LONDON, UK—Ten years of malignant and exaggerated reporting reached boiling point last night on September 18 when dozens of British Sikhs started a Twitter storm against British journalist Sunny Hundal.
The storm was in response to Sunny Hundal’s offensive and generalised blanket tweet that “British Sikhs are more intolerant than Christians and Jews on marriage” which was put out to promote his latest article.
Sunny Hundal has a history of antagonising the Sikh Community with his casual statements on the social media attacking the community continuously generalising Sikhs as backwards and violent.
Ironically, Sunny Hundal likes to advertise his Sikh origin when it suits him and uses it as a catalyst to promote his brand of hate and hysteria to the mainstream by grossly exaggerating issues within the Sikh community.
Last night many Sikh organisations, professionals and social media groups retaliated with the hashtag #Hundalswrong challenging his opinions and constant ridicule of Sikh practices and stirring statements.
One tweeter said that Sunny Hundal “is what Katie Hopkins is to humanity”.
Another tweeter wrote “You’re entitled to have an opinion against Sikhs but NOT allowed to distort Sikh beliefs & condemn entire group of people #HundalsWrong”.
Over the past decade, Sunny Hundal has written in numerous incarnations of blogs and commented in the Guardian, Independent and other newspapers. He has been accused of promoting an aggressive bias when it has come to Sikh issues allowing readers to form an anti-Sikh sentiment thereby fusing situations even further and ensuring the Sikh institutions and practices feel isolated from the mainstream.
The worldwide Sikh community openly condemned Sunny Hundal for his ill-informed and inappropriate comments and articles.
Twitter users also urged the editors of newspapers such as the Guardian and The Independant to think very hard and provide much more balance from the real hardworking and respected Sikh community before publishing any more of Hundals hateful comments.
Independently, Sikh24 understands some individuals may be considering reporting such comments as a Race Hate Crime given the offence they have caused.
What is surprising is that supposedly reputable UK newspapers get people with, at best, clearly little to no knowledge of the subject, or at worst, ‘misinformants’, to cover important issues that have serious consequences. Is this borne from naivety or deliberate policy?
Bakwas! Your article is biased – I think Sunny can be provactive but that’s a good thing we should all be questioning ourselves.
What do you mean ‘all questioning ourselves’? He is not a Sikh and neither are you so what right do either of you have to speak bakwas on behalf of Sikhs and cast aspersions against Sikhs and their doctrinal principles. The Anand Karaj was formulated by the third and fourth Gurus themselves specifically for one Sikh to marry another and when Guru Gobind Singh Ji conferred eternal Guruship on the Adi Granth to annoint Guru Granth Sahib that sacred sacrament is then carried out before our Guru. What right does bald headed Sunny Hundal have to criticise the Anand Karaj – next he and you will be proposing what need do Sikhs have to be sincere about taking baptism before Guru Granth Sahib in the Gurdwara and make taking Amrit with all the solemn pledges that involves before our Guru a meaningless ritual too. You should not speak of a subject of which you and your stooge Hundal are at best ignorant and at worst inimical towards.
Well said. ??
The Sikhs have a well established world wide code of conduct which prevents A SIkh and non SIkh marrying using the Anand Karaj wedding ceremony which was specifically created by the third and fourth Gurus of the Sikh religion for the marriage between two Sikhs. Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the eleventh and final Guru of the Sikhs (the clue is its title Guru Granth Sahib) and Sikhs are expected to behave before him in the same manner they would have done if sitting before one of the previous ten human Gurus. How then can you promise to accept and honour the prescriptions of Anand Karaj when you are not a Sikh in the first place (and therefore do not acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Guru you will be standing before and walking around during the ceremony) and do not even understand the language being spoken to you? that kind of marriage is a farce and really just makes a mockery of the Anand Karaj and Guru Granth Sahib. A Sikh can marry a non Sikh without any issue but they just cannot use the Anand Karaj ceremony in a Gurdwara. Use civil marriage and ask for an Ardas blessing in the Gurdwara if you must but don’t reduce the Anand Karaj to just some ritual that will satisfy your in-laws that you are actually married in the eyes of God (and of course line the pockets of the Gurdwara’s committee who will throw in banqueting hall where they’ll further break Sikh doctrine by allowing you to serve meat and alcohol too to your guests). Ask yourself why would you want to stand in Gurdwara and pay obesience and indicate your willingness to accept the responsibilities and obligations that Anand Karaj demands when you and others attending know perfectly well you have no sincere intention to honour such sacramental pledges. You have reduced the Anand Karaj to some meaningless ritual and Guru Granth Sahib to just some holy book when it is far more than that to SIkhs who indeed treat it with respect and reverence to the point of treating him as if he were a human being (put to bed at night and raised in the morning and dressed with cloth each day). Sikhs are duty bound to protest such sacrilege and they did so peacefully sitting down and standing around – they are Sikhs and are perfectly entitled to be on Gurdwara premises carrying kirpans (being reported mischievously as bladed weapons when they are in fact ceremonial swords and daggers which as Sikhs they are mandated to carry at all times and which British law accepts for them to do as part of their religious obligation). Every single Gurdwara in the world has bladed weapons (kirpans) on public display so this is a non issue being used to sensationalise this story with people like Hundal grabbing a few headlines for his self promotion. No one forces you to be a Sikh (and Sikhs do not believe they have a monopoly on God so a Jew, Christian and Muslim have as much chance of of spiritually realising Him as a Sikh does) and there is is no punishment for leaving the Sikh religion to follow another religious faith so why do you want Sikhism’s principles and doctrinal teachings to be undermined and contravened? Sunny is not being proactive (unless of course you mean in the service of those who have an antipathy towards Sikhs and Sikhi) but maligning and misrepresenting the Sikhs whilst claiming the right to do so because he is of ‘Sikh descent’ in the same manner RSS Harinder promotes his favourite porn star Sunny Leone. To be a Sikh you have to look like one AND act like one so Sunny Hundal doesn’t qualify to speak his hate speak against Sikhs and I would point out the similarities in his self loathing outbursts with those who have deep routed psychological identity issues much like Daniel Burros who was a Jew who joined the American Nazi Party. The phenomenon of the self-hating Jew is well recognised being essentially a neurotic reaction to the impact of antisemitism by Jews accepting, expressing, and even exaggerating the basic assumptions of the anti-Semite and is equally applicable to any faith and perhaps more so when that faith is so overt in expressing its identity triggering resentment, bitterness and self loathing in those who have conflicted guilt about the religion they were born into which seems to restrict their desires.