London, June 24
Britain has abandoned plans to raise an exclusive regiment of British Sikhs on the ground that it would be seen as a move encouraging racial segregation, a media report said on Sunday.
Despite the British infantry being short of 3,000 soldiers, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) rejected the idea after discussions with Britain's Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which argued that creating a Sikh regiment would be divisive and amounted to segregation.
"We would not support any policy that seeks to isolate specific groups in the armed forces or wider society," a CRE spokesperson was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
“The creation of a separate regiment according to ethnicity would be segregation, which amounts to discrimination under the Race Relations Act. Anything that creates separation between regiments can only have a detrimental effect upon our Armed Forces' operational effectiveness,” the spokesperson added.
Ironically, last year, the armed forces were ordered to meet tough targets to recruit more men and women from ethnic minorities.
The decision on Saturday was criticised by politicians, members of the Sikh community and soldiers, who claimed that the army had fallen victim to political correctness.
— IANS
