Silk Screen; 403; The New Puritans: The Sikhs of Yuba City

You Let's go!

I'm going! And this is where we came famous for the In the name of God, my victory is for God's sake. Almost 8,000 Sikhs live in the farm country around Uber City, in the Sacramento Valley of California.

They make up the largest rural Sikh community outside of India. Sikh farmers are among the most successful fruit growers in the region and account for almost half the national clean peach production. But not only have they prospered here, they have also in the midst of white rural America maintained and even intensified their cultural identity. I feel I'm right in the middle. The way I dress and things I do, I guess I'm American, but inside I'm probably maybe a little more Indian than American. I'm proud of what I am on the Sikh and I'm proud of it. And if I had my chance to do it all over again, I'd wish to be a Sikh. A while ago somebody was asking, how come you haven't merged into this culture? I said there are two things, two conditions people can merge. Either we lose our identity, become like them or they lose their identity and become like us.

The Sikhs were among the first East Indians to settle in North America. They began to arrive in the early 1900s, driven from their farms in the British ruled state of Punjab by worsening economic and political conditions. Most of these early settlers were men, who had left their families behind and who hoped to return after making their fortunes. They worked wherever they could, on the railroads, in the mines and in the lumber yards. Many made their way into the inland valleys of California where they found seasonal employment on farms and ranchers. They worked long hours for meager wages and sent whatever they could to their families. Life in America was harder than they had imagined. Only a thousand Sikhs or Hindus as they were mistakenly called

had settled in California by 1910. But in spite of their small numbers, they still found themselves a target of the anti-oriental sentiments of the time. Indian immigration was officially halted in 1924. There were almost 6,000 Sikhs living in California at the time. By 1946, that population had dwindled to a mere thousand. Many had died, others had been deported or had moved abroad. But what most contributed to the decline was the inability to bring over wives or other Sikh women from India. Many Sikhs eventually married Mexican women with whom they shared some cultural ties. Their children were raised as Catholics with a little knowledge of Sikh traditions. There was a tremendous social pressure when I was a teenager. By other East Indians, not to wear a turban. But there were no children coming from India going to the schools.

We were all born here. There were only a couple of families in this whole area who had East Indian fathers and mothers. And they did not wear turbans, they did not wear beards. They shaved and cut their hair, and they wore the same clothes that everybody else did. In 1946, East Indian immigration was reopened on a limited quota basis. At this time, 400 Sikhs, almost half the Sikh population in California, lived in the Uber City area. The flat Sacramento Valley, with its hot dry summers and cool winters, had long reminded the Sikhs of their homeland. But they were especially attracted to the area by the prevalence of orchard farming, which is particularly labor intensive and profitable even on a small scale. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson initiated the Open Immigration Policy, which allowed US residents to bring over close relatives

without restriction. The effect on Uber City was dramatic. Thousands of new immigrants arrived from the Punjab, bringing with them values and traditions the early settlers had been unable or unwilling to preserve. For the first time, the community became large enough to allow the Sikhs to maintain these traditions openly. But some of the earlier immigrants saw this transformation as a step backwards. Well, I came to this country as a student in 1954 and one of the common meeting places used to be the Stockton Sikh Temple. And it was amazing to see the degree of adaptation in the Stockton Sikh Temple, where everybody would go in with their shoes on and sit on the chairs. And if they were clean shaven, they wouldn't cover their heads. But then, with the new immigration policy, new influx came from India. They went back to the way they used to do

in Punjab and rest of India. Very nice people. They are modernists. There were a lot of people have gone for the tell, but I think there are lots of different religions with Chame einer at that time. People didn't like these books, Before I enter here, I cut my hair, I had not a big beard at that time, a small beard. Then I think, 1981, I decided to become sick or sick, you can call. When I got baptized, then I find out what I was missing. Today is the most valuable thing for me, my turbine, my hair, more than anything.

This reaffirmation of sick identity is constantly being strengthened by the arrival of new immigrants. The Ubersity Seek still maintain close ties with their homeland. Many families return to the Punjab to visit their relatives or to arrange the marriages of their children. But most of all, as the center of the Seek faith, the Punjab has remained a spiritual home. And in recent years, the fight for greater political autonomy there has deeply affected the Ubersity community. Everything that's going on in India has made the Eastern community think a lot closer. And especially the younger generation, they are becoming more involved in church-related activities. The parade that was held just last week, I thought that there was so much more participation in this parade than there has ever been in the past. The cold and temple attached just shocked every sick and the united and we've every sick together.

And it opened them eyes and said, hey, this is what happened to our brothers and our, you know, in back home, that this isn't right. And it kind of made you look toward to more, open your eyes more to your religion. In the 15th century, Guru Nanak, the first of 10 Sikh Gurus, attempted to harmonize the underlying principles of Hinduism and Islam. Sikhism emerged as a separate faith. Two centuries later, in 1699, the 10th Guru Gobind Singh gave final form to the Sikh religion. He changed the practice of Sikhism from a pacifist religion to a martial one by instituting the Kalsa, a fraternity of soldier saints to which all Sikhs would belong after a ceremony of baptism. They would take on the names Singh for the men and Kaur for the women and observe strict rules of spiritual conduct. All baptized Sikhs must maintain five physical symbols, the most significant of which is to keep

hair and beard unshorn. Many choose not to follow these strict injunctions, but still accept the faith and consider themselves Sikhs. Gobind Singh also declared that after his death, the institution of Gurus would end and the Sikhs would then look to the holy book, the Grand Sahib, for guidance. Sikhs believe in one God who is immortal, omniscient and omnipresent. They also believe in the concept of karma, the transmigration of souls from one form of life into another until their final union with God. The Sikh way of life is summed up by the triple maxim, meditate on the name of God, earn your own livelihood by honest labour, and share your earnings with fellow beings. The general feeling among the whites in the Yuba City area is that East Indians are very successful, very wealthy and they have done very well with their agriculture

activity. And many times they wonder about how the East Indians, many of whom are not highly educated or sophisticated, how they have accomplished all this. It's by just sheer hard work that they save money. They postpone their present pledges for future comfort and for their children's future and they invest wisely and that's the only key to their success. And it's very much in the American tradition, the early Puritans did that, they were hardworking. So the new East Indians, they're the new Puritans. I mean, we work and we bring in goes into the family, you know, people say, I don't understand how these damn Hindus got so much money because they're united, the whole family's united, what they make is theirs, the families, you know. And that's why, I think that's where it takes to offer a lot of white people as they see the Sikhs and Indian people and they have nice cars, nice homes, you know, and some land and they work for it, they work

their damn butt off for it. And that's what they can understand. While these guys are out in Hawaii kicking back with their shirts off, these East Indian people are working, you know, 12 to 13 hours shifts in the summertime. Most of our Punjabi people in this area, they came from the village with a different, you know, very traditional value systems and they want to preserve that. And I think they're afraid of the majority culture because of the basically two, three things, like they do not want the families ties to go weaker. They think, you know, assimilating means they have to be like Americans and they will have to, you know, bring the divorces in the marriage system and all sorts of things and they think, you know, they don't want that.

Their kids go out, lose 15-odd years running around and what I told a lot of these white people, I said, what are we raising here? What we got? We're getting a nation of bastards, that's all, I don't want to say that word. But what else you can say? That's what's going on and all over USA. Our parents, in a sense, don't have the word, as we say, love, not in the Western sense, or own in love and then they kind of laugh at that. Because it doesn't really, we're going to last, you know, for a duration, just because they see the divorce rate in this country and they see, you know, stable foundation. So, you know, that's where we may have our differences. We're not sure because we've felt feelings before and we can't explain what they are, where they came from. Actually, I don't think I ever did go out because they would say, no, you know, it's not okay in our culture to be out. We don't want you to be seen out going to a movie.

There may be other people that may see you and we talk about it. I never want to do any dances when I was in high school. Simply, I don't know. I think I was shy or embarrassed to tell my parents, I wanted to do that. That wasn't the nice thing to do. You don't do that in high school. You know, you don't date. So, it's kind of hard to tell your parents. You know, in India, when you go to a dance, the whole family go and it's not you guys dancing with girls. It's people dancing and they're just standing there watching them dance. I didn't go to my high school prom because at that time I didn't know what it was and even now, even to this day, I'm still not exactly sure what it is. But I realized it wasn't my parents telling me not to go out. It was just myself. I wasn't really comfortable doing that. The majority culture do not understand them that well and their parents do not understand them either. They want their children to go to the school and learn the knowledge from the

books, the classrooms, but there are other things that they're learning. I can just name few families where they have been some conflict and children have just left the homes and did their own thing. But in most of the cases, if you talk to the students, I have a, you know, a lot of students I talk to at the college, they say, at I, you know, we go home and we do whatever our parents want us to do. And we go out and the time we try to enjoy our lives. Women are, it's going to be much more sensitive than men. There are a lot of things that I, as an adult now, cannot do that my brothers and my husband can do. We had a parade just a week ago. And my brother and my husband were an active part of it and went out and, you know, did signs and so forth. And I would always say, well, I want to go to and go help because I think I've got some artistic abilities, but it was always like, no, you can't go. Don't be silly. You have to, you know, you can't go because there's going to be all men there. And it's so true.

I think it's difficult for the Indian girls because Indian guys, we all date certain some extent. If your daughter's not at home, they'll say, oh, where is she? And it doesn't even get to that point because she'll be at home. Say, girl, she's start dating, you know, the parents aren't out and she's getting a bad name. Next week, she'll probably be in India, get married. She won't have much to say. When I was growing up, I didn't really think about it. It was just sort of into the back of my mind and, oh, sure, I'm in good India and this handsome prince is very good or something. But,

once I turned 18, yeah, when I turned 18, people would, you know, in the community would come through to my parents and they would say, oh, yeah, she's 18 now and we know such an sexual guy and, you know, how about it? And that's when I came up with the hard reality of, hey, I'm going to have to go through this and who am I going to get married to and how's it been worked out? My father went back about six years ago. The main purpose was to go see if he could find somebody. When he came back and told me, he broke the news gently to me and he would tell me that, you know, I was engaged. I did see pictures of him and was kind of, you know, shocked, like, is this the person I'm really going to marry? I mean, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this man here in this picture. It, since I was engaged for about a year, it took me a whole year to get used to the idea. I think the first time when they came and told me, I just cried. No, I cannot believe this. They just couldn't go out and pick somebody that I really don't know.

But seeing my parents started talking about him and about his family, they knew a little bit about the family because they were close friends to my grandparents in India. So I heard so much about them that I got used to the idea. When I went to get married, I put an ad in the paper, you know, in the Metrimonium section and saying, you know, Jetsick from the United States, you know, 25 years of age with the degree in electronic self-sporting, you know, looking for a wife out of Jetsick family with, say, like, five, four height minimum, you know, with the least over, you know, past high school education, you know. And after that, I got a, I don't know, 30, 40 letters and got myself a taxi and I started going around and meeting all

these different families. And when I got to about the 45th or 50th girl, you know, and we had about two weeks to stay. And finally, you know, I said, well, it seemed like what I was looking for, you know, and, you know, I said, yeah, you know, this is where I'm going to marry. And then I say, you know, I want the marriage and, you know, real quick and within a week because I have to go back and then they arrange a big old marriage within a short notice, you know. It's something unique, I think, for us to say an arranged marriage. It's something like, wow, how am I going to do this or what's going to happen. But the only thing that you do know for sure is that when you look around you, everyone else did it and it's working quite well for the most part. But the problem is is that we're all going to college, we're all getting an education where

we have a whole new part of our life here. And that's something where our parents really have to sit down and start thinking about. One thing I think that failed to realize is that we do have feelings sometimes that go beyond dedication to your parents. And being in America, you are taught to be yourself, express yourself. You're allowed to do that. Recently things are starting to change. Divorce is starting to, things aren't working on. People are beginning to seek the remedy because it's impossible to expect to live the rest of your life with someone who just, you know, you can't communicate with them. I have two friends who just recently got married back in India. They're both very westernized. My mom asked them to go back with her to get married and they were more than willing to because they didn't want to hurt their mom. It's hard for them to accept it now after they're married. They've been married for about six, seven months. It's really hard for them to, they're having a hard time getting along with their husbands because of their different views and so forth. But they have accepted the fact that they're going to be married and they

have to live with it and they have to make the best of it. I don't recommend an arranged marriage because you go in blind. You don't know this person. I had, I saw my husband once before I got married and I can tell you those nine days in between ten days were held because I kept thinking, what have I let myself in for? What is going to happen? I don't know this person. It was the worst nine days of my life. I was lucky. I was very lucky and I'm working out very nicely but I just think it's just a luck of the draw sort of thing. It's better to marry someone you know, someone you love. Now this word of arranged marriage is very much misunderstood. The parents are not anti their children. There is a screening process. In a arrangement what comes I recall from my own case that the parents look at the whole picture. They don't look at the just one thing that boy and girl like the same flavor of the chewing gum and there's a

compatibility and so let's go and marry it. Their wisdom is always helping. They're really afraid of us becoming influenced and flying the coop as they say and that to your parents for them is a great loss more than we can even imagine and being in America. There's a very small community here that's really holding us here but once you're outside of that wall it's it's you're free to go and do as you please so and they can't they have no control beyond that point. At this point in my for my own child I feel like one him to have an arranged marriage but I feel if he found somebody and came home and said mom you know there's this girl that I like you know I like to get married to her. If she was from our culture and from the same religious background and from the basically the same economic status I'd probably say yes.

They want to ensure that we carry on the tradition and one part of that is marriage and being that you marry into your own. Our parents have given us a culture, our traditions given us discipline and it's kept us going and why throw something like that away given that we're prospering we're safer I guess with what we have. you