With the Sikhs once again coming under attack and falling prey to hate crimes, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) has decided to take up the matter with the Prime Minister.
Terming the recent attacks on some Sikhs in the US as “unfortunate”, the SGPC on Sunday said that it will write to the Prime Minister urging the Centre to take up the matter with America and other foreign countries to prevent recurrence of such incidents.“These attacks on the Sikhs, said to be hate crimes, are very unfortunate and we condemn them strongly,” said SGPC chief Avtar Singh Makkar.He said that the SGPC will soon write to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to “take up the issue with the United States and other foreign countries to prevent recurrence of such incidents”.
Days after a Sikh man was hit and dragged by a truck in New York following an argument between him and the driver who allegedly hurled racist slur at him on August 5, another Sikh man and his mother were attacked in the city on August 7 by a group of teenagers in an apparent hate crime, sparking an outrage among the community members.
“The Centre should strongly take up the matter with US Government in the larger interest of the Sikhs living in the country,” Makkar said.“Such attacks have happened in the past as well. According to media reports, in this recent attack on the mother-son duo in New York, the attackers had used derogatory language against the man's mother and made fun of her hair, which needs strong condemnation,” he said.Makkar said that the US Government should curb such attacks on innocent Sikhs with an iron fist and severely punish those found guilty.
The issue of challenges faced by the Sikh community, particularly the challenges to the Sikh turban — the identity of the Sikhs — has come to light now and then. They were being mistaken as henchmen of slain Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin laden in foreign lands because of their headgear.Among many incidents, Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) president and the head of SAD’s Delhi unit Manjit Singh GK was asked to remove his turban during frisking at an international airport in Rome (Italy).
As he refused to abide their instructions, he was allowed to go ahead only after the protocol officer from India’s High Commission arranged their departure without removing turbans for security check a day after.Even many Sikhs, including the ace golfer Jeev Milkha Singh’s coach, were forced to remove turbans at the airports.
Things took ugly shape for the Sikhs as immediate aftermath of 9/11 attacks on the US. It was the time when the Sikhs came under attack with the people associating turban with terrorism, leading to the widespread discrimination against Sikhs.A survey by the Sikh American legal Defence and Education Fund (SAlDEF) and Stanford University revealed that 49 per cent of Americans believed that Sikhism is a sect of Islam.