AND NOW, THE PARADE. To start, I recommend watching the video shot from the drone flying overhead during the festival:

The beginning and end of the drone flyover shows the beginning of the parade — the starting point of my post.

The lead float of the parade is a large throne upon which the Guru Granth Sahib is seated, one that is likely modeled after the palanquin upon which the Sikh scripture is carried in Amritsar during the daily processions in and out of the Golden Temple grounds. This, however, is a full parade float that holds priest, musicians, and attendees of the Guru.

The floats that followed either commemorated major historical events in Sikh history, including the martyrdom of Guru Gobind Singh’s two younger sons (discussed in a previous post), or martyrs of contemporary Sikhism.

The center of the Khalistan agitation was a stage constructed on the side of the parade route in support of the creation of Khalistan. Chants of “Khalistan / jindabad!” (long live Khalistan — the same style of chants that India and Pakistan used leading up to and after Partition in 1947), “What do we want? / Khalistan!” “India out of / Khalistan!” alternated with cries in English for Khalistan and speeches listing what rights the Indian government is withholding from the people of Punjab.

Our float then passed the Sikh Referendum 2020 stand and continued along the route, and the cries for Khalistan faded away as the stand crawled out of sight.

My mom and I sat on a float at the back of the parade procession, and the real magic was what we saw during our six hours proceeding very, very slowly down the 4.5-mile parade route. The route was lined at every possible turn with food stands set up by gurdwaras, charitable societies, and cultural groups, all serving chai, samosas, pakoras (vegetable fritters), kulcha (small sandwiches of potatoes and garbanzo beans), sweets, Punjabi beverages, just about every Punjabi snack imaginable. People handed food and snacks up to our float, then trash bags to collect and take away our waste. The volunteers ensured no one went hungry or thirsty during the parade.

These three photos are just a small sample of what the parade offered its attendees, as the sheer number of people there stretched much farther than the eye could see. This was as pure and grand an expression of Punjab — of the Sikh pillar of seva, or selfless service — I had ever seen, and it was right in my home state of California. It drew Sikhs from all around the world, including a woman from New Delhi who sat by my mother and me on the float. Despite the political turmoil underpinning the sentiment of this festival, the most prominent feeling was the genuine sense of pride and joy that followed us the entire weekend.

The following morning, Sikhs came out by the dozens to clean up after the parade, leaving the streets of Yuba City even cleaner than they were before the festival started. As good as Punjabis are at throwing parties, Sikhs are even better at cleaning them up.

***

I’ve been sitting on this particular post for months now, mulling over what analytical framework with which I should be approaching it — is it the whole of Punjab and its vibrant culture packed into a 4.5-mile parade route? Is it Punjab showing the breadth of its global outreach, paired with its almost microscopic focus on the events of the homeland? And what about the cultural festival and its symbolism: how the festival is either an ideal of the culture it depicts or a microcosm, or both? The more I thought about how to frame the festival, the further, I felt, I was getting from it. Yet, it didn’t seem appropriate to just say, “This is Punjab,” and leave it at that.

I am exceptionally proud of my Punjabi-Sikh heritage. I have worked tirelessly for the past several years to learn the language and the faith, including two and a half years attending the Gurdwara Sahib of Chicago, a month in Ontario for the past life of this blog, and a month in Punjab for field research. My undergraduate education, largely, was a process of leaving home to find Punjab. I even returned to New Delhi after I graduated to work a job that proved unrealistic for me to take on, considering I did so without allowing myself time to recuperate after the whirlwind that was my final year of undergrad. Every Friday in New Delhi, I stood on the balcony of my apartment and called the professor I had stayed with in Punjab the previous year. Every week, as I sweated through the monsoon humidity and late summer heat, we discussed when I would be able to visit Punjab, his students, his children. “I fixed up a room for you,” he said, just as he had done the first time I stayed with him. “When the weather is better, when I get a free weekend, I’ll come visit,” I said.

Because of health reasons, I left India without making it to Punjab, and I was frustrated and disillusioned that I had traveled halfway across the world, only to miss Punjab because of weather and too heavy a workload.

I came home and saw Punjab stronger than I had seen in India — more concentrated, louder, more political. I had been to the festival six years prior, but my experience of this culture was limited due to lack of interest and decreasing exposure (read: being in high school). This time, I was in tune with the events in Punjab and their implications on the festival, with every song and speech in Punjabi, with every aspect of the festival and parade.

My family was at the first festival; my grandfather was an organizer, and my mom and her siblings walked the then 5-mile route. The turnout was marginal, and the other organizers complained about the length of the route. The idea for the parade, my grandfather said, came from a Sikh festival in Vancouver — a community that had settled in the continent decades prior. Today, with the growth of satellite television and social media, the Yuba City Sikh Festival has mushroomed in size to become the largest Sikh festival in North America. The festival represents the full spectrum of Punjabi-Sikh culture, from the idealized version of Punjab the organizers put forth, to the loud political advocacy of separatists, to the fraying edges of popular memory of Punjab among youth. Attendees see in the festival as much as they know of Punjab, whether they track daily news reports out of the home country or could care less about India and its politics. The festival is, indeed, Punjab — equally to those who never got acquainted with the home country, and to those who never really left.

“If immigration stopped tomorrow, these gurdwaras would be empty,” foretold Nandeep Singh, co-founder of Jakara Movement, in his presentation titled “Why Don’t We Care About Our Kids?” Jakara Movement is a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading awareness of Sikhism and Punjab among Sikh youth in the US, though the elders filling out Dashmesh Hall on the Sikh Temple of Yuba City grounds gave little credence to the young upstart’s claims.

This post will take us through the remaining three speakers of the Sikh Seminar discussed in the previous post, centered on what is one of the Sikh diaspora’s most pressing issues: can the faith survive outside of its homeland? And, as an extension of that question: if Sikhism is to survive as a global religion, what elements of its home culture must be preserved? Punjabi language? Punjabi literacy? Cuisine, fashion, gurdwara attendance, marriage within the culture? Popular sociology maintains that immigrant culture cannot survive three generations in a new country, but the Internet and social media have created a niche for any and every community that has access to it. My generation (meaning my brother and first cousins) is the first in my family to be born entirely in the US. Of the seven of us, five of us speak Punjabi, four of us are half (my brother and I being the two halfsies who speak), and only one of us can read Punjabi. At what point will it be inevitable that we lose Punjab?

And now, the speakers.

Sikh Seminar and Open House, October 31, 2015. In this post, I will focus on Sikhnet.com Founder Gurumustuk Singh, Jakara Movement Co-founder Jakara Movement, and Journalist Jarnail Singh.

1. Gurumustuk Singh, Founder, Sikhnet.com: Sikh Perspective on Meaning of Universal Sikhi Values.

In truth, my notes on Gurumustuk Singh were sparse, because my focus going into the festival was how the festival reflected Punjab and its diaspora. Gurumustuk was born in Los Angeles, was raised Sikh, and was schooled in India. His parents – a Christian father and Jewish mother – found Sikhism through Kundalini yoga and meditation. They represent a small contingent of primarily non-Punjabi Sikhs known as 3H0 (Happy, Healthy, and Holy Organization), and their home base is in Espanola, New Mexico. SikhNet, which is one of the most prominent sites devoted to spreading awareness about Sikhism, is also based out of Espanola. 3H0’s philosophy is to live spiritually and cleanly through yoga, contemplation on the name of God (as Guru Nanak preached), and particular practices of natural food and dress, not unlike the Hindu concept of ayurveda (3H0 has their own line of natural foods, oils and clothes). 3H0 was founded by Harbhajan Singh Puri (known to his followers as Yogi Bhajan), who moved from India to Toronto in 1968 and taught about the lives of the Sikh gurus as part of his yoga classes. He devoted his life to teaching yoga and spreading the name of God as detailed in the Guru Granth Sahib, or Sikh scripture.

(My side observation, not to diminish the value of 3H0 in any way, is to point out how India is a strong breeding ground for religious/lifestyle movements founded by people preaching yoga and meditation, some of which take root in the US. See also: Patanjali and his line of all natural products, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati and ISKCON, Shah Mastana Ji Maharaj and the Dera Sacha Sauda “Confluence Of All Religions,” Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and transcendental meditation, and so on.)

SikhNet provides a powerful source of cohesion for converts to Sikhism, and it is an excellent starting point for delving into Sikhism. Though their stories are more derived from oral tradition than from historical sources (scrutiny courtesy of my grandfather), these stories depict Sikh popular memory of its heritage – how popular Sikhism strives, rather optimistically, to see itself when separated from politics. It’s quite a difficult ideal to implement.

2. Nandeep Singh, Co-founder, Jakara Movement: Why Don’t We Care About Our Kids?

Nandeep Singh is a Sikh from Fresno, California, whose presentation explained how US-born and Indian-born Sikhs are “poles apart.” Singh argued that Sikhism is disappearing among its American-born youth, as their parents, through lack of engagement with their children, are not doing enough to preserve Sikh culture. His presentation came with charts that detailed Sikh youth attendance in temples:

Jakara Movement’s favorite charts, courtesy of their mailing list.

Until the teenage years, parents bring their children to the gurdwara on Sundays, as seen by attendance at gurdwaras in San Jose, Livingston, and Fresno, California. Teenagers’ attendance numbers drop sharply, as the vast majority of gurdwara attendees are the parents of those children and the generation above. Singh noted that 1/3rd to 2/5ths of this children are born in Punjab and immigrate to the US, so the problem is not just US-born youth. He calls this current generation of Sikhs (my generation) the lost generation. Interest in Sikhism is not cultivated through basketball and bhangra, but through community building efforts organized around Sikh values. This model of youth engagement – religious school, youth groups, scholarship programs, and so on – focuses on making youth proud of their Sikh heritage, a heritage that emphasizes the need for learning the Punjabi language and maintaining a political awareness of the happenings in Punjab. In the absence of any central Sikh unifying body (India has the SGPC, but Sikhs outside India have no overarching administrative body), Jakara Movement strives to create a sense of cohesion among American Sikhs.

The crux of Nandeep Singh’s presentation was his observation that there were no youths in the audience of this seminar. The kids were playing outside with one another, looking at the shops and toys, making no clear effort to learn about political upheaval in Punjab and its implications on Sikh identity. Any person under the age of 25 in the audience (e.g. me) was an exception to a trend of detachment from their parents’ culture, implying that (to answer my opening questions), Sikhism needs an all-of-the-above strategy to keep its culture alive: language, literacy, physical Sikh markings, and so on. In other words, ours is a path from which we cannot stray. We must wear our identity proudly.

3. Jarnail Singh, Journalist and Member of Legislative Assembly, Delhi (Aam Aadmi Party): Challenges Before Sikhs And How to Overcome Them

Jarnail Singh came more than hour late, as he was coming to this conference straight from India. He spoke entirely in rapid-fire Punjabi, quoting Sikh scripture and berating India’s major political parties, from the far right-wing Hindu RSS poisoning Punjab with heroin to Punjab’s own lack of political cohesion. Punjab is on track to becoming a failed state, from farmer suicides to drought to cancer and drug addiction. In a video I did with formerly-Chandigarh-now-Austrialia-based video artist Bobby Sandhu, Sandhu notes that Punjab is ashamed of how its culture, and how it is rare to find people who are proud to be Punjabi. Jarnail Singh echoed this sentiment. Punjab has no central administration, no think tank to ensure that it and the Sikh faith will survive in India. Punjab and its diaspora, instead, can only seem to watch as the province dries up.

***

When it came time for Q&A (which was actually before Jarnail Singh arrived), I asked Gurumustuk and Nandeep Singh if they think Sikhism can survive in the US without the Punjabi language. Gurumustuk said that he could not imagine his life in Sikhism had he not grown up in Punjab, while Nandeep Singh flatly said no and that it is the responsibility of our generation to decide how Punjab will look in America. The previous questions in the session had been primarily from elder Punjabis asking Manoj Mitta about the province of Punjab, with little attention being directed to the state of Punjabi youth. As Nandeep Singh noted, “How can we think about the situation in Punjab when we don’t think about our kids?”

The generation gap is the most confounding issue facing Punjab, as it has been for every immigrant community in the US before. Immigrants tend to preserve as much as they can of home. In the case of Punjab, this was done by maintaining monetary ties to home; much of Punjab, including its largest gurdwaras, was developed by foreign money brought back in to the province: immigrants to London, Toronto, Vancouver, New York pursuing wealth through business, law, engineering, or medicine and sending funds back to their home villages. These veritable castles dot village roads throughout Punjab, their gated confines facing crumbling roads and straw huts caked in cow patties. Those who left India decades ago and have not returned – for me, my family and the Punjabi families my research has guided me to – note with heavy sighs that they would not have the same opportunities in India as they have had in the US and Canada. The original waves of Punjabis to California of the 60s, but dating back to the opening decades of the 20th century, adopted America, taught their kids America, and now fear that their grandchildren do not know Punjab. In many regards, their fear is true; the language is disappearing, and knowledge of Sikhism is going with it. Congregations are filled out by new waves of immigrants who have been displaced by 1984, by the increasing difficulty of farming in light of pesticide-resistant bugs, in search of greater economic opportunity, but the children of Punjab have grown up with their parents protecting them from these realities. The generation gap is stark and massive, accelerating with each new generation but met with artists and organizers who work that much harder to figure out what Punjab means as the memory of mustard fields fades further into the distance.

It seemed appropriate to end this post with a sunset over Punjab. Photo taken on the outskirts of Jalandhar, over fallow fields.

Now, anyone who read this blog in its past life knows that I love politics, especially Punjabi politics. It is with this in mind that we turn to the Yuba City Sikh Festival and a seminar that was held in the Dashmesh Hall (meaning Hall of the Tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh). First, we must talk about Punjab.

On October 12, 2015, 112 pages were found torn from the Guru Granth Sahib (the living Sikh scripture) in Bargari, Faridkot, Punjab. This was an early incident in a series of desecration events throughout the province, events that sent shockwaves throughout the Sikh world. See the map below:

A map of Punjab indicating where desecration events took place, starting October 12 and continuing over the few days.
1: Bargari, Faridkot district (mentioned above)
2: Kohrian, Faridkot district
3: Mishriwala, Ferozepur district
4: Ludhiana
5: Gurusar Mehraj, Bathinda district
6: Sarai Naga, Muktsar district
*: Baghapurana, Moga district

Events 1 through 6 were detailed in an article on Firstpost, though the most significant desecration event (*) occurred in Baghapurana, Moga district, on October 14. Here, police fired on a peaceful protest to disperse it, injuring 80 and killing 2. Protests erupted throughout North India blaming Chief Minister of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal for turning his back on Sikhs, as well as the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS), a political/religious/charitable group operating out of North India. By the time the story reached Yuba City, Badal was the main target of outrage:

#BoycottBadal was the theme of this stand at the Yuba City Sikh Festival, where passersby could hit a dummy of Chief Minister of Punjab Parkash Singh Badal with a sandal. In South Asian culture (exactly like the infamous Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at President Bush), hitting someone with a shoe is among the most blatant signs of disrespect possible. Feet are culturally unclean; to show respect for someone, you bow at their feet and take up their dirt, so hitting someone with a shoe is like weaponizing all the uncleanliness your soul has ever tracked, this life and beyond.

(On a sidenote, the DSS is a fascinating entity; they consider themselves a spiritual successor of Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism, and they argue that there is no distinction between religions – Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Christianity, and so on. Their current leader, Saint Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insan, is a cult of personality figure who stars and directs his own action/religious film series, MSG – The Messenger of God. Even his name is an overt effort to unite faiths: Saint being Christian/Sufi, Gurmeet meaning “of the Guru,” Ram being a Hindu name for God, Rahim “the merciful” being a name of God in Islam, Singh being the Sikh male last name, Ji for respect, and Insan from Arabic, meaning human.)

It is with this in mind that we turn to the seminar. This post will cover the first two speakers.

Sikh Seminar and Open House, October 31, 2015, 1 PM to 3 PM (though it ran until 4:30). The speakers: Delhi Journalist Manoj Mitta, Activist Daughter Navkiran Kaur Khalra, Sikhnet.com Founder Gurumustuk Singh, Jakara Movement Co-founder Jakara Movement, and Journalist Jarnail Singh.

1. Manoj Mitta, Journalist & Author of When a Tree Shook Delhi: “1984 Carnage and its Aftermath”

1984 (referenced in an earlier post, “Symbols of Sikhi”) is a watershed year for Sikhs. It was in 1984 that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in an effort to eradicate a Sikh separatist movement in Punjab, ordered a coordinated attack on Sikh temples throughout Punjab and North India, including the wholesale destruction of Akal Takht Sahib, one of the five holiest gurdwaras in all of Sikhism. Operation Bluestar killed Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale – an extremist to history, but a martyr to Sikhs. After the operation, Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards.

In November of 1984 (Mr. Mitta pointed out that this festival was the 31st anniversary of this event), Indian police launched a coordinated attack on Sikhs throughout Delhi and Punjab in retaliation. The Indian government maintains that these were riots were nothing more than public manifestations of anger directed at a specific religious group (of which India has a long history), but Mitta argued that the events that opened November 1984 were too big to be just anger. Official reports state that 2733 were killed in three days of violence, and that the police actively recruited people to riot, that they entered neighborhoods, spread word of the riots, and catalyzed the violence. The ensuing act-finding inquiry included no public hearings, no testimonials by prominent victims, no justice. Mitta’s book, When a Tree Shook Delhi, released in 2007, took 23 years to write – a testament to how difficult it was, and still is, to piece together 1984.

2. Navkiran Kaur Khalra, Daughter of Internationally Acclaimed Human Rights Activist Jaswant Singh Khalra: “How to Honor My Father’s Legacy”

Navkiran Kaur Khalra’s father spent his life fighting for the Indian government to acknowledge the atrocities of 1984 and after. For the decade-plus following ’84, Punjab was essentially a police state. Blockades dotted every major highway, and bodies turned up at crematoriums, stripped of any form of identification. According to Indian law, a body cannot be cremated without permission of the deceased’s family, but ledgers at Amritsar crematoriums in 1989 reported that 6,000 bodies were cremated due to lack of identification. 297 had been identified, but the government claimed that they were missing to cover up police involvement. Khalra’s father, who went missing in 1995, was one of an estimated 25,000 who were disappeared in the years following 1984. The CBI (India’s FBI) took 12 years to convict 6 people involved in the disappearance and presumed murder of Jaswant Singh Khalra.

These are familiar stories to the Sikh diaspora, stories that have driven – and are still driving – the faith out of Punjab. The popular memory of violence and repression solidifies global Sikhism’s resolve to form a nation of their own comprised of lands their kingdom once controlled before it fell to the British. These lands stretched as far north as Afghanistan, past Shimla in the east, the Thane River in the west, and on Delhi’s door in the southeast. Today, by contrast, Punjab is a province carved from a region that once included Pakistani Punjab, the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, and the Hindu mythological battlegrounds of Haryana. As it shrinks under pressure in India, its global voice becomes ever louder. The events of 1984, of Punjab the police state, of October 2015, hung heavy on the minds of Sikhs at the festival.

This tent commemorates those who were disappeared by police in Punjab in the ’80s and ’90s. Pictured on the tent banner are Bhai Gurjit Singh and Bhai Krishan Bhagwan Singh, the two Sikhs killed by police in October protests – “Diamonds of the Qaum,” or global Sikh nation (qaum from Persian etymology). The cutout is of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. To the right of the cutout is a banner that reads “Disappeared by the police: Victims of Government Repression.” The photos on and in the tent show pictures of murdered Sikhs, but without proper documentation: no names, dates, locations, anything. The sparsity of solid evidence is a primary reason why the Indian government has been able to deny responsibility for so long.