Our Heroes

Sikh-American Sher Singh: Victim of 9.11 America

by RICHARD C. DUJARDIN & TOM MOONEY

 

 

The day after the 9/11 attacks, Sher Singh was making his way from Boston to his home in Virginia when his train made a brief stop at Providence Station -  where a phalanx of police and FBI agents armed with bomb-sniffing dogs yanked him out and interrogated him for several hours.

Largely because some people had seen him at South Station with an untrimmed beard and green turban, nervous agents had wondered if he, too, might be one of those terrorists -  though the kirpan he wore would show he was a Sikh, not a Muslim.

Even though he was released the same day, the interrogation helped propel Sher Singh, then 27, into the national spotlight as one of the first people in the wake of 9/11 to be arrested because of ethnic and religious profiling.

The irony: the once-suspected terrorist has, for many years now, held a top-secret government clearance and visits some of the most secure military bases in the country, advising Navy and Marine leaders on the use of the latest computer technology.

Reached at his home in Frederick, Maryland, where he was interviewed by phone with his 3-year-old son bouncing on his lap, Sher Singh said he holds no grudge against the agents who pulled him off the train that day nearly 10 years ago.

“In situations where you have gone through some horrific events, it is possible to make an error in judgment,” he said. “They felt they were doing the right thing.”

He says it wouldn’t have happened if he and the nation’s 500,000 other Sikhs had done a better job educating Americans about their 500-year-old religion, which emphasizes gender equality, hard work, truthful living and community service.

It’s one of the reasons why he and his wife, Hemani Kaur, have spent so much time both in their former community of Leesburg, Virginia, and in Maryland, organizing interfaith dialogues and helping to teach people what Sikhism is about.

Sher Singh, a U.S. citizen since 1998 and a son of an Indian Air Force pilot, is one of the founding members of Loudoun Interfaith Bridges, an organization that tries to create interfaith harmony and understanding by having Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Unitarians, Muslims, Quakers and others visit each other’s houses of worship, and by holding an annual “day of thanks” event, picnics and musical performances. The group has also been working to promote understanding in the county’s public schools.

He and other volunteers have also established a little community school in Virginia where he and other teachers try to pass on Sikh values to 125 children, through such service activities as taking the youngsters to homeless shelters where they can help feed the hungry.

Sher Singh is also a teacher of music, taking pride in being able to play such stringed instruments as the dilruba and the saranda, and has been actively involved in advising the administrator of Loudoun County, Virginia., on such things as hiring practices as a way toward improving multicultural diversity.

“One of our core values as Sikhs is to serve humanity,” says Sher Singh. “We believe there is one universal Creator who is there for everyone.”

In hindsight, would he still have taken the train if he knew he would be arrested? He had done so against his wife’s advice that he postpone the trip.

The answer, he says, is yes.

The country had just gone through a very traumatic event, and at times such as those, you want to be back with your family and your neighborhood. “I needed to get back. I have no regrets.”

He adds that while he underwent an unpleasant experience, he thinks a nation has a responsibility to take steps to ensure its citizens are safe.

True, he said, the authorities made an error in his case. “But an error doesn’t mean a policy is misguided.”

 

THIS IS HOW THE SEP 12, 2011 INCIDENT WAS REPORTED IN 2003

by Tom Mooney

September 12, 2001

He expected some travelers might exhibit "naive ignorance" regarding his turban and beard.

"But I did not expect that to come from the authorities."

At Boston's South Station, [Sher] Singh recognized another Sikh in the crowd by his dress. The two gravitated toward each other. The other man, a pharmacy student at Northeastern University, was also headed south on train No. 173. [Sher] Singh suggested they ride together to keep each other company.

After the train had been stopped in Providence, [Sher] Singh watched from his seat as passengers in the coach in front of him disembarked and lined up on the platform. "I sensed then something bad would happen to someone."

Then two police officers burst into his car.

*   *   *   *   *

Government agents were searching for accomplices of the terrorists who had commandeered two jets from Logan Airport the day before. By the time [Sher] Singh boarded Amtrak No. 173, he had come to the attention of the FBI. As the train inched out of Boston, Singh - a native of India and a U.S. citizen -  was among four passengers branded "suspicious."

In the frenzy of the day, the authorities' interest in the southbound travelers was broadcast as news around the world.

At Providence, federal agents and state and local police converged on the station with bomb-sniffing dogs. They swarmed across the platform and through the gift store and the coffee shop. Cruisers and unmarked cars blocked the steet. Hundreds of spectators gathered around the station -  just uphill from where Roger Williams founded Rhode Island 365 years earlier on the principle of religious tolerance.

As the train stopped, police with their guns drawn rushed into [Sher] Singh's coach and pulled him off. They pressed him against the train, handcuffed him and asked his residency status. One officer taunted him: How's Osama bin Laden? They asked if he had a weapon. [Sher] Singh said no, but he told them that he was wearing his sheathed kirpan, a small dulled knife that Sikhs carry as a religious symbol of their willingness to fight injustice.

The police confiscated the kirpan and took [Sher] Singh into custody, one of the first detainees in a national roundup. He was charged with carrying a concealed knife with a blade longer than three inches.

As officers led [Sher] Singh from the station, a spectator lunged at him.

"You killed my brother," someone yelled.

"Kill him!" shouted another. 

*   *   *   *   *

 

"There was no questioning at that time," says [Sher] Singh. "They just said 'Keep your hands up and mouth shut and get the hell out of the train.' "

Three other men, including the other Sikh who wore a smaller headpiece, were questioned and allowed to continue on the train. Only [Sher] Singh was arrested.

Soon thereafter, he says, his picture was being broadcast and published around the world beside that of Osama bin Laden's.

He spent five hours in the Providence police station answering questions from immigration and FBI investigators before being released. Authorities then were quick to announce that [Sher] Singh had no connection to the terrorist attacks.

They kept the kirpan, however, and refused to drop the charge for carrying a concealed knife.

Among [Sher] Singh's emotions was a sense of guilt - that his image was somehow reinforcing the stereotype of Sikhs as people to be feared or hated.

"I was the medium for how half-a-million Sikhs [in North America] were portrayed," he says.

A day after his arrest, Hermani Kaur and her father-in-law drove to Boston to pick up [Sher] Singh, where he had returned to stay with friends.

"We took the scenic route," Hermani Kaur says, "to avoid the big cities."

Why?

"Because my father-in-law wears a turban."

 

 

 [Courtesy: The Providence Journal]

September 8, 2011

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