Campaigner who fought for Sikh rights to wear turban at work
A PROMINENT Midland community leader who successfully campaigned for a change in the law to allow Sikhs to wear a turban at work and school has died at the age of 90.
Sewa Singh Mandla’s high-profile battle against civic authorities in the 1970s led to landmark legislation recognising Sikhs as a distant ethnic and racial group.
A retired lawyer, Mr Mandla was a long-serving volunteer at the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha sikh temple in Handsworth, Birmingham, and was awarded an OBE last year.
It was presented to him by the Queen during her 90th birthday honours list in recognition of his 50 years legal, human rights and community voluntary service in West Midlands.
Mr Mandla was born in Kenya in January 1927 and moved to Birmingham in 1955 to practise law, becoming one of the first non-white solicitors to work at Birmingham magistrates court.
The grandfather-of-six hit the national headlines in 1978 when he complained that a local private school had discriminated against his son Gurinder by not allowing him to wear a turban in class.
A House of Lords panel later agreed saying: “We find it impossible to believe that Parliament intended to exclude the Sikhs from the benefit of the Race Relations Act and to allow discrimination to be practised against the Sikhs.
“We agree with the noble and learned friend that Gurinder Singh cannot comply with the school rules without becoming a victim of discrimination.
“The discrimination cannot be justified by a genuine belief that the school would provide a better system of education if it were allowed to discriminate.”
Winning legal recognition as a distinct ethnic and racial group paved the way for Sikhs in the UK to become exempt from wearing crash helmets and hard-hats on construction sites and to freely wear turbans in the workplace and schools.
Tributes poured in on social media describing Mr Mandla as a “pioneering campaigner” and “selfless servant of the community.”
A spokesman for the Sikh Network said: “Mr Mandla’s passing will be lamented – he distinguished himself as an equal rights pioneer.
“The Sikh community is indebted to his tenacious fight against the shim of a school and the courts upheld our right to freely wear turbans. Mr Mandla will be remembered as a man of principle and a role model to all of civic society.”