The community of Sikhs living in Scotland have urged local officials to consider them as an ethnic minority rather than a religious group for the upcoming 2021 census or they will take legal actions.
The Sikh Federation stated that their community has been officially recognised as an ethnic group since 1983 in the United Kingdom, a status that they say needs to be extended to the Sikh community in Scotland by local authorities.
“Public bodies in Scotland will only start to systematically collect information on Sikhs if there is a specific Sikh ethnic tick box that can be used by decision-makers when allocating resources and making decisions for the provision of public services,” a spokesman for the Sikh federation said.
Scotland’s Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop emphasised that the Sikhs were not united on the issue inside the community, as some say that being classified as a separate ethnic group is “confusing and inappropriate”.
The 2011 Census documents for the UK registered 432,000 Sikhs in the country, based on a question about religion, which was not compulsory to answer. In the same census, 0.2% of the Scottish population said they consider themselves Sikhism by religion, most of which live in Glasgow.
Figures from the Sikh Federation are significantly higher with between 700,000 to 800,000 ethnic Sikhs residing in the UK.
Scotland's Sikhs warn of further legal action over census if not classified as religious group
EPA-EFE//GERRY PENNY
Harpreet Kaur during a passing out parade at Pirbright Army Training Barracks in Surrey, UK. In 2008, Kaur became the first Sikh woman to join the British Army.
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