Death in Sikh Family Does Wedding Need to Be Postponed
The anniversary in Leamington Spa is a lot smaller than the newlyweds had hoped. Just close family and friends – those they tin can really trust. The marriage takes place in clandestine, on a Friday afternoon.
Information technology'southward a beautiful, vivid day at the town's Gurdwara Sahib temple, but there is an feet in the air that is more typical pre-wedding ceremony jitters: the young couple have been forced to marry under "oppressive circumstances" after previous weddings were disrupted by protesting religious men who do not want Sikhs to marry out of the faith.
The protesters dress in hoods, cover their faces and intimidate guests at the temple. Yet they are Sikhs – a religion readily associated with peace and inclusivity.
"I have got through the days of being called a Paki and a nig-nog," the registrar Bhopinder Singh tells the Guardian. "I never idea that the day would come when I would be frightened and terrorised by people of my own faith."
The most contempo incident at the Sikh temple was on eleven September when women, children and commission members feared for their safety later on 55 men with their faces covered in black cloth flooded into the temple. The temple was held nether siege and the couple who were due to marry were forced to cancel their nuptials.
Among those trying to keep the peace that day was the 79-year-old Dark-green party councillor Janet Alty, who was questioned nether caution for allegedly calling one protester a terrorist. No further action was taken confronting Alty. Those who run the temple say protests accept become an unfortunate recurrence during the wedding flavor.
Eventually the disrupted wedding did take identify under a shroud of secrecy the following Monday, but the protestation has sent shockwaves through the shut-knit customs.
When an interfaith matrimony now takes place, the temple is forced to hire security guards to protect couples and their families. To avoid trouble, some couples are choosing to get married on weekdays, which are less likely to be disrupted.
5 weeks afterwards that terminal protest, the Guardian was invited along to the temple for Friday's secret wedding.
The bride is a follower of Jainism, an ancient Indian religion like to Buddhism, and her groom is a Sikh. The couple practise non want to be identified for fear of repercussions.
At the temple, volunteers cook sabzi and chapattis in the kitchen, preparing to feed the forty or so people of every faith who will walk through its doors to attend the wedding.
Upstairs, in one of the prayer rooms, the couple – both 29-year-onetime professionals - and their relatives are anxious.
The bride says she received a telephone telephone call that morning and was told her wedding would have to be a day sooner than planned, for her ain safety.
"We have been educated here and are moderate and should be free to marry whomever we wish," she says. "I had to blitz up from London – this is no fashion to exist. There is a central problem with the style [the protesters] are behaving and it volition non be accepted."
Her new husband says: "We take had to get married under oppressive circumstances. We were forced into this. The other pick was to have a bigger wedding but hire security and nosotros didn't want to do that.
"These guys have a wicked PR auto and they post videos of supposed 'peaceful protests' online all the time. But they are not peaceful – they are threatening. They come with hoods on, with larger than normal kirpans [Sikh daggers] and human action in an abusive manner."
One relative, Simon Gronow, a Christian solicitor from London, married into the groom's family 12 years ago. "This temple has decided to welcome interfaith marriage, but there is a grouping who want their way to prevail and there is an inevitable disharmonize," he says.
"I have always institute Sikhism a welcoming organized religion and I am still Christian simply besides take part in Sikh traditions. It has never been an issue before and this is a new matter for all of united states to come to terms with."
Mota Singh, a councillor and old mayor of Leamington Spa, calls the protesters "fundamentalists". Singh, 77, says because of his moderate outlook he has received repeated threats from the grouping online and in person and has even had a brick thrown through his window.
He was present at the temple on the morning of the protest on 11 September. He said the protesters arrived at the temple at half-dozen.30am, forcing their way past hired security guards into the main atrium. The couple were warned and did not nourish. Armed police somewhen cleared the protesters, all of whom were arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass.
Warwickshire police said no farther activity would be taken against 50 of the 55 people arrested. A 28-year-old man from Coventry was given a caution for religiously aggravated criminal damage. A 39-year-quondam from Birmingham and two men anile 33 and 36 from Coventry have been re-bailed until the end of November. No further action was taken confronting a 31-yr-old from Oldbury.
The protests had been organised by a grouping called Sikh Youth UK and were part of an increasingly active youth movement within the community.
Deepa Singh, who describes himself equally a Sikh Youth U.k. co-ordinator, said the grouping had thousands of members including teachers, barristers and accountants. Others guess membership to be in the low hundreds.
Another member, Shamsher Singh, previously told the Guardian: "More and more young people are becoming interested in the true interpretation of what it means to be Sikh.
"The elder generation arrived [in the Great britain] and fitted their organized religion round the need to assimilate, survive and to get work. This led to a stripping back of the spiritual nature of what information technology means to be a Sikh to a series of symbols.
"At present younger people desire to reclaim Sikhism as a deeply spiritual, peaceful and encompassing religion and this is why we are seeing these protests."
Mota Singh, the councillor, said he first became enlightened of ii Birmingham-based groups who accept been involved in protesting, Sikh Youth Great britain and the Sikh Federation, around 6 years ago. He claims that they accept strong links to the Sikh Quango, an system gear up up in 2010 to deal with issues affecting the Sikh community in Britain and Europe. The council denies any affiliation with the group, and say they take no involvement in the organization of protests.
Shortly after the Sikh Council was formed, it issued an edict saying weddings between Sikhs and non-Sikhs could non take place in temples, arguing that the Sikh wedding ceremony, Anand Karaj, should be reserved only for Sikhs.
Marrying people of other faiths is acceptable, they say, but conducting that union in a Sikh temple is non. Non-Sikhs can merely be involved if they take the Sikh faith and alter their name to include Singh or Kaur, the council insists.
Around 10 of the estimated 360 Sikh temples in the UK are thought to be affiliated to the quango. Notwithstanding, many in the Sikh customs are wholly opposed to these rules, saying Sikhism is a faith of acceptance and equality.
Mota Singh believes there has been a "cultural modify" where young British-born Sikhs are "attracted by fundamentalism … They stick together and they want their own societies which exclude other groups.
"They are different to their parents – the start generation immigrants – who wanted to integrate. They want the religion to remain 'pure'.
"They take been born in Britain, have had a British didactics however they don't believe in democracy and complimentary will and allow mixed marriages to take place. It has staggered some of the older generation. They are shunning the moderate mode. Their fathers were clean-shaven and wanted to integrate. This is a whole new brood of Sikhs."
The temple's registrar, Bhopinder Singh, said he was pleased the wedding season was almost over for the year. "I take been in this land since the historic period of 9 and take lived through the football hooliganism of the 1970s. These guys were far more scary than football hooligans," he said. "They were foul-mouthed and intimidating and I have never experienced anything like this."
Other temples across the country have been less robust nether pressure from the protests groups and no longer hold interfaith marriages. But the temple commission in Leamington is adamant that they volition proceed. "On the confront of it what they are protesting is against mixed marriage – but it is deeper than that," said the temple trustee Jaswant Singh Virdee. "They want to control the temple with their own people and with their ain extremist views.
"It is seems these protests apply only to England. Throughout the rest of the earth this is not happening. Ultimately, it is a manner to gain power."
Balraj Singh Dhesi, the offset Asian mayor of Leamington, said the protests were a British miracle. "Interfaith marriages have been taking place since the birth of Sikhism hundreds of years ago. These prejudices, which are growing and are very concerning, will cause damage to British gild. They are indigenous to this country but all the same have an obvious condone for integration."
Friday'due south wedding ceremony passed off without incident, merely there is a grim irony in a couple spending the biggest day of their lives praying for information technology to be totally uneventful.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/03/i-never-thought-id-be-terrorised-by-my-fellow-sikhs-at-a-wedding
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