Last week, when British House of Lords de­bated the mo­tion on chal­lenges posed by re­li­gious in­tol­er­ance and prej­u­dice in the UK, which co­in­cided with launch of the gov­ern­men­t’s ‘re­fresh’ of Ac­tion Against Hate (2016), Lord Singh of Wim­ble­don In­dar­jit Singh ex­pressed his dis­ap­point­ment at the con­tin­ued mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of non-Abra­hamic faiths, in­clud­ing Sikhs. WSN pre­sents full text of his speech which is a scathing analy­sis of British pol­icy.

My Lords, I want to thank the no­ble Lord, Lord Bourne, for ini­ti­at­ing this im­por­tant de­bate. I shall take my cue from the no­ble Lord, Lord Pat­ten, and be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial.

I read the Gov­ern­men­t’s half-time re­view of their hate crime strat­egy and find it dis­ap­point­ing in that it com­pletely fails to ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing causes of hate crime—for much of this evening, we have done the same—and, while re­peat­edly ad­dress­ing the con­cerns of the Abra­hamic faiths, vir­tu­ally ig­nores the equally real suf­fer­ing of other faiths. The re­view de­tails some 20 ini­tia­tives to pro­tect against anti-Se­mitic and Is­lam­o­pho­bic hate crimes. A con­de­scend­ing ref­er­ence to oc­ca­sional round-table meet­ings with other faiths is no sub­sti­tute for ac­tion. Why the dis­par­ity? To echo Shake­speare: if we are cut, do we not bleed?

“A con­de­scend­ing ref­er­ence to oc­ca­sional round-table meet­ings with other faiths is no sub­sti­tute for ac­tion. Why the dis­par­ity? To echo Shake­speare: if we are cut, do we not bleed?”

There are no com­par­a­tive sta­tis­tics on hate crimes suf­fered by dif­fer­ent re­li­gions to jus­tify par­tial­ity. Fig­ures pre­sented to jus­tify ad­di­tional re­sources for the Jew­ish and Is­lamic faiths come from those com­mu­ni­ties. Chief Su­per­in­ten­dent Dave Stringer of the Met has made it clear that a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of hate crime recorded as Is­lam­o­pho­bic is against other com­mu­ni­ties. The no­ble Lord, Lord Mor­row, re­ferred to a free­dom of in­for­ma­tion re­quest made by my col­league, Hard­eep Singh, which showed that there is no clear de­f­i­n­i­tion of whom hate crime is com­mit­ted against.

Many of the hate crimes de­scribed as Is­lam­o­pho­bic are di­rected against Sikhs out of ig­no­rance or mis­taken iden­tity. In the States, a Sikh was the first per­son mur­dered in reprisal af­ter 9/​11, and six wor­ship­pers in a gur­d­wara there were shot by a white su­prema­cist in an­other mis­taken-iden­tity killing.

The day af­ter 9/​11, I was go­ing to a meet­ing with the then CRE at Vic­to­ria. As I came out of the sta­tion, two work­men dig­ging the road looked at me in a hos­tile way. For­tu­nately, their lack of re­li­gious lit­er­acy saved the day. The el­der turned to the younger and said: “He’s not a Mus­lim; he’s a Hindu.” I did not ar­gue the point.

““The one God of us all is not the least bit in­ter­ested in our dif­fer­ent re­li­gious la­bels but in what we do to serve our fel­low be­ings.””

Guru Nanak

Few Sikhs have not been called “bin Laden” at some time or other, and some have been vi­o­lently at­tacked. We heard about the gur­d­wara in Leeds be­ing de­faced and partly burned and, only a cou­ple of months ago, a gur­d­wara in Ed­in­burgh that I had re­cently vis­ited was fire­bombed.

I do not in any way be­grudge the pro­tec­tion that Jews and Mus­lims re­ceive against hate crime. The Jew­ish com­mu­nity has suf­fered griev­ously from anti-Semi­tism, and Mus­lims are suf­fer­ing hate crime to­day. I have al­ways had a warm work­ing re­la­tion­ship with both com­mu­ni­ties. All I ask is that the Gov­ern­ment are a lit­tle more even-handed to non-Abra­hamic faiths in both poli­cies and re­sourc­ing.

“Few Sikhs have not been called “bin Laden” at some time or other, and some have been vi­o­lently at­tacked. We heard about the gur­d­wara in Leeds be­ing de­faced and partly burned and, only a cou­ple of months ago, a gur­d­wara in Ed­in­burgh that I had re­cently vis­ited was fire­bombed.”

Let me now turn to the im­por­tant causes of hate crime. Prej­u­dice, in the sense of fear of—or ir­ra­tional, neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes to—those not like us, is not some­thing found only in oth­ers; it is com­mon to all of us.

The ex­is­tence of hea­thens in dis­tant lands gave us a per­verse sense of unity and su­pe­ri­or­ity based on a shared, ir­ra­tional dis­like of those not like us. We find this again and again in lit­er­a­ture. John of Gaun­t’s speech in “Richard II”, with its ref­er­ence to,

“This pre­cious stone set in the sil­ver sea”
 Against the envy of lesser breeds’,

sim­ply an ex­am­ple of how we viewed for­eign­ers. Some on the leave side of the Brexit de­bate will prob­a­bly say Shake­speare did not go far enough!

To­day, the one-time dis­tant for­eigner, with a dif­fer­ent cul­ture and re­li­gion, can be our next-door neigh­bour, and it is im­per­a­tive that we set aside our own prej­u­dices and see peo­ple as they re­ally are, equal mem­bers of one hu­man fam­ily.

“I be­lieve in the fun­da­men­tals of Sikh teach­ing, such as the equal­ity of all hu­man be­ings, gen­der equal­ity and con­cern for the less for­tu­nate. Yes, I sup­pose I am a fun­da­men­tal­ist.”

Lord In­dar­jit Singh to Scot­land Yard

It is equally im­por­tant that we look openly and hon­estly at prej­u­dice em­bed­ded in re­li­gion. What gen­er­ally passes for re­li­gion is, in fact, a com­plex mix of su­per­sti­tion, rit­u­als, cul­ture, group his­tory and up­lift­ing eth­i­cal teach­ings. While eth­i­cal teach­ings are easy to state, they are ex­tremely dif­fi­cult to live by, so we tend to fo­cus on other things.  Of­ten we have a per­verse, uni­fy­ing but naive, be­lief—we find it again and again in dif­fer­ent re­li­gions—that the cre­ator of all that ex­ists has favourites and takes sides, re­gard­less of merit. As Guru Nanak re­minded us:

“The one God of us all is not the least bit in­ter­ested in our dif­fer­ent re­li­gious la­bels but in what we do to serve our fel­low be­ings.”

This big­otry of be­lief is wide­spread and is of­ten found in re­li­gious texts. As a Sikh, I feel that the ul­ti­mate blas­phemy is to say that texts con­don­ing the killing or ill-treat­ment of the in­no­cent are the word of God. Such be­liefs lead to hor­ren­dous crimes and sav­agery—not only be­tween faiths, but even within the same faith—and to in­creas­ingly fa­mil­iar ter­ror­ist out­rages in the name of re­li­gion. It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that re­li­gious ex­trem­ists and far-right ex­trem­ists need each other to thrive.

To­day, de­spite all the lip ser­vice paid to in­ter­faith un­der­stand­ing, there is vir­tu­ally no di­a­logue be­tween faiths to ex­plore and un­der­stand their dif­fer­ent re­li­gious teach­ings, with each re­main­ing smug in its be­liefs. I have been a mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment-funded In­ter Faith Net­work of the UK since it was founded in 1987 and am a mem­ber of other bod­ies com­mit­ted to re­li­gious di­a­logue. Meet­ings rarely go be­yond pi­ous state­ments and aca­d­e­mic dis­cus­sions on safe pe­riph­eral con­cerns, with mem­bers go­ing back to their con­gre­ga­tions to stress the ex­clu­siv­ity and su­pe­ri­or­ity of their teach­ings.

“I do not in any way be­grudge the pro­tec­tion that Jews and Mus­lims re­ceive against hate crime. The Jew­ish com­mu­nity has suf­fered griev­ously from anti-Semi­tism, and Mus­lims are suf­fer­ing hate crime to­day. I have al­ways had a warm work­ing re­la­tion­ship with both com­mu­ni­ties. All I ask is that the Gov­ern­ment are a lit­tle more even-handed to non-Abra­hamic faiths in both poli­cies and re­sourc­ing.”

Look­ing at an in­ter­net learn­ing site about Is­lam, I was star­tled to see a col­league say­ing that he felt sorry for peo­ple of other faiths be­cause they were “all go­ing to hell”. I once at­tended a meet­ing of the Three Faiths Fo­rum where Chris­tians, Jews and Mus­lims were talk­ing in a su­pe­rior way about the three monothe­is­tic faiths. Ac­cord­ing to the open­ing line of the Sikh scrip­tures, there is one God of all hu­man­ity. We need to learn a lit­tle more about each other to com­bat re­li­gious prej­u­dice.

It is not all up to the Gov­ern­ment. Peo­ple of re­li­gion have a com­mon re­spon­si­bil­ity to look afresh at neg­a­tive cul­tural prac­tices such as dis­crim­i­na­tion against women and oth­ers that at­tach them­selves to re­li­gion. Re­li­gion will be­come more rel­e­vant if we sep­a­rate dated cul­ture from abid­ing eth­i­cal teach­ings. Sec­u­lar so­ci­ety, which some­times shows an aloof su­pe­ri­or­ity to war­ring re­li­gions, should also en­cour­age more open di­a­logue.

With the best of in­ten­tions, we skirt around ques­tion­able be­liefs and prac­tices by us­ing coded cam­ou­flage words to ad­dress symp­toms, rather than look­ing to the un­der­ly­ing causes of vi­o­lence and ha­tred. Words such as “Is­lamist”—in­sult­ing to Mus­lims—“rad­i­calised”, “ex­trem­ist” or “fun­da­men­tal­ist” are loaded eu­phemisms or vague in­nu­en­dos, de­void of real mean­ing. The ab­sur­dity of such lan­guage is il­lus­trated by the true story of a visit to my home by two Scot­land Yard of­fi­cers fol­low­ing my crit­i­cism of the In­dian Gov­ern­men­t’s in­volve­ment in mob vi­o­lence against Sikhs. The men from the Yard asked if I was an ex­trem­ist or a mod­er­ate. I replied that I was ex­tremely mod­er­ate. They then asked if I was a fun­da­men­tal­ist. I replied, “Well, I be­lieve in the fun­da­men­tals of Sikh teach­ing, such as the equal­ity of all hu­man be­ings, gen­der equal­ity and con­cern for the less for­tu­nate. Yes, I sup­pose I am a fun­da­men­tal­ist”.

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If re­li­gions pre­sume to tell us how we should live, move and have our be­ing, they must be open to dis­cus­sion and chal­lenge. The same open­ness is ab­solutely es­sen­tial in com­bat­ing prej­u­dice and work­ing for a safer and more tol­er­ant world.’