British Sikh Community

Debate between Pat McFadden and Fabian Hamilton

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

I start by saying—I am not going to speak in Punjabi—sat sri akal to hon. Members present and everyone watching at home and in the Public Gallery.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) on securing this debate. He did so after we circulated an e-mail to many members of the all-party group, asking them to apply for such a debate because we felt that one was timely. By the attendance here, I think we were absolutely right.

My involvement with the Sikh community in the United Kingdom started in 1988, when I was elected chair of the race equality committee of Leeds city council. Almost immediately following that—one year into my tenure as a Leeds councillor, which I held for 10 years—I was approached by a leading member of the Leeds Sikh community, Mr Thandi, who was a market trader and a great exponent of the virtues of the Sikh faith. He wanted to educate me about what Sikhism meant for him, his community, the city of Leeds and the whole of Great Britain. That he did, and he did it well. He became a close friend and was a member of the Labour party. In 1992, he kindly agreed, with his wife, to be included in my election manifesto for that year. Sadly, I did not win, but to my even greater sadness, he died just two days before the general election.

My memory of Mr Thandi has carried me through all my work on Leeds city council and as Member of Parliament since. I do not represent such a huge Sikh community as hon. Members from Wolverhampton, Birmingham or even London do, but I still have three gurdwaras in my constituency, which are well attended. One of them is in a new building—it was built in 1997, so I suppose it is not so new now—and I was privileged not only to dig the first sod of earth for that temple on Chapeltown road, but to be present at its opening as the newly elected Member of Parliament.

Over the years, I have got to know many members of the Leeds Sikh community, including Dr and Mrs Kalsi. Dr Kalsi has written a very good book about Sikhism and what it means, which I commend to anyone who wants to know more about the faith, although, with a Member such as the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) among us, perhaps we do not need to read it. My friend Prem Singh Duggal was president of the Chapeltown road gurdwara and helped me to understand so much about the Sikh faith, and one of the immediate past presidents, Mr Inderjit Singh Gill, always invites me to the Sikh sports events that regularly take place in the city.

I have attended the Vaisakhi celebrations in what is now called Millennium square in the centre of Leeds. It was not always called that—it was just the square outside Leeds civic hall.

[Mr McFadden]

We are pressed for time, but I want to remind my hon. Friend and the House that I will be happy again to host the House of Commons Vaisakhi celebrations on 22 April, to which all right hon. and hon. Members are most cordially invited.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank my dear right hon. Friend for that intervention. He has organised that event for the second or third year running, and I thank him for taking on that work and making sure that Vaisakhi is celebrated in the House for everyone involved. It is always a joyous and colourful occasion to celebrate not only the contribution of the Sikh community in the city of Leeds and in Great Britain, but to celebrate the start of spring, although it usually rains actually. Extraordinary colour and life is brought to the centre of the city of Leeds and throughout so many of our towns and cities in the United Kingdom to celebrate that festival, and there is always wonderful food as well. One thing that has always impressed me is the equality between men and women, who celebrate together, not separated. They joyously celebrate humanity, as well as their own faith and belief.

Since 1997, I have tried to bring together the Sikh community in Leeds and the Jewish community that I represent. There are probably about equal numbers of them now, as the Jewish community has declined somewhat and the Sikh community has grown. As hon. Members have said, the values of those communities are very similar. When I walked into the newly built Jewish community centre—the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff centre —on Stonegate road in north Leeds with members of the Sikh community to discuss how we might set up a Sikh elderly housing association and a welfare board, just as the Jewish community had done so many decades earlier, there was a great deal of celebration, with elderly Jewish people embracing many of our Sikh friends who had come along to discuss that with them.