Grinding Swords

Reformers, Restorers and all points right, 10 years ago you truly hated Eastern Europeans. Yet Henry Nowak had the most common surname in Poland, while his very Slavic-looking father had a slight but unmistakable hint of the non-native English speaker. And juries were absolutely sacrosanct to you, as they should be, until two of them were unable to convict Mohammed Fahir Amaaz of actual bodily harm, or Muhammad Amaad of anything at all. But now juries are just grand again, because one of them has convicted Vickrum Digwa and his mother, Kiran Kaur. If two juries drawn from the 80 per cent white City of Liverpool could not convict two Muslims of Pakistani descent, although the first one had convicted one of them of three other assaults, then the system was redeemed when two Sikhs were convicted by a jury drawn from the 80 per cent white City of Southampton.

Digwa was convicted both of murder, and of possession of a bladed article in a public place. The jury rejected his claim to have been acting in self-defence, and it equally rejected his claim that the bladed article had been a kirpan, not least because he had at the time been wearing a real one. He had already been barred from the gurdwara, Kaur will be sentenced on 17 July for having hidden the murder weapon, Digwa's brother Gurpreet participated in the original lie, and the behaviour of the family at yesterday's sentencing hearing caused 14 Police Officers to be summoned to the court. All communities have families like that.

People grieve in their own ways, of course, but when you already have a conviction for murder, then is it really worth a civil action for wrongful death at all, never mind if that involved getting mixed up with Elon Musk? The party that Musk has the insolence to support in Britain now wants to ban the kirpan, although, while I am open to correction, I have not been able to find a single case of its use as an offensive weapon since its exemption under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, 38 years ago and counting. As soon as it were used as such, then that exemption would cease to apply in that specific case. But unless you can show me otherwise, then that has never happened on these shores. Musk, Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain might also consider that there were no stronger opponents of halal meat than the Sikhs, and that the original kirpan was a real sword used defensively against Mughal persecution. In wearing the kirpan today, a Sikh still declares such readiness, willingness and ability in principle, all else having failed. Think on.

And think on that Digwa claimed to be a member of the Akali-Nihang warrior order within Sikhism. With its obvious attraction to Digwa's type of weapons-obsessed young man such as might accrue to Active Clubs and the like, many members of that order reject the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee's 2001 ban on shaheedi degh, their traditional drink to aid meditation and, interestingly, to make them fiercer in battle. Interestingly, because its base is cannabis.