Tony Blair Faith Foundation

Being asked to speak at Birmingham’s Holocaust Memorial Day 2012 event at the Town Hall, on behalf of the Sikh community was an honour and privilege. I spent a few minutes reflecting on the experience of the Sikh widow following the mass atrocities that hit Delhi and other parts of India in 1984. Sharing a testimonial that I collected during my research in June this year where I spent some weeks with the brave women and children on Tilak Vihar, a resettlement colony commonly known as the ‘Widow Colony’.

The theme for Holocaust Memorial Day this year asks us all to Speak Up, and Speak Out to create a safer, better future. It asks us to reflect about the rights, responsibility, and duty we all have to speak up when faced with things we believe to be wrong. It challenges us to learn about the consequences of not speaking, and the force for good we can be when we act and speak out.

As I prepared for my presentation, I reflected on the memory of those brutally murdered at the hands of those they were supposed to trust. I believe we must use the memory of those whose voices were silenced to continue to inspire us to Speak Out today.

As a Faiths Act Fellow of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation I feel very lucky to be part of a forward thinking organisation that is putting a priority towards protecting the rights of minority communities, helping those silenced voices to speak out, feel safe and create a better future for our children.

Speaking recently in Milan, Tony Blair explained:

“The honouring of religious minority rights and a healthy religious pluralism is a core aspect of democracy and it is a core dimension of the open-minded. Democracy has a checklist of government accountability, the electoral possibility of getting rid of a government because a majority of voters are opposed to its policies, respect for citizen’s rights. A state needs to fulfill them to claim that it is democratic. Political pluralism and religious pluralism, it seems to me, go together … the minds behind the use of religion to justify violence or prejudice are the closed minds. They regard those who do not believe as they do, as infidels, outcasts, even those within their own faith that differ from them. Against this closed minded attitude has to be placed an idea of faith that is open to others: I have my faith, I keep my faith; but I am prepared to respect that you have yours and have an equal right to practice it and believe in it. That is the only way the world can work and democracy take root. Without this attitude of mind, religion becomes a source of conflict. As globalisation shrinks the world and pushes it together, those of different faiths perforce live side by side; and whether they jostle each other, in friction and tension with each other, or get along and learn from each other, determines world peace.”

Working as part of the Faiths Act fellowship promoting interfaith understanding and cooperation on the ground, I am working at promoting a better future for our world- a world in which genocides and atrocities are not able to take place, a place where my faith community and others, can live without fear of their lives and rights.

Our voices are powerful, whether we stand on our own or in a crowd. We each have a duty and responsibility to use our voices for the common good, irrespective of age or background. By taking inspiration from those who have risked their lives to speak up and used their voices in the past, we can build safer communities today.

Today, and everyday why not use your voice to take a step forward to a brighter future. What better place thank to pledge this:

Holocaust Memorial Day Pledge

Faiths Act Declaration

Immy Kaur, Faiths Act Fellow