Britain’s Sikh lawmakers took to the floor of the House of Commons to defend the Sikh community’s religious freedoms after a horrific murder case prompted calls from far-right groups to restrict Sikhs from carrying a sacred religious article of faith ‘Kirpan’, following recent calls for restrictions.
This was despite the Kirpan not actually being used to commit the crime - the lethal pesh-kabz Indo-Persian knife that is designed to penetrate body armour was the murder weapon. The debate followed the sentencing of Vickrum Digwa, 23, to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of stabbing to death 18-year-old student Henry Nowak.
Labour MP Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi was among the Sikh Parliamentarians who intervened during the session, directly criticising Reform UK and Restore Britain parties for what he described as “scapegoating and throwing under the bus an entire community based on the actions of one violent murderer”.
Dhesi reminded the House about the hundreds of thousands of Sikh soldiers who fought bravely alongside British forces in both World Wars “wearing their turban and their kirpan”, and called on Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to reassure the Sikh community of its right to freely and peacefully practise its faith.
“There is simply no religious justification for these actions, a sentiment that is shared universally across the Sikh community,” Dhesi said. Mahmood, addressing the Commons, acknowledged that some far-right voices had called for a ban on Sikhs carrying the kirpan, which she described as “one of the five holy items in their faith”.
She referenced the Offensive Weapons Act of 2019, which she said had “clarified and strengthened existing legal protections in relation to long kirpans”, and made clear that the government had no intention of punishing the wider Sikh community for the crime of one individual.
“We do not believe in collective punishment in this country. Instead, we stand together against an act of pure evil. We condemn those who committed this heinous crime, not all those who share their faith or their ethnicity,” the Home Secretary said. Mahmood also stressed that the murder must not be weaponised to set communities against one another, adding that the wider Sikh community “must not be condemned for an individual’s heinous crime”.
The debate has drawn widespread attention across Sikhs in Britain and beyond, with religious and community leaders uniformly condemning both the killing and the subsequent attempts by certain political groups to frame the incident as grounds for restricting a centuries-old religious practice.