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Who Speaks for Sikh Americans?
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The WSN reproduces this thread posted on TheLangarHall.com by
Camille which has generated considerable discussions within
hours of featuring on the net. The piece is all the more
relevant at a time when Gurdwara Sahib, Fremont is witnessing
elections this weekend. How important is it to act and network
through gurdwara-specific focus while claiming to be advocating
issues on behalf of a faith community? Here is a good take off
point for discussion. Please do join issue. -- Ed. |
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 While
Sikhs have lived in the
U.S. for over
100 years, our numbers have grown tremendously after 1960s
immigration reform. With this increase in numbers, we’re beginning
to see the first long-term interactions between waves of immigrants
and within generations of immigrants. These shifts in demographics,
in concert with growth in the population of U.S.-born Sikhs, have
created a space in which we are re-visioning and exploring advocacy
and expression on behalf of the Sikh community.
Among many
U.S.-born and 1.5-generation Sikhs, this advocacy and participation
has happened through the creation of new institutions. Sidestepping
the process of sangat-based decision-making, a slew of new
“community-focused” advocacy organizations have popped up. Many of
the organizations we now think of as household names (SALDEF -
formerly SMART, Sikh Coalition, United Sikhs, Ensaaf) were founded
in the last 15 years. While these same organizations provide
important legal advocacy tools, a lack of coordination between
organizations, paired with a hesitancy to engage Sikh spiritual
organizations, at best leads to confusion around a cohesive, unified
Sikh voice/message. At its worst, this failure to work together
leads to the creation of campaigns that often either duplicate
efforts or undermine each others’ work.
Interestingly,
many of these organizations choose not to work through gurdwaras or
sangats. When they do, it is often to extract community resources
(signatures, funding, in-kind donations), not to work with sangats
to define their own goals and service needs. Perhaps the latter goal
(working with sangats) is beyond the mission or purview of these
individual organizations. Sikh advocacy organizations tend to focus
on translating the practice of Sikhi to non-Sikh communities as
opposed to building capacity within the Sikh community itself. This
isn’t inherently a bad thing; it’s necessary for us to work both
within and without the Sikh faith community. As a U.S.-born Sikh
from a sangat that grew exponentially over the course of my
childhood, I can understand the frustrations around working through
the gurdwara — the politics, generational divides, insularity, and
language challenges can be disheartening and time-consuming.
In my opinion,
these frustrations are insufficient reasons to avoid working
directly with or through sangats. I believe that Sikhi has a
stridently community-based organizational model (i.e., panth). This
model dovetails nicely with the principles underlying grassroots
community organizing. Now, I’m biased because I strongly believe
that communities are the foundations for effective advocacy, even
though the process of creating a cohesive message or unity is much
more time-consuming (and sometimes unachievable) in the grassroots
model.
Gurdwaras are
the center of our faith community and will continue to serve an
essential spiritual, service, and social function no matter how many
organizations we found. Because none of the “big” national Sikh
organizations are sangat-based or democratically elected, they
remain completely unaccountable to the Sikh community.
This attempt to
“get away from the gurdwara” creates a vacuum in which individuals
often claim to speak for the community without the authority or
right to do so. As a result, individuals and individual voices
clamor for legitimacy and “right-ness” instead of working for
collective voices and righteousness. This emphasis on the individual
and the individual’s voice (without a democratic backing) is
inherently opposed to the community-based focus of Sikhi. Even
“small” interim decisions require a council of 5 (panj pyaare) to
come together to take action when the sangat cannot, with the
default that the sangat is the foundation for decision-making. This
sangat-based approach prevents both grandstanding and human error;
after all, how can an individual, without counsel, interpret the
will or intent of the faith/faith community?
Where this
undermines our (collective) goals the most is in issues around the
full practice of the faith. In the
U.S., this tends
to cluster around hate violence and legal concerns regarding
“accommodation” of the 5 kakkars. I respect the work being done by
Sikh advocacy organizations, but I often question their messages and
tactics. At the national level, it is essential that Sikhs have a a
democratic, accountable, panth-based organization that can serve as
“the final word” for coordinating advocacy efforts and initiatives
for the faith. This doesn’t mean that other advocacy organizations
should not exist or should not continue to do the work they’re doing
— they should. However, a higher level of coordination, in which
personal disagreements or misunderstandings could be clarified and
settled, would only strengthen our overall advocacy and service
efforts.
5
March 2008
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