Turban Doesn’t Mean Terrorist
baldeep pooni
Tears flowed down my eyes and down my cheeks as I glared at the TV then read the words: ‘’Today another Sikh man was killed in what seems like a hate crime’’. In the next 30 seconds the CNN news broadcasting network displayed images of the dead Sikh man with his family crowded around him, crying in despair and shock. I continued to watch in horror as the news statistically pinpointed this catastrophe as the tenth murder this week. Although the reporter stated this lethal assault cumulated as the tenth murder this week he didn’t give the slightest mention about a possible solution from the New York City officials. Shortly after the news report, I shut off the TV, got up off the couch and made my way to the bathroom to wash the tears that had dried on my face.
As the cold water trickled down the sink I held my head into an erect position facing the bathroom mirror. While I peered at my reflection in the mirror, inattentively my subconscious mind began to process the similarities between me and the Sikh man that was murdered today. I didn’t support a turban or beard like him but I had the same brown skin complexion, Indian heritage, Punjabi culture and Sikh religious background like the Sikh man. Suddenly, I questioned ‘’was he attacked and killed because of his turban and beard?’’ Over ten years have passed since September 11, 2001 but the misconception of what a turban means seems embedded into American society.
Months flew by like leaves on a winter tree as I saw and heard reports on TV and the internet that dealt with assaults on people with diverse ethnic backgrounds. A majority of these assaults and random acts of violence occurred on people of Sikh identity, specifically the Sikhs who distinctively exhibited turbans and kept long unshorn beards. Since I yearned to for a critical research on this topic, I waited until the three week Christmas break the school gives for the winter holiday. Throughout those three weeks I did nothing but investigate every detail that would give me some kind of perspective on how frequently these hate crimes occurred and why. After spending numerous nights and days on this research, I discovered fact after fact proving these events were still occurring at the same rate they had in 2001 when the terrorist attack on The Twin Towers in New York took place. Also, I discovered these crimes frequently occurred because the general public had little knowledge about the religion called Sikhism or the Sikhs, the religion’s followers. In fact I conducted random polls at public places like the mall, stores and bookstores to conduct random polls. I asked people passing by, if they knew anything about Sikhism. To my surprise not one person could accurately do so.
Although I gained some insight about the general public’s views though my research, I still felt blind to the complex elements of hate crimes. It wasn’t until I watched the documentary called ‘’Divided We Fall’’ that I found out how frequently and violently these assaults occurred in American society, assaults that happened less than two months from December 17,2011, the day I began my research. In this documentary I viewed how American citizens who were raging out with sentiments of patriotic confusion systematically attacked numerous Sikhs, men, women and children. I saw child, man, and women being accused of terrorism and then brutally attacked and killed. Thus watching this documentary left only one color flowing throughout my mind: red, the color of blood. At that moment I realized I had to do something to restore the red, white and blue American colors of justice to ‘’my people’’ but the mixed emotions flowing within me left me with no specific path to start from. A couple of days passed as I struggled on with a possible action to take. However my stress grew so I decided to pay a visit to the local Sikh religious temple.
As I sat on the comforting carpet of the Sikh temple I closed my eyes and sought for some kind of answer. I laid there inside the black realm of contemplation for what felt like hours; then, suddenly the voice of one of the organizers of the Sikh temple gained entrance. His voice awakened me. I focused on Mr.Singh, a tall, light brown, turbaned man with a long beard that flowed from the sides of his face to the middle of his fancy orange tie. He usually started out by jumping from thought to thought but today he focused on one subject, centered on the chaos plaguing our religious community here in America. With a very concentrated gleam in his dark brown eyes Mr.Singh spoke from his podium.
‘’Over the last few months more and more Sikh children and Sikh teenagers have stopped wearing the Sikh symbols because they are constantly harassed at school by their friends.’’
Then with a storm of tears precipitating down on his face and with both hands folded together as done in prayer, Mr.Singh made his final statement in an emotionally wrecked voice.
‘’These children have given up all that they believe in because they now have come to believe that our religion is somehow linked to the terrorists in this world!’’
As soon as Mr. Singh uttered these words I knew I had to stand out as a symbol of faith for not only the Sikh youth but for everyone that lost their lives because they were mistaken as terrorists. I decided that to combat this issue I needed to wear the turban, one of the most significant Sikh symbols and then educate the kids at school, the people I met at grocery stores and anyone I met on the walks of life that turban doesn’t mean terrorist! The root cause of this misunderstanding emerged as ignorance. The majority of the Americans didn’t know the difference between the Sikhs and Al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization! If CNN could show Bin Laden as the image of terrorism, I could dismantle the negative connotations attached to the turban due to this propaganda, and show the world that a turban serves as a symbol of the long injustice Sikhs faced in India not a link to Bin Laden’s violent terrorist plots.
The night before my first day back to school, I practiced tying my turban over and over again till I had perfected it. As I woke up that morning with an air of responsibility, I carefully combed my hair in a braid at the top center of my head. With pride and excitement, I took the sacred cloth of the turban in the palms of both of my hands, spreading it carefully, completely covering the front of my hair. Then with my left hand firmly fixed upon holding the cloth of the turban over my scalp, I grabbed the long piece of the turban with my right hand, bringing the cloth together to an inch wide, a technique that helps a turban remain neat. Then I slowly brought the cloth over my scalp in a methodical manner until securely tied. As I picked up my book bag and walked out of the door I reminded myself that these steps were the first steps in the shoes of a man who had a quest for social change!
Published December 17 2011
baldeep pooni
image by BoominViisuals