UK Sikhs accuse BBC of racism:
"We should not be paying a licence fee for promoting the ignorance-based ramblings of those bent on self-promotion who sneer at Asian religion and culture," said Hardeep Singh, a spokesman of the Sikh Media Monitoring Group, which accused BBC's Asian Network of being insensitive towards listeners from the minority community. The Sikh Group has written to the BBC asking for a full transcript of Adil Ray's show, which was removed from their website after threats from angry Sikh listeners who accused the popular Muslim presenter of denigrating the "kirpan" dagger - an important religious symbol and one of five ceremonial symbols that baptised Sikhs are expected to wear at all times, The Independent newspaper said today. Members of the Sikh community complained that Ray, in the show broadcast by the Birmingham-based network on Thursday August 6, had been disparaging about whether Sikhs really needed to carry kirpans. The complaint was based on Ray's discussion of the cancellation of a Punjabi music concert in Canada where police had banned Sikhs who refused to remove their "kirpan", the British daily reported.
There are two dimensions of note here. The first specific one is that Sikh accusations of insensitivity probably have to be interpreted in light of the recent history of communal tensions within the Indian subcontinent, as well as the longer history of Sikh persecutions at the hands of Muslim rulers such as Aurangzeb. Though Leftish, and frankly often deracinated and Westernized, activists attempt to establish racial-cultural identity among South Asian groups irrespective of nationality and religion, the reality is that those divisions are very salient for most of the diasporic community. A more general issue is that when you are outside of a given religious tradition specific orthopraxic demands of that religion may seem somewhat silly or trivial. Yes, many practitioners of the Sikh religion exhibit outward markers of their devotion, but this is certainly not limited to Sikhs. Several years ago a play was shut down in Britain due to riots which occurred because Sikhs felt their religion was being demeaned, certainly Europeans know how to import religious minorities which add "spice" to their societies. For those people of no or private religious inclination where does acceptance of diverse religious practices which entail heightened sensitivities stop? There are over 1 billion Muslims, as Muslims like to remind us, but only 25 million Sikhs. Should we privilege the demands of Muslims over Sikhs because of the former's much greater geopolitical heft than the latter? (e.g., a Sikh equivalent to the Muslim outrage over the Danish cartoon controversy would be relatively minor because of their small numbers and geographical localization) Or perhaps only the size of the local community should matter when it comes to accommodation? It is also notable to me that this row, as they say in England, over BBC commentator insensitivity toward Sikhism, and references to similar complaints about Islam last year, are somewhat peculiar insofar as when I listen to the BBC the presenters make almost no effort hide distaste when there is a reference to evangelical Christianity as practiced among American whites (or, at least, anthropological curiosity which connotes that the objects of interest are benighted boobs). Speaking as an atheist, it seems clear that when white people hold to Bronze Age beliefs they're backward, but when colored people do they're authentic and add to the rich vibrant diversity of a society, and you're racist to criticize their backwardness because it's an essential characteristic of their identity (whereas of course the white race has evolved to the stage where religious identity is optional, and for East Asians religion has never been a big issue, e.g., Buddhist monks mourning the death of the first Roman Catholic president of South Korea). Would that nose adornment really look less silly if one was told that God ordered that one wear it?
