Vaisakhi Reception at St James's PalaceDate: Thursday, 24 April, 2008

Picking up on what Harbinder was saying, it is absolutely true that this is why it is so important to help you celebrate some of these great festivals of your Community. The United Kingdom owes an immense debt of gratitude to the courage and sacrifice of Sikh soldiers and this, of course, is most famously exemplified in the purely appalling conditions of the First World War, and later in Asia during the Second World War. One only has to visit the immaculately maintained Commonwealth War Grave Commission Cemeteries in Flanders or in Ragoon, Delhi, or Singapore, to see the scale of this sacrifice, and, symbolically, to see Brothers-in-Arms who fell together, at rest together.

Their acts of courage and heroism have enabled four generations to live in peace in Europe and, from that point of view, it is the greatest privilege and pleasure, as far as my wife and I are concerned, to have representatives from the old Sikh Regiments here, those British Officers who served in those Regiments with us here today. There aren’t, I fear, very many left, but to enable us to pay a tribute to them today is something very special, particularly, when I think that the Sikh Brigade Association was established in 1948, exactly the same age as I am now. So I feel a slight affinity in terms of the fact that it is their 60th anniversary too!