Sewa Singh Mandla

Sewa Singh Mandla was a Birmingham solicitor whose son's turban led to the House of Lords ruling that Sikhs are a protected group under British race law. South Asian Britain says he was born in Nairobi on 4 January 1927 to Sardar Mool Singh and Harnam Kaur, an orthodox Amritdhari family whose ancestral home was in Gurdaspur. He was educated in Nairobi and taught for several years because he could not afford to study in Britain. He taught himself law, qualified as a barrister in London in 1955, returned to Nairobi and built a successful legal firm. He left for Britain in 1974, retrained as a solicitor in London and opened premises in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1978. The same source says he became the Birmingham Magistrates' Court's first non-white solicitor.

The case: In 1978 Mandla applied to send his son Gurinder, then 13, to Park Grove School, a private school in Birmingham. In Lord Denning's later account, the headmaster asked whether the father would consent to the boy removing his turban and cutting his hair, and Mandla refused. On 24 July 1978 the headmaster wrote that he saw no way to reconcile the school's uniform rules with the turban. Mandla found another school where his son could wear his turban, but reported the headmaster to the Commission for Racial Equality, which backed him with money and advice in proceedings in the Birmingham County Court. The judge dismissed the claim; Gurmit Singh dates that ruling to 10 December 1980. The Court of Appeal under Lord Denning dismissed the appeal on 29 July 1982. Mandla and Gurinder then went to the House of Lords, where five Law Lords allowed the appeal on 24 March 1983, Lord Fraser giving the judgment. The Guru Nanak Nishkam Sewak Jatha, his gurdwara in Handsworth, supported the case, which South Asian Britain says drew national attention through petitions and protests.

Key moments

• 4 January 1927: born in Nairobi.
• 1974: leaves Kenya for Britain.
• July 1978: the headmaster refuses to relax the school's rules for the turban.
• 24 March 1983: the House of Lords allows his appeal.
• 7 October 2017: dies in Birmingham, aged 90, shortly after being awarded an OBE.

Remembered for: South Asian Britain says the ruling encouraged Sikhs and other groups to challenge racial inequality in Britain and beyond. Mandla is remembered as the Sikh father who would not let his son give up the turban to get into a school, and who took the case all the way to the House of Lords.