AMRITSAR: Two incidents of hate crime against Sikhs in California in a span of less than one weeks have raised a question mark on the success of National Sikh Campaign(NSC) which was suspended just six months after it was launched in 2017.

In one of the incidents in Manteca, California a 71 year old Sikh Sahib Singh was assaulted and his turban ripped off. Earlier in Turlock, California Surjit Singh Malhi was also brutally assaulted while he was putting up campaign yard signs in his local community.

“These sad act of cruelty are just the latest example of violence, bullying, and abuse against Sikh Americans,” said Rajwant Singh, founder NSC while talking to TOI on Wednesday.

Sources seeking anonymity informed TOI that NSC had to be stopped due to financial as well as ‘local’ constraints.

However, Rajwant doesn’t agree with this and maintains that the NSC was a limited time campaign. He said the NSC was launched on April 14, 2017, and continued for 6 months nationwide and for one month in Fresno. However, he necessitated on the need to run Fresno like campaign in other parts of Californa and in other states as well.

He claimed that the incidents of hate crime had come down in Fresno which was in the Central Valley, a house of over fifty thousand Sikhs, while Manteca was several hundred miles away from Fresno and Keyes was also in the North.

Stating that community in many parts of the country takes out nagar kirtans and participate in local parades etc but a sustained TV advertisement and social media marketing campaign advertisements had to be done for getting desired results.

Meanwhile, American Gurdwara Parbandhk Committee coordinator Pritpal Singh informed that vice mayor of Modesto Manmeet Singh Grewal would be meeting with the all the elected officials and law enforcement agencies in the Central Valley with regards to the recent two incidents of hate crime against Sikhs.

Pritpal observed that such incidents happened out of ignorance but the majority of fellow American citizens had condemned these attacks and have expressed solidarity towards Sikh Americans.

American Sikh Caucus Committee Director Harpreet Singh Sandhu said that he would also meet with the members of American Sikh Congressional Caucus to take up the matter relating the security of the Sikhs.

