To be Sikh in Sacramento

By
seva
Published: April 8, 2006Posted in: archiveTags:
:Array

It can be difficult, so teen’s Web site seeks to educate fellow Americans

The memory still hurts.

Outside Sunrise Mall two weeks after 9/11, a turbaned and bearded Sikh man and his 11-year-old son were taunted by passers-by: “Terrorists, go back to Afghanistan!”

“People assumed we had something to do with terrorism, and they wanted to retaliate,” says Harkirat Hansra, now 15 and a sophomore at Mira Loma High School.

He’s not from Afghanistan. He’s not even from India, though his parents, Gurprit and Maninder Hansra, immigrated to California in the 1980s from the Punjab state.

Harkirat Hansra is an American, born and bred, a suburban kid from Rancho Cordova. He decided to deal with the problem of misunderstanding and discrimination the American way: through education.

For a school project, he has created a Web site called “Sikhs: The Most Visible Yet Most Misunderstood Minority,” which is at www.infoaboutsikhs.com, with the goal of educating Americans about who their Sikh neighbors really are.

In elementary school, Harkirat was the only Sikh student to wear the turban. At Mira Loma, he’s one of two.

“Kids would ask me why I wear it,” he says. “Those questions are understandable. Usually, I’d answer, ‘It’s part of my religion.’ I was just teaching people about my religion, and that was good.”

A little education for all of us: Sikhs are members of the world’s fifth-largest religion – it’s a religion dedicated to nonviolence, community service, equality and tolerance.

More than 26 million strong around the world, Sikhs have been in the United States since the late 1890s.

About 15,000 Sikhs live in the Sacramento area, and there are seven Sikh temples, or gurdwaras, here.

The oldest gurdwara in the United States was built in Stockton in 1912.

Sikhs have served in the U.S. armed forces since before World War I.

And they wear turbans to cover their hair, which, in accordance with their religious beliefs, they never cut.

The turbans seem to be the crux of the issue, the source of strangers’ questions as well as their rationale for anger and prejudice.

“Before 9/11, maybe once in a while some crazy guy would say something negative to me,” says Gurprit Hansra, an electrical engineer for the state. “But otherwise, life was quite normal.

“Both of my children were born and raised here. They’ve been to India one time for a total of three weeks. They’re American. This is their country. The U.S.A. is their country.”

In 2001, their country grew suspicious of them.

In those frightened weeks and months after 9/11, it happened a lot more than we like to remember, in places all across the map: Shocked Americans, bristling with misguided patriotism, imitated the terrorists by terrorizing their innocent fellow citizens for the crime of ethnic origin. Arab, perhaps, or Iranian – or, in case after case, Sikh.

Hate crimes against Sikh Americans escalated largely because of the turban, which many people wrongly assumed meant Sikhs were affiliated with the Taliban, Osama bin Laden or radical Islam.

In the most violent and appalling incident, a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Ariz., was shot and killed on Sept. 15, 2001, by a man shouting, “I stand for the flag!”

Days earlier, a man was arrested at the Sikh temple in West Sacramento for blocking the entrance and defiling a pool of sacred water.

Bigotry escalated along with people’s fears. When Gurprit Hansra took his daughter, then a third-grader, to school not long after the attacks, he says, another parent yelled angry words at them, blaming them for the terrorism.

For months, Sikh postal carriers in Carmichael and Vacaville were reported to authorities by suspicious neighbors on their routes.

Hate-crime statistics compiled by the FBI don’t separate Sikhs into a distinct reporting category. But Kavneet Singh, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund’s western regional director, says his organization has documented almost 800 hate crimes against Sikhs since 9/11.

“And there’s a tremendous amount of underreporting,” he says.

In the past year alone, gurdwaras in Bakersfield, Lodi and Fresno have been spray-painted with racist slogans. A Sikh cabdriver in San Francisco was shot and killed. Someone attacked two elderly Sikhs in Vacaville, knocking off their turbans.

Clearly, the passage of time hasn’t erased the ignorance. As Singh says, every 9/11 anniversary brings more incidents. So did the beginning of the Iraq war.

That’s a lot of fear and prejudice for young Sikh Americans to absorb.

“After 9/11, I was demoralized,” says Harkirat. “This is my home country, and people wanted to tell me to move somewhere else.

“But I’m not afraid. Sikhs stand out because of our turbans, and my father always tells me to be aware. You have to watch your surroundings and see if people are following you.”

It’s a wise course of action. But Harkirat wants to do more: He wants to represent, to stand up for his fellow Sikhs even as he stands out. He volunteers at Mercy San Juan Medical Center each week, for example, and he serves on the Sacramento County Youth Commission.

And now, his Web site.

Sitting at a midtown Starbucks with his father, Harkirat opens his laptop to provide a quick tour of the site, which took him five months to create and received 130 hits in its first several weeks online. Even now, he’s constantly adding material and updating items.

On his site, Harkirat provides information on Sikhs’ beliefs and religious symbols, their language, their heritage and culture. It’s a good overview, one aimed specifically at teenagers.

“The anger at Sikhs comes from fear of the unknown,” Harkirat says. “I thought I could make a positive contribution to society if I could educate people.”

When people understand Sikhs and their religion, he says, prejudices against them will diminish.

It’s an earnest, idealistic view of the world – but it’s also a way of taking a stand.

“See how he’s fighting back?” says his father. “That’s why I’m proud of him. He understands there’s a problem, but he’s trying to find a solution. The solution isn’t to run away but to fight back.”

Frequently asked questions

Here are Harkirat Hansra’s answers to questions about Sikh customs as posted on his Web site, www.infoaboutsikhs.com.

Q: What are Sikh turbans made of?

A: Sikh turbans are made of muslin.

Q: How long are Sikh turbans?

A: Sikhs wear turbans of varying length, but most are between 15 and 20 feet. However, the turbans are very light and do not weigh much.

Q: How is a turban tied?

A: Adults usually wrap the length of the turban around the head five to six times in a clockwise direction and then tuck in the ends.

Q: Does the color of a turban mean anything?

A: No, Sikhs generally wear turbans that match their clothes because it is part of their dress.

Q: Do Sikhs sleep in their turbans?

A: No. Since it is part of their dress, they wear the turban when they go out. When they reach home, they may or may not wear a turban, and they sleep without a turban at nighttime. *Note from BCSikhYouth.com: Most Sikhs actually sleep with a small turban, or keski, or at least a patka.*


Q: Do Sikh children also wear turbans?

A: Generally, no. Sikh children wear a small piece of cloth, like a bandana, on their head called a “patka.” However, some children wear turbans also.
Q: When do Sikh children start wearing turbans?

A: There is no set rule, but generally when they are in their late teens and start getting a beard.

Q: Do Sikhs wear turbans when playing sports or swimming?

A: Usually not, as Sikhs prefer to wear a “patka” when they play sports or swim. *Note from BCSikhYouth.com – Many Sikhs also wear a small turban, or keski, when playing sports*


Q: How long does it take to tie a turban?

A: About five minutes.

Q: Is a turban a kind of hat?

A: No, unlike a hat, a turban cannot be casually put on or taken off. It has to be retied, one turn at a time, each time it is taken off.

Q: Do Sikhs take off their turbans in public?

A: It is considered disgraceful to take off a turban in public. Sikhs feel very offended if somebody takes off their turban or asks them to remove it.

Q: Is a turban a religious requirement or a social custom?

A: Sikhs don’t cut their hair, because they like to live the way God has created them. The turban is to cover the hair – so it is also a religious requirement. It is not a social custom.

Q: Do women also wear turbans?

A: Usually not. However, some women wear turbans. *Note from BCSikhYouth.com – Although it is not yet common as mentioned above, the turban is an integral part of the Sikh identity, for both genders.*

About the writer:

Related:

About the Author