Sikh security kit meant to help gurdwaras prevent violence like the Indianapolis shooting

A Sikh woman prays in a gurdwara. Photo via Sikh Coalition.

NEW YORK— Sikh houses of worship, called gurdwaras, are discussing how to ramp up security measures around the country to protect the community after the mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis that killed eight people, including four Sikhs.

"It certainly has once again, brought questions of safety into strong consideration, and I think it's fair to say that everyone in the Indianapolis Sikh community is aware of those concerns, more so now than maybe before this tragedy happened," said Mark Reading-Smith, Senior Managing Director of Programs at Sikh Coalition, a New York-based advocacy group.  

Perhaps the most prominent tool is The Sikh Coalition’s recently revamped gurdwara security kit launched in January to help the Sikh houses of worship and community members prevent and prepare for such unexpected tragic events. The advocacy group added sections on free security consultations and grants that gurdwaras can apply for to help fund the security measures suggested in the kit. 

While there are more than 25 million Sikhs worldwide, only about 0.1-0.2% of Americans (or 300,000-500,000) identify as Sikh, according to Census data and advocacy groups like the National Sikh Campaign. Sikhs practice monotheism in a tradition that began in the Punjab region of South Asia in 1469. Many Sikhs wear turbans or grow long beards, which has motivated bias and hate crimes against many American Sikhs, especially after 9/11.

A more recent turning point for the community came on Aug. 5, 2012, when six people were shot and killed and four wounded at a gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wis. At the time, it was the deadliest attack on an American house of worship in 50 years, “a wake-up call,” the Sikh Coalition states in their security kit.

After the shooting, “we organizationally were thinking about these safety concerns at the Sikh-American houses of worship," Smith said. 

Then in 2015, Dylann Roof, a white supremacist, killed nine Black Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

"That shooting further solidified for us as an organization that we had to take proactive measures to provide freely available resources to Sikh gurdwaras nationwide so that they could make sure that their gurdwara was safe," according to Smith.

The gurdwara security project was first rolled out in 2016. And between 2016 and 2017, the Sikh Coalition worked with over 70 gurdwaras across the country to provide free resources and support them in initiating some safety steps.

The security kit's key focus areas are reporting incidents and threats, safety and security drills, security assessment assistance, applying for grants for security upgrades and assistance related to government resources, including cybersecurity and active shooter preparedness, among others.  

The Sikh Coalition has also urged the FBI, police and Indiana’s elected officials in a letter to investigate the Indianapolis shooting for a possible bias motive.

While the shooter's motive is still under investigation, nearly a year before the shooting, the gunman browsed white supremacist websites, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department. 

"He targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face senseless violence," said Satjeet Kaur, executive director of the Sikh Coalition.

Anti-Sikh hate crimes rose by a staggering 200% from 2017 to 2018, according to the FBI’s annual report on hate crime statistics  in 2018. In 2019, Sikhs were the fifth-most targeted religious minority in the country. 

“I don't think there's a day that goes by with leadership within our organization where we're not worried about the next hate crime, violent act of bias, bigotry, or backlash, whether that's aimed at an individual community member or at a Sikh gurdwara or in the potential case of what's happened in Indianapolis over the last week place of employment or everything in between," Smith said. 

While measures like the gurdwara security toolkit are a step forward, they have their own set of challenges, especially when certain aspects like the grants are tied to state and federal government programs. The security kit also points to resources from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, which some Sikhs fear could draw attention to members of the community who immigrated illegally or have overstayed visas.

"We have gone really far out of our way…to ask questions of the Department of Homeland Security and get information, including guarantees that any work that the Department of Homeland Security is doing to improve security at American houses of worship has absolutely nothing to do with the other side of their work, which is immigration and detention,” Smith said. “We've been very skeptical of that commitment, especially in the previous administration… It is up to the individual community that gets to make the determinations about whether or not inviting law and federal law enforcement officials in for security assessment is a prudent thing to do.”

Manmeet Sahni is an independent journalist from New Delhi based in New York. She writes about politics, human rights, inequality and social movements. Her bylines have appeared in Documented, The Article and others and she is an alumna of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.