Sikhs and Hindus condemn defacement of places of worship

By Aneela Mirchandani

A week of celebration for Sikhs and Hindus marking the spring harvest turned into dismay last Saturday as three places of worship in the Vancouver area were vandalized. Leaders of both communities joined together in a show of unity to counteract the actions of extremists.

Unknown assailants spray-painted a Sikh temple and two Hindu temples with extremist slogans and slurs during the night of April 19th. The vandalism occurred after two consecutive weekends of celebration for Vaisakhi, an ancient north Indian harvest festival that is of immense historical significance for Sikhs. 

The Vancouver Sikh temple, the Khalsa Diwan, organized a Vaisakhi parade on April 12 with hundreds of thousands in attendance, featuring colorful floats, dancers, free food, and flags—including Canadian flags. 

The Sunday the week after, temple management awoke to see their outside walls defaced with slogans calling for Khalistan—the name of a separate nation for Sikhs that some demand—and with profanities directed towards India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi. 

Images released by the temple show large, black, spray-painted words on the wall saying, in Punjabi and English, “long live Khalistan,” “death to Modi,” and a four-letter “f” word directed towards India, which has been written over by temple management to a milder “fool India.”

“This extremism has gone on too long,” said Jagdeep Singh Sanghera, vice president of the Khalsa Diwan Sikh temple, in a phone interview with AsAmNews. “Enough is enough. The government has to step forward and put an end to this.”

They put out similar sentiments in a statement released on their Instagram account. 

Just an hour earlier the same night, two Hindu temples in Surrey had been defaced with similar spray painted signs. According to a statement released by one of the temples, the Lakshmi Narayan Hindu temple, the pillars and the entrance sign had “Khalistan” spray-painted over them. In addition, the security cameras were stolen, showing that the actions were premeditated.

“These kinds of activities are not acceptable,” said Vineet Aggarwal, joint secretary at the Hindu temple, in a phone interview with AsAmNews, “and not acceptable at the Khalsa Diwan as well. We are not interfering in anything, and cannot do anything about what they are asking for,” he added, meaning Khalistan. He said the attack had made people afraid to visit the temple.

Police in both cities are investigating the attack. Vancouver police released security camera footage of the culprits, asking the public for help in identifying them. There were two assailants, both male, and they arrived in a white truck. 

The Surrey police chief, Norm Lipinski, was in attendance at a press conference held by the Lakshmi Narayan Hindu temple management on Wednesday at its premises. He intimated that Surrey police were sharing information with their Vancouver counterparts, resulting in synergy between their investigations. 

“We have assigned this file to our major crimes section,” Lipinski said, “so we have some very experienced people looking at it.” He signalled optimism that their investigation would soon bear fruit.

Also in attendance were the mayor of Surrey, Brenda Locke, and the attorney general of British Columbia, Niki Sharma. 

“Any place of worship is a sacred place for all of us, no matter what our faith is,” Locke said. “That is what is particularly troubling about this.”

During the press conference, it was revealed that another Hindu temple, the Bhameshwari temple in Surrey, was also defaced during the same night.

These acts of vandalization occur amid an atmosphere of increasingly charged Sikh politics as a renewed separatist movement has taken hold among some Sikhs of the diaspora, centered particularly in Surrey and Brampton in Canada. The Sikh diaspora community itself has been divided over the Khalistan issue especially in the last two years. 

The Sikh temple, Khalsa Diwan, had explicitly barred Khalistan slogans, signs, and other forms of separatist politics from the Vaisakhi parade they organized on April 12. While Sanghera said he did not want to point fingers at anyone while the police investigation is ongoing, the statement released by the temple directly called out “extremism” over the Khalistan issue.

“A small group of Sikh separatists, advocating for Khalistan, defaced our sacred walls with slogans like ‘Khalistan Zindabad’,” the statement said. “Zindabad” is roughly translated as “long live.”

The two communities whose places of worship faced the attacks joined together in a show of unity to counteract the politics of division. 

Representatives from the Sikh temple, Khalsa Diwan, joined the press conference at the Hindu temple on Surrey Wednesday. 

“Obviously their intention was to divide our communities,” Sanghera said. “We will never let that happen. We stand in solidarity with the [Hindu temple]. My message to the culprits is, no—you will never achieve your goal, we will stand united and stand up to you.”

“This is not just vandalism,” said Vinay Sharma, secretary at the Lakshmi Narayan Hindu temple, “they want to scare us, they want to divide us. But we, as Hindus and Sikhs, are mature enough, we are sensible enough, that we will never fight.”

The management of both temples expressed great confidence in law enforcement in getting to the bottom of the attacks.

“We stand in solidarity with our Sikh and Hindu brothers and sisters whose places of worship have been violated,” said the president of the Canadian chapter of the Coalition of Hindus of North America in a released statement.

The Sikh Coalition, when reached for comment, said they would refrain from commenting as they are a US-based organization. 

The Canadian Hindu Chamber of Commerce released a statement saying that Hinduphobia has no place in Canada.