An Insider
Update: Check out Amardeep Singh’s No False Medicine for as he puts it ‘insider updates.’ Amardeep is a Sikh himself, and not best pleased about all this. This post includes part of an email from a Sikh friend in Birmingham:
I am in Birmingham and have been talking to people who were at the protests on Saturday and I can tell you that the Khalistanis in Britain have scented blood and are not going to step down. They have been inciting people in Gurdwaras and on websites and Punjabi radio stations to come to Birmingham from all four corners of Britain to “protest” outside the theatre. It is the raising of a lynch mob, people are talking about thousands being there, and I can tell you, they have got it in their minds that this is their own personal struggle against the enemies of Sikhism, that they are facing down Aurengzeb, and making the last stand to protect the dharma and the Sikh roop. Having spoken to many of the youth who attended the protest a sense of exhiliration came through that they have the eyes of the world on them, and I asked them specific points about what they would be prepared to do. People said repeatedly that they would not mind if Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was killed or at least hospitalised because of this, and when I asked them that if they play was not stopped, would you be prepared to burn the theatre down to the ground and they said yes. This has been headline national news on every television and radio station in Britain. Needless to say, it has made Sikhs look like fascists and taliban like in their outlook, a disastrous result for a community that has been previously thought of as hardworking, industrious and creative.
Lynch mobs are so, so, so easily raised. Ironically, of course, that thought is exactly the thought behind the religious hatred law – and surely the lawmakers are not wrong to think that. But the proposed cure seems so likely to do more to encourage ever more lynch mobs than it does to calm them down…
Further updates. Harry’s Place has a good comment on the subject here. Insert Joke Here has one here. And Amardeep has this link to the complaints about Behzti and one to an interesting editorial from Asians in Media.
Just what we needed. Who will follow next?
Is the sudden “awakening” of these Sikh mobs (sic) factually inspired by this law, or is it just one of their arguments of opportunity? I would be tempted to think that the larger public debate made them reconsider their own position. After all, it has this effect on all of us.
Good question. Let’s hope Amardeep gets some more emails from his friend in Birmingham, and shares them with the world.
It’s got nothing to do with the (proposed, probably dead in the water) law.
As you suggest, it is opportunism on the part of the Sikh leadership in Birmingham. The play went up last week — with its sensationalist marketing (the poster practically screams “dirty laundry”), it was an obvious target.
And the kinds of people who are involved with this are congratulating themselves right now. They’re not hearing the criticism — they’re seeing their faces on TV and thinking, “Wow, we won.”
Ah, thanks, Amardeep. Drat…that’s terrible about your friend. How horrible for him, how depressing and frustrating.
Actually lynch mobs can be very hard to raise. Take the ones after the Port Arthur Massacre and Dunblane; the gun control people attracted tiny demonstrations, though you wouldn’t know it from TV.
Some lynch mobs are a ‘constructed reality’ ;-)
I’d note that the proposed incitement to religious hatred law would, perhaps ironically, have protected this play – apostate Sikhs are very clearly a group identified by their religious beliefs. And Amardeep’s friend too, if the nature of his novel’s offensiveness to Sikhs is one that can be classed as religious.
Yeah, mobs are easier to construct than to raise.
“I’d note that the proposed incitement to religious hatred law would, perhaps ironically, have protected this play.”
Its a stupid law, and should not be passed. However, I do draw some comfort from the fact that it is religious people who are far more likely to fall foul of it than secular types. Many seculists are merely contemputuous of religous beleifs. It generally takes another religous person to express outright hatred towards someonelse on account of their religon (or lack thereof).
OB makes an interesting point. Riotous assembly has been illegal for centuries – we don’t need new laws, we need to enforce the old ones.
But I can see a problem here. I don’t know how many police cells Birmingham has, but there can’t be *that* many. Assuming that the theatre had carried on, and that the police had protected the theatre, and that disturbances had continued. Where do you put hundreds of people, after you’ve arrested them? What happens to the rest of Birmingham when you’ve got every police officer in the county either protecting the theatre or processing the arrested people?
I think that the theatre should have attempted to keep going, but I can’t blame them – much – for stopping.
No, I don’t blame the theatre at all. My question is simply what actual, real world, physical difference the religious hatred law would have made. The mob action was already illegal, so how would the play or playwright have been what dsquared calls ‘protected’ by the new law, any more than it already was?
I can see where the law would make a difference at the punishment phase. A six month sentence could be doubled, or whatever. But what earthly difference would it have made, would it make, will it make, in the preventive phase? What does ‘protected’ mean in such a context? Not much, I would say. It just sounds good, so (apparently) encourages dsqd in his ‘courageous’ attempt to point out some good in the proposed law. But this particular attempt is utterly unconvincing, at least so far.
“Under the new law, they’d risk jail for doing so, which one would imagine would stop them.”
Would one? Really? Seriously? Come on, dsquared – do you really imagine that? People (in theory) risk jail for doing a lot of things, but they do them anyway.
“In a country in which it is illegal to incite religious hatred, however, apostates are protected a lot better than they are in a country in which it isn’t, practically by definition”
I really don’t think that’s true. I don’t think it’s even close. What religious zealots want to do to apostates is not shout at them but kill them, and the obvious threat of jail doesn’t stop them. I think this law simply fosters and more deeply entrenches the belief in zealots that they have a right and a duty to enforce respect for their beliefs by whatever means necessary. I think it’s way past time for everyone to say Wo, stop, enough: your beliefs are your problem and you don’t get special ‘protections’ for them. Deal with it.
Ophelia, before I continue, are you actually interested in empirical evidence on this subject? I’ve provided you already, gratis, with a lot of detail on the UK legal system and the history of race relations, and you still keep making the same points as if I hadn’t bothered. I realise that knowing what you’re talking about isn’t necessarily an “Enlightenment value”, but before I stir myself to give a potted history of the Race Relations Acts, I’d like to know I wasn’t completely wasting my time.
You’ve already made that joke – the one about Enlightenment values and knowing what you’re talking about. I think there should be a law against repeating jokes, with the punishment tripled if the word ‘Enlightenment’ is used.
Yes, I am interested in empirical evidence on this subject. I’m not much interested in your airs of long-suffering though. And as for wasting your time, and making the same points – you say that as if someone had asked you to deliver these more or less bad-tempered and patronizing lectures. I know I didn’t! Hey, really, don’t waste your time. I can always read your comments at Harry’s Place, where you talk so much more civilly than you do here.
(I like the ‘gratis’ bit though. You were expecting to be paid for these visits?)
How disappointing, Ophelia. Surely, he did nothing graver than disagree tenaciously – you would not want your site to admit only one angle, would you? Anything, or anybody for that matter, admitting only a specific point of view is rather suspect.
JoB
Points of information:
(1) ‘Khalistanis’ refers to militantly nationalist Sikhs who are for the creation of a Sikh homeland. Think ‘Kahanists’ for an analogy. In the past, in the UK, they have been involved in agitation and sometimes violence against leftists from south Asia, notably members of the Indian Workers Association, many of whom themsleves come from a Sikh background.
(2) It’s almost impossible to measure whether or something was ‘a riot’ from the number of arrests made by police on the day, and the charges laid. You have to be there, or have a lot of information from people (not journalists … ) who were. If dsquared was there, then I’ll take him at his word. If not …
Chris, so we can’t trust the police, nor the journalists. We have to be there, or know people that were involved. Hmm, is that not mildly paranoic?
“Chris, so we can’t trust the police, nor the journalists. We have to be there, or know people that were involved. Hmm, is that not mildly paranoic?”
Probably not. The police will often understate the number of rioters/protesters because they want to look like they are maintaining order (or not look like they have lost it). Those supportive of the cause will often overstate because it looks like the cause has more supporters than in fact it does. Journalists will also often overstate because a “hundreds of rioters” is more interesting than “a mild kerfuffle involving a few people”. I think other Chris is probably being suitably skeptical rather than mildly paranoid.
Nowdays, the MO of most UK police forces when they expect serious disorder is to film it, then nick people later. So ‘3 arrests on the night’ means little as a measurement of riotness.
This assumes, of course, that West Mids were expecting it to kick off and had put lots of camera teams in place. They might not have been, in which case, three arrests will be all there is, no matter how violent it was.
Indeed, if it’s _very_ violent, then the last thing that the police will do is arrest people – this takes officers out of the front line. Snatch squads are a supplement to the line of baton-wielders, not something that can replace them.
My main point was not ‘you had to be there’, but that ‘you had to be there if you’re going to be in a credible position to use three arrests as a measure of violence.’ I don’t distrust all journalists; it’s just that I doubt that the stringers for the BP, West Mids Today and Carlton who would have been in the area would have had much experience in judging the violence levels on a demo.
I normally put in some further reading at this point, but I can’t think of anything generally available right now. Please accept that it’s like that, and that’s the way it is.
Fair enough – a huge riot it will not have been but it doesn’t make it insignificant.
Jass “If Punjabis just ignored this ridiculous play, then it would just cause a wave of similar degrading plays to be broadcasted.” No it wouldn’t, because the demand would not be there. Ignoring it would be easily the best policy. Even assuming (as it may well be) the play to be poisonous unpleasant misleading rubbish, the fact is the theatre was only a hundred seater, and the performance on a short run. Now interest has been vastly exaggerated. The market has been primed, and demand exponentially increased due to the visceral indignation of a religious grouping (what you call UK Punjabi Crew). But that is how the media works. I see a thread of cheap nasty sensationalist vulgarity running throughout our UK culture, and it probably helps to see this more as a UK-wide phenomenon, rather than an anti-religious or inter-ethnic one. I am appalled by the crass banality of much that passes for credibility in this country, e.g. reality t.v., and the mindless worship of celebrity and no-brainer materialist ambitions, the sexualising of prepubescent children and the positing of misogyny, homophobia or thuggish villainy as ‘cool’. People will produce art, t.v, plays and novels simply to shock in this economic climate because that’s how the market is structured. It doesn’t obey talent ot taste or respect. Saying all this doesn’t mean I am a: spiritual in any way, or b: wish to close down t.v., newspapers publishers, film-makers or advertisers (well, not all the time) – it’s just the way it is in the UK. At a certain level we all become victims of it, the very same time we all seem to manage to rub along together… so please let’s not allow market forces to makes us throw rocks at each other… they’ll only put us on t.v. at our worst. Respect.
“(..) know the consequences of publishing offensive material, (..) not appealing to asian audiences.”
Yikes, out go all non-Asian folk plays. I suppose that’s for the best anyway.
“The play is a completely made up Fairy tale and is not based on actual events.”
Hmm, out go all plays & movies minus the stuff Oliver Stone makes up sometimes.
‘Tis a strange way to show your, for all I know, justified indignation – violence induced taboo kinda self-defeats itself. No wonder if it’s a bad play, the only & exclusive reason for it being known is a riot. Then again, no better thing for an authoritarian element than a riot. He’ll see himself taking center-stage, & quite regardless of the subject of the riot.