A Sikh Temple’s Century
THE Stockton Gurdwara in California — the first Sikh temple in the United States — is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Immigrants from Punjab, India, purchased the lot on Grant Street in early 1912.
Once in a while, I bring out a black and white photograph of the gurdwara taken a few decades later. The members of the early families fan out on the steps leading up to its main entrance. I scan the faces, picking out my mother, my sister, brothers, cousins, aunts and finally, myself. In the front row, the girls stand in their fancy dresses. Boys in buttoned shirts look restlessly away from the camera. Behind us loom those who had the brave vision to build this temple, to cross the vast Pacific in the first place.
They settled in a place that looked much like their beloved but impoverished homeland, planting the broad sun-drenched valleys with the same crops they had grown in Punjab. The community was small in those years. When immigration laws loosened, many of the men brought brides from India. Those young families, my own among them, attended services at the gurdwara for ordinary and major celebrations, like the births of the gurus who established Sikhism beginning in the 15th century. Whenever we arrived, I would stand at the entrance, just inside the wall that surrounded the complex, looking up at the arch that soared above the doors. Looking back now, I imagine that wall must have made our comings and goings even more mysterious to the white residents along Grant Street.
In Oak Creek, Wis., this past Sunday, a gunman with ties to the white power movement entered a gurdwara and shot to death six Sikh worshipers. We know little about his motives, but presumably he saw the temple as a frightening symbol of otherness. But as I watched the images of the shooting on television, I saw the faces of my own brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles, contorted with terror. It was the children who first spread the word of the attack, running into the kitchen, where women were preparing langar — the communal vegetarian meal of dal, yogurt and roti that is a staple of Sikh services.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/opinion/a-sikh-temples-proud-history.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120808