This month, Britain has been remembering tragedies around the world. A minute's silence took place in memory of the holiday makers gunned down in Tunisia. Memorial services were held to mark the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London. The nation has also marked 20 years since the Srebrenica genocide, with the commemorative events in the UK being the largest outside of Bosnia.
City Sikhs has been involved in some of these memorial events. We joined several organisations in supporting #WalkTogether, which encouraged people using public transport to get off one stop early and walk to their destination in an act of remembrance of 7/7. It captured the public's imagination as a simple yet powerful message of unity.
We also held an event at the Wiener Library in central London where the keynote speech was from a survivor of the Srebrenica genocide. She spoke of how she lost 22 members of her family and was continuing to fight for justice two decades later. Her speech was emotionally charged and deeply moving.
Commemorating such anniversaries is fundamental towards our collective identity, as Sikhs, as British, and even as humans. It allows us to reflect on the past and teaches us how to ensure such things do not happen again. Remembrance gives us a sense of purpose in the modern world. However, in order to remember, you need to know what it is that you are remembering.
#WalkTogether recalled how Londoners came together after 7/7. Most other cities would probably have become divided along the lines of 'us and them'. London's reaction was different. It held strong in the face of terrorism and refused to let it affect the city in any significant way. London remained united.
The events marking the Srebrenica genocide remind us how easily a society with generations of rich diversity can descend into divisions along racial and religious lines and ultimately end in ethnic cleansing. This genocide took place on European soil just 50 years after the Holocaust, something that the nations of Europe should never be allowed to forget.
The people killed in these tragedies were victims of hatred. They were innocent men, women and children, and those who were left behind continue to feel a sense of loss and injustice. The human tragedy of the Widows' Colony in Delhi, home to survivors of the indiscriminate killing of Sikhs in November 1984, is a stark reminder of that.
Yet there is hope to be had in how people react to events. In Tunisia, hotel workers formed a human chain around the tourists and refused to give in to terrorism. They willingly risked their lives to save their guests and, in doing so, epitomised the best of humanity. Each tragedy has powerful stories of hope, and those are the stories that we should remember.
We must always remember the past, but we should also look to the future with an idea of how we want our world to be. By working with other communities, by treating each commemoration or memorial as a tragedy from which we can all learn, by remembering the stories of hope, we will be much richer as a society. Love and unity will always overcome hatred. We just need to be strong enough to believe it.
