UK envoy sorry for calling Golden Temple a mosque

London, April 24 

A top UK diplomat has called the Golden Temple a mosque following which he apologised for the gaffe amid protests by Sikhs.

Simon McDonald, Permanent Under-Secretary, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, referred to the Golden Temple in Amritsar as the “Golden Mosque” in a tweet on Monday.

“At the Queen’s birthday party, presented with picture of The Queen at Golden Mosque in Amritsar in 1997, a permanent memento for Deputy High Commission’s wall,” he tweeted. On realising his mistake, he apologised for the gaffe. The Foreign Office top diplomat said this morning: “I was wrong: I am sorry. I should, of course, have said the Golden Temple or, better, Sri Harmandir Sahib.”

However, Bhai Amrik Singh, the chairman of the Sikh Federation, said: “This was a major gaffe by a top civil servant and unacceptable. It demonstrates a remarkable level of ignorance from someone in his position.” “In our view, a public apology and admitting the mistake is not enough. What we need is a commitment from the UK government and senior civil servants to root out such ignorance and discrimination or we will continue to face hate, abuse and threats of violence,” he was quoted as saying by The Guardian.

The gaffe comes as Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn vowed to launch an independent inquiry into Britain’s military role in the Indian Army’s 1984 raid on the Golden Temple under his party’s government. The Labour leader promised that an investigation into the attack, which is said to have left thousands of people dead, would be in the party’s next manifesto. — PTI