Two British Indians were on Friday stripped of their honours conferred by the monarch in the United Kingdom for significant contributions to the nation.
While the Central Chancery of the Order of Knighthood, which administers state honours, did not detail the reasons for the forfeiture, media reports claimed that the action was taken for their comments about Khalistan separatists and Islam, among other reasons.
According to a statement by the committee, the appointments of Raminder Singh Ranger, a Conservative Party member in the House of Lords, and Anil Kumar Bhanot, a managing trustee of the religious group Hindu Council United Kingdom, were “cancelled and annulled”.
King Charles III directed that their names, along with four others, be “erased” from the register, the committee said.
Ranger was appointed a Commander of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2015 for his role in the business landscape and his contribution towards the British-Asian community. Bhanot was conferred as an Officer of the Civil Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2019 for his contribution to the Hindu community and religious harmony.
According to The Guardian, the honour given to Ranger was cancelled for allegedly ill-treating a freelance journalist named Poonam Joshi, as well as comments he has previously made about both the Pakistani and Sikh communities.
Following an event at the House of Lords in 2023, Ranger had called Joshi a “presstitute” several times on social media, The Indian Express reported. He also falsely claimed on the social media platform X that she had accused her husband, a BBC presenter, of domestic abuse.
Ranger, in an official statement, said that he lost his honour “for standing up against Khalistanis who wish to break up India”.
He added that the title was also taken away for his stance on “the BBC for producing a two-part documentary with the help of anti-Prime Minister Modi guests to imply that the PM was involved in the Gujarat riots some 20 years after the riots and for which PM Modi was exonerated by the highest court in India”.
On January 17, 2023, the BBC released the first episode of the two-part documentary India: The Modi Question. A few days later, the Centre had directed YouTube and Twitter to remove links to the documentary from its platform.
The documentary showed that a team sent by the British government to inquire into the 2002 Gujarat riots had found that Modi, who was then the state’s chief minister, was “directly responsible for a climate of impunity” that led to the violence. Official records show that 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed in the riots.
The documentary also featured a former senior diplomat, one of the investigators sent by the United Kingdom government, who said that the violence had been planned by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
On his part, Bhanot said that he was stripped of his title after the committee accused him of “Islamophobia” for his posts on social media about the violence against Hindus in Bangladesh in 2021, The Times of India reported.
“At the time, our temples were being destroyed and Hindus were being attacked and killed,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I was calling for dialogue and legislative measures.”
He claimed that “free speech was a thing of the past” in the United Kingdom.
In 2022, Bhanot stepped down from his position as the director and trustee of the Hindu Council United Kingdom after a series of posts calling Islam “evil” and “an invasion into minds”, as per reports.
The council was founded for the purpose of “giving the UK Hindus an effective voice on policy matters with the Government of the day whilst enhancing mutual understanding among the major faiths predominant in the UK.”
The recommendations for forfeiture to the Central Chancery of the Order of Knighthood were submitted by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, according to The Times of India.
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