ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the concerns and issues facing Indian Dalit communities in the English Midlands. The Valmiki community has built its own places of worship and is proud to be independent of both Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras. Furthermore, some Valmikis have continued to practise Sikhism to which their forefathers/mothers converted since the establishment of Khalsa by the tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh. They are called Mazhabi Singhs and were an important part of the British Raj army. Paradoxically the places of religious worship have created fissures amongst Indian communities rather than uniting them to fight for racial equality and fair play in the UK and elsewhere. There is no doubting the fact that the institutions of family and marriage are the bastion of caste retention and divisions. There is a vast amount of research which affirms that most marriages in the first- and second-generation Indians are arranged along caste and religious lines.
