Labour is stirring up Sikh identity politics

It’s good news that next year’s census will not include a separate Sikh ‘ethnic’ tick box. A no brainer, you may say, because Sikhism is a religion (already recorded in the census), which like any other includes people from various ethnic groups. But don’t be fooled: this issue has been highly contentious – and Labour has only made matters worse with its meddling.

Campaigners from a group called the Sikh Federation UK (SFUK) point out that Sikhs are recognised as an ethnic group under law (a point I addressed here). However in the current pandemic, the SFUK has made noise suggesting ‘Sikh discrimination continues’ because statistics for death by religion aren’t available, whereas deaths by ethnic group are (in any case, most British Sikhs identified as Indian in the last census, for which data is readily available). The debate rages on and has occasionally been ugly. But a consequence of all this has been the emergence of a new and worrying form of Sikh identity politics.