A guest post by Satvinder S Juss, Professor of Law at King’s College London, and Global Distinguished Professor of Law at Notre Dame University, USA.

Why did the judge in The King v Vickrum Singh Digwa (1/6/26) describe the assailant, Digwa, as “carrying a large Sikh dagger” in “a sheath attached to a belt over the outside,” which would go onto brutally kill young Henry Nowak? Why did he say “[i]t is a strict requirement of the Sikh faith to have a knife, called a kirpan, at all times” and that “[generally, this will be a small knife, hidden from view, often on a length of cord and worn around the neck.”[1] If it is a ‘kirpan’ why not call it that? And does it matter that it was called a ‘knife’ first and a ‘kirpan’ only later? Is the Sikh ‘kirpan’ a knife?

Lawyers know only too well that how an issue is framed determines how it is addressed. In law, as in life, context and framing are everything. Framing defines scope. Scoping determines rights and liabilities. The law is correctly applied. Irrelevant issues are scrupulously avoided. In point of fact, Henry Nowak was not stabbed by a knife, and still less a Kirpan, but by an Afghan Peshkab, a ferocious weapon “designed to go through chainmail”[2], and which Digwa had no business carrying. Digwa was apparently offered manslaughter by the prosecution, but foolishly declined it, insisting he acted in self-defence, notwithstanding overwhelming contrary evidence, only to then deservedly got the sentence that he did. Throughout the trial, the terminology of ‘knife’, ‘dagger’, ‘kirpan’, ‘shaster’ and ‘bladed article’ was used interchangeably by lawyers and judge alike, obfuscating the issue at hand. Traditional Sikh Kirpans (described as ‘a small knife’ by the judge) would not even cut cheese. They are ceremonial and purely symbolic, which is why the judge correctly explained, “[i]t is a fundamental principle of Sikhism that any kirpan is worn as a symbol of religious faith and is never to be carried for an offensive purpose.”[3] This is not a far cry from the words of an Australian judge that, “[t]he kirpan represents spiritual, religious and moral sanctions and rights and responsibilities of an initiated Sikh.”[4] Thus, when the issue is framed as a ‘kirpan’ (and not as a knife) the conclusion inevitably follows as it should.

The difference in approach is to do with the difference between Western essentialism and Eastern non-essentialism. In the West, Aristotle talked of things in terms of their ‘essences’.[5] The essence of a thing is what it fundamentally is.[6]Its property invests it with its ‘nature’.[7]  So, a Kirpan has the essence of a ‘blade’, a ‘dagger’ or a ‘sword’. This why in the trial the Sikh kirpan was equated with a humble kitchen ‘knife’, or a not-so humble ‘dagger’.

Under the Sikh Code of Conduct (‘the Rehat Nama’) as the Expert Witness, Prof. Gurnam Singh explained,[8] the Kirpan is one of the 5 K’s, being a 3-6 inch blade, but there is no religious injunction requiring a second Kirpan to be worn. Yet at the trial, Digwa insisted that he wore the Afghan Peshkab as a religious obligation, and falsely insisted that it was a kirpan. It was not a kirpan nor ‘a large Sikh dagger.’ And, it would have been easy to gainsay this but for Aristotle’s  thinking, which entrenched itself so forcefully during the Scholastic period.[9] Given how profoundly it has affected the viewing objects in terms of their essences it is unsurprising that courtroom deliberations so quickly fell into use of the language of a knife and a dagger. This is not to say that Western essentialism has not been challenged. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) thought ‘essences’ can only be meaningful for a specific category of human experience.[10] The human experience of the Sikh kirpan is not that it is a knife. For Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000), only in the description of certain phenomena does the definition of a thing in terms of its essences actually work. Objects mostly do not have essential properties.[11] In Eastern thinking, all phenomena are devoid of essence. A Sikh would be alarmed at a suggestion the Kirpan had any malign connotations. Neither a knife, nor scissors, nor one’s hands actually have an intrinsic essence of their own.

For the rest, the judge’s decision is both careful and sensitive to its subject-matter. Importantly, it brings to the fore the existence of a group previously overlooked. As the judge told Digwa, “[y]ou are a member of an order of Sikhs called the Nihang who have a tradition of having a second knife, or kirpan and that is often fully visible,” although the reference to a ‘knife’ was again misconceived. The judge rightly noted that, “[y]ou  observed that tradition in your everyday life, at work and in public” and then importantly observed how “it was not a strict requirement” and that this was manifestly “ borne out by the fact that neither your brother nor father … were so dressed.”[12] Instead, as Professor Gurnam Singh’s expert testimony noted, “[o]ver the last 30 years” young people “wearing a kirpan” do sometimes “see it as an act of resistance…”[13]

For the Press and the Politician the die, however, was cast. The Sikh Kirpan now stood indistinguishable from a “knife”. The BBC gave an erroneously convoluted report of the “stabbing (of) the Southampton University student with a ceremonial blade Sikhs are required by their faith to carry”.[14] Yet in 2009, it had correctly reported that “in Sikhism the Kirpan is an instrument of non-violence that should be used to prevent harm from being done to a defenceless person.”[15] Was the Court’s judgment the reason for this obfuscation? The use of a “large Sikh knife” was also wrongly identified by others.[16] The fall-out did not stop there. Henry Nowak’s gruesome murder became, overnight, a watershed moment in British race relations. Nigel Farage called for “pure cold rage.” US Vice President J.D. Vance demanded “righteous anger” and blamed the “mass invasion of migrants”[17], quite  forgetting that Digwa was a British-born son of a British-born father. David Lammy[18] and Harriet Harman[19] both hinted at the privilege of kirpans being taken away. The Sikh Federation, based in Southampton, responded that “under the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 and its July 2022 statutory guidance, a kirpan is clearly defined and understood to feature a curved blade,” which Digwa was not using.[20] There was talk of so-called two-tier policing, which one notable commentator debunked because, “it is simply not tenable to suggest that the problem here was that the police were more preoccupied with accusations of racism than an act of murder” as “[t]he police were taken in by the word of two people at the scene against the word of one” so that, “Digwa’s lie was always going to succeed briefly.”[21]  Nevertheless, the British Sikh Report 2025, released this year, now notes how, 49% of Sikhs surveyed, are already worried about rising anti-Sikh sentiment. That concern will rise.[22] Even so, the Sikh Federation has urged that “fully practising Sikhs who wear a Kirpan should continue to recognise the serious responsibility that accompanies it…”[23]

Could the judge have spoken differently?  He could, and indeed, he did. He too had noted[24], “[t]he privilege extended to practising Sikhs of being allowed to be in public with a bladed article.” This is language drawn from section 139 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which refers to “to any article which has a blade”[25] and states that “it shall be a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had the article with him”[26]carried “for religious reasons.”[27] The protection conferred is in terms of a defence but it is not for religious reasons alone, begging the question whether David Lammy and Harriet Harman mischaracterised the situation as a ‘religious exemption’, because the same provision also allows for such an article “as part of any national costume.”[28] This covers the sgian dhubh blade when worn as part of Scottish Highland dress. Is it seriously now contended that this will be removed from a proud Scotsman? Surely, the question is not the item per se but its use – precisely the question in Digwa.

What is needed is mature reflection. To the question, “[w]hy would Digwa have carried a lethal weapon unless he intended it to be available for his use?”[29] could be the response that he carried it as a matter of Nihang national costume.

Satvinder S Juss

[1] at §10

[2] As the murder weapon was described by the Sikh Federation: see Charlotte Coles and  Allen Sinclair, “Sikh group calls for inquiry into Henry Nowak death”, 8 June 2026 (Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj0g4qmmry7o )

[3] at §12

[4] Athwal v State of Queensland [2023] QCA 156 at §66

[5] J. L. Ackrill , Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione  (OUP, 1975) .  Also see, David Charles, Aristotle on  Meaning and Essence(OUP, 2002).  Further see, Charollette Witt, Substance and Essence in Aristotle :  An Interpretation of Metaphysics  VII –IX (Cornell Univ Pres, 1989)

[6] Aristotle, Metaphysics (London: Penguin Books Ltd.,1998), at p.168.

[7] Steven K. Strange, (1992) Porphyry: On Aristotle, Categories. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).

[8] cited at § 11

[9] Though see, N. Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny & Jan Pinborg (1982) Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).  Also see, D. Chalmers,  (1999) “Is there Synonymy in Occam’s Mental Language?” published in The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, edited by Paul Vincent Spade. (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999)

[10] Husserl is accredited with founding the phenomenological movement. See, esp. Jitendranath Mohanty, The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl, (Yale Univ. Press, 2008) ; Also see Edmund Husserl, Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology,  (Northwestern University Press, 1970).

[11] Willard Van Orman Quine, Word and object , (MIT, 1960)

[12] at §11

[13] at §10

[14] Ethan Gudge, BBC News, “Sikhs ‘demonised’ after murder, says community leader”.

[15] BBC News, “Boy’s Sikh dagger in school ban”, 13 October 2009

[16] Steven Morris, “Southampton man jailed for life for murder of student with ‘religious’ knife” The Guardian 1 June 2026

[17] Gaby Hinsliff, “Let this be a warning – if Europe worries about Trump, it has even more reason to fear JD Vance” The Guardian, 9 June 2026

[18] Craig Munro, “Lammy says Sikhs’ blade ‘privilege can be taken away’ after Henry Nowak death” The Metro, 7 June 2026,

[19] Sky News, “Henry Nowak’s murder shows we need to end religious exemptions for knife laws, ex-deputy Labour leader says”, 5 June 2026,

[20] Charlotte Coles and  Allen Sinclair, BBC News, “Sikh group calls for inquiry into Henry Nowak death”, 8 June 2026, which also reports how a full inquest into the death of the student is due to open at Winchester Coroner’s Court with a jury on 20^th  September 2027.

[21] Stephen Bush, “Fatal Lies” Financial Times, 3 June 2026

[22] Immediately following Henry Nowak’s murder, the author was personally contacted by the Vice-Dean and the Dean of his law school, as well as by the Vice Chancellor, all of whom offered support, for which he remains grateful.

[23] Aamna Mohdin, “Kirpans and UK knife law: what are the rules?” The Guardian, 2 June 2026

[24] at §11

[25] at §139(2)

[26] at §139(5)

[27] at §139(5)(b)

[28] at §139(5)(c)

[29] Joshua Rozenberg, A lawyer writes: “Unduly lenient?” 3 June 2026