SIKH COMMUNITY ATTITUDE TO SAFEGUARDING!
This article is not a pleasant article to share. It brings Sikh faith schools into disrepute, but it's a reality and public outcome of a drawn out legal challenge hopefully opening the eyes of wider Sikh community.
The reported Khalsa Academies Trust scandal demonstrates complacency/breach in following statutory safeguarding procedures & subsequent covering up. It resulted in unnecessary clashes with educationalists, local authorities, Ofsted, governors, parents, @educationgovuk etc.
The cover up attempt created such a big fallout, severely damaging staff careers, ruining kids education, undue stress on parents, gaslighting of governors (such as myself) and trustees for raising concerns.
On a personal level, some of us were labelled "grasses" by the local Gurdwara committee. We were labelled "extremists", "fundamentalists" and part of a "sect" by this Trust and even subject to a Counter Extremism investigation. We were labelled troublemakers and malicious.
We were ghosted, demonised and gaslighted by some in our own community. We endured viral videos, radio shows attempting to distort and misportray us.

All we we did was raise genuine school safeguarding concerns as per our statutory school governor duties.
But the ignorance of our own community fostered the culture of cover up and complicity. So ask yourself, how easily will other people come out to highlight safeguarding concerns in Sikh spaces when they will be treated this way.
With all the recent lively discussion around lack of safeguarding in Sikh spaces, the community must also understand how systemic the cover up culture is and how it even seeps into UK Sikh faith schools, despite the illusion of process and procedures.
The whole safeguarding discussion is "philosophically flawed" in Sikh institutes from Gurdwaras to camps to schools until the cover up culture is eradicated and safeguarding is taken seriously!
The matter of certain Sikh bodies and their complicity to cover up for a Trust that they are allied with should be an even bigger concern and needs addressing.
I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel for Sikh schools who suffer from poor leadership. More than anything I hope the failure of Sikhs schools is not a conversation we have in retrospect in the coming decades.

Let's see what the future has in store. 🙏🏽

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More from @MankamalSingh

28 Jul
WE ARE NOT SEEKS!
Diaspora Sikhs need to seriously make concerted efforts to stop mispronouncing "Sikh". It is NOT meant to be pronounced as "seek". In Punjabi spheres we use the correct pronunciation. We know the translation of ਸਿੱਖ. So when did it become "seek" and why allow it
US/Canadian Sikhs have done better to ensure "Sikh" is pronounced properly within the mainstream. However, in the UK, we need to undo 100+ years of accepting an incorrect pronounciation. I take it on board that I too have been conditioned into the incorrect pronounciation.
This is not a minor thing, if from the outset we cannot hold our ground on how "Sikh" should be pronounced then what hope do we have for defending Sikh identity, values and culture. We cannot even protect the pronounciations out of fear of not fitting in.
Read 5 tweets
18 Jun
Gurdwara Sri Satranj (Chess) Sahib - Bassian village.

The site was being dug in 1933 by local villagers and a clay pot was discovered. The villagers threw away the pot thinking it was worthless. When the pot broke it revealed 32 old chess pieces with 4 pieces of paper
1/
The discovered papers in the clay pot revealed that Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji visited this place in 1705, while coming from Machhiwara.

Guru Sahib played Satranj (Chess) with Rai Kalha, the Muslim Pathan chief of Raikot, at this place, hence the name of the Gurdwara.
2/
Guru Ji went towards Siloani from here and left the chess pieces with Bhai Basso who was living here.

Unfortunately after the Gurdwara was built in the early 1930s, some chess pieces on display went missing over time, so Sangat built secure cabinet for the remaining pieces.
3/
Read 4 tweets
21 Jan
Many like Sikhi to be interpreted as an oversimplified set of popular soundbites and buzzwords for the sake of assimilation and acceptance.

We throw around well-liked words like equality, love, courage and expect it to sum up the Sikh Gurus message.
We want to project a cultural experience that's appealing to the mainstream.

We want access to the ceremonies, the infrastructure and any past glories.

We continually want to cash in the religious colletaral.

Well that's all good and well!
But Sikhi is a framework, an order, a Panth, an identity, a sovereignty.

A distinct way of life.

A history that unfolded from that way of life.

A future that takes into account that way of life.

A spiritual infrastructure that leads us back to that way of life.
Read 4 tweets
18 Jan
Sikh Organisations/Gurdwaras and Sangat in general, are completely disconnected with all the “twists and turns” regarding Multi Academy Trust (MAT) structures and how it's clenched Sikh Faith school set up in the UK. (Thread 👇)
So, philosophical foundation of these schools in UK was based on tenets of Sikhi. When presented to @educationgovuk, it was a school model encouraging citizenship through the Sarbat da Bhalla, equality, hard work etc. commonly communicated as central to the Sikh way of life.
It was with this aspiration and vision that thousands of Sikh parents signed up for, exciting concepts and visions for new Sikh schools. Some of us were heavily involved in that new wave of exhilaration and shared goals. I myself was a co-founder of a school in East London.
Read 21 tweets
15 Jan
Saddaned about the departure of Sant Baba Sant Partap Singh Ji, Mukh Sevadar and founder of the Institution Gurdwara @KaramsarUK in Ilford.

To me Baba Ji was a stalwart, a pioneer, a visionary, a figurehead and the mentor so many needed.

(Thread)
Building and sustaining an institution is a blessing and leading that seva is given to those who come with the virtuous temperament to unite Sangat and connect them to the One. And Baba Ji was blessed with that Seva which won him so much love and respect.
Cast our minds back to the early 1990s in Ilford. There was still no Gurdwara in the heart of Redbridge, a borough that was home to one of the biggest Sikh populations in the UK. There was no spiritual hub attracting Sangat in their masses yet.
Read 10 tweets
28 Nov 20
WHY ARE THE PUNJAB FARMERS PROTESTING AND WHAT'S THE IMPACT.

A brief thread that hopefully breaks down what has happened over the past few weeks, why Punjab farmers are marching in mass to Delhi and what the longer term impacts could be.
#FarmersProtest
In a nutshell Modi's government is trying to open up the agricultural sector to corporate forces as he has done with other industries resulting in exploitation of natural and Human Resources, lowering of environmental standards, displacement of people from ancestral lands etc.
This would would result in the consolidation of land into mega-farms, destroying small holders who are the backbone of Panjab it would result in a vicious monopoly and completely destroy the unique culture and character of a region and its people that is millennia old.
Read 5 tweets

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