Understanding Sikhs and diversity in America
On the heels of the first Upstate Sikh temple opening in Duncan, a lecture will be given at the University of South Carolina Upstate on the religion that was founded in India in the late 15th century by Guru Nanak and is the youngest and least known of the world’s monotheistic religious traditions.
Prabhjot Singh and Mallika Kaur will present “9/11 to Oak Creek: Understanding Sikhs and Diversity in America” on Thursday, March 7 from 11:00 a.m.to 12:00 noon in the Health Education Complex, Room 2039.
Singh is president & CEO of Pixatel Systems, a fast growing mobile start-up based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is the founding chairman of the Sikh Coalition, the nation’s largest Sikh civil rights organization. He devoted his full-time energy in the months following September 11, 2001 to mobilizing the Sikh community and developing the Sikh Coalition’s national infrastructure. Singh served at the Coalition’s Executive Director until 2006 and has been on the Coalition’s Board of Trustees since inception. He is a co-founder of Saanjh, an immigrant leadership development non-profit, and also serves on the MBSK Foundation Board, which focuses on education as a tool of empowerment. Singh is regularly invited to speak at universities, youth camps, and corporate events about activism, post 9/11 America, and the Sikh faith.
Kaur is a staff attorney at CORA, a domestic violence agency in the Bay Area, California, who focuses on gender and minority issues in the United States and South Asia. In the U.S., Kaur has worked closely with Sikh and other immigrant communities in New York, Illinois, and California on issues ranging from post-9/11 discrimination against Sikhs and Muslims to asylum for men and women from Guatemala, Mexico and Nepal. In South Asia, she has worked on and written about issues ranging from female feticide and Punjabi farmer suicides to police torture. Kaur traveled in Kashmir as the 2010-2011 Harvard Sheldon Traveling Fellow where she spoke to women and girls caught in the conflict. She is the co-founder of the Sikh Family Center, an initiative committed to closing current gaps in access to social services as well as increasing community awareness and activism around holistic health and safety. Kaur holds a Juris Doctorate (JD) from Berkeley Law and a Master in Public Policy (MPP) from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
For more details, contact Dr. David Damrel, associate professor of religion at USC Upstate, at 503-5798 or ddamrel@uscupstate.edu.
Love to all, hatred to no one, but why do Upper Caste Sikhs loot, maim, slaughter and oppress Lower caste Dalit Sikhs and Ravidasis?
Why were all 10 Sikh Gurus Upper Caste Khatri Supremacists? Why no Lower-Caste, Jat, or Out-Caste Dalit Gurus?
Sikhs cultivate a pious image to attract, impress, deceive and back stab.
History shows Sikhs are the most violent people on earth. Sikh gangs ravage Canada, Britain, US with rape, slaughter, drug trafficking, money laundering.
Sikh Supremacists brandish beards, long threatening knives, turbans, to segregate from others. Why are Sikhs hostile to interracial marriage with poor Blacks and Hispanics?
Sikhs commit genocide of millions of female fetuses to produce male kids.
Sikh Terrorists murdered 100,000 innocent Indian civilians during 80s, 90s. Sikh terrorists bombed Air India flight 182 from Canada and murdered 350 passengers in 1985.
A reply to Simran:
Dear Simran,
Your comments are a very strong display of great ignorance of Sikh history.
First, let us agree on the notion, that it was the Sikh gurus that outlawed the caste system to begin with. Any “Sikh” practicing the caste system, is practicing something else, it is certainly not Sikhism.
1. Your claim that why were all 10 Sikh Gurus Upper Caste Khatri Supremacists, is quite ill-founded, as it seems to imply that they used the Bedi name or Sodhi name to oppress their will upon the people. I think you will find based on the history of Sikhs from giving women equal status (perhaps even higher than men), and initialization through the Khalsa that the Gurus taught the Sikhs to be all as one.
2. History shows Sikhs to be the most violent people on Earth? This was quite amusing, as you seem to have left out the atrocities committed by Muslims and Christians throughout the Crusades. You also have seemed left out the atrocities committed by atheists such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. The “Sikh gangs” you are referring to are “Jatt Gangs”, arrogant buffoons from Punjab that all have cut hair, sport bandanas, drink and smoke all day and night, they are hardly any representation of Sikhs that I am aware of.
I could go on and on, but, I quite frankly don’t have the time. If you would like, you can send me an e-mail at ikjyotsingh@me.com.