“The Stockton Gurdwara in California - the first Sikh temple in the United States - is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year,†Bhira Backhaus wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times. Immigrants from Punjab, “purchased the lot on Grant Street in early 1912.â€
“Once in a while, I bring out a black and white photograph of the gurdwara taken a few decades later,†Ms. Backhaus wrote. “The members of the early families fan out on the steps leading up to its main entrance.â€
Ms. Backhaus wrote of the people who built the Sikh temple, “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.â€
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 k now 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.
At the Stockton Gurdwara, services began in the morning and resumed after a break for langar. The meal always made us children groggy and impatient, and soon we'd head outside, down the steps to the small playground amid the chinaberry trees. When it was time to head home, it was the children who tugged at the kameezes of our mothers, who were reluctant to leave the lively company of friends.
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