Raghav Chadha stirs a row as he meets this UK MP: Who is Preet Kaur Gill?

Great to meet @raghav_chadha in Parliament. – He is a Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, India. I look forward to a discussion around global health security and antimicrobial resistance. pic.twitter.com/9Gz6gc7TZi

— Preet Kaur Gill MP (@PreetKGillMP) March 20, 2024

Gill, the Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Public Health, made history in 2017 when she became the first woman Sikh MP of the United Kingdom. She has also often drawn scrutiny from the Indian government due to her perceived support for Khalistan.

The 51-year-old chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for British Sikhs and serves as Vice Chair for the APPG on International Freedom of Religion or Belief. In February, she alleged in the House of Commons that agents with ties to India were targeting Sikhs in the UK. Gill mentioned that some British Sikhs were even on a “hit list” of what she termed “transnational repression”, and questioned Security Minister Tom Tugendhat about the British government’s response.

In August 2020, Gill engaged in a public row on X (at the time, Twitter) with Conservative British MP Raminder Singh Ranger who posted that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson does not endorse Khalistan. Gill promptly challenged him citing the principle of self-determination enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

The eldest of seven siblings, Preet Gill was born to a bus driver father and seamstress mother at Edgbaston, Birmingham, in 1972. Her father Dalvir Singh Shergill who migrated from the village of Jamsher in Jalandhar to West Midlands in 1962 was known as much for his height — he was a towering 6’4” — as for his work as the president of the first gurdwara in the UK — the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in Smethwick — from 1984 to 2004.

Preet Gill had her first taste of public life when she was elected college president of Bournville College, where she studied psychology and sociology. She moved to London to get an honours degree in sociology and social work from the University of East London and became a child services manager. After completing her post-graduation, Gill came to India where she spent some time working with street children in Delhi. She also lived in a kibbutz in Israel for some time.

Gill’s parliamentary tenure

A very active parliamentarian, Gill is known for her work in public health and environment. She first incurred the ire of the Indian authorities when she called for the release of British national Jagtar Singh Johal, aka Jaggi Johal, who she claimed was being wrongly held and tortured by the police since 2017, the year she was elected MP from Edgbaston, Birmingham. It is one demand she has raised every now and then. Arrested while on a visit to Punjab in 2017, Johal is accused of being involved in targeted killings in Punjab and at present is in Delhi’s Tihar jail.

Preet Gill is still known to maintain her ties with her extended family in Jamsher, where a celebration was held to commemorate her victory in 2017. Around that time she triggered a row when during a visit to Punjab after her election she expressed concern about the prevalence of drugs, a no-go topic for foreign delegates. She also seemed to endorse the year-long farmers’ protest in 2020-’21 against the now-repealed farm laws.

In December 2021, soon after a sacrilege and lynching incident at the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the Indian High Commission in Britain issued a statement slamming Gill when she first wrote and then deleted a post that referred to a “Hindu terrorist” behind the act. Later she posted, “Beadbi incidents are unacceptable but the lynching of another person is also unacceptable.”

In 2023, Gill triggered a row in the Sikh community when she defended faith leaders amid a debate on domestic abuse among Sikh women sparked by a report from Sikh Women’s Aid. The report surveyed 839 Sikh women in Britain, revealing that nearly two-thirds had experienced domestic abuse, including incidents involving faith leaders. Gill took to the WhatsApp group “Sikhs in Labour” to seek a written apology to the “guru ghars”.

Of late, Gill has been at the receiving end of threats, which started coming last year when she got a threatening email. In January, she told BBC that people had been threatening to protest outside her home. “I am really worried in a way I have never been worried before,” she told the broadcaster.

The Labour leader is married to fellow social worker Sureash Arora, with whom she has two daughters aged 12 and 14.