LONDON: Two leading British Indian community figures — Tory peer Rami Ranger and Hindu Council UK managing trustee Anil Bhanot — have been dramatically stripped of their honours.
Multi-millionaire Ranger has been stripped of his CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by the King, and Bhanot, a practising accountant who runs a community arts centre in Leicester, has been stripped of his OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). The announcement came in the “London Gazette” on Friday.
They will be asked to return their insignia to Buckingham Palace and can no longer make any reference to their having an honour. The forfeiture committee considers cases put to it when the holder of an honour may be deemed to have brought the honours system into disrepute.
The committee’s recommendations for forfeiture were submitted through UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to the King.
Ranger and Bhanot denounced the move as an attack on free speech. Bhanot, who got his OBE for community cohesion, told TOI he was contacted by the forfeiture committee in January and did his representations. “I thought it would be alright, but apparently not,” he said. He said the complaint, accusing him of Islamophobia, was about tweets he had written about violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in 2021. The website “5 Pillars” had complained about these tweets to the Institute of Chartered Accountants and to the Charity Commission and both of them cleared him on free speech grounds. He does not know who complained to the forfeiture committee and denies he said anything Islamophobic.
“At the time our temples were being destroyed and Hindus were being attacked and killed. The BBC wasn’t covering it and I felt empathy for those poor people. I felt someone had to say something. It was similar to what is happening now but on a smaller scale. I was calling for dialogue and legislative measures. I did not do anything wrong and I have not put the honours system into disrepute. Free speech is a thing of the past now in England. I am quite upset about it. Because it’s an honour, it’s political,” he said. “I don’t think they looked at my representations at all.”
Ranger was conferred his CBE for services to British business and community service in 2016. “I don’t care about the CBE but I feel freedom of speech has been undermined and they are rewarding the wrong people, making them more powerful than upstanding citizens,” he said, saying he plans to have a judicial review of the decision and take it to the European court of human rights. The complaints against him include one by Sikhs for Justice, a US-based organisation which is banned in India. One was about comments he made defending PM Modi and challenging the BBC documentary, “India: The Modi Question”. Another complaint was about a tweet he made regarding a Southall gurdwara trustee.
A spokesperson for Lord Ranger said: “Lord Ranger has not committed any crime nor has he broken any law. It is a sad indictment that the honours system, which is designed to empower individuals who go the extra mile and as a result contribute a great deal to the nation, should be used to curtail the basic fundamental rights of free speech. Lord Ranger was a worthy recipient of his CBE. The manner in which it has been taken from him is shameful.”