Author: Dr Gurnam Singh U.K.
The Office for National Statistics has given its verdict on the question of a separate census category for Sikhs as an ethnic group. Based on qualitative and quantitative research the broad conclusions of the ONS are that there is considerable support for a separate sikh ethnic box amongst leaders of Gurdwaras and Sikh organisations but not amongst the younger sections.
I suspect also that this reflects a split between ‘religious’ Sikhs who may have a firm sense of identity and/or are regular attendees at Gurdwaras and ‘secular Sikhs’ who are more likely to adopt a more fluid sense of identity. The research identified considerable confusion amongst the younger Sikhs about the question of Sikhism being a faith or ethnicity. To fully answer this question, more research is clearly needed and this confusion may well be a symptom of not having an ethnicity box.
The ONS report does concede that there is a need to more accurately measure the Sikh presence in the UK in order to inform better public policy towards this group. They intend to address this by providing an option to chose Sikh ethnicity from the ‘Other’ category under the ethnicity section in the online version. They are also recommending other mechanisms to correlate the ‘religion’ data with data from the ‘other’ option in the ethnicity section.
Sikh organisations such as the Sikh Federation UK and Sikh MP Preet Gill will be disappointment about this outcome as they were confidently predicting the ethnicity box for Sikhs had been conceded by the Government. Others, such as Lord Indarjit Singh, who were arguing about the dangers of conflating a religious category of Sikh with ethnicity, would have damaging effects, will be pleased. Their argument was that such a move would create confusion amongst non Panjabi Sikhs and those who chose the Sikh other but were from non Panjab.
This issue is probably going to rumble along but Sikhs in the UK have another 10 years to work on building consensu, which means carrying the vast majority of the community with you and not relying on eco chambers. Yes there is a significant number, even perhaps over 100,000 that have expressed a desire for a separate Sikh ethnicity box, but that means 2/3 or the community are either agnostic or opposed to this and their opinions need to be changed.
Here is a link to the full report for those interested in looking at the detail.
