Historical Election for New York City's Largest Asian Neighborhood (in National News) The Fight for Mint Mall (in Bay Area News) New UC Irvine Golf Program Unfazed (in Sports) Apature 2001 (in A&E) Emil Amok: The New Style of Internment (in Opinion)

Sikh Candidate for NYC City Council

Inderjit Singh, one of the candidates in the city council primary on Sept. 25. He is the only Sikh running for public office. Photo by Corky Lee.

By Adrian Leung

As New York City’s primary elections were postponed for two weeks, following the attack on the World Trade Center, and hate-crimes against Sikhs rose in number — Inderjit Singh’s campaign for a seat on the City Council, representing District 28 in Queens, has taken on a whole new front.

A Sikh himself, Singh decided to run for office after seeing the lack of accountability politicians had toward the South Asian community. “I’ve been here for many years. One thing I’ve discovered: unless you are an active participant in the political process, no will do anything for your community. There’s nothing like self-help.”

District 28, which encompasses the neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, Rochdale Village and South Jamaica, has an Asian Pacific Islander American population of 8 percent. With a large Indo-Guyanese population in Richmond Hill, District 28’s elections started off with 11 candidates – four of whom were vying for South Asian votes. Indo-Guyanese Americans Trevor Rupnarain and Rameshwar Jodha, along with Muslim leader Imam Aziz Bilal were also running.

Rupnarain challenged the petitions of Bilal, Jodha and Singh — who, by law, needed to have the signatures of 900 registered voters to be on the ballot. Rupnarain’s reasoning was that with so many South Asians on the ballot, the vote would be split amongst them. Both Singh and Jodha were removed from the ballot, and Rupnarain lost the primary. Singh is now running as the Green Party candidate.

Singh says he hasn’t faced any direct racism himself, mainly because his constituents know better. “Fortunately, when I’ve gone campaigning, people know me. I’ve expressed to them my personal feelings as well as feelings of the community.”

Although he has no personal experience with hate-crimes, he has been participating in organizing against them, at educational forums held by the Asian American Legal and Defense Education Fund.

Said Singh: “My sense is that all this harassment has two causes. One is naturally the ignorance of people who don’t know who the Sikhs are. There are over 500,000 Sikhs living in the United States. Sikhs came here over 100 years ago. We are not new to this country. We’re not proselytizing people. Two, I think a lot of American people are frustrated. They don’t know where to target their anger — even the president doesn’t know what to do. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to attack someone who looks like the imagined enemy. [Consequently] it’s not just against Sikhs. It’s all brown people.”

Appearing with a number of New York’s religious leaders at the Prayer for America in Yankee Stadium on Sept. 23, Singh continued to advocate a strong religious role in combating the hate-crimes.

“The first thing to do is let others know who we are,” he said. “I’ve reached out to every clergy, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, to make them aware of the role they play in educating their congregation. We’re prepared to go to various religious congregations and speak to them about who we are.”

Singh also emphasized the need to be critical of the label “Muslim terrorists.” He said, “There is no Muslim terrorist, or Christian terrorist — terrorists don’t belong to any religion because the killing of innocent people violates every religion. You cannot be killing someone innocent and helpless and say you’re a person of god.”

Remaining wary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Singh pointed out the double standard. “[The terrorist] turned out to be a white, Anglo-Saxon person. These same people who are upset now did not go out beating up every white person.”

Singh spoke on the contradictory state the Sikhs occupy. “It’s particularly unfair because we’re actively helping the relief effort,” he said. “Instead, we’re having to worry about our safety, living in a stage of siege.”