British Sikh MP, Preet Kaur Gill, has been accused of undermining sexual assaults within Gurudwaras, reports The Guardian. According to the report, the allegations were levelled at her by supporters of the Labour Party. It is alleged that the British Sikh MP had sent a series of WhatsApp messages to a group trying to discredit allegations of sexual abuse within the gurdwaras.
According to the messages accessed by The Guardian, Gill asserted that those who declare Sikh temples unsafe are using “extremely harmful language” and asked them to apologise in writing to gurdwaras. One member of the group said she was “disgusted” by the remarks, calling them “unforgivable”.
“I was very surprised by her comments, as there are genuine concerns with safeguarding at UK gurdwaras,” Nav Johal, a Labour councillor who was on the group to which Gill sent the messages, told The Guardian.
“Her messages were even more surprising given Gill (a former social worker) comes from a child protection background,” Johal added.
The uproar over the WhatsApp messages erupted after Sikh Women’s Aid (SWA), a UK charity and victim support agency, surveyed 839 Sikh women in Britain and found that nearly two-thirds of them had experienced domestic abuse.
According to The Guardian, some of the respondents said that they had been abused by Sikh spiritual leaders as the report went on to warn about the lack of protection offered by gurdwaras.
The SWA had said in its report that it “has advocated for several cases where sexual abuse and misconduct were alleged to have taken place or exacerbated in Gurdwara and faith settings”.
After the publication of the report, an angry Gill posted a series of messages on the WhatsApp group, Sikhs in Labour. “Where is your Evidence guru ghars (Gurdwaras) are not safe??? This is outrageous you should apologise to the Sikh community,” she wrote in one of the messages shared by The Guardian.
“Calling guru ghars unsafe is very dangerous language. Please submit a written apology to guru ghars,” she added.
Gill also stated in one of her messages that alleged rape victims at one particular gurdwara had been in consensual relationships with their accused assailant.
UK Sikh MP calls Golden Temple lynching victim a ‘Hindu terrorist’, deletes Tweet after outrage
Notably, British Sikh MP, Preet Kaur Gill, is the same leader who had in 2021 shared a tweet in which she referred the man who was lynched to death at Golden Temple after an alleged ‘sacrilege’ attempt as a ‘Hindu Terrorist’. Her tweet angered the Hindu community not only in the UK but across the globe. Her tweet also got noticed by the Indian high commission in London.
The commission said in a statement that it is “constrained to unequivocally repudiate” the comment made by the MP before Indian security agencies could investigate and release a statement on the probe.
After the uproar, the MP deleted the tweet and replaced it with another tweet saying, “No place of worship or community should be targeted in this way. Awful scenes from Harmandir Sahib.”