Sikhing for an answer to racism

Sikhi is one of the six major religions, currently, in the world. It originates from the Punjab region but over recent years, the migration of Sikhs, has led to a global community. Unfortunately this has led to an increase of racial slurs, accusations and prejudice towards not only Sikhs but to other East Asians. Including attacks on social media, physical hate crimes and even the desecration of our holy book (Sri Guru Granth Sahib).

An issue strongly rising in the Sikh community is cyber-attacks on Sikhs; due to lack of understanding and a lack of education towards the Sikhi. This ignorance has led to the assumption that Sikhs are part of Islamic terrorist organisations across the world. Strong evidence to prove this came from Veerender Singh Jubbal, who uploaded an innocent photo of himself on Twitter. This was later Photoshopped so that he looked like an Islamic suicide bomber at the Paris attacks, on 14th November 2015. This photo was altered to give him a bomb vest, a Qur’an and also showed the Sikh dastaar (turban) to be an Islamic turban. Jubbal openly appealed on Twitter to this offensive photo, by stating ‘People will not stop harassing, and bothering me.’ Alternatively the positive aspect of this event was the huge amounts of support that Jubbal got from Sikhs and other races. It also has helped to raise awareness of the two completely separate religions that are Sikhs and Muslims. Another attack on social media was when the first Sikh NCAA player, Darsh Singh, had an offensive comment written about a picture he uploaded on Facebook. The person who had written the comment argued that it was just ‘banter’ and that no harm is meant by his statement, ‘Nobody at school wants to guard Muhammad, he’s too explosive’. Many Sikhs have forgiven him for his offensive comment, purely on the basis that he lacks the knowledge and understanding to convey his opinion without racial prejudice. But they still feel strongly against his statement and that action must be taken.

Another, more hurtful, event that shows the problems that Sikhs face is the desecration of the Guru Granth Sahib in our homeland, Punjab. On 11th October 2015, 110 pages of the Sikh holy book were found ripped and damaged in the open sewage of Faridkot, Punjab. Outraged, the Sikh community gathered for peaceful protest throughout the world, especially in the Punjab region. The government responded to these peaceful protests with a full military army. Video evidence of the protest shows the Sikhs calmly sitting on the floor doing morning prayers, when the police released powerful water cannons on them and shot two innocent men. The release of these videos has created huge amounts of discontent globally, as it shows the unjust methods of the Indian police, as well as them torturing two young Sikh boys who weren’t even part of the protest. This form of aggressive racism, even reached the media of Britain, when a Sikh scholar, Jagmeet Singh, who tried to tell the public of the events in Punjab but was cut off by the BBC presenter who then showed an unrelated and irrelevant clip to the matter. There was only one benefit of this desecration in Punjab, which was that it was the first time that unlawful events in Punjab could reach global media. Unfortunately this was not the case in 1984 when over 30’000 Sikhs were killed, yet it did not even reach the borders of India, media and power blackouts meant that there was no form of safety for the Sikhs.

Sikhism has faced an increase in racial abuse on a worldwide scale, especially in their homeland where the Indian government are trying their best to supress our rights. Furthermore, in western countries this problem is surfacing, which has led to physical attacks, such as the beating of a Sikh man in Chicago whilst he was being called a terrorist. However, Sikhs have in some way or another benefitted from these events by bringing a community closer together. Which is how Sikh Society formed in the Manchester Grammar School, we used community cohesion to go from a small club, to the largest in the school in the matter of a couple of months. The whole foundation of our society relies on support from our peers and their trust in us to talk about important topics that are happening as we speak. The principles of Sikhi encourage us to view everyone equally and fairly no matter their race/religion, which is what we try to achieve in our society.

Thank you for reading,

Mahavir Singh Nerwan and Hukam Singh Nerwan