Sewa Singh Mandla

Birmingham

1952–5, 1974–2017

Sewa Singh Mandla was born in Nairobi, Kenya in the 1920s to parents Sardar Mool Singh and Harnam Kaur, who had migrated to East Africa along with many other Indian communities in the post-war period. They recognize their ancestral home as Gurdaspur in Punjab. As an orthodox Amritdhari Sikh family, the Mandlas spent a lot of time at their local gurdwara in Kenya. Sewa Singh Mandla was educated in Nairobi, with ambitions to conduct further study in the UK, and he took the necessary examinations to seek entry, although owing to a lack of funds he pursued teaching for a number of years after he left school. He then began to tutor himself in law, with a view to studying and examining in London to become a barrister, which he did in 1955. He returned to Nairobi, set up a successful legal firm and was married to Mohinder Kaur. They had three children.

The Mandla family started to migrate to the UK in the 1970s, with Sewa Singh Mandla leaving in 1974. He initially lived in London while he was retraining to be a solicitor, and then established his new premises at Handsworth in Birmingham in 1978, soon entering the Birmingham Magistrate’s Court as its first non-white solicitor. His most enduring legacy was his legal battle on behalf of his son Gurinder Singh, which ultimately led to anti-discrimination measures for Sikhs and other religious groups in the UK. When Gurinder was refused admission to Park Grove School in Harborne because he refused to remove his turban, cut his hair and wear a school cap, Mandla made a claim against the school to the Commission for Racial Equality. He did so on the grounds of racial discrimination and the case was then taken to court under the Race Relations Act (1976).  For Sikhs, adhering to Khalsa tradition means, for example, that men should maintain long hair and wear a turban, so Mandla saw his son’s rejection as an act of discrimination against the Sikh diaspora. The legal proceedings began at the county court level in 1978 and ended several years later in 1984 after appeal processes when it reached the House of Lords. The case was disputed on the grounds that Sikhs were supposedly not a ‘racial’ or ‘ethnic’ group in order to qualify as a protected group in the Race Relations Act.

With the support of his gurdwara, the Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha in Handsworth, the case gained national attention, through widespread petitioning and protests. The case concluded with the House of Lords ruling that the school’s decision was indeed discriminatory, encouraging the Sikh community itself and other groups to fight racial inequality in the UK and globally. Mandla passed away aged 90 in 2017, having been awarded an OBE shortly before.