So a Sikh shop owner puts the flag of St George outside his shop. I will ignore the crass desecration of the wording across the middle. However, this didn’t go down well.
Business owner Gagan, 31, received the anonymous letter last week claiming that as an Indian business owner, the firm should not show support for England during the World Cup.
The manager of GMS Heating & Plumbing was accused of forgetting his motherland and his skin colour in the poisonous pen letter.
Can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. Merely that it wasn’t a twitter mob.
Littered with spelling mistakes and bad grammar, the letter said: ‘You have put [the] wrong flag outside your shop when you have come from Indian.
‘Have you forgot your skin colour?’
It went on to say: ‘You should put the Pakistan flag outside your shop not British.
‘If National Front skinheads saw this flag outside they will kick you back to India without your trousers on.’
Right. He’s a Sikh, mind, so likely as not is of Indian heritage rather than Pakistani. Still, that’s an irrelevance. How did he respond to the letter?
The defiant business owner said his father immediately went out to purchase four more flags after opening the letter, which was posted anonymously.
Although the letter addressed him as uncle, possibly indicating the writer was Indian, Gagan didn’t want to speculate on who penned the note.
He said: ‘We’re just trying to have some fun and people want to ruin it by saying it shouldn’t be done. It should be done.’
Now that is how you respond to the offenderati. Well done that man. Well done indeed. You give the bastards a two finger salute and rub it in by doubling your efforts. This is a good news story. Never explain, never justify and never, never apologise. More please.
Well done Gagan for his robust response to a cowardly and racist attempt to intimidate him…
The man is a shining example; but then there has not been a lot of demanding aggrieved victimhood by Sikhs, has there?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard them mentioned in these contexts, so probably not. I think if ever there was a group who knew how to integrate into their host society, it would be the Sikhs.
Beilliant way of telling the racists (for that is what they are) to “Fur cough”.
Well done Mr Gagan for knowing appeasement is self-defeating in business – if only May was as prescient. If I were in London you would be on our supplier list
http://www.londonplumbingilford.co.uk/
OT
Link: Greg T
BTW, have you come across Tropeolum tuberosum?
Grows madly – mine is now up to 6ft off the ground & still going strong.
I’ll fins out this winter if the tubers really are dible, or not!
August 27, 2017 17:33
@Greg T
Were they edible? Tasty? Taste description?
Cheers
Got to respect them, the Sikh’s. They fought for exemption from the crash helmet law – and won. At the time the authorities grudgingly conceded their turban offered as good protection as a crash hat (though I wouldn’t like to test that assertion).
And there’s one who’s exempt from wearing the hide of a dead bear on his head.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/330553/sikh-soldier-becomes-first-to-guard-queen-in-turban/
But the thing Gagan’s critic should note, they are required to carry their Kirpan at all times. Usually the blade is less than 3 inches, so legal for all of us. But that need not be so, they can be any length the wearer chooses.
I absolutely guarantee that in the right hands, a 3″ blade can inflict life changing injuries, or worse.
Travelling back on a late train from a meeting in London, I was going through some of the papers. A lady of Indo/Pakistani appearance was sitting at the opposite side of the table. She asked me sympathetically if I was revising for exams. I said I was a little old for that but she was full off relief because she had just qualified as an anaesthetist that day.
We talked of this and that, the state of the country and her career plans. She told me that her parents, who had worked hard to make a success of their lives here, were keen for her to emigrate” because of the Muslim problem”. She got off at Leicester. I had not asked her but her manner, bearing and frankness were so similar to those of the girls in the Sikh family who ran our nearest corner shop that I had little doubt that she was too.
Er, doesn’t this make the letter “racist”
. . .just sayin’
Yes, of course it does, but only white people are racist. Do try to keep up at the back there.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I posted up in support of this gentlemen and his dad too. If you don’t stand up to offended idiots, they win.
Precisely.