Sikhs still struggle with post-9/11 discrimination

Raghuvinder Singh never imagined his father would be in danger when he traveled as a visiting priest to a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in August of 2012.

But he was one of seven worshippers who ultimately died from a massacre on August 5 that year, at the hands of a white supremacist Army veteran who opened fire at the temple. Singh's father was shot in the head and left partially paralyzed.

"His life totally changed," said Singh.

He suffered from his injuries for more than seven years before he ultimately died from them on March 2, 2020.

Young Sikh Americans still struggle a generation later with the discrimination that the Sept. 11 attacks unleashed against their elders and them, ranging from school bullying to racial profiling to hate crimes — especially against males, who typically wear beards and turbans to demonstrate their faith.

After 9/11, "people saw turbans and beards as something to be fearful of," said Satjeet Kaur, executive director of The Sikh Coalition.

As the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11 nears, younger Sikhs say much more is needed to improve how hate crimes against their community are tracked. The FBI didn't even begin tracking hate crimes specifically against Sikhs until 2015, and many local law enforcement agencies fail to record bias attacks comprehensively.

The FBI listed 67 anti-Sikh crimes for 2020, the highest annual number since the category was created in 2015. Such attacks can be particularly hard on young Sikhs, who face bullying by classmates who try to yank off their turbans or mock them as "Osama's nephew" or "Saddam Hussein." They can often struggle with the Sikh philosophy of "chardi kala," which calls for steadfast optimism in the face of oppression.

Tejpaul Bainiwal, 25, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Riverside, who is studying the history of Sikhs who first began arriving in the U.S. in the late 1800s, acknowledges he got into plenty of fistfights in high school with other students who tugged at his head covering and taunted him. He said terrified Sikh families, including his own, debated whether to continue displaying outward signs of faith, such as turbans, after the Aug. 5, 2012, massacre at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, which ultimately killed seven worshippers.

"I was an angry child," Bainiwal said, recalling the bullying he faced for wearing a turban. "I was born and raised here… why are they singling me out?"

It took Bainiwal a long time before he could appreciate the Sikh concept of chardi kala.

"To balance 'chardi kala' and this anger—it is tricky, I'd say, because we are humans and we are full of emotions. And one of the things that the Sikh faith teaches is to control our anger," said Bainiwal.

When Singh's father was still alive, he could communicate by blinking: once for "no," and twice for "yes."

Singh, now 49, said the greatest lesson his father taught him was how to embody chardi kala.

"I would say, 'Papa Ji, are you in chardi kala?' And he would double blink every time," Singh said. "In that condition, if he can live in chardi kala, why cannot we?"