "Shut up and get back to Cuba."
He says this newspaper's Johann Hari is "not old enough to shave let alone write a column." But he also attacks right-wing commentators such as Simon Heffer and Peter Hitchens ("we are not living in the fifties anymore"). When it's put to him that Hitchens also underwent a left to right conversion, he says: "He hasn't come from the background I've come from, he's not been bankrupt, he's just not real."
He also despises the output of "Radio 5 Dead", ridiculing presenters Shelagh Fogarty and Victoria Derbyshire and citing one listener to the station who revealed she ate Eggs Benedict and "three grilled cherry tomatoes" for breakfast. "If I ever attract those ponces to my show you can take me out and shoot me."
Gaunt is convinced that his upbringing gives his words a deeper truth. He is "straight". Not that he gets credit for it by an intelligentsia that "sneers" at the likes of him. "They paint me as some sort of right-wing bloody bigot, that left-wing liberal chattering class, none of which have ever done a proper day's work. I know because I used to promote them all, they've all come straight out of university and gone straight into arts and media."
The presence of loyal listeners such as Sid (Muslim taxi driver Siddiqui Khan, who gave the presenter a Christmas card before the holiday "is banned") says otherwise. "I say immigration has been good for the country, I say it repeatedly and I believe it passionately but it has to be controlled and well-managed," says Gaunty. "They can call me a fucking bigot as much as they want, or a racist, but I know what I am."
His views have made him hated by the BNP, he says. "I hate 'em. It's foul, filthy, horrible, to judge somebody by the colour of their skin." And though he is vehemently anti-abortion, he is "not anti-gay at all".
If Gaunty's not careful, an invitation to Jeremy and Miranda's next dinner party could be in the post.
Published: January 25 2008 16:15 | Last updated: January 25 2008 16:15
French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is visiting India at the head of a large trade delegation, is coming under pressure to exclude the Sikh turban from the ban on ostentatious religious symbols in France’s schools.
It is the latest side-issue to distract attention from Mr Sarkozy’s own agenda for the visit – the development of stronger trade and investment ties with the world’s second-fastest growing big economy – following weeks of discussion of his love life.
“Prime minister Manmohan Singh, a Sikh never seen without his turban, is the best evidence France needs to be convinced that a Sikh is inseparable from his turban,” said Manjeet Singh, president of the Akali Dal (Panthik), a political party in Punjab.
Indian foreign ministry officials, known for their fastidious attention to protocol, had been irritated by Mr Sarkozy’s failure to state whether Carla Bruni should be treated as a normal member of the delegation or given the status due to a president’s wife.
Coverage of his visit in the Indian press has been dominated by his romance with the former model, with many wondering whether he might be planning to propose to her at the Taj Mahal. Mr Sarkozy, who is the guest of honour at India’s Republic Day parade today, in the end decided to leave Ms Bruni behind in France.
The visit started badly on Friday when Mr Sarkozy was grilled on the stability of the French financial system in the wake of the record fraud perpetrated against Société Générale by a rogue trader. He tersely replied that its “solidity and reliability” was unaffected.
In a speech to Indian businessmen, he expressed support for an Indian seat on the United Nations Security Council and for civil nuclear co-operation with India, but also pointedly urged New Delhi to “assume its responsibilities” in the fight against climate change.
Sikh groups, which have been holding protest marches in New Delhi, yesterday distributed grainy black and white photographs of turban-wearing soldiers in the Champs-Elysées in 1919. About 80,000 Sikhs fought in France during the two world wars.
“Today Sikhs are fighting for their right to wear the turban in the same country,” said Mejindarpal Kaur of United Sikhs, an advocacy group. “The prime minister of India must raise the turban issue with the president of France.”
Intended to affirm the neutrality of the French state vis-a-vis all religions, the 2004 law prohibited “ostentatious” religious symbols – taken to include the Sikh turban, the Muslim hijab, the Jewish Kippa and Christian crosses – in public schools in France.
Visiting French politicians have in the past promised to find an acceptable compromise that satisfies both secular fundamentalists at home and France’s tiny Sikh community, but failed to follow through on that commitment, Sikh groups say.
Sikhs in France complain they are accidental victims of legislation intended to curb what was perceived to be the growing trend for Muslim schoolgirls to wear headscarves. There are an estimated 5m Muslims in France and 6,000 Sikhs.
Sikhs say the turban is not a religious symbol but an integral part of their way of life. Sikhs are prohibited by religion from cutting their hair and complain that the ban is tantamount to forcing them to give up their religion.
Aberdare girls' school has temporarily excluded Sikh student, Sarika Singh, for wearing her religious kara bracelet. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
The case of a 14-year-old Sikh girl excluded from school for wearing a religious bangle will be heard in the high court, it was decided today.
Sarika Singh, a pupil at Aberdare girls' school, south Wales, has not attended school since being told she cannot wear her bracelet, known as a kara.
The case brought by the human rights group Liberty follows unsuccessful legal attempts to extend the boundaries of Muslim dress acceptable in schools. A Luton schoolgirl, Shabina Begum, sought to wear a full-length jiljab to classes and, although her case was upheld in the court of appeal, it was reversed by the House of Lords.
A young teaching assistant in Dewsbury, Aishah Azmi, failed in her attempt to prove religious discrimination after she was prevented from wearing a veil in the classroom.
In the Singh case, which is not expected to be heard for several months, Liberty argues the school has breached race relations and human rights laws.
Ann Fairclough, Liberty's legal officer who is representing the Singhs, said: "Nothing less than our traditions of religious freedom and racial tolerance are on trial in this case.
"Individuals from any religion who wish to modestly express their faith should not be denied a proper education, as Ms Singh has."
Liberty claims the school is also breaching a 25-year-old law lords' decision allowing Sikhs to wear items such as turbans to school.
An interim hearing will be held in the next two weeks to decide whether Singh, the only Sikh at her school, can return to classroom while the case is continuing.
She had been taught in isolation at the school for two months, and has been excluded since the beginning of November. The school has banned students from wearing any jewellery other than plain ear studs and wrist watches.
Singh has refused to remove the bangle and her family has said it is an important Sikh reminder to do good with the hands, and should not be regarded as jewellery.
Liberty claims Aberdare girls' school is violating the Race Relations Act 1976, the Equality Act 2006 and the Human Rights Act 1998.
Members of the GTA Sikh community are rallying to save their lead priest from being sent home to India after eight years as their main spiritual adviser.
Gurdeep Singh, 38, was refused landed immigrant status last year and community members fear he may be scooped up and sent packing by immigration officials.
He is one of many foreign priests being allowed here to work, but not reside, their Toronto lawyer said.
Singh was sponsored here in 1999 to act as a lead priest and adviser of the Gurdwara Nanaksar, on Timberlane Dr. in Brampton, said temple secretary Gurmeet Singh.
Gurmeet Singh said the refusal has left the priest without status in Canada, but he can't be removed yet because an application for a visa extension is pending.
'OUTSTANDING'
"He is an outstanding priest who was educated and trained in India," Gurmeet said yesterday. "The community wants to keep him here as their spiritual adviser."
He said the priest doesn't receive wages but his expenses are paid for by the temple, which has a congregation of about 10,000.
Gurmeet said community leaders have had unsuccessful meetings with immigration officials in a bid to sponsor Singh here as a landed immigrant.
'WELL-LOVED'
"This man leads all the services and is invaluable to the community," he said. "He is very highly qualified and well-loved by the community."
Lawyer Mendel Green said Singh was refused landed immigrant status because his English skills were lacking and officials fear he may go on welfare.
"Immigration is treating these highly skilled priests as temporary workers," Green said yesterday. "The community must have the stability to know their leader will be here tomorrow."
Green said Ottawa is cracking down on foreign priests. "There seems to be a big problem with communities getting their priests," Green said. "The immigration department is not using any common sense in dealing with this situation."
Immigration spokesman Madona Mokbel said there's no conspiracy to ban priests.
"All these cases are dealt with on a case-by-case basis," Mokbel said yesterday.
AN EVENING of celebration has been held to mark the birth anniversary of Guru Gobind Singh Ji.
The Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara in Wilbury Way, Hitchin, marked the anniversary of the Sikhs' 10th guru by holding an evening of events which included holy songs as well as offering free food and holding a fireworks display.
Born in 1666 Guru Gobind Singh Ji was a saint, soldier and poet who fought against oppression and in 1699 changed a two-century-old Sikh tradition by creating a new order known as Khalsa, which refers to the collective body of all baptised Sikhs.
Sikhs from across the world will be joining in moral and practical support of a peace march in New Delhi, India, today to protest against a French secularity law that bans the wearing of sacred turbans in schools and other work places throughout the country.
The one kilometre march from Gurudwara Bangla Sahib to Jantar Mantar, prefiguring the arrival of the controversial French president next week, will be followed by a candle light vigil.
The new law in France prohibits all “ostensible” religious articles - including the Sikh turban, the Muslim hijab, the Jewish Kippa and Christian crosses in public schools in France.
For Sikhs, the turban is one of five key symbols of their faith. For those who wear it, it is not just a head-dress but an extension of who they are as a person. It is also a willingly accepted obligation in a way that a cross, for example, is not for Christians.
Eastern Orthodox Christians wear a cross which is consecrated for them at the change of name they have through baptism, but it is usually worn under the clothing, for example.
Civil rights campaigners say that the French law is unacceptably prohibitive, and an example of "eliminative secularism" - a version of secularity which is not simply about equal treatment and the denial of privilege to any one group, religious or non-religious, but a deliberate attempt to deny any visibility to religion in public life.
The march is taking place a week ahead of French President Sarkozy’s arrival as chief guest at the 58th Indian Republic Day celebrations.
Six Sikh schoolchildren and two adults have unsuccessfully turned to the French courts for redress. They are now appealing their cases to the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
United Sikhs, a body which brings together Sikh people from the India, the USA, Canada, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere, will file for third party intervention in these cases in order to reinforce the importance of the turban to Sikhs.
The turban, they point out, poses no security threat as a Sikh is recognizable only with and because of the turban and not without it. Further it does not interfere with identification in today’s age of biometric photos.
A number of national and international Sikh organizations are participating in the march.celebration. Over 2,000 Sikh school pupils and 1,000 Sikh college students will join in the candle light vigil.
Delegates from Dharmik Ekta Mission, Shromani Akali Dal (Panthic), Shromani Akali Dal Delhi, and the International Sikh Confederation are expected to take part in the nonviolent protest.
United Sikhs aims to "recognise the human race as one" and to work with minority and underprivileged communities for empowerment, spiritual development, education and understanding.
A Queens man has been charged with a hate crime for breaking the nose and jaw of a Sikh worshiper.
David Wood, 36, allegedly approached Chadha Bajeet on Monday night screaming, "Arab, go back to your country," as the 63-year-old man parked his car outside a Sikh temple in New Hyde Park.
Wood was arraigned Tuesday night and is being held on $10,000 bail. He is charged with second-degree assault as a hate crime, second and thirddegree assault and second-degree aggravated harassment.
She was portrayed in the press as a victim of cruel religious discrimination - a poor persecuted Christian who had been "banned" by British Airways from wearing a simple cross at work. And all this while her Muslim and Sikh colleagues were parading about in hijabs and turbans.
The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Tony Blair came out in her defence. The Daily Mail took up the cudgels on her behalf. One hundred MPs spoke out in her favour. Bishops demanded a boycott of BA. Evangelical Christians went into paroxysms of righteous fury. At last - here was proof that they were innocent victims of Christianophobia - as practised by our very own national airline.
An open and shut case, you might think. Nadia Eweida was a Christian martyr, pure and simple.
But hang on a moment. The employment tribunal, to which she complained, has just published its judgment, and it tells a rather different story. Not only did it kick out all her claims of religious discrimination and harassment, it also criticised her for her intransigence, saying that she:
"... generally lacked empathy for the perspective of others ... her own overwhelming commitment to her faith led her at times to be both naive and uncompromising in her dealings with those who did not share her faith."
One example of this was her insistence that she must never be required to work on Christmas Day, even though she had signed a contract that made it clear that she, like her colleagues, would be working in an operation that functions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and therefore required shift working and bank holiday working, too.
In order to be fair to everybody, BA used a union-approved ballot system to ensure that those who worked on Christmas Day were fairly and objectively chosen. If their name came up, they were at liberty to negotiate with their colleagues to change shifts and days on a like-for-like basis. But not Nadia. She insisted that, because she was a Christian, she must not be required to work on Christmas Day - or Sunday, come to that.
The tribunal commented:
"[Eweida's] insistence on privilege for Christmas Day is perhaps the most striking example in the case of her insensitivity towards colleagues, her lack of empathy for those without religious focus in their lives, and her incomprehension of the conflicting demands which professional management seeks to address and resolve on a near-daily basis."
Eweida was originally suspended from work as a BA check-in clerk when she refused to wear a cross on a necklace underneath her uniform rather than on top of it. This breached stated uniform policy, which stated that no one was allowed to wear visible adornments around their neck.
But Eweida and her Christian activist backers managed to foment such a backlash that BA was forced into changing the policy. Now she can wear her cross visibly, and the airline offered her £8,500 compensation and a return to her job, with her point successfully made.
But no - she decided to continue pursuing the airline at the industrial tribunal. She was funded in her action by a rightwing religious law firm in Arizona called the Alliance Defence Fund, whose affiliated lawyer was Paul Diamond, a familiar figure in court cases demanding religious privilege.
The tribunal - unlike the Daily Mail - was required to look at all the evidence, and not consider only Eweida's account of events. And having done so, it kicked the case out on all counts, saying that Eweida did not suffer any discrimination.
The tribunal concluded:
"The complaint of direct discrimination fails because we find that the claimant did not, on grounds of religion or belief, suffer less favourable treatment than a comparator in identical circumstances."
The tribunal also heard how Eweida's attitude and behaviour towards colleagues had prompted a number of complaints objecting to her: "Either giving them religious materials unsolicited, or speaking to colleagues in a judgmental or censorious manner which reflected her beliefs; one striking example," said the judgment, "was a report from a gay man that the claimant had told him that it was not too late to be redeemed."
Indeed, the proselytising motivation of her desire to wear the cross over her uniform instead of underneath it was underlined when she said: "It is important to wear it to express my faith so that other people will know that Jesus loves them."
The details of this case make it clear that this is a woman who is wearing religious blinkers. In several instances she brought grievances and complaints against BA that had no basis in fact. She was convinced that BA was anti-Christian, and nothing would dissuade her from that opinion, despite the company jumping through hoops trying to accommodate the many and varied religious demands being placed on it. Indeed, there is a BA Christian Fellowship group that did not support Eweida's fight, and confirmed that BA was already "making available facilities, time, work spaces, intranet use and supporting Christian charitable activities throughout the world" - but strangely we haven't heard about them in the newspaper reports.
The tribunal notes that on the original claim form, Eweida states "I have not been permitted to wear my Christian cross; whilst other faiths (Sikhs, Hindu, Muslims) are permitted to manifest their faith in very obvious fashion. Secular individuals can show private affiliations." The tribunal found the first and last assertions to be untrue. But Eweida would not be persuaded.
Her numerous demands for special treatment because of her religion showed a complete indifference to the effect it would have on the lives of others. Indeed, in one instance she made an accusation against the Christian Fellowship group that turned out to be completely fallacious, and the tribunal felt compelled to say: "We find it demonstrates to a degree the extent to which the claimant [Eweida] misinterpreted events, as well as her readiness to make a serious accusation without thought of the implications."
Now we read that there is another case in the pipeline for British Airways. An orthodox Jewish man is bringing a case of religious discrimination because he is required to work on Saturday, the Jewish Shabat.
And a demonstration by Sikhs has just taken place outside the Welsh assembly, demanding that a schoolgirl be permitted to breach the school's uniform policy by wearing a ceremonial bangle, the kara.
As Jonathan Bartley, of the religious thinktank Ekklesia said of the Eweida case:
"Like many of the other claims of discrimination being made by Christians, this has turned out to be false. People should be aware that behind many such cases there are groups whose interests are served by stirring up feelings of discrimination of marginalisation amongst Christians. What can appear to be a case of discrimination at first glance is often nothing of the sort. It is often more about Christians attempting to gain special privileges and exemptions."
The National Secular Society has demanded that employers should be permitted to declare their workplaces secular spaces if they want to, without penalty. Attempts by employers to accommodate everyone have turned many workplaces into religious battlegrounds. It should now be OK to say: "Leave your religion at the door, please. And if you won't and your religion doesn't permit you to work in the way that this jobs demands you do, then please find another job that will."
Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day has blasted Indo-Canadian supporters for resisting deportation of failed refugee claimant Laibar Singh.
Twice they have stopped police attempts to deport Singh who entered Canada on a false passport five years ago and is currently sheltering in a Surrey gurudwara (Sikh temple) after exhausting all legal avenues.
The first attempt to deport him failed Dec 10 when over 2,000 supporters blocked police access to him.
They foiled another attempt last Wednesday when they blocked police entry to the gurudwara. whose management had promised to cooperate in Laibar Singh's deportation.
Stung by their non-cooperation, the minister said Singh might be in a mall or a gurudwara; he was not entitled to stay in Canada any more and will be deported.
Hitting out at the gurudwara management for sheltering Singh, he said: 'There are a few and there are rare circumstances across the country where places of worship are used as sanctuary. There is no law that actually provides for that.
'When people are ... defying a removal order - whether they are taking refuge in a place of worship or whether they are taking refuge in a mall - they are in defiance of the rule of law.'
Urging the Indo-Canadians to cooperate in Singh's removal, the minister said, 'I would encourage those who are supporting somebody at a time like this to remember that those representatives gave their word and they asked for a time of reconsideration, and then the reconsiderations were given and at the risk of them being seen as people who do not keep their word, I would hope that they would respect that. We believe in the rule of law in our country.'
He said over 12,000 illegal people were being removed from Canada each year, and the Canadian Border Security Agency was delaying this case only because they didn't want to hurt the sentiments of Sikhs by entering the gurudwara.
Meanwhile, Gulzar Cheema, a doctor who examines Singh regularly, has come under fire for breaking patient confidentiality after he had said Singh could travel to India under medical support.
Singh's supporters said it was unethical on the part of Cheema to speak publicly about his health.
Singh was paralysed in 2006 and his supporters say he should not be deported, as he will not get proper medical care in India.
A teenage Sikh girl, who was kidnapped by her own family at a Leicester cinema as she fled an arranged marriage, has told of her ordeal.
She revealed her story just days after an inquest ruled that Muslim teenager Shafilea Ahmed, from Cumbria, was unlawfully killed by her parents after she refused to go to Pakistan to marry.
The Sikh girl, who is in hiding, was 16 when she was snatched by her mother and uncle outside a cinema in July last year.
ABOUT 200 Sikhs gathered at the Samabula Sikh Temple in Suva yesterday to commemorate the 340th ceremony for their tenth Guru.
Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the 10th and last Guru of Sikhism, was born at Patna, Bihar in India and died in the 1700s.
The Sikh Association of Fiji national treasurer, Sardar Balminder Singh said Guru Ji had preached philosophies like love, tolerance and had fought for the abolishment of the caste system.
Every year, Sikhs converge at the temple to commemorate the birth, work and teachings of Guru Gobind Singh, prior to his death.
The celebration is also called Khalsa Panth.
Sikhs hold prayers, kathas (religious readings) and kirtans (hymns) followed by a feast.
Balminder said the tenth Guru's father, Guru Tegh Bahadur had nominated him as the tenth Guru.
"After Guru Tegh Bahadur's death, Guru Gobind Singh became Guru on November 11, 1675," he said.
Before Guru Gobind left his body, he nominated Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji the Holy Book of Sikhs, as the next perpetual Guru of the Sikhs. Hence, there was no human Guru of the Sikhs thereafter. Balminder said Guru Gobind Singh was highly regarded by the Sikhs for his monumental role in the development of the Sikh faith.
He said Guru Ji infused the spirit of both sainthood and soldier in the minds and hearts of his followers to "fight oppression in order to restore justice, peace, righteousness and to uplift the down-trodden people in this world."
A legal challenge has been filed in the High Court on behalf of a 14-year-old girl excluded from a Cynon Valley school for wearing a Sikh bangle.
Sarika Singh has been excluded from Aberdare Girls' School since 5 November and will not be attending when classes start back next week after Christmas.
Campaign group, Liberty, has made the challenge, saying the school had breached race relations laws.
The school bans all jewellery and has said their policy ensures equality.
After filling the challenge, Liberty said the school has also breached human rights laws.
It says it also breaches a decision made by the House of Lords which allows Sikh children to wear items representing their faith, including turbans to school.
Liberty wants Sarika to be allowed to attend normal lessons at the school while wearing the Kara, and for the school to amend its uniform policy to comply with the Race Relations Act.
Sarika was excluded from her school three times last term and was taught in isolation for two months before that step was taken.
Aberdare Girls' School only allows ear studs and a wrist-watch
School governors rejected her request to wear the bangle after a "significant period of research" examining the uniform policy and human rights legislation in detail.
The school's governing body must lodge its defence in the High Court by 11 January and then the court will consider the case during the following week.
Anna Fairclough, from Liberty, said: "Sarika Singh has suffered humiliating isolation and is being denied a proper education simply because she wears the Kara, a small bangle worn by virtually all Sikhs both in and out of school and work.
"It is astonishing that the school continues to exclude her despite almost universal condemnation and 25-year-old House of Lords precedent." United Sikhs, an international advocacy charity, will also apply to file a third party intervention.
A spokeswoman for the Welsh Assembly Government has previously said school uniform policy was a matter for the governing body.
However, she said the government would shortly be issuing guidance on school uniform policy considering issues including health and safety as well as equality and discrimination.
More than 2,000 people have joined an online group in support of Sarika on the social networking site Facebook.
A few months ago in Punjab, as grain farmers set fire to harvested rice fields to clear their land, Jagroop Singh spent the afternoon reflecting on his good fortune farming cows. Singh, a tall Sikh who tends his herd in a white tunic and pale pink turban on a farm near the north Indian village of Aliwal, owns 60 somewhat bony brown animals, which he keeps in an open-air shed on the edge of the fields behind his house.
Meanwhile, restaurants are now doing so well that many are opening up branches in different cities. Some are fast-food chains that have emulated McDonald’s, which has been in India for more than a decade and is one of its most established foreign restaurants. It remains a popular destination: in the evenings its restaurants are full of families queuing for Chicken Maharaja Macs, McAloo Tikki burgers and Paneer Salsa wraps – now made with “multi-cereal” bread for the health-conscious diner.
Indians have typically bought their fruits and vegetables in outdoor markets, and packaged foods in small stores with limited selections of products. But supermarkets, where young professionals such as Singh can find rare fruits like kiwis and chilled foods like butter, are now popping up around the country. In Gurgaon, the booming business district on the outskirts of Delhi, where cows wander along dusty streets between newly built office blocks, shoppers walking into a Spencer’s supermarket will find a pizza stand, Chinese food “X-press” and shelves filled with many of the same brands that they would see in London or Paris.
Aberdare girls' school has temporarily excluded Sikh student, Sarika Singh, for wearing her religious kara bracelet. Photograph: Barry Batchelor/PA
