I’m not a Sikh. Obviously. But, if I was to follow a religion that appears to actually be about peace, then I could do no better than to follow the underlying religion of the three or four people that make up the entire force of operators of Sangat TV, channel 847 on Sky.
This little known, mainly voluntarily, based Sikh TV channel that’s run on a shoestring came into its own when it decided to report on the recent riots when they migrated to the streets of Birmingham where the channel is based.
They packed their equipment, including one microphone and one hand-held camera, up onto a people carrier and drove directly into where the troubles were and just kept broadcasting live, showing us raw and uncut uncensored footage of what exactly was happening.
With them was the absolutely captivating presenter Upinder Randhawa (left in the picture), constantly providing an extremely passionate running commentary, in English.
“We Love this country, it has given us so much, I will die for this country,” says Upinder as he reinforces the messages of peace and tries to implore people to stay at home and look out for each other. He tells us how good it is that the police are here to protect us and how we should be thankful and let them do their job, and you can see the sorrow in his eyes as he reports on the small businesses and shops that have been pointlessly burned out or ransacked.
Throughout his running commentary he is able to reinforce the Sikh message of peace and of being one community together. Absolutely fantastic, almost tear jerking words that were calling for harmony and asking for no revenge action and such passionate content that has long been missing from conventional mainstream media broadcasters.
For the duration, Sangat TV, which has a more usual format of extensively religious pre-recorded programming, became compulsive viewing. I was watching one night and the broadcast car stopped and gave a lift to a couple of police who were exhausted trying to chase some rioters. The Sangat TV broadcast car then sped after the criminals, dropping the police off in time to arrest them, all live on the air. Unbelievably fantastic television and a true sense of community spirit. It even got a mention in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister.
These guys should definitely get some kind of accolade at the next TV-up-your-own-arse-awards for producing outstanding and compulsive television, and Upinder and the rest of his crew deserve a public acknowledgement of their bravery for what they were able to do and the message he was trying to put across.
Certainly, the rallying and haunting words of Upinder and the others correctly and truthfully promoted the core values of the Sikh religion, and for this I hope Sangat TV will be truly rewarded by its community and followers with many more donations and contributions to ensure its longevity.
Meanwhile, mainstream media should be embarrassed at most of its old fashioned monotone coverage and reporting of the riots, and learn something too, for this is how to do it!
Short video-clips of Sangat TV’s live and raw output during the riots can be found via http://sangattelevision.org/videos.html which also includes a link to their Youtube channel. Some of their output was also uploaded by others to Youtube, so searching for ‘Sangat TV’ will give you access to even more output than provided by Sangat TV themselves. I highly recommend spending time viewing it.
England's England 
I'm in total agreement with you on this one Chris. You rarely hear of UK Sikhs generally because they just get on with life. My eldest daughter did a school project on them earlier this year and I learnt a bit more on them.
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