CALIFORNIA, USA—In Fresno, California — the heart of that state’s agricultural community — police are looking for whoever attacked two elderly Sikh-American men. The incidents happened a week apart over the holidays. One man was fatally stabbed, another badly beaten.
The attacks come amid reports of increased bullying and violence directed at Sikh-Americans around the country, apparently because they are mistaken for Muslims.
The unprovoked and apparently unrelated attacks are a hot topic on KBIF-AM in Fresno, where Gurdeep Shergill and his wife, Sonia, co-host a program on Saturday mornings for the 35,000 Sikh-Americans who live in Fresno.
“This morning I was talking about the hate crime, I was giving them the definition, what is hate crime, why they happen,” Gurdeep Shergill says.
The subject of hate crimes is ripe in the community. The day after Christmas, a 68-year-old farmworker, Amrik Singh Bal, was attacked and beaten by two white men as he waited to be picked up for work. Bal was wearing a turban at the time.
Then on New Year’s Day, another 68-year-old man, Gurcharan Singh Gill, was fatally stabbed in the liquor store where he worked. In that attack, Gill was not wearing a turban indicating he was Sikh, said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.
“But we are looking at this as a potential hate crime as well,” Dyer says.
Dyer asked the FBI to help with their investigation. He said Sikhs have lived in Fresno for more than a century. As Dyer talked about what’s happened in his hometown, his eyes became red and moist.
“I was at a community meeting last week with a number of those individuals, and you could just sense the fear,” he says. “Are they being targeted as a result of being mistaken as a terrorist or extremist? Is it because of what occurred in San Bernardino or Paris? And those are all legitimate concerns.”
National advocacy groups are concerned as well. A spokesman for the Sikh Coalition, Mark Reading-Smith, says since the San Bernardino massacre last month, it’s received three times as many reports of hate backlash than in previous years.
The attacks are also unsettling to people attending Fresno gurdwaras — Sikh houses of worship. One man, who identified himself as “Mr. Singh,” said he won’t stay at home or be intimidated from wearing a turban in public.
“Anytime, anytime something could happen” says Singh as he shrugs his shoulders. He says Americans need to be better educated on the differences between Sikhs and Muslims.
But would the attacks on Sikhs stop if people realized they aren’t Muslim? That question troubles many in the Sikh community, especially younger people.
“The problem in that kind of narrative is it actually implicitly says there is a proper victim,” says Nandeep Singh, the executive director of the Jakara Movement, a youth-oriented nonprofit based in Fresno.
“When we see rising Islamophobia, are we to back away from our fellow Americans, or to embrace them that much tighter?” he says. “To say that attacks against all is wrong. It really isn’t attacks against Sikhs that are wrong, but it’s really attacks against anybody.”
Singh expects attacks on Sikhs could continue. But he also sees an opportunity for those in the Sikh community not just to educate people about who they are — but remind them they are Americans too.
Radio host Gurdeep Shergill agrees.
“I tell my audience that we are Americans,” he says. “And if we can’t feel safe in America, there’s no other place in the world where we can feel safe.”
Tit for Tat has never worked on Sikhs.
The. Jokes are plain and simple manifestation of
JEALOUSY
The santo banto jokes are aimed at belittling the Sikhs not just in their physical outward identity but also by extension to Sikh achievements but is borne not just out of jealousy but actual insecurity and feelings of wounded ego that such a young and small (in terms of populous) religious community could accomplish so much in so short a period of time. There is also the Hinduvta political dimension to encouraging such stereotypical disparaging of Sikhs – if the Indian population generally is reinforced into thinking Sikhs are nothing more than genial, simple minded comedic peoples then when they start standing up for their rights it becomes a greater contrast of what the public perception is prepared to accept of the Sikhs. Very easy then to say Sikhs are now radical, extremist, militant, terrorist if you have taught people their natural disposition is to be drunk, foolish and fat. That is why the jokes are not just offensive but actually dangerous – Hitler’s Nazi party followed the same line portraying Jews in a comedic fashion at first, exaggerating crude and then cruel caricatures before these morphed into anti-national stereotypes to engender anti-semitic feelings in the German masses.
I meant that bullying is intrinsic to citizens of all Empires.
After some times even American Sikhs will morph into bullies.
How ever Empire is the only place where you can pursue your
“Empires Dreams”
“Empires Exceptionalism”
Empire’s are a unigue creation of human civilization.
Do you not get Brahimanical bullying of the Dalit in India?
I have stated historical fact’s.
I have not been judgemental about it.
You should be judgemental about it as apathy cannot produce change. In the case of the US the American population is largely ignorant of who the Sikhs are and what they have contributed to the world (particularlry in relation to the two world wars and their actual religious monotheistic beliefs both of which would chime with American thinking). This means a mass programme of education and visible media savvy role models are needed to engage with the US (and the Sikh Coalition is doing a wonderful jump raising political and legal awareness). India’s violence towards Sikhs on the other hand is even less understandable and acceptable considering every memeber of the majority community should be taught form early age what Sikhs have given for their liberty both religiously and in terms of independence. Instead they are taught santo banto jokes on sardars and told that mass murder of Sikhs is excusable as some sort of tit for tat collective punishment that we should all just forget about.
The pagan worshipping Roman Empire became the monotheistic ‘Holy Roman Empire’ and ruled by Christians. In trying to give the SIkhs this insidious ‘it’s alright to be bullied, look it happens under all empires’ you are inadvertently sending them the opposite message with this example ‘RSS Harinder’.
All Empires have bullies .Even Christians were bullied in Roman Empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Christian_policies_in_the_Roman_Empire