The Sikh Coali­tion has set a clas­sic ex­am­ple of how to en­gage with gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies and train com­mu­nity ac­tivists and lead­ers to heighten aware­ness about Sikhism en­abling the Sikhs to live fear­lessly.

Unques­tion­ably, the mo­men­tum gen­er­ated by The Sikh Coali­tion through Sikh Aware­ness and Ap­pre­ci­a­tion Months and of­fi­cial recog­ni­tions of Vaisakhi in var­i­ous states of the United States of Amer­ica, has en­riched the Sikh com­mu­nity and also en­abled many non-Sikh Amer­i­cans to un­der­stand Sikhs and Sikhism, par­tic­u­larly opin­ion-mak­ers.

In its re­port, the Sikh Coali­tion has noted that, “States like Cal­i­for­nia, Delaware, Geor­gia, Illi­nois, In­di­ana, New Jer­sey, New York, Penn­syl­va­nia and Wash­ing­ton re­newed and deep­ened their cel­e­bra­tion of Sikh Amer­i­cans, states like Col­orado, Utah, Con­necti­cut and Wis­con­sin passed their first-ever state-wide res­o­lu­tions.”

It is in­deed re­mark­able and praise­wor­thy that, “the Sikh Coali­tion worked with 54 bi­par­ti­san Con­gres­sional and Gov­er­nors’ of­fices to cel­e­brate Vaisakhi and show their sup­port for the Sikh com­mu­nity by shar­ing so­cial me­dia posts on their plat­forms on April 14th, reach­ing a po­ten­tial four mil­lion Amer­i­cans. These Sikh aware­ness ini­tia­tives com­pli­mented fed­eral de­vel­op­ments, where leg­is­la­tors were able to in­tro­duce a Vaisakhi res­o­lu­tion in the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.”

Not only that, Sikh Coali­tion tells us that, “Lo­cally, Sikh com­mu­nity mem­bers worked with elected of­fi­cials to se­cure at least 33 of­fi­cial Vaisakhi and Sikh Aware­ness res­o­lu­tions and procla­ma­tions in cities, coun­ties and school dis­tricts across the United States. Thanks to lo­cal Sikh lead­ers, this in­cluded first-time recog­ni­tions in Salt Lake City, UT; Lex­ing­ton, KY; Olathe, KS; and more.

The Sikh Coali­tion also worked with com­mu­nity mem­bers to fa­cil­i­tate Vaisakhi cel­e­bra­tions in places such as East Queens, NY; New Cas­tle, DE; New York City, NY; and Los An­ge­les, CA. Our staff also de­liv­ered Sikh Aware­ness Pre­sen­ta­tions to school chil­dren, law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, mu­seum at­ten­dees and to in­ter­faith part­ners. At the Na­gar Kir­tan in Los An­ge­les and the Sikh Day Pa­rade in New York City, we also made sure to fo­cus on youth lead­er­ship and de­vel­op­ment, en­gag­ing youth com­mu­nity mem­bers in con­ver­sa­tions and di­a­logue around Sikh aware­ness and iden­tity. These are just a few of the many lo­cally-or­ga­nized events that oc­curred across the coun­try.“

Sikhs mo­bi­lized in record num­bers to use Vaisakhi as a proac­tive op­por­tu­nity to en­gage their gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials,” said Se­nior Man­ager of Pol­icy and Ad­vo­cacy, Sim J. Singh. “Ask­ing for Sikh Aware­ness and Vaisakhi recog­ni­tions is an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­nity to be­gin build­ing re­la­tion­ships with elected of­fi­cials from both sides of the po­lit­i­cal aisle. These re­la­tion­ships in­crease Sikh aware­ness and com­mu­nity power.”

If any­one in In­dia or else­where thought that Sikh Aware­ness Months are hap­pen­ing only be­cause of the fear psy­chosis that grips the com­mu­nity in the Di­as­pora, read the re­port again. The Sikh Coali­tion’s work in cre­at­ing aware­ness about Sikhs and Sikhism and even of other or­gan­i­sa­tions that en­gage their com­mu­ni­ties around them in such a pow­er­ful way, is a trib­ute to their lob­by­ing, ne­go­ti­a­tion and po­lit­i­cal skills.