ABSTRACT
On Monday, 21 February 2000, Central Air Radio Limited (Birmingham, UK), trading as ‘Radio XL’, broadcast as usual on 1296 medium wave. At 13.45 pm, Vikram Gill was presenting the Panjabi phone-in programme, ‘Eck Swal’ (ek sval, ‘One Question’). Responding to a letter from a listener, Gill referred obliquely to the widely believed story that the great saint Valmlki was once a ‘dacoit’. The Panjabi term he used was daku, denoting a ‘robber’, ‘thief or ‘brigJ and’.1 While the allocation of this term to Valmlki is of little consequence to most Panjabis, or indeed to most Hindus, there is a sizeable community in Britain for whom ‘Bhagwan Valmik’ is God.2 These are the self-styled ‘Valmikis’. The shock wave felt throughout the British Valmiki community was tangible. RepresentaJ tives made a formal protest to the radio station. They demanded an apology for the disrespect shown to them as worshippers of Valmik, and a public retraction of the dacoit legend in relation to their God. As far as the Valmikis are concerned, the legend is both demeaning and unfounded. This book is an attempt to unravel the complexities of this dispute.
