Sikhs in America

On September 15, 2001, the Sikh-American community was terrorized after learning about the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi. Sodhi was shot and killed outside of his Mesa, Arizona, gas station. The assailant wanted to “kill a towel-head” in retaliation for the attacks on 9/11.

Sodhi, like many practicing Sikhs, kept unshorn hair, beard and a turban. Because there are so few Sikhs living in America, the Sikh turban and beard was often mistaken with images of Osama bin Laden, leaving many to be victim of hate crimes since the fall of the Twin Towers in 2001.

On August 5, 2012, as I was sitting at the local Sikh Temple, I received an alert regarding an attack at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. The assailant went on a deadly rampage at the temple, fatally shooting six worshipers and wounding six others before turning the gun on himself. This was one of the worst attacks at a place of worship in America since the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.

Such attacks continue to happen. This past July, a driver in Queens, New York, yelled racial slurs at Sandeep Singh, a married father of two, and ran over him in his pickup truck. Singh is now in critical condition at the local hospital. Last month, ten teenagers in Roosevelt Island, New York, attacked a doctor named Jaspreet Singh Batra. He was punched in the face and back of his neck. The assailants called him “Osama bin Laden” and told him to “go back to his country.”

President Lincoln once said that the “legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.” Last year, the FBI decided to finally track hate crimes committed against Sikhs in particular, ensuring more accurate reporting and accountability. But more needs to be done.

A recent study presented by the Sikh Coalition in a briefing to the Congressional Anti-Bullying Caucus documented that Sikh children had been punched and kicked and had their turbans ripped off by fellow students. Slurs such as “terrorists,” “go back to your country” and “bin Laden” were yelled during the assaults.

We need a comprehensive approach to prevent hate crimes against the Sikh community. Local and state governments should include references to the Sikh faith in our curriculum, so our young citizens can be made aware of Sikhs. The U.S. government also needs to address the issue of racial profiling at the airports.

Each time, Sikhs are asked to step aside for “random screenings,” our fellow citizens implicitly assume that Sikhs pose a threat to our society, and that it is acceptable to single us out for unwarranted scrutiny. Finally, the U.S. government needs to end its presumptive ban on Sikhs from serving in our country’s military because of uniform regulations conflicting with the Sikh commandment to keep beards and unshorn hair. By not being able to freely serve our nation, we are unable to demonstrate our commitment to our nation, defend our freedoms on the frontlines, and win the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans.

While these actions won’t automatically end biases and acts of violence against Sikhs, they will solidify our nation’s commitment to ensuring Sikhs can fearlessly practice our faith, and that the government is doing for our people “what needs to be done.” In the end, we can only remember the victims of hate crimes and create a stronger union, if we strive to learn more about our neighbors, spread love, and eliminate any prejudices against others.

Kanwar Singh is student at the Harvard Extension School, and co-founder of Portraits of Sikhs.