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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 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.
Sikh community leaders who were supportive of the idea pointed out that it would have been no different from the Scots, Welsh and Irish Guards or the Royal Gurkha Rifles, which recruits exclusively from Nepal and which is regarded as a model infantry regiment.
'The Sikhs have a long and distinguished heritage of serving with the British Army. I know there are many, many Sikhs who would join up and would serve wherever required. But if you want to get them in large numbers they need their own regiment, something they would take a huge amount of pride in,' Kuljit Singh Gulati, general secretary of a west London gurdwara said.
'They would regard it as very prestigious. It is a shame that it now looks as though it will never happen,' he added.
'The MoD has missed a golden opportunity in not tapping into the Sikh community's desire to form a regiment. It's nonsense to suggest this would amount to segregation and since when did the CRE dictate Britain's defence -policy?' a senior army officer was quoted in The Telegraph.
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