![]() ![]() I grew up on the farmland that my grandfather had farmed when he first came to America, the farm my father was born on, and where I was born. But when his best friend fell to bullets on the front, he took it off to wrap his wounds and brought the body back.Ĭould you tell me a little about your childhood in Clovis, California? When he was sent to the front, he refused to take off his turban as his superior British officer demanded. He fought in WWII, but he never fired a shot and he was very proud of the fact that he had killed no one. From him, I inherited Sikh stories, scriptures and songs, and the idea of chardi kala - the call to be in high spirits even in darkness and suffering - that is central to our faith. It was my other grandfather, my Nanaji, Captain Gurdial Singh, who lived with us and helped raise me. I grew up with stories about his life that gave me a profound sense of my heritage as an American. It was only when the laws changed that he went to India, then in his 60s, to get married. Because of the Asian Exclusion Acts, he could not go back to India to marry because he knew he would not be allowed to return. He was finally released through the efforts of one white lawyer, Henry Marshall. When he arrived there in 1913, he was thrown into prison. He left India in 1911 with his older brother and spent years working in China and the Philippines, finally earning enough money to sail by steam ship to Angel Island, San Francisco. My Dadaji, Kehar Singh, grew up in a village called Chand Nawan in Moga, Punjab. One of the responses to hate crimes against Sikh Americans is to say that they are being unfairly targeted/mistaken for Muslims. But what gives me hope is that millions of Americans are being politically awakened in ways we have never seen. ![]() I looked at my son and realised he is growing up in a country more dangerous than the one I was raised in. In the face of this violence, I was completely paralysed. Early reports said his assailants asked him: why are you here? My family has lived in Clovis for about a hundred years. A day after Christmas, 2015, an elderly Sikh man was crossing the street in my hometown of Clovis, California, when he was attacked. About a year ago, I was working at Stanford Law School and the current president became the Republican frontrunner and hate crimes began to escalate in the US. I have been an activist for about 15 years ever since the murder of my family friend, Balbir Singh Sodhi, in Arizona, in the aftermath of 9/11 (Sodhi was the first victim of hate crime after 9/11). And yet, none of our work was enough to prevent, what the Southern Poverty Law Centre has called, a ‘year of enormous rage’. ![]() We built organisations, institutions and relationships with the government and media. She wanted to teach others that the people she considered brothers and uncles were not scary just because they looked different.I am among a generation of South Asian American activists who have worked as lawyers, artists and organisers fighting for civil rights since 9/11 and longer. Kaur is a third-generation Sikh-American. He was the first of an estimated 19 people killed in the aftermath of 9/11." He was murdered in front of his gas station by a man who called himself a patriot. "On the third day, I began to read the crawling on the bottom of the screen that read,'Sikh man killed in Mesa, Arizona in hate crime,' she says. They were intercut with images of a bearded and turbaned Osama bin Laden. images of the world trade towers falling again and again. Then, like millions of others, she saw the T.V. She planned to go to India to interview people about religious conflict. In September 2001, Valarie Kaur was a 20-year-old college junior, studying religion and international affairs.
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