THERE was a spring in their steps as they marched around midtown Manhattan to mark Vasakhi, the Sikh New Year. It wasn’t a boisterous affair but echoes of “I’m Sikh and I’m proud of it” was almost unmistakable.
Men in turban and women wearing the dastar (head cover) lined the streets to watch last Saturday’s parade.
“This is a proud day for me,” said computer engineer Iqbal Singh Grewal as he munched on prashad, a cocktail of nuts and sweets that was handed out during the procession.
Prashad is usually given out at the end of a religious service; the person receiving it symbolises his acceptance of the teachings of that day.
New York is home to an estimated 50,000 Sikhs, mostly stereotyped as taxi drivers and convenience store owners. Many of the newer immigrants these days start out at construction sites.
Iqbal Singh, a New Jersey resident, has called America home for the past 20 years.
“The Sikhs have gone through a lot, especially after 9/11 when some people began calling us Talibans,” he said, although he personally felt that such harassment had been minor.
But groups like The Sikh Coalition do not take it lightly.
“We created a website the day after Sept 11. Within six months, we received 300,000 reports on hate crimes, and harassment at school and at the workplace,” said Amardeep Singh, executive director of The Sikh Coalition, the largest such organisation in the United States despite having only four full-time staff.
“We are getting more complaints than we can handle,” he said. The coalition is funded by private donations and charitable organisations.
Amardeep Singh found that the average American would look at a Sikh and think Osama bin Laden or Taliban.
“There is definitely a lack of understanding and ignorance of the community,” he lamented, noting out that male Sikhs were not allowed to serve as traffic policemen unless they removed their turbans.
“This is despite the fact that they have passed all the required written and physical tests,” he said, pointing to the irony that this happens in New York, the most diverse city in the world.
Born in Connecticut, Amardeep Singh, 36, was introduced to alienation from young; he was the only Sikh in his school. “The kids used to call me Gandhi. They thought he was a funny figure with his dhoti,” he said.
In the early days, there was no gurdwara. Then several Sikh families banded together to establish one, he recalled.
He observed that harassment against Sikhs paralleled the historic or tragic moments that took place in the United States. “During the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, people would ask me whether I was from Iran. I would get crank calls, asking me to go back to Iran,” he said.
“The 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City led to warnings that Sikhs would be blamed for it, although the man behind it was Timothy McVeigh. And after Sept 11, we were told to return to Afghanistan.”
Harsimran Kaur, an attorney with The Sikh Coalition, related the case of a Sikh woman who was harassed by her superior at work last year.
“He would say things like ‘take off your turban if you want to work here. Besides, I want to see your long hair’.” The woman defied his instructions and was then ordered to wash the bathroom, which was not part of her job. She was eventually fired.
“We filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in October last year,” Harsimran said. The case is still being reviewed.
In a way, the community has made big strides here. Last year, five Sikhs were elected to the Queens County Democratic Committee, a victory of sorts as it signalled their entry into local politics.
“It is the lowest level of elected officers in New York City but it gives them a chance to join the meetings of the Democratic Party. It provides them with a platform; it gives them an important first foot in the door. They are slowly getting inside it,” Amardeep Singh said.
