Minority Ethnic and Religious Communities: Cultural and Economic Contribution

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Bilimoria on securing this debate, as well as on his brilliant and inspiring speech.

I begin with a brief personal comment that illustrates the rapid rise of our different faith communities in Britain. I grew up in a part of the Midlands where we were the only non-white family. The same area is now home to substantial minorities of different faiths and cultures.

Many will recall that in the 1950s and 1960s shopping hours were rigid and limited, and customers would receive hostile looks if they entered a shop just before closing time. Then suddenly, thanks to the enterprise of new faith communities, everything changed and we had corner shops open until late at night, well stocked to meet the needs of those who worked unsocial hours, or those who suddenly discovered that they had run out of milk or bread. I remember one shop where a young lad would do his homework between serving customers. He is now a university professor. Inherent business skills also began to flourish, with corner shops giving way to large wholesalers, supermarkets, hotels and even hotel chains, and the growing popularity of Indian cuisine has added spice to an otherwise staid British diet.

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the Parsee or Zoroastrian community in this country, we reflect with admiration that some of the most important innovators are members of that highly enterprising community. The Tatas are significant players in steel, car production and much else. Among many others, we have the Cobra Group of my noble friend Lord Bilimoria, which is doing much to quench the nation’s thirst.

Turning to my own community, Sikhs have become one of the wealthiest and most successful communities in Britain, with the average household income being second only to that of the Jews. The contribution of the community has spread to many different activities. If you look on the back of a bus or travel by tube train, you can hardly fail to notice the advertisements for Vitabiotics, a vitamin supplement company owned by a Sikh, Dr Kartar Lalvani. In sport, we have the Olympic torch bearer, Fauja Singh, who is 99 years old, and Monty Panesar and Ravi Bopara regularly make it into the England team.

The one area in which Sikhs have not made the contribution that I believe we should have made is in furthering interfaith understanding. Perhaps I may explain myself. To my mind, interfaith dialogue in this country has lost some of its momentum, with representatives of different communities being superficially nice to each other but not doing more to enhance understanding and social cohesion. The difficulty in moving to constructive engagement lies in the balance between reaching out to other communities with different beliefs while preserving our own distinct religious integrity. I believe that Sikhs are ideally equipped to revive the momentum. A religion that includes the writings of Hindu and Muslim saints in its holy scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib, to show that no one faith has a monopoly of truth, can and should be playing an important part in reconciling different faiths and cultures. While Sikhs can count successes in other fields, our report card here reads, “Can and should do better”.

In conclusion, my hope and belief is that our different communities will build on their achievements and make Britain a showcase for the world in enterprise, tolerance and understanding.