From Sunny Hundal:
The National Council of Hindu Temples (UK) have now cancelled their conference after hundreds of Hindu members — and even some people from their own advisory board — criticised them for their decision to host Tommy Robinson at their annual confence.
Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) previously led the neo-Nazi group English Defence League, and now the neo-Nazi group PEGIDA UK. The only difference between the two, even by his own admission, is that the banners will say ‘Pegida’ instead of ‘EDL’.
…The NCHT got caught out, and they tried to save face by claiming they were “forced” to cancel because of “threats”. Embarrassing for them, not me.
The conference was scheduled for 14 February; Robinson was to speak on “British Multiculturalism” (“Multi Culturalism is the future but something has gone wrong, we all know what it is and unless we face the problem head on, we will all suffer together”) [1]. The story has been covered by Breitbart, from an angle sympathetic to Robinson and the NCHT:
The British Hindu Temple’s Presidents Conference 2016 has been cancelled after a sustained and aggressive campaign by far left activists who took offence at the fact that Tommy Robinson, an organiser of PEGIDA UK, had been invited to speak and engage in dialogue with the Hindu community.
The General Secretary of the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHT), Satish K Sharma, told Breitbart London that blogger and journalism lecturer Sunny Hundal had “spread nonsense on Facebook” about the event and compared some “aggressive” far left activists involved in the campaign to the far right.
Mr. Robinson claimed that the “event has been cancelled after threats instigated by Sunny Hundal”, a well know Twitter activist who has argued that, “the far-right is using ‘divide and rule’ between Sikhs and Muslims”.
However, despite the article’s dramatic lead-in, no details of the supposed threats are given, and there is no indication of any complaints having been made to the police. According to Sunny, the Southall Black Sisters organised a protest against Robinson’s involvement, but that hardly amounts to a “threat”. Unless Breitbart can provide some evidence, it appears that the site is engaging in the fashionable practice of conflating criticism with threats.
Robinson’s presence was always going to be controversial, and if Sunny hadn’t drawn attention to it someone else probably would have, with a similar outcome.
But might Robinson’s appearance at such an event also have been controversial for him?
According to an event flyer, the line-up included, among others, Shri Kalavai Venkat on “What Every Hindu Should Know about Christianity”, and Shri Satish K. Sharma on “Interfaith – an Anglican Trojan Horse?”, along with a discussion of “Anti-Hindu Caste Legislation”. Venkat has also written a book with the same title as his presentation; according to the blurb:
…Christianity originated in a psychotic milieu, Christian beliefs are self-contradictory, and theology invalidates the need to believe. It explores the provocative question of whether Jesus is a myth. It systematically argues that Christianity lacks an ethical framework, ‘Herem warfare’ is the Christian code of holy extermination, Christian beliefs and practices may cause harm to both Hindus and Christians, and concludes that Hinduism and Christianity cannot coexist. It offers a prescription on and how to engage Christianity and why mutual respect cannot be the precondition for Hindu-Christian engagement.
Does body representing Hinduism at a national level in the UK really endorse such a view?
Perhaps Venkat could have asked Robinson about the EDL’s motto, “In hoc signo vinces” – the legendary message supposedly given by God to the Roman Emperor Constantine, that he would conquer under the sign of the Cross of Christ.
Footnote
[1] On Twitter, Robinson has now stated that subject of his presentation was in fact to have been “sexual grooming of our young children”, and he claims that this was what Sunny objected to.
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