Attempting to call attention to growing threats to the Sikh community, on the 40 year anniversary of a three week long Sikh massacre taking place in India, a group of Sikh activists walked 350 miles up the spine of California’s Central Valley.
Intentionally tracing Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers’ path during their 1966 strike, on this 350 mile walk, protesters marched along the old 99 freeway. Taking place Oct. 9 to Nov. 1, marching from Bakersfield to Sacramento, the Fearless for Justice March was organized by the Jakara Movement — a Sikh advocacy group.
California’s Sikh community has been farming the Central Valley for over a century, fleeing to the valley in 1984 to escape anti-Sikh violence following the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Last year, in 2023, California Legislatures recognized the 1984 Sikh massacre as a genocide, and earlier this month a federal resolution to do the same was introduced in Congress.
During the Fearless for Justice March, Simarpreet Singh remarked on how it feels to be a Sikh activist living in America: “We have evidence that the Indian government is going around literally naming people who are in this building today, calling them things like ‘they’re a terrorist,’ because we represent something that they are trying to repress.”
On June 18, 2023, Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was assassinated by masked gunmen outside the Sikh temple he led in Surry, Canada. Canadian police arrested and charged three Indian men with the murder of Nijjar, and are alleging that India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah, the chief aide of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was behind the plot to target the Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.
In New York, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, one of the main leaders of the Khalistan movement — an independence movement seeking to create an ethno-religious sovereign state called Khalistan for Sikhs in Punjab, India — faced assassination attempts.
After Pannun received warnings from Canadian officials about a “serious threat to his life,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was able to stop the assassination attempt on the activist’s life. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted two Indian nationalists, one of whom is former Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadav, with orchestrating this attempted assassination.
India has denied all involvement with both cases.
These are both alleged incidents of transnational repression. Defined by the FBI as “foreign governments reach[ing] beyond their borders to intimidate, silence, coerce, harass or harm members of their diaspora and exile communities in the United States,” transnational repression has been a growing issue for the Sikh community.
Addressing this transnational repression, Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains, the first Sikh elected official in the state of California, stated, “This is an attempt by the Indian government to annihilate and destroy an entire community.”
Assemblywoman Bains recently introduced AB 3027, attempting to enact policy providing a concrete definition for transnational aggression, to protect “individuals and organizations against transnational repression,” and provide training to local law enforcements on how to deal with these types of threats.
Following the proposal of this bill, Assemblywoman Bains says that she received death threats and other messages accusing her of terrorism. She continued that this bill was killed in committee for alleged fear that naming India as a county engaging in translational repression would put a target on the backs of Hindu Americans. Despite the push-bach, Assemblywoman Bains plans on introducing the bill again in the next session.
One of the main groups opposing AB 3027 is The Coalition of Hindus in North America (CoHNA) — CoHNA Pushpita Prasad stated “Anti-India hate or laws, if they came to be, would be used as a cover for anti-Hindu hate.” Prasad continued, emphasizing her belief that hate for Hindus has largely been ignored in America and that a translational repression could be used against the work that she and groups like CoHNA do.
“This bill didn’t call out any religion or dialect, it called out a country,” she says. “India belongs to a lot of different religions and dialects and ethnicities, not just one,” says Prasad.
Following the attempted assassination of Pannun, Congressman and Senator Elect Adam Schiff, introduced the bipartisan Transnational Repression Reporting Act of 2024. If passed, this bill would require “the Attorney General, in coordination with other relevant federal agencies, to submit a report of cases of transnational repression against U.S. citizens or people in the United States.”
Harman Singh, Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition, emphasized his gratitude to Congressman Schiff for proposing this bill. “We are deeply grateful to Congressman Schiff for proposing this legislation and taking the continuing threat of all transnational repression, including India’s recent targeting of Sikhs, seriously.
“It is essential for our national security that the United States is not seen abiding such egregious violations of democratic values or international norms — including India’s harassing, harming and plotting to kill US-based Sikhs–without consequence. We hope that others in congress will join Congressman Schiff to support this significant step forward,” stated H. Singh.
During a training session by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) earlier this year on Hinduphobia, materials included allegations that Sikhs for Justice is a hate group. HAF suggested law enforcement “monitor the social media platforms for US-based groups and individuals with ties to Khalistan terror groups who advocate violence and fundraise in furtherance of Khalistan.”
Present at this training session were some of California’s police chief’s, district attorney, members of the DOJ and homeland security. HAF also asked law enforcement to “investigate Khalistan attacks against Hindu temples and devotees as hate crimes.”
In a public statement addressing the training secession, The Sikh Coalition, denied all allegations of vandalizing Hindu temples in California: “First, we are deeply disturbed to know that advocacy groups have been pushing a political agenda in their training to law enforcement. It is in the interest of all communities that crimes — including acts of vandalism at houses of worship — are investigated promptly and transparently so that perpetrators can be held to account; to our knowledge, there is no evidence that pro-Khalistan or Sikh individuals are responsible for any such crimes in California.
Addressing the HAF directly, The Sikh Coalition stated “we are angered by the insinuation of Hindu America Foundation (HAF) Community Outreach Director Ramya Ramakrishnan that northern California gurdwaras (Sikh houses of worship) are somehow institutionally connected to drugs, weapons, and organized crime.”
The Sikh Coalition called on the HAF to give me a public apology, stating, “Given the shared reverence in the Hindu and Sikh faith traditions for the importance of houses of worship, we fully expect that HAF will issue a public apology for these remarks immediately.”
