CONTENTS

Condemnation of Indian Flag Burning

This is a brief update on the recently passed motion (EDM 2017-19/1292) in the House of Commons.

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CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS

A Letter to the Rt Hon. Sajid Javid MP

A letter to Rt Hon. Sajid Javid MP, Home Office Minister, regarding the The Andrew Marr Show Interview where he discussed the planned review of immigration policies and their impact upon the Indian community.

Letter PDF >>

Open Letter to the Labour Party

The Dharmic Ideas and Policy Foundation (DIPF) was launched on 4 February 2015 at the Palace of Westminster in the presence of members of both Houses of Parliament as well as dignitaries from Dharmic organizations. Its mission is to engage in work on policy issues that are of concern to Britain’s Dharmic communities.

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ARTICLES

A Letter to Bob Blackman MP

Dear Bob,

I hope all is well.  We write to you to draw attention to our concerns about your recent statements in parliament regarding the consultation on the caste discrimination law.

In a recent parliamentary exchange of 17 May 2018 you raised the matter of the consultation on the caste law. However, you mentioned only the Equality Act 2010 and referred to caste as a ‘protected characteristic’. That indicates that your question was directed towards the removal of the legislative duty to make caste an aspect of race.

This isn’t the first occasion on which you have adopted that approach in your parliamentary interventions on the issue. In exchanges of 21 December 2017, 22 February 2018, 29 March 2018, you raised the matter in a similar fashion, citing concerns only about the legislation but not the case law.

For reasons about which we would appreciate clarification, you have not seen fit to raise the problems with retaining the case law which, as detailed in our multiple briefings, poses far wider risks of unfairness and injustice to the general public than the legislation. Our concern is that the parliamentary focus has been maintained solely on the legislative duty and having caste added as part of race but there is no mention, focus or debate on the case law and its far wider implications.

We are sure that you do not require reminding that ridding the public of the case law was part of the commitment made during GE2017 by several sitting MPs including yourself. You will recall that you had yourself indicated prior to GE2017 that it was not possible to repeal the case law but then during a meeting with ACLC agreed with our stated position that it is not only possible but necessary to repeal the case law too. This exposes the fact that HMG’s consultation on the matter was unfairly premised on a choice between the two outcomes while it neglected to state that a third option was available i.e. rejecting the legislation and case law.

Now we are again concerned that the issue of the case law is being driven underground in all official discussion of the matter. This is not helped when the replies on the part of the several recent equality ministers regularly, though implicitly proclaim (1) the unacceptability of caste discrimination implying the need for some law despite the consultation document itself accepting that there is no evidence for caste discrimination and the impossibility of defining caste, and (2) a preference for maintaining the case law without making clear in which way the consultation responses have gone.

We are also concerned that in your interventions you regularly mention the view of the Hindu community. However, it is obvious that the law, whether legislation or case law, would have implications far beyond the Hindu community and would affect the general public in an insidious manner. The risk of making the caste law seem as though only Hindus are concerned about it marginalises the range of objections to it and makes it appear as though it is a purely sectional interest not of general concern to society as a whole. Furthermore, you are also aware that the Hindu community organisations have not all spoken with one voice on the issue and, pushed in that direction by HMG and prior to the GE2017 by your position as mentioned above, some appear to have entertained the view, never properly reasoned by proponents, and consistently opposed by us, that the legislative duty may be deleted but the case law should be retained. In other words, although there is no one view within the Hindu community about what the next steps should be, your interventions imply that there is only one Hindu community perspective: the one in favour of retaining the case law.

We note also that in the latest parliamentary exchange of 17 May 2018, the minister appears to agree to meet with the All Parliamentary Group for Dalits. She also indicates an agreement to meet with you so that you can put the views of the ‘community’. Presumably you meant by this the Hindu community, as that would be consistent with your other statements on the issue. Could we request that you indicate to the minister that ACLC would also like to be heard directly alongside you when you arrange to meet the minister?

Yours sincerely,

Mukesh Naker
Communications Officer for ACLC

EVENTS

Program – Human Rights for all?

– 10 minutes Introduction by Host & Mineshbhai Patel
– 30 minutes DIPF Paper by Dr Prakash Shah & Dr Gautam Sen
– 15 minutes Presentation – GHRD – Forced marriage of underaged Hindu girls in Pakistan
– 15 minutes Documentary
– 15 minutes Presentation – P2P Productions and Smetana “Pakistani Hindu – Who am I”
– 15 minutes Documentary
– 40 minutes Panel – discussion – chaired by Host
– 10 minutes Closing & vote of thanks

Introductions to documentary makers:

1. Human Rights Focus Pakistan, Naveed Walter, President, Email: hrfp@yahoo.com, hrfp94@gmail.com Website: www.hrfp.org
3 min. clip Trailer “Trapping Faiths” 

2. Samvedana Charitable Trust – Prakash Jha & Anuradha Mishra Trustees
Email – samvedanateam@gmail.com Website http://samvedanatrust.org.in/about-us/
Short 2 min clip – Who am I…? – Story of displaced Hindus from Pakistan | Official Trailer | P2P Productions – 

For Further details please contact
1. Minesh Patel M: 07961 099 998 E: Minesh.Patel65@gmail.com
2. Mukesh Naker M: 07713 137 425 E: Mukesh.Naker@d-s-p.org.uk

Pakistani Sikh on the run from the Taliban

Article attributed from Justice Upheld: http://justiceupheld.org.uk/896-2/

In 2004, 44 year old Harjit Singh (not his real name), a Pakistani national and a baptised Sikh man opened a Sikh faith school in a district of  Peshawar in Pakistan for the children of his minority Sikh Community.

Shortly after the school was opened, a member of the Taliban in the region contacted Harjit Singh and ordered him to close down the School with immediate effect, failing which, Harjit Singh said that he was threatened with death. Harjit Singh recognised the threat to be real and immediate. The representative of the Taliban making the threat is known to the communities in the region.

Mr Harjit Singh refused to close the School. As a consequence, the Taliban issued a ‘fatwa’ against him with an order to kill him. The Taliban filed a formal complaint (‘First Investigation Report’ – ‘FIR’) against Harjit Singh with the local Police. The complaint was that Mr Singh had opened the Sikh School despite their objections. The Taliban have a powerful influence and presence in the region. The Taliban is above scrutiny in the region.

Harjit Singh sought help from the local Sikh leaders who were unable to assist. Harjit Singh said that they do not have any power – they too live in fear of the Taliban.

The school was forced to close in 2004. Harjit Singh together with his wife aged 39, and three children (aged 15, 13 and 11) fled their home in fear that the Taliban will continue to pursue them. Mrs Singh and their children stayed with her family, whilst Harjit Singh moved from city to city to find a job to support himself and his family.

Harjit Singh was unable to find a suitable job. Eventually, he did find casual employment, and on both occasions, his work colleagues found out that he was on the run from the Taliban. He had no choice but to leave his job. At one point, he was identified by a man from his village who happened to be in the area where Mr Harjit Singh was staying at the time. Mr Harjit Singh maintains that this man proceeded to disclose his whereabouts to the Taliban.

In April 2017 Harjit Singh had no alternative but to flee Pakistan taking his wife and young children with him to a safe country where he has sought asylum. Mr Singh’s and his family’s application for asylum is waiting to be progressed.

The family are extremely anxious about their future and concerned for the safety of their friends and family in Pakistan. Mr Harjit Singh said ‘The threat from the Taliban is real, I had no alternative but to ensure the safety and future of my children and my wife. Sikhs are a minority in Pakistan. We are forced to pay ‘jizya’ [historically a form of tax charged to non- Muslims living in an Islamic country].

Mr Harjit Singh said he ‘….Pakistan is my ancestral home however, he is denied the right to practice his faith freely. Sikhs in Pakistan are forced to pay the jizya tax to practice their faith, even to access roads (they are required to pay arbitrary amounts of toll) We are oppressed in our own country’.

Jas Uppal from ‘Justice Upheld’, a British Human Rights charity based in the U.K. who has been instructed by Mr Singh, said that ‘We view the treatment of Mr Harjit Singh and his family in Pakistan as being nothing short of oppression, discrimination and persecution of a minority. We understand that the Sikh population in Pakistan is currently less than 20,000. Prior to the Partition in 1947, the Sikh population combined with the minorities in Pakistan was 20% in the region. This has now been reduced to less than 1%. The Sikh population was not even recorded in the 2017 consensus in Pakistan’. The world is ignoring the suffering of Sikhs and other minorities in Pakistan at their peril which has emboldened the persecutors to continue with impunity’.

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Condemnation of Indian Flag Burning

A brief update on the House of Commons motion: EDM 2017-19/1292

In April 2018, DSP wrote to community organisations and individuals to write letters to their local MP and those Peers they had some links with to ask the Govt to take firm action against the perpetrators of this wanton damage and abuse of freedom to protest.

We are very pleased to see that Bob Blackman has sponsored an Early Day Motion (please click on it to see a copy of our letter to individual MP’s) on this issue. Please see below the text for the EDM and a link that provides updates on the EDM. As you will see, he is currently being supported by only four fellow Conservatives and two Democratic Unionist Party MPs. The Dharmic community is grateful to all of them for their support in this issue. But where are the other MP’s we cast votes for? Particularly Labour and Lib-Dem MP’s.

To make an impact Bob Blackman needs your help by contacting your local MP and asking them to sign this EDM. You can find your local MP please use this link – https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/mps/

Please bcc DSP on Mukesh.Naker@D-S-P.org.uk when you send out the email & also send us any responses you get.

House of Commons – Early Day Motion

That this House condemns in the strongest possible terms the desecration of the Indian flag in Parliament Square on 18 April 2018; further condemns the timing of this action as it coincided with the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and was deeply insulting to both the Indian diaspora and the people of India; notes that these actions were carried out in full view of the police and have been widely captured on social media; calls on the perpetrators to apologise to the Indian community and to the people of India; and while acknowledging the apology offered by the Government to India via the Indian High Commission, urges the Government to take firm and decisive action against the perpetrators of this illegal and immoral act; demands that those responsible for this foul act are brought before the British courts and if found guilty punished for their crimes; and condemns those who commissioned and transported the vile mobile billboards which circulated London attacking our good friend Shri Narendra Modi.

https://www.parliament.uk/edm/2017-19/1292