Spice Radio CEO Shushma Datt, who had started a campaign against racism, was honoured at a community festival on Sunday, August 4, organized in commemoration of the South Asian elders who had fought against colonialism.

#HandsAgainstRacism was launched by Datt on the birth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr. in January 2015.

At an annual community festival attended by thousands of people every year, the organizers of the event Prof. Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation honoured Datt in recognition of her popular initiative against growing bigotry and racism in North America.

The event coincided with the mass shooting in El Paso that left 20 people dead. The massacre was committed by a white supremacist who targeted Hispanic population at a store in Texas.

Datt, who is a veteran broadcaster, congratulated the organizers for keeping the history of resistance against racism and colonialism alive.

Prof. Mohan Singh Memorial Foundation is dedicated to the cause of celebrating the struggle of Indian revolutionaries who laid down their lives fighting against British occupation of their homeland and racism abroad. They had founded the Ghadar Party in North America back in 1913. To honour those heroes, the organizers also hoisted the Ghadar Party flag on the occasion, while small Ghadar flags greeted visitors from different corners of the venue at Surrey’s Bear Creek Park.

They also honoured an independent TV Producer Kamaljit Thind for keeping alive the history of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre which left close to 1,000 people dead in British India. The troops had fired indiscriminately at a gathering of peaceful demonstrators who had assembled at a public park in Amritsar in 1919 to protest against draconian laws and the arrests of the leaders of passive resistance movement.

The key organizer Sahib Thind gave a call to the crowd to keep fighting against racism. Thind was expecting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to attend, but he never came. However, two Liberal Cabinet Ministers, Harjit Singh Sajjan and Carla Quoltrough, besides local Liberal MPs, Sukh Dhaliwal, Randeep Singh Sarai and Ken Hardie were in attendance. 

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and NDP MLA Rachna Singh were also present on the occasion.