Who we must blame for California Sikh holy writings desecration
Days after 9/11, a Sikh gas-station owner was murdered in Mesa, Arizona by a bigot, who allegedly mistook him for a Muslim.
Since then, we have heard and read about a number of attacks - physical, verbal, online - on Sikhs living in the West and in the Australian continent.
A deliberate explosion at a gurdwara in Essen, Germany occurred in April this year.
On August 5, 2012, an armed supremacist stormed a Sikh house of worship in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and killed six people inside.
Since Balbir Singh Sodhi's murder in Arizona post-9/11, various assaults on the members of the community and their holy sites in the developed world have been blamed on what's been called mistaken identity.
I don't fully agree there's any mistake - or rather any widespread ignorance - overseas about the Sikhs living there from decades to half-a-century to a century.
The desecration of the sacred Sikh writings in California should not be downplayed as a stray incident of religious disrespect perpetrated by some lone wolf.
Desecration of Sikh religious scripture reported in Union City of California (In pic: US police & Mayor at the spot) pic.twitter.com/MgFVRMRubI
— ANI (@ANI_news) August 11, 2016
Instead, there appears to be a pattern, a common motive behind all these strikes, minor or major.
Every gurdwara in these nations, billed as finest democracies, is identified by a "Sikh Temple" sign.
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| How can attackers be mistaken when every gurdwara is identified by a "Sikh Temple" sign. |
How can attackers then be mistaken?
And mind you, most of those who raided them or defaced them or desecrated them are not men of colour.
If I connect the dots from available news reports, it appears the attacks on Sikhs, one of the most visible and identifiable brown-skinned communities in the West and in Australia, are a manifestation of an aggressive homegrown far-right ideology brewing in those parts of the world.
That ideology is a likely reaction to Islamist terrorism entrenched in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa.
But this radical Right dogma is slowly taking a toll on the democratic values of American, European and Australian nations.
Perhaps, Donald Trump owes his rise as a serious candidate for the US presidency to the undercurrents of the same sentiments in his country.
Details are yet sketchy about the latest events in California.
Still, the desecration underscores the need for the most advanced democracies not just to arrest individual hate attackers, but arrest the hostile far-right waves that threaten to punch a hole in their multicultural milieu.