Times Square rocked to bhangra and dhol, colorful dancers in bright turbans, DJs turning discs and emceeing the “Turban Day-Vaisakhi” festival on a sunny April 16 afternoon. Thousands of New Yorkers and tourists from around the country and the world flocked to enjoy the sights, sounds and symbols of Sikhism and learn something about the followers of that religion.
Organizers hoped to counter hate crimes against Sikhs stereotyped because of their religious symbols, particularly the turban and beard.
They chose Times Square as an ideal location to spread awareness about the community because they saw it as the heart of the city and the country. Most of those who came left knowing a little more about Sikhs and Sikhism than they did before.
More than 5,000 visitors joined the festivities enjoying bhangra performances, kirtan, instrumental religious music, and Naam Simran (yoga meditation). Organizers helped some 2,500 visitors who lined up to get the turban wrapped around their heads – men, women and children of several ethnicities were soon sporting the headdress and posing for selfies and group pictures. Among those who wore the turban was Pittsburgh Stealers’ team member Will Johnson.
“We ran out of turbans by 2:30 pm for an event that was planned for 12 noon to 4 pm,” Bobby Singh Sildana, one of the four main organizers told Desi Talk. This was the 2nd such festival held, preceded by one at Madison Park on a much smaller scale. The success of the Times Square affair has convinced them to hold more such events through the year. Famous long distance runner Milkha Singh, the “Flying Sikh” headlined the event and spoke about how his turban and beard are precisely what made him famous.
The four friends, Sildana, a businessman from Long Island who owns the historic 17th century building housing the Swan Club, Gurmeet Kaur Sodhi a journalist, talk show host and documentary-maker, Kawaldeep Singh Sahni, a fashion industry entrepreneur manufacturing private labels and fashion brands for big department stores; and Chanpreet Singh, who works at the United Nations, got the event together in 20 days when the City gave them a permit with a time limit. They bought air-time on CNN, Time Warner, New York 1, Fox, and News 12, Sodhi told Desi Talk.
“We’re happy with the results. We couldn’t expect anything more. We are getting clls from all over the world. Snapchat had it on live feed,” Sildana said. A Turban Day was also held April 14 in Oslo, Norway; and on the day of the event, a gurdwara in Germany was bombed, he said. “That’s why we need to do more of these events.” Times Square, he said, was an ideal place as the financial capital of the country and most recognized spot the world over.
“New York City is a melting pot of all cultures. But you will be surprised how many people don’t know about turbans and beards,” Sodhi said. “We were under the assumption that people here knew about Sikhs. But you could be living round the block or working in the same office and you don’t know about them,” she said.
A January 2015 survey released by the National Sikh Campaign, “Sikhism In The United States: What Americans Know And What They Need To Know,” shows that even though Sikhs have lived in the United States for more than 150 years, helping build the Transcontinental Railroad, serving in major wars, and cultivating farmland in California, “most Americans know little to nothing about Sikh Americans or Sikh culture.” The majority (60%) of Americans admit to knowing nothing at all about Sikh Americans and knowledge of Sikhism is substantially lower than for other minority religious groups in the United States.
Sikh activists have succeeded in the last few years, in getting the FBI to gather information about hate crimes against Sikhs; the U.S. Army has on a case-by-case, allowed a few Sikhs to keep their turban and beard while serving; and issues such as bullying of Sikh school children and violence against members of the community has come to the fore, especially after the Aug. 12, 2012 massacre in a Wisconsin gurdwara by a Neo-Nazi. According to a report by the Sikh Coalition, 300 incidents of hate crime violence were reported against Sikhs in the months following 9/11.
New York has seen its share of hate crimes and bullying. Between 9/11 and 2012, of the 23 notable incidents nationwide listed by the Sikh Coalition, 9 were in the New York, New Jersey area.
More recently, in September 2013, a Sikh professor of Columbia University was beaten up by a gang of teens shouting “get Osama.” In 2014, Sandeep Singh, a Sikh father, was run over by a truck and dragged 30 feet by a driver who called him a “terrorist.”
This past year, Seattle, Washington, has seen at least two vandalism cases against gurdwaras in the last few months, as have gurdwaras in other parts of the country; hate crime charges were filed against a man for attacking a Sikh Los Angeles bus driver this March; in Chicago, Inderjit Singh Mukker, was assaulted by a teen and called a “terrorist” and “bin Laden.”
The first casualty of post-9/11 backlash was a Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, in Mesa, Arizona four days after the Twin Towers fell. Of late, Sikhs are among those facing the brunt of hate crimes following the San Bernardino, California massacre of 14 people by a Pakistani-American and his wife, and most recently, following the bombings in Paris and Belgium.
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