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02/25/2008

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Security officers at Logan International Airport listen to a lecture on Sikh religion.  Photo by JULIE MASIS

BOSTON - Navjeet Singh , the New England director of the of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, who wears a turban like many Sikh men, has become accustomed to people calling him “Osama” on the street. He said it has happened to him at least three times in the last four years.

The last time he heard the terrorist’s name, he was wearing a suit and tie at a subway station on his way to a meeting at work. He ignored the comment.

“As I was getting on the T, I heard somebody say it,” he recalls. “I just felt a sense of outrage to be identified with someone who is responsible for a lot of harm. … In general, people seem to think that someone with a turban is likely a Muslim, because pictures of Osama [bin Laden] seem to show that he is wearing a turban.”

Although he often chooses not to engage with the person who insults him, Singh is sure these incidents are not unique to him. To raise awareness about Sikhs in America — and to show that Sikh turbans are different in style from the Muslim head-covering — he has been leading Sikh cultural awareness training sessions at Logan International Airport and at the Boston Police Department.

In 2007, he and other Sikh volunteers trained the entire Boston police force, which has more than 3,000 officers. At the airport, Sikh cultural awareness sessions are ongoing and take place every month in conjunction with an Arab-Muslim cultural awareness presentation. 

The training seminars seem to be needed.

The truth about turbans: Kanwaldeep Singh Arneja unrolls a turban during a presentation about Sikh culture at Boston Logan International Airport. Photo by JULIE MASIS


Only one of the 28 transportation security officers who attended the training at the airport in February raised his hand when asked how many people have known a Sikh personally. The other airport security officers in the room had only stereotypes — that Sikhs tend to be more military-oriented than others, that they are well-educated and upper class, and that they often carry a small knife.

During the hour-long training, they were introduced to Sikhism by Kanwaldeep Singh Arneja, an IBM product developer from Billerica, Mass.

Arneja unrolled a turban cloth in front of them — to show that it is not a hat, but a piece of fabric that can be six to seven meters long. He stressed that a Sikh’s head is a private part of his body and that a turban should not be removed in a public area. He suggested that in cases of suspicion, a Sikh could be given the option of patting down his own turban and having his hands swabbed after for remnants of chemical materials.

Transportation officers also had a chance to take a look at the traditional Sikh dagger, called a kirpan, that Sikh men often wear under their clothing and learned that it symbolizes that the person who wears it had mastered the scriptures. Passengers are not permitted to carry the knife aboard airplanes.

One slide in Arneja’s presentation included pictures illustrating the difference between the Arab and Muslim-style turbans and Sikh turbans.

Singh, who has led several of these presentations in the past, said he emphasizes that removing a turban is not like taking off at hat.

“It involves wrapping and unwrapping and it takes time,” he said. “Last time I was at the airport, I wrapped it on the head of one of the staff. … After years of practice every day it takes us three to five minutes, but for most people [putting a turban on] can take 10 to 15 minutes.”

The presentations are important in light of the post-9/11 hate crimes against Sikhs, he said.

The day after the attacks of September 11, 2001, a Sikh man was arrested and pulled off a train in Providence, Rhode Island, after authorities mistook him for a terrorist.

Hate crimes against Sikhs are on the increase — although many of them are reported only in local newspapers and do not make national headlines, Arneja told transportation security personnel at the airport. The Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund has recorded more than 600 hate crimes against Sikhs, including desecrations of places of worship, and an incident in which two Sikh brothers, who had lived in the United States for more than 20 years, were shot to death in Arizona. Two more hate crimes were reported in the last two weeks alone, he said.

Most recently, Arneja said, a Sikh man who had the flu fell asleep at a bank in Orlando after taking some medicine that made him dizzy. He awoke to find that the bank had been evacuated and police had surrounded the building.

“Awareness [about who Sikhs are] is everything. It’s underplayed,” Arneja said.

Azekah Jennings, a conciliation specialist for the U.S. Justice Department’s New England office, who attended the training at the airport, said the Sikh cultural awareness sessions at Logan may be expanded to other airports around the country.

“There have been incidents in other parts of the country, incidents where people were targeted. Some of it is really bad. There’s been physical assaults, name-calling, on and on,” Jennings said. He added that he is proud that no such incidents have taken place at Boston’s Logan airport.

A Sikh cultural training video was uploaded to the transportation security authority’s Web site on February 5.

To learn more about recent hate crimes against Sikhs, visit saldef.org. To watch the Sikh cultural awareness training video on the Transportation Security Agency’s website, go to www.usdoj.gov/crs/video/ocg-video.htm.

- By JULIE MASIS

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