Sunny Hundal
Sunny Hundal (born 1977) is a British journalist, blogger and an academic.
Born in London to Sikh parents of Indian origin, Hundal has a degree in Economics from Brunel University. He is best known as the founder and editor of the centre-left group blog Liberal Conspiracy. Comment is Free on the Guardian website named him as their blogger of the year in 2006.[1] Hundal has also written for publications including The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Independent, and is noted for his messages on Twitter.[2] He is currently a journalist-in-residence at Kingston University. [3]
Projects
Hundal has founded and edited a number of politically progressive websites: Liberal Conspiracy,[4] a group weblog about politics and media, Asians in Media,[5] Barfi Culture community websites,[6] the Pickled Politics weblog,[7] and the New Generation Network in 2006, a group and manifesto that attempted to challenge the current discourse on race relations in the UK. All these have been wound up.
In February 2007 he made a BBC radio documentary Lost in Translation about Asian brides brought to the UK.[8] The BBC also quoted his claim that Shahrukh Khan's endorsement of skin-lightening creams was "completely immoral".[9]
Political stances
In 2008, he wrote a blog post saying that non-white voters should consider voting Conservative, on the basis that "brown people" were being deliberately targeted by anti-terrorism legislation brought in by the New Labour government of Gordon Brown.[10] In 2010, on his Liberal Conspiracy blog, he backed the Liberal Democrats in the UK General Election.[11]
About three months after the formation of the Coalition Government, Hundal joined the Labour Party in order to influence its political direction.[12] In August 2010 Hundal backed Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership election.[13]
Hundal has criticised various religious organisations including the Islamist Hizb ut-Tahrir,[14][15] the Muslim Council of Britain,[16] Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK,[16] Christian Concern For Our Nation,[15] Sikh Federation[17] and Hindu Forum of Britain.[17] He has been awarded the Fourth IRDS Awards for Print Media for fighting against religious obscurantism, awarded by the Lucknow-based Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences (IRDS).[18]
A vegetarian, he describes himself as a strong environmentalist.[19]
References
- ^ Blogger of the year at Comment is free on The Guardian
- ^ Howard Jacobson, "We don't dare to criticise 'real people' – just those in the twittersphere", The Independent, 23 January 2010
- ^ http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/activities/item.php?updatenum=2565
- ^ Liberal Conspiracy
- ^ About AiM at Asians in Media magazine
- ^ About Barfi Culture at Barfi Culture
- ^ Contributors at Pickled Politics
- ^ Lost in Translation, 26 Feb 2007, BBC Asian Network
- ^ Beyond the pale?, 25 Sept 2007, BBC News
- ^ It’s time for brown people to switch to Tory, 16 June 2008, Pickled Politics
- ^ "The Guardian endorses the Lib Dems and I'm with them", Liberal Conspiracy, 1 May 2010
- ^ "Why I’ve decided to join the Labour party", Liberal Conspiracy, 16 August 2010
- ^ "Why I think Ed Miliband is the right person to lead the Labour party", Liberal Conspiracy, 23 August 2010
- ^ Sunny Hundal "The enemy within", The Guardian (Comment is Free), 1 April 2007
- ^ a b Sunny Hundal "Fundamentally flawed", The Guardian (Comment is Free), 21 May 2008
- ^ a b Sunny Hundal "Stop whining!", The Guardian, (Comment is Free), 9 June 2006
- ^ a b Sunny Hundal "The tables have turned", The Guardian (Comment is Free), 2 November 2007
- ^ IRDS Award Winners 2013, Institute for Research and Documentation in Social Sciences
- ^ Introducing guest blogger Sunny Hundal, The f word (feminist blog), 18 January 2009