Selected Editorials - The Sikh Bulletin

This issue of the Sikh Bulletin was and is going to be about our family in North America, Canada and The
United States of America, a case study in Diaspora Sikh Family, because there are many more like us and
with whom I wish to establish empathy. An editorial pertaining to that had already been written but then
comes 8/5/2012 in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Now this issue is going to have two editorials.
I had come to this country by a rather unusual mode of travel, hitchhiking, from New Delhi to University
of Washington, Seattle, June 24 th 1960 – September 21 st 1960. During this sojourn, in many countries of
the Middle East and Europe and six states of USA, I met a multitude of very kind people but also a very
few not so nice.
I had kept detailed journals of my travel and they had continued during my stay here although with less
regularity.
It was during the research of those travels for this issue on August 7, 2012, two days after the carnage in
Wisconsin that I came across the following:
September 7, 1960, Monahans, Texas:
“…I crossed over to the other side of the road to buy some tomatoes from a roadside vegetable stall.
The old proprietor was a strange character. The first thing he asked me was how the hell I was there
How did I get the passport to get to USA And finally grumbled and cursed his government which lets
foreigners come to USA. I do not know why he grudged this. And the tomatoes he was selling at 20
cents a pound, I did not buy, thinking they were too costly and when I asked him did he know for how
much we can buy them for in India (which was my way of politely educating him as to where I was
from), with contempt in his eyes he said, for nothing. I walked away before I could lose my temper at
that sad silly man…”
A deputy sheriff of Monahans even checked my papers. I guess his ignorance, or pride of authority,
would not allow him to distinguish between me and an illegal Mexican. In this sense he was no
different than the Pakistani Police ASI who, on June 28 th 1960 at the Khanewal Railway Station,
sent a policeman to bring me out to him to show my passport. He leafed through my passport and
gave it back to me. Our contempt for each other was so obvious that no words were exchanged.
Today, on August 7 th 2012, as I transcribe this from my diary, even after more than half a century of this
experience of mine, after Oak Creek, Wisconsin, Gurdwara tragedy on Sunday, 5 th August that saw six
innocent lives snuffed and many injured, including a policeman, there is no shortage in this country of
senseless hate mongers, including the Republican law makers, one of whom even aspired to become the
President of this only super power in the world, who are directly responsible for creating an environment
for this hate filled crime with their ignorant and obsessive hatred for all the Muslims, their four years long
effort to label Obama as a Muslim and spineless and cowardly legislators who have sold their souls to the
National Rifle Association.
To that bunch you can add the Republican legislator who shouted ‘you lie’ to the President of the
United States during his State of the Union address; a Republican Supreme Court Justice who showed his
intelligence, or lack of it, by mouthing something similar; Republican Supreme Court that decided for us
dummies who our President ought to be and pushed down our throats that ‘Corporations are People’
ruling; the Republican leader of the Senate whose primary goal is not to help the economy to turn around
and help people find jobs but to make Obama a one term President; a party that insulted the American
electorate and the world by nominating a Vice-Presidential candidate a person who did not even possess a
passport. Did the party ever think what that meant It meant that the world could face as a leader a person
whose vision was no larger than a frog in a well.
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