Sikhs in California vote on independence from India

It is a busy Saturday on the Sacramento Gurdwara Bradshaw on the edges of the town surrounded by fields and strip malls. In entrance of the brand new, gleaming white temple, a crowd of individuals are dressed of their most interesting for a marriage. The sounds of worship are piped out into the morning air via loudspeakers.

Stroll across the again of the domed constructing and also you encounter one thing else, a sea of brilliant yellow flags emblazoned with daring, blue letters spelling out a phrase: Khalistan.

Khalistan would not exist on any map, however it’s an imagined homeland for some Sikhs who dream of their very own nation separate from India. The requires an unbiased state have grown extra pressing amongst Sikhs within the wake of final yr’s foiled assassination try of a Sikh activist on U.S. soil. The Justice Division charged an Indian nationwide within the plot.

Sikhs are an ethno-religious group who come initially from what’s now the Indian state of Punjab. There are an estimated half 1,000,000 Sikhs in America, a lot of them based mostly in California.

An extended line of truck cabs and vehicles snake throughout the Gurdwara car parking zone — vans as a result of Sikhs make up an rising proportion of truckers in America. This caravan is on the brink of take to the streets of Sacramento and its sprawling suburbs — a rally on wheels to get out the vote forward of Sunday’s referendum.

The query on the poll: Ought to there be an unbiased Khalistan?

After stops in Europe and Canada, the nonbinding Khalistan referendum is rolling out within the U.S. The primary vote was in San Francisco on the finish of January. Organizers say it was so common that they scheduled a second vote for the tip of March.

“We might be no extra”

The battle for Khalistan has a protracted historical past, however the roots of this referendum might be traced to occasions that occurred 40 years in the past, says Irbanjit Sahota, who helped manage the rally.

“We wish to let the world know that this occurred to us in India, that there was a Sikh genocide in November 1984.”

Within the early Nineteen Eighties some Sikh separatists had been violent of their calls for for Khalistan. In 1984 in response to rising unrest, the Indian military took over the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the holiest of Sikh websites, together with different Gurdwaras. A couple of months later, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards.

What adopted was extra horrific bloodshed — offended mobs pulled individuals from their properties, temples had been burned to the bottom, Sikhs disappeared.

“We’re by no means going to get justice from India,” Sahota says. “I do not know that the world can do a lot to get us justice.”

In 2005 then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally apologized for the anti-Sikh violence. For some Sikhs, that wasn’t sufficient. They wished what occurred in 1984 acknowledged as a genocide. Sahota says additionally they wished one thing else.

“I really feel our solely manner ahead is to make Punjab an unbiased state the place we will follow our faith, protect our tradition, protect our historical past.”

Sahota says though that violence occurred a long time in the past, the present authorities in India — the Hindu nationalist BJP, led by Narendra Modi — is focusing on spiritual and cultural minorities, together with Sikhs. On the rally, one truck towed a U-Haul trailer with an enormous signal: “Modi: Face of Hindu Terror.”

“It simply makes it worse,” Sahota says. “Now we have now no place. Earlier than we felt like we weren’t simply equal residents. However now we really feel like both we have now to do one thing or we might be no extra.”

“Sikhs are completely happy in India”

Not each American Sikh believes the Modi authorities’s Hindu nationalist agenda is harmful for Sikhs.

“To say that it is a systematic, some sort of program going towards Sikhs at the moment is just not there,” says Jasdip Singh, the chief of Sikhs for America. “What we do” he says of his group, “is spotlight the contributions of the Sikh neighborhood within the U.S. and we attempt to combine the neighborhood into the mainstream America.”

Singh was additionally a founding member of the group Sikhs for Trump.

He says the scenario for Sikhs has considerably improved because the violence of the 80s and 90s. “Sikhs do have points in India like every other neighborhood, however they’ve a authorized framework, they’ve a structure, they’ve a justice system in India,” he says. “Sikhs in India are completely happy.”

For Sikhs dwelling outdoors of India, he says, “which is a really, very small proportion of the Sikh inhabitants to start out asking for a separate homeland, I imply, I do not perceive that.”

He famous the referendum has no authorized standing — it’s nonbinding. Even when thousands and thousands of Sikhs vote for Khalistan, nothing will occur, as a result of it is a purely symbolic train.

“As immigrants, once we come right here, we come right here to contribute to this nation — constructive issues,” he says. “If we wish to protest for Khalistan, we should always go to India, Punjab and begin protesting. Why are we utilizing the soil of this nation to convey points that aren’t related to America?”

However the U.S. authorities has begun to take discover of the Indian authorities’s remedy of minority spiritual and ethnic teams.

In December, the US Fee on Worldwide Spiritual Freedom urged the U.S. State Division to checklist India as a “nation of specific concern” as a result of “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of freedom of faith or perception.”

This month, the Tom Lantos Fee on Human Rights heard testimony from consultants and activists concerning the risk to minority communities coming from the Indian authorities.

Transnational Repression

There are three moments in latest historical past that shift and form Sikh American id, in accordance with Harman Singh, with the Sikh Coalition. The civil rights advocacy group was itself based on account of the preliminary second, the terrorist assault on the World Commerce Middle.

The primary post-9/11 hate crime was the homicide of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh man in Mesa, Arizona by a white man who wished to “kill a Muslim.”

A few decade later, in 2012, a white supremacist walked right into a Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and began capturing, within the deadliest hate crime in an American place of worship on the time.

Each tragedies introduced American Sikhs collectively.

However the third second, the one we’re in proper now, Singh says, reveals a really totally different risk.

This previous winter, the FBI unsealed an indictment accusing an Indian authorities worker of orchestrating a murder-for-hire assassination try of a Sikh separatist activist in New York Metropolis. The company labeled the incident an instance of transnational repression — oppression or interference by international governments on residents or former residents overseas.

“It is a main turning level inside the Sikh neighborhood,” Singh says.

“There are important issues with the protection of Sikhs in the US, but in addition the focused harassment, intimidation makes an attempt by India to silence dissent right here,” he says.

Singh and the Sikh Coalition will not be concerned within the Khalistan referendum, however Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the person focused for assassination in New York is. Pannun is the chief of Sikhs for Justice, which is organizing the referendum marketing campaign. The Indian authorities has labeled him a terrorist, and banned him and Sikhs for Justice from India.

The revelations of the plot to kill Pannun got here on the heels of the homicide of one other Sikh activist in British Columbia. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian authorities of being behind his demise. The Indian authorities denied any involvement and says that within the U.S. case their worker had acted alone.

The poll, not the bullet

Whereas the killing in Canada and the assassination try in New York drew consideration, transnational repression is just not new to many within the Sikh neighborhood, says Harman Singh. “People who advocate for this concept of Khalistan, an unbiased Sikh state, have been very weak to transnational repression for a number of a long time.”

Sikhs who advocate for Khalistan or vote within the referendum will not be terrorists, he argues. “What India has completed is criminalize the suitable to self willpower,” he says.

On the Gurdwara Bradshaw Sacramento, the vans are gearing as much as get on the street, horns are honking and music is blasting from loudspeakers.

Sikh for Justice’s coordinator Avtar Singh Pannu is there serving to to fireplace up the group. He says the referendum is an opportunity to inform their story and vote for freedom. After California, the subsequent cease is New York.

When requested if he’s afraid of being focused or killed, Pannu says no, as a result of “everybody dies sometime.” However, he says, everybody must also have the suitable to self willpower.

“We consider poll,” he says. “We do not consider bullet, and that is how we stand for that.”