To recognise the contributions of Sikhs who fought in World Wars for the UK, a bronze statue of a Sikh soldier was unveiled at the Victoria Park, Leicester, the city that witnessed communal clashes in August this year.
The bronze figure on a granite plinth went on display in Victoria Park on Sunday, the BBC reported.
Sikhs from India played a key role in the British army during the two World Wars. They accounted for less than 2 per cent of India’s population during the Great War, but made up almost 20 per cent of the British Indian Army at the outbreak of hostilities.
It is part of the Centenary Walk which leads to the Arch of Remembrance and many other memorials already set within the grounds.
“We are so proud to be unveiling this memorial to honour the sacrifice of all those brave men who travelled thousands of miles to fight for a country that wasn’t their own,” Ajmer Singh Basra, President of the War Memorial Committee, told Leicester Times.
“The statue will also serve as a reminder for Sikhs who have made Leicester their home since the 1950’s,” Basra added.
The idea of the statue, which was envisaged by late Councillor Culdipp Singh Bhatti MBE and designed by artist Taranjit Singh, took shape with the help of the Sikh Troops Memorial Committee.
It has been funded by donations from Sikh congregations, the wider public and city council community ward funding.
The Sikh community takes part in the annual remembrance commemorations at Victoria Park in November each year.
Recently, records of 320,000 troops from Punjab (undivided) who fought in the first World War were disclosed by UK-based historians to offer new insight into the contribution of Indian soldiers to the allied war effort. They were lying in a basement in Lahore for 97 years.
In the 1951 Census, just 624 people with South Asian heritage were recorded as living in Leicester. Now, 70 years on, the city has one of the highest proportions of British South Asians.
Leicester has long been heralded as a socially cohesive unit with a sizeable number of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus from India and Pakistan living harmoniously alongside each other.
The recent clashes, following an India-Pakistan cricket match in August, came as a shock to many and upset the multicultural apple cart.
