Sangat Television is TV channel, and is a Project of, and wholly owned by Sangat Trust, a Registered UK charity. The station commenced broadcasting on 1 September 2010, as part of a two-week test phase.

Description

Sangat TV is owned by Sangat Trust, a UK Registered Charity backed by

gurdwara A gurdwara (sometimes written as gurudwara) (Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ''guradu'ārā'', meaning "Door to the Guru") is a place of assembly and worship for Sikhs. Sikhs also refer to gurdwaras as ''Gurdwara Sahib''. People from all faiths ...

s from the UK and from other individuals. The channel is an open platform for the Sikhs sangat to express their views independently. Programming includes educational material on the

Sikh gurus The Sikh gurus ( Punjabi: ਸਿੱਖ ਗੁਰੂ) are the spiritual masters of Sikhism, who established this religion over the course of about two and a half centuries, beginning in 1469. The year 1469 marks the birth of Guru Nanak, the found ...

and

Guru Granth Sahib The Guru Granth Sahib ( pa, ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ) is the central holy religious scripture of Sikhism, regarded by Sikhs as the final, sovereign and Guru Maneyo Granth, eternal Guru following the lineage of the Sikh gur ...

. The channel is now broadcast on Sky channel 769.

West Midlands riots

Sangat TV came into prominence during the West Midlands riots of August 2011. The presenter Upinder Randhawa notably broadcast live from the streets of Birmingham from the first day of rioting in the area, Monday 8 August 2011, to provide accurate, live information and broadcasts. Coverage was extended to the surrounding areas such as West Bromwich and Wolverhampton the following night. The channel's coverage was used by

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

, ITN and

Sky News Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel and organisation. Sky News is distributed via an English-language radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of Comcast. John Ryley is the hea ...

as well as international stations such as

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

Fox News The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...

and

NDTV 24x7 NDTV 24x7 is a 24-hour English-language television news channel based in New Delhi, India.Louis Brawley ''Remote Control: Indian Television in the New Millennium'' Penguin UK (2012) History Until about the end of the 1980s, like most of the w ...

to show what was happening in the area. This coverage included sequences of guerrilla journalism, most notably footage of the reporting team transporting a police officer in their vehicle in pursuit of looters while live on air. The popularity of the coverage led to Sangat TV presenter Upinder Randhawa's

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

following jumping from 600 users to about 4,000 users in one night, as well as having over 4,000 followers to a fan page on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

called "Upinder Randhawa from Sangat TV is a Legend".

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

David Cameron David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...

hailed Sangat TV's contribution as "an example of a media company's commitment to social responsibility". On 10 August 2011,

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

said it had received one complaint about the previous night's coverage of the riots, in relation to alleged incitement to violence over comments urging people to get out on the streets and protect their property.

Management issues

In August 2016, word went round that Sangat TV would be moving its base from

Edgbaston, Birmingham Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre. In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family an ...

Southall, London Southall () is a large suburban county of West London, England, part of the London Borough of Ealing and is one of its seven major towns. It is situated west of Charing Cross and had a population of 69,857 as of 2011. It is generally divided ...

in a bid to get better content and volunteers to run the channel.

Ofcom / broadcasting issues

Sangat TV was fined £30,000 over a debate in which guests supported an assassination attempt on a former Indian Army general,

Kuldip Singh Brar Lieutenant General Kuldip Singh Brar, PVSM, AVSM, VrC (born 1934) is a retired Indian Army officer, who was involved in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. As a major general, he commanded Operation Blue Star. Early days K S Brar was born in 1934 i ...

, who led the army attack on

Akal Takht The Akal Takht ("Throne of the Timeless One") is one of five takhts (seats of power) of the Sikhs. It is located in the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) complex in Amritsar, Punjab, India. The Akal Takht (originally called Akal Bunga) was built by ...

Operation Blue Star Operation Blue Star was the codename of a military operation which was carried out by Indian security forces between 1 and 10 June 1984 in order to remove Damdami Taksal leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the buildings of ...

in June 1984. In 2015, the

Broadcasting Broadcasting is the distribution (business), distribution of sound, audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio ...

Code was broken when Sangat TV continuously aired a song hailing 'Sukha Jinda', two criminals who had robbed a bank, with justification that it was an advert from Dharam Seva Records. The complainant considered that the video glorified the actions of two Sikh nationalists

Harjinder Singh Jinda Harjinder Singh Jinda (3 April 1961 – 9 October 1992) was a member of the Sikh separatist group Khalistan Commando Force and one of the two assassins of Arun Vaidya (the Chief of Indian army at the time of Operation Blue Star and architect of ...

and Sukhdev Singh Sukha ("Jinda" and "Sukha" respectively). These men, who were members of the

Khalistan Commando Force The Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) is a militant Khalistani organisation operating in the state of Punjab with prominent members based in Canada, the United Kingdom and Pakistan. Its objective is the creation of a Sikh independent state of Khali ...

, were hanged in 1992 for the assassination of General Arun Shridhar Vadiya, the Chief of the

Indian Army The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...

responsible for

Operation Bluestar Operation Blue Star was the codename of a military operation which was carried out by Indian security forces between 1 and 10 June 1984 in order to remove Damdami Taksal leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers from the buildings ...

in 1984. They were also found responsible for the murder of two Indian politicians. Ofcom upheld a complaint made by Dr Parvinder Singh Garcha. The programme, which aired in September 2014 included a live debate in advance of an election for a new committee to run the

Gurdwara A gurdwara (sometimes written as gurudwara) (Gurmukhi: ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ''guradu'ārā'', meaning "Door to the Guru") is a place of assembly and worship for Sikhs. Sikhs also refer to gurdwaras as ''Gurdwara Sahib''. People from all faiths ...

Sri Guru Singh Sabha in Southall, West London. At the end of the debate two videos were shown. The second video also included the claim that money had been stolen from a donation box in the Gurdwara during a period when the Baaj Group was in control. Ofcom noted that the decision to include the second video was made by the presenter during the course of the programme and that Dr Garcha said that he had left the studio before at the end of the debate (i.e. before the video in question was shown). However, in Ofcom's view, it is reasonable to expect that before making such a decision, a broadcaster would be familiar with the content of any material it planned to broadcast. Ofcom considered that the Baaj Group was treated unfairly in this respect in the programme as broadcast.

References

* https://www.facebook.com/DalKhalsaUK/posts/10154257993311721 * https://www.sikh24.com/2016/01/26/uk-sikh-channel-sangat-tv-falls-foul-of-ofcom/#.WQXHVty1uUk * https://www.bizasialive.com/ofcom-upholds-complaint-of-guest-on-sangat-tv/ * https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/61386/regis1limited.pdf

External links

Official website

Sangat Trust website
{{Sikhism Broadcasting in Birmingham, West Midlands Religious television channels in the United Kingdom Sikh mass media Television channels and stations established in 2010 Sikhism in the United Kingdom