Sikhs Pro-Actively Combating Hate
It has been over a year since the brutal attack upon Sukhvir Singh, a Sikh taxi driver from Seattle. I previously blogged about the ordeal and Sukhvir’s heroic capacity to forgive. In many ways his move enshrines a message by Guru Nanak from SGGS (p. 223) in Raag Gauri:
Khima Gahi Brath Seel Santokh
Extending forgiveness is the (true) fast, (the true act of) kindness, (the true path of) contentment
However, for the Sikh community in Seattle, the movement did not end there. It seemed to have prompted two Sikh students at the University of Washington, Jay Singh and Paul Bassi, to come up with a project.
“It affected us all really deeply as Sikhs to see this is happening right so close to home,” Jay Singh said.
Despite a busy class schedule, the friends decided they needed to do something.
Their solution was to create an informational sheet about Sikhs for cab drivers to hang in their cars.
“The most important point to get across is that Sikhs are Americans, they’re people just like you and I, who are working hard to put food on the table for their family,” Jay Singh said.
The students decided the best way to distribute their placards was not to go through the cab companies, but through the Sikh community itself. So they went to a temple in Renton where they promptly handed out 250 of their placards.
“Week after week we’d go back and we’d hear, they’d come up to us and say hey, this is really great, can we get a few more, give it to our friends, you know?” Bassi said. [link]
So far comments on the posting news website have been mixed, still I hope that we can get in touch with Paul and Jay to help promote their work in other Sikh populated areas – especially in the Bay Area and New York, where we have many Sikh taxi drivers. Hopefully SSAs at NYU, Berkeley, San Jose State, or even a group like the Jakara Movement can spearhead this move.
Random Posts
There seems to be a lot of ignorance about Sikhs among people in general altough people have become more aware of what Sikhism is, and what Sikhs stand for.
Educating people on the Sikh religion is obviously the most effective way to reduce ingnorance and to prevent attacks on turban – wearing Sikhs. Altough this seems to be blindingly obvious, I have not seen many instances, such as this, where Sikhs have actually taken a proactive step to educate people on Sikhi.