Over on his personal blog Pickled Politics, Sunny Hundal and some of his shabbier friends have resorted to using my real name and accusing me of writing certain comments.
Nothing wrong with that in itself. However, Sunny Hundal has also banned me from commenting on Pickled Politics, so I am unable to speak there and defend myself.
These are the sleazy tactics Sunny Hundal has to employ to get ahead: banning his critics and then abusing them when they cannot argue back.
A coalition of teachers and education experts is calling on the BBC to abandon its flagging Asian Network and create a station geared specifically towards young children instead…
Susan Stranks, the broadcaster and Sound Start Group campaigner, said: “The Asian Network has had an eight year trial costing in excess of £56 million.
“This two year assessment will cost £3.6 million, saving money and supporting families with young children in every sector of the community, including those learning English as a foreign language.”
A poll by Ipsos MORI found that 23 per cent of people believe a children’s radio station should be the BBC’s highest priority. By comparison, 19 per cent favoured 5 Live Extra, 17 per cent R7, 16 per cent 6 Music, 9 per cent Radio 1Xtra, and 7 per cent the Asian Network.
On Monday, Channel 4 will be showing a Dispatches programme called ‘When Cousins Marry‘.
Despite the inclusion of a token white couple (who are not even first cousins) the show is primarily about sections of the Asian Muslim community who habitually engage in cousin marriage, and the illnesses this causes among their children.
Dispatches reveals the tragic consequences of first cousin marriage in Britain. Every year such marriages cause hundreds of children to be born with terrible disabilities; one third of whom are so ill that they die before they are five years old.
The practice is most common in Britain’s Pakistani community, in which more than 50% of people marry their first cousin, and in Bradford 75% of ethnic Pakistanis follow the tradition.
The documentary is also very definitely about the shady politics surrounding this issue.
…we approached 16 MPs with a significant number of British Pakistani constituents for interview – every one of them declined. We also asked 30 MPs with high populations of British Pakistanis in their constituencies to give their views in a short survey. Only one, who wanted to remain anonymous, responded telling us that anyone who tried to talk about it risked being attacked politically. Former Labour MP Ann Cryer believes it is political correctness that is preventing politicians from raising the subject. ‘It’s fear that they’ll be accused of racism or demonization’, she says, adding that she too has been lambasted for discussing it in the past.
From MixTogether’s point of view, the programme also touches on the all-important freedom to choose a marriage partner:
However, some young people told us that they sometimes face extreme pressure from their families to marry their first cousins. I met ‘Zara’ who was born and raised in the UK. When she was 16, she was pressurised into marrying her cousin from Pakistan. She says ‘I was emotionally blackmailed, my husband’s family went on a hunger strike, they said we are going to commit suicide and that it was matter of their honour because I had been engaged to my cousin for a long time.’
All of these aspects to the programme place it squarely within the remit of Sunny Hundal, who has built a career as a journalist out of commenting on political issues that impact on the Asian community. He is currently trying to re-shape the Left and promote ‘grass roots participation’ in politics, and he has recently joined the Labour party. Yet in recent times Hundal has made virtually no comment on forced marriage and related issues. This is sometimes left to his deputy Rumbold on Pickled Politics, but seems to never get Hundal’s personal seal of approval. He reserves comment on Muslim issues to areas where he can attack his political opponents.
Yet here is a TV programme with very obvious potential benefits to the Muslim community and to a lot of young Asians. It also highlights an area where freedom of speech is being restricted amongst our political representatives in Parliament. There is no doubt that Dispatches: When Cousins Marry will add credibility to the case being made by forced marriage campaigners.
The question is whether Hundal will put his personal credibility on the line and call for a response on this issue from his readers.
This blog will definitely be watching…
Update: Predictably no response whatsoever from Sunny Hundal. He has left it to Rumbold on Pickled Politics to do his usual performance, flagging big issues so that Hundal can wash his hands of them.
If the English Defence League or BNP were responsible for the same rate of hospitalisations of British Pakistani children as genetic disease, do you think Sunny Hundal would stay silent?
Hundal used the Asian card to get where he is, but now he won’t lift a finger to campaign personally on issues that affect real Asian kids.
Buzz has it that production house; Shreya Creations is planning a show for ZEE TV, which will be based on the concept of Honour killing in Haryana.
The show tentatively titled ‘Main Bulbul Tu Sayyad’ will star some big names, some of which are yet to be confirmed. According to reports, Milind Gunaji who was seen in Akshay Kumar’s latest flick ‘Khatta Meetha’ has been offered a pivotal role. The same is with Sushant Singh whose supporting roles in movies like ‘The Legend of Bhagat Singh’ have been iconic. Rohit Khurana who essayed the psychotic character of Vansh in Colors’ ‘Uttaran’ has been approached for the lead role.
TellyBuzz also reports that production house Pearl Grey is also working on a concept linked to Honour killing for Colors.
It is very encouraging to know that these dramas will be carried by Asian TV channels. As we have frequently argued on this blog, too much of the fight against ‘honour’ based violence is focussed on changing factors external to the Asian community (police, social services etc). Until the message starts to penetrate WITHIN the community there will never be real change.
These shows will help. We will keep an eye out for them in the schedules.
Blogging- if it is really supposed to matter at all- has to be about the exchange of ideas. The privilege of a blog owner is to be able to set the agenda on a blog. After that, only irrelevant spam and illegal/bigoted comments should be censored. Blocking contributors because of personal grudges or because you don’t like the alternative viewpoint being offered is not consistent with the spirit of free speech or of democracy.
Unfortunately Sunny Hundal only suffers democracy grudgingly. More balanced political bloggers see democracy as a process involving all sides, where nobody is arrogant enough to think that their point of view is exclusively correct. Sunny takes a paranoid view of politics as warfare, where anyone who disagrees with him has to be ‘destroyed‘. Hilariously, his latest post is an irony-free attempt to claim the moral high ground over a neo-con blogger who was driven by inner sadness to spew pages of partisan bile out on blogs. He cannot see that he has become what he claims to hate.
There is no reciprocal ban on Sunny Hundal at MixTogether & Friends.
Update: I’m clearly not the only one who has been banned by Hundal. I wonder if the Guardian know how much he is manipulating the available content on his blogs?
At the time of Nasim Jamil‘s death, it was reported that she dreamed of reuniting families, and had been successful in at least 5 cases.
However Mohammed Sarwar, the Muslim MP for Glasgow Central (no relation to the accused), said there was talk among the city’s Asian community that her intervention in family disputes could have made her a target.
This killing affects all of us who campaign against the izzat system, and give up our own time to clear up the mess that it leaves behind. Nasim Jamil was a kind-hearted lady trying- and succeeding- to do the right thing. She was a pioneer on Asian Radio, with the courage to face down izzat problems and try to resolve them. In doing so she showed more courage than any of the big-name Asian presenters, and paid the ultimate price.
Her memory will live on, and we will follow the trial closely.
It looks to have been even more of a flop than the London Bhangra Flashmob, with hardly anyone involved who was not one of the organisers (in the black T-shirts). The BBC Asian Network is headquartered in Birmingham’s Mailbox shopping centre, so it is hugely symbolic that the Birmingham protest was a dismal failure.
There is not one picture or video clip from last weekend’s demos- London or Birmingham- that would convince anyone of a national demand for the Asian Network. If the organisers of these events were even sincere about saving the station, they have failed and have now consigned it to its fate.
In future, if people want to go in the press and try to chat big chat like they know what it’s all about, they really need to be sure they can deliver.
As the video shows towards the end, only a handful of people came to this ‘flashmob’, and around 10 of them were the organisers. The large crowd of (mostly non-Asian) people shown dancing in the video are all from the ‘Save 6 Music’ demo that was held in the same place at the same time.
This is realistically the final curtain for the Asian Network as a national station.
If the biggest ego name in Asian media cannot gather enough support to even merit a look (or a news story) from the BBC, then it is game over.
Anyone watching that video can see beyond doubt that the VAST majority of British Asians simply do not care about the station in its current form. If they do not care, then there is no reason anyone else nationally should care either. If there was a shred of honesty among anyone on that stage, they would admit that the station needs a radical content overhaul to make it relevant to modern British Asians.
MixTogether.org’s committee and members stand ready to consult with the Asian Network on content that would win it a loyal audience among mixed couples. We proposed this to the management last year as a way of raising the audience numbers, but our idea was rejected.
Now it looks distinctly like the station is sleepwalking into irrelevance, along with Sunny Hundal.
After criticising the frivolous Bhangra Flashmob in our last post about the Asian Network losing listeners, MixTogether & Friends has learned of another well intentioned but pointless stunt being staged.
While this is a noble effort (Mr Verma models his task on Indian holy man Lotan Baba) it is pointless in terms of saving the Asian Network.
The only thing that can save the Asian Network is for it to win back over 150,000 listeners and slash its cost base. When national spending is being slashed to try and tackle the deficit, the BBC cannot possibly justify a national license for a failing radio station that nobody listens to.
Bhangra flashmobs and walking backwards do nothing to bring back listeners to the Asian Network, or to cut the station’s costs. Only better content will attract listeners.
MixTogether submitted a popular and well-supported proposal for new content to the Asian Network last year, but our ideas were rejected out of hand. We are still prepared to work with the Asian Network to develop new content if they are really serious about winning back listeners, but it doesn’t look too promising.
