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On Saturday, September 21, Joe Rubin, a reporter for the Sacramento Bee, reached out to me multiple times, seemingly desperate for an interview, wanting to know more about a law enforcement conference HAF’s Bay Area team had organized in April. 

On the phone, Rubin aggressively posed questions that only obliquely referred to the trainings in question.  

“Do you speak for the Modi government? Why was this conference even needed in the first place when the community was just protesting transnational repression? Why didn’t HAF invite the press for this conference? Are you saying that Sikhs for Justice was behind the temple attacks?” he asked.

The questions and tone made it obvious that this was not a reporter who wanted to gather facts and write an accurate piece, but someone who had decided his conclusion before his “investigation.” Rubin seemed completely unconcerned about what I hoped to discuss: the physical assaults on Hindu Americans and temple vandalisms that were carried out often with slogans supporting the Khalistan terrorist movement. Amazingly, Rubin seemed more concerned about us discussing these crimes with law enforcement. He had taken a side, that of the vandals, no less. 

I have stood up against injustice all my life and now work with pride at the largest Hindu advocacy organization in America, now two decades old, and which was founded solely to protect the rights and dignity of Hindus living in the US. 

In the past couple of years there have been several incidents of vandalism targeting Hindus and Hindu places of worship across the country. The graffiti in many incidents strongly points to supporters of the movement to create a Sikh theocratic state called Khalistan, taking land from India to do so. In the last two decades of the 20th century, the Khalistan movement was responsible for thousands of deaths in India (Sikh and Hindu alike), and blew up an Air India flight from Canada, killing all 329 people on board, as part of a reign of terror to try create their Khalistan, defined as ‘land of the pure.’ 

This horrific violence is armed and logistically supported by Pakistan and the territorial goals of the Khalistan movement reflect that – the parts of Pakistan that once were part of the 18th century Sikh Empire don’t form a part of the lands proposed for Khalistan, rather, Khalistan would tear away the entire northern land mass of the Republic of India.

As surveys indicate negligible support remains for the Khalistan movement in India, it has morphed into a militant movement alive only in parts of the Sikh diaspora. Frustrated by their lack of support in the actual Punjab state and inability to achieve any territorial goals, pro-Khalistan activists have taken on an anti-Hindu avatar, especially in the United States and Canada. 

Now, they have desecrated Hindu sacred places, destroyed property, and harassed Hindus in the US and Canada for no other reason than that they are Hindu or Hindu places of worship, violating the fundamental right to worship free from persecution. And when many of the most likely pro-Khalistan culprits are caught on tape destroying a statue to Mahatma Gandhi on a Hindu temple property chanting Khalistan slogans, or assaulting a Hindu man at a Taco Bell while calling out “long live Khalistan” and adding “you dirty, disgusting Hindu,”  or when suspected Khalistani bot run social media handles share the first videos of Hindu temple desecrations, Hindus are gaslit. They are told by leading Sikh advocacy groups that there is actually no evidence that Khalistani extremists are responsible and rather, or that the perpetrators are most likely Hindus themselves, trying to discredit the Khalistan movement. 

The lack of meaningful action by law enforcement agencies in addressing temple vandalisms as hate crimes has been both extremely disappointing and is simply unacceptable in a nation that is supposed to guarantee protection for citizens to practice their religion as they choose. 

Imagine the public outrage if mosques or gurudwaras or synagogues or churches were similarly vandalized and repeatedly targeted? It would make national news each time.

During that disturbing phone call with Rubin, he outrageously mentioned that Gurpatwant Singh Pannun — a spokesperson for Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), one of the most prominent Khalistan groups in the United States, and someone who had made a number of public threats to HAF and other Hindu organizations on video, including an eerie demand telling Hindus, including a Hindu Canadian Member of Canada’s Parliament, to immediately “go back to India” — had just made a few “inflammatory” comments online.

I let him know that it was very disappointing to hear journalists downplay something so serious as these threats and bigoted statements about Hindus. 

Beyond Rubin minimizing the hate and extremism of Pannun and SFJ, the advocacy groups, who have denied any involvement of Khalistanis in attacks on Hindu temples need to answer a couple questions very clearly and without equivocation: 

Do they support the openly racist and xenophobic rhetoric by Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and by extension Sikhs for Justice telling Hindus in America to go back to India? If they don’t support such calls for Hindus to go back to India, why haven’t they publicly condemned his statements? Even more troubling, why have they described him as a “prominent Sikh activist” who is being targeted because of his supposed “advocacy for the rights of Sikhs and the creation of an independent Sikh state, known as Khalistan” in a recently introduced transnational repression bill in Congress, which they consulted on? And how are Sikh rights advanced by threatening Hindus in America and Canada to go back to India?

It was clear that Joe Rubin from the Sacramento Bee hadn’t done his research or read up on reports before he chose to interrogate me. I mentioned that the HAF’s conference — which I discovered he had already seen the video of due to it being public record — was meant to teach law enforcement about Hinduism and Hindu Americans so that they could be culturally sensitive while responding to hate crimes and victims. At the same time, the conference did mention the increase in temple vandalism incidents and other ongoing harassments by the Khalistani group, and very clearly stated that the vast majority of Sikhs living in the US are peaceful law-abiding citizens who generally have good relations with their Hindu neighbors and that the Khalistani extremists make up a small fringe group within the broader Sikh population. 

Rubin asked if my organization was tying the attacks to Sikhs for Justice. I responded that it was the job of law enforcement to find out who was behind the attacks. 

In the one-sided article Rubin published in the Sacramento Bee, in which this hostile interview was quoted, it was clear that he sympathizes with extremists and provides cover to those individuals and groups that have been attacking Hindu American targets or blatantly lying about our organization. 

In the wake of that article, I have been harassed online and told to publicly apologize. 

I want to be very clear: My colleagues and I will never stop advocating the rights of our Hindu community and speaking out about the threats we are facing. We have never called for profiling any community. We only called for law enforcement to address violent acts by Khalistani extremists, which we will continue to do.

Our dharma teaches us to always stick to the truth in one’s thought, speech and actions, no matter what. As the popular Sanskrit phrase says, dharmo rakshati rakshitah, “Dharma protects those who protect it”.

The author is the Director of Community Outreach at the Hindu American Foundation.

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of New India Abroad)