COLOUR, music and hundreds of people lined the streets of Southampton yesterday to celebrate the festival of Vaisakhi and the Sikh New Year.
A procession through the city started from and ended at the Gurdwara Nanaskar in Peterborough Road, Bevois Valley.
All four of the Sikh Gurdwara's in Southampton were involved in the festivities.
The event was attended by city bosses including Adrian Vinson, leader of the city council, MPs John Denham, Alan Whitehead and Sandra Gidley, the Reverend Ian Johnson and mayor of Southampton Dennis Harryman.
Addressing the gathered Sikh community Councillor Vinson said: "The values you are celebrating are values of justice, tolerance, peace, hard work and truth and they are values from which we can all learn and benefit from whatever our background or community."
Vaisakhi is a long established harvest festival in the Punjab. The celebrations pay homage to a historic event which took place in India in 1699 when the tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh, chose the occasion to transform Sikhs into a family of soldier saints known as the Khalsa Panth.
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