Sikhs have complained about not being able to bring their religious daggers into Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s concert in western Sydney on Sunday night.
Paramvir Singh Bimwal, 50, was asked to take off his Sikh knife, called a kirpan, after turning up to Parramatta Stadium for the show, but he and his wife Sona decided to leave instead despite paying $200 each for tickets.
Mr Bimwal told ABC News it felt “very disrespectful and hurtful” when the dagger set off a wand detector at security and he was told to leave it in a box and collect it again after the concert, which was attended by 25,000 fans.
“It’s really disappointing to be here, and we were told right at the entrance to move aside. It feels like you’re being discriminated against,” he said.
“This is not a knife that I’ve picked up from my kitchen, and I’ve decided to break the law. It’s an article of faith.”
Two other concertgoers, Harman Singh and Manmohan Singh, were also refused entry due to their religious knives, and said it should have been made clear on their tickets that they would not be allowed to enter with their kirpans on.
“In our Sikh culture, we cannot remove it from the body. It’s not fair. Diljit is also from the Sikh community,” Manmohan said.
Randeep Singh Grewal from United Sikhs Australia said Sikhs were not allowed to remove their kirpans under any circumstances due to their deep religious significance, calling them an “article of faith … that symbolises the solemn duty to defend the weak and oppressed, uphold justice and stand for righteousness”.
NSW Police confirmed they spoke with a male patron who declined to cloak a kirpan, while Venues NSW said it offered a “secure, respectful and free cloaking service” that five people had chosen to use.
After the concert Dosanjh said in an interview in Punjabi that he had been targeted by racist comments on a Daily Mail article about his arrival in Australia.
He claimed the comment read “the new Uber driver is here” and “the new 7-Eleven employee has landed”, but said he was not angry and “my love goes out to everyone, even the ones who say things like that about me”.
“I don’t mind being compared to a cab or truck driver. If truck drivers cease to exist, you won’t get bread for your home,” he said.
In 2021 kirpans were outlawed in NSW schools after a stabbing in Sydney’s north-west, but months later the ban was reversed and new guidelines were brought in to ensure the daggers could not be used as weapons.
Then in 2023 the Supreme Court of Queensland overturned a state government ban on carrying kirpans, finding that some sections of the knife ban legislation were inconsistent with rights to equality in the federal Racial Discrimination Act.
Sikhs in NSW have also been pushing for a religious exemption to motorcycle helmet laws, with advocates telling parliament in December that forcing them to remove or adjust their turbans to wear helmets violated their faith.
Header image: Left, Diljit Dosanjh at the Sydney concert (Facebook). Right, a Sikh wearing a kirpan (Wikipedia: Skielor – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link).
