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Sword-wielding Sikh emerges hero in US gurdwara shootingThe 65-year-old head of the small US town gurdwara turned out an unlikely hero of the Wisconsin shooting incident as he confronted the 'neo-Nazi' gunman with his kirpan to save dozens of women, children and other worshippers from being shot down.
Sadwant Singh Kaleka's, the head of the Wisconsin gurdwara, unequal battle may not have lasted long as the 40-year-old former US Army 'psy-ops' veteran Wade Michael Page killed him mercilessly by his 9mm handgun.
But his heroism slowed down the racist killer, providing vital moments for women and children to flee the attacker and bolt themselves in rooms round the complex, US media reports said.
The women and children who were preparing meals for the congregation were in direct line of attack of the the gunman, but Kaleka's brave effort to stab Page to slow him down has won widespread acclaim and praise in Wisconsin.
"He turned into an unlikely hero to save the place which he had devoted to build," said Amardeep Kaleka, his son.
"Whatever time he spent in that struggle gave the women time to get cover," he said.
Amardeep said FBI agents hugged him Sunday, shook his hand and said, "Your dad's a hero'' for fighting to the death while protecting others.
"Whatever time he spent in that struggle gave the women time to get cover'' in the kitchen, Kaleka said. One of the women was his mother, who called police using her cellphone while hiding from the gunman.
His nephew Jatinder Mangat said Kaleka was always willing to help out with any job.
"He doesn't care what he's wearing, what he's doing, he'll just be there for you,'' Mangat said. "We used to say 'It's OK, we'll have somebody else do it,' and he'd say, 'No, no, I'll do it,' even if it was a dirty job. He'll do anything.''
Another nephew, Gurmit Kaleka, also spoke of his uncle's willingness to serve.
"He was a great guy who always believed in social service. He was always willing to help anyone who came his way,'' Kaleka said.
Kaleka was widely regarded as the founder of the Oak Creek temple that was attacked by Page, a disgraced former US army soldier and racist, who is widely thought to mistaken bearded and turban-wearing Sikhs for Muslims.
As Kaleka confronted the gunman, Page had already shot at least one person in the temple's car park. He then went on to kill six Sikh worshippers before going back outside to ambush the police when he heard approaching sirens.
The killer was then "put down" in a gunfight after severely wounding one police officer.
Kaleka and his family came to the United States from India in 1982. He built a successful business, and devoted every extra dollar he earned into building the Oak Creek Gurudwara.
Parishioners described him as the kind of man who, if you called him at two in the morning to say a light had gone out at the temple, would be there at 2:15 am to change the bulb.
In stark contrast, Page, 40, was a disgraced soldier, in the army from 1992 to 1998, before being discharged for a "pattern" of misconduct including drunkenness and going Awol.
Pictures show him heavily tattooed. Neighbours said that he had a tattoo commemorating the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on his right arm, a common indicator of far-Right and anti-Muslim affiliations.
Relatives speak of those killed in Sikh shooting
A religious leader willing to do anything for his beloved, tight-knit Sikh community. A former farmer who left his fields in rural northern India and found a new home at the temple. A joke-telling Sikh priest whose family had just arrived from India. The mother who gave everything of herself for her family and her faith. A pair of brothers who lived together a half a world away from their family to serve as temple priests.
These six were killed Sunday by a former Army soldier at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek. Here are their stories.
Paramjit Kaur finished her morning prayers, a daily ritual for the deeply spiritual mother of two, and walked into the temple's front hallway Sunday and was fatally shot.
Kaur's friends remembered the 41-year-old wife Monday as sweet, outspoken and devoted to her family and her faith. They said she was also hard-working - spending 11 hours a day, 6 days a week, in production at a medical devices firm in order to provide for her children.
"I'll miss her so much,'' said 42-year-old Manpreet Kaur, who described herself as Paramjit Kaur's closest friend. They are not related.
Manpreet Kaur said that when she gave birth to her son this year, Paramjit Kaur would visit her in the hospital after she got off work, bearing food for the new mom.
"She always knew what I needed and would bring it for me,'' said Kaur, who noted that Paramjit Kaur had been a recent immigrant to the United States when she herself arrived seven years ago.
Co-worker Baljit Kaur, 45, said Paramjit Kaur talked incessantly and was very friendly. She was also very religious, Baljit Kaur said.
"She prayed every day for an hour to an hour and a half, even when she working,'' Baljit Kaur said.
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Suveg Singh Khattra was a constant presence at the temple. Most days, his son, a taxi driver, would drop him off there to pray.
Khattra and his wife moved to the United States eight years ago to join their son. On Sunday, the 84-year-old former farmer from northern India was shot and killed.
"He don't have hatred for anybody. He loved to live here,'' said son Baljinder Khattra, who moved from the family's farm in Patiala, a city in Punjab, in 1994.
Kulwant Kaur, the elder Khattra's daughter-in-law, hid with the other women in the pantry. When a police commando unit evacuated them, Kaur saw Khattra's body lying on the ground.
She tried to touch him to see if he was awake, but officers warned her not to touch anything, said Kaur's son, Mandeep Khattra.
"They told them to keep moving because they were priorities over the bodies,'' he said.
The elder Khattra spoke no English, communicating instead with neighbors and friends with his hands.
"He (was) very humble. He loved all peoples,'' Khattra said.
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Prakash Singh's wife and teenage children were living in the temple. Recently, they had moved from India to join the Sikh priest in Wisconsin.
Navdeep Gill, an 18-year-old temple member from Franklin, said Singh had rented an apartment nearby and his family was due to move in by the end of the month. Singh's son and daughter will start school soon; the daughter is in high school and the son is going to be a freshman in high school.
As a Sikh priest, Singh performed daily services, which would have included recitations from the religion's holy book, leading prayers and lecturing on how to practice Sikhism.
Gill said Singh had a fun-loving personality _ "telling jokes and whatnot'' _ and looked nothing close to his age of 39.
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Ranjit and Sita Singh shared the bonds of brotherhood _ as siblings and as Sikh priests, both in Wisconsin to serve their faith. The rest of their family is in India, left to make sense of their deaths.
Ten years ago, Ranjit Singh, 49, came to the United States for better opportunities. Once here, he made it his responsibility to take care of everyone who visited the temple.
The temple's secretary, 56-year-old Inderjeet Singh Dhillon, said Monday that Singh made sure guests were well fed, even if he couldn't always express it in English. Dhillon remembered an occasion when five English-speaking visitors stopped in and Singh insisted _ using only gestures that made those at the temple who knew him laugh _ on "food for everybody.''
It was the same with Singh's brother, 41-year-old Sita Singh, who had arrived in the United States a year ago. Though Sita Singh was quieter than his brother, he was no less dedicated to the temple's visitors. Both men lived at the temple.
Dhillon said that the younger Singh would wake up every morning between 4:30 and 5 to read the Sikh holy book. Afterward, he would see which visitors had come in and ensure all had prasad, the food offering given at the end of every prayer session.
"It was very important to him that whoever came always left with prasad,'' Dhillon said.
The elder Singh brother became a mentor to some of the temple members, including Shehbazdeep Kaleka, a 19-year-old from Racine and the nephew of the temple president.
Kaleka said Monday that he turned to Ranjit Singh when he was down and needed advice, because Singh was a positive person.
Singh's most common advice to the 19-year-old was to sing and sing loudly _ it didn't matter what or how well _ and that would lift his spirits.
"It worked every time,'' Kaleka said, pausing. "He was a very good and honest man. He didn't deserve to die.''
US Sikhs a small, misunderstood community
Ever since they arrived in the U.S. as farmers and lumber mill workers in the late 19th century, Sikhs have struggled with how little Americans knew about the faith.
In 1907, a mob in Bellingham, Washington, who called Sikhs "the Hindus,'' ran them out of town. (Bellingham officials apologized formally 100 years later.)
Over time, they established themselves in the United States with major temples from Boston to California. Still, they remained a small, often misunderstood community, readily identifiable by their turbans. During the 1970s Iranian hostage crisis, Americans often mistook Sikhs for Iranians. Vandals attacked some temples after the Oklahoma City bombing, committed by white U.S. Army veteran Timothy McVeigh.
So when the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks occurred, the Sikh community immediately began organizing, working closely with U.S. Arabs and Muslims on domestic anti-terror policies that respect civil rights.
"When you walk out, all eyes are on you. You get used to it, but it's tough,'' said Vishavjit Singh, a Sikh software engineer from White Plains, New York. "I've had people calling me `Osama' and saying, `Go back home.'''
The massacre Sunday at the suburban Milwaukee Sikh temple left six Sikhs dead and several people wounded, including a police officer who responded to the scene. Authorities have identified the gunman as Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran described by civil rights groups as a neo-Nazi and white supremacist. Police have called the attack Sunday an act of domestic terrorism.
For Sikhs, the attack was the latest _ and worst _ of a string of horrific assaults on their community. Many of the recent attacks have been outright hate crimes. Others remain unsolved.
Just four days after the 2001 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona, was shot and killed by a man who mistook him for a Muslim and was seeking revenge. Last year, a New York City subway worker and Sikh, 30-year-old Jiwan Singh, was assaulted on a train and accused of being related to Osama bin Laden. His son had been attacked two years earlier. In Elk Grove, California, a Sacramento suburb, two Sikh men were fatally shot last year during an afternoon walk. No one has been charged with the crimes.
Sikhs leave their hair uncut and covered by a turban as outward demonstrations of and reminders of their faith. For the same reasons they carry a small ceremonial dagger, called a kirpan.
"They are identifiable. Both Muslims and Sikhs are visible minorities,'' said Diana Eck, a Harvard University professor and director of The Pluralism Project. "Both have been subject to misapprehension and targeting as a result of ignorance and prejudice.''
As early as the 1990s, Sikhs in Washington and other major cities began organizing, building relationships with leaders of other faiths, Eck said. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Sikhs around the country reached out with more urgency. Like American Muslims, they organized open houses at their places of worship.
The Sikh Coalition, a New York-based civil rights group, formed about one month after the attacks from a volunteer effort to protect members of the community. The group has since reported more than 700 hate crimes and has fielded hundreds of complaints about unfair treatment at airports. In April, the coalition unveiled a free mobile application, FlyRights, which allows travelers of all backgrounds to complain immediately to the government if they feel they've been treated unfairly by airport screeners.
The coalition and another group, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, have been taking on cases of Sikhs who say they have been pressured by employers to stop wearing their turbans on the job. In June, the White House held what is believed to be the first briefing on Sikh civil rights.
It's a significant effort for a group that remains a tiny minority in the United States. Of the 27 million Sikhs worldwide, the majority live in India, where the religion was established in the 15th century.
The exact number of Sikhs living in America is not known. Estimates range from 200,000 to 500,000. Many left their homes in the agricultural Punjab province, known as the breadbasket of India, and arrived first in the West and Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s.
The first major temple was built in 1912 around Stockton, California, but like other immigrants, Sikhs were not allowed to bring their spouses to the United States, which restricted their numbers. When President Lyndon Johnson eased immigration quotas in the 1960s, Sikhs began arriving in larger numbers with their families. Temples were built around Boston, Chicago and other parts of California.
Yet, no matter how established they felt in the United States, many Sikhs felt misunderstood. In recent years, many young Sikhs have cut their hair or worn baseball caps instead of turbans to avoid standing out. Vishavjit Singh, cut his hair for years, but has returned to the faith and now wears a turban.
"What is amazing, even 10 years, 11 years after 9/11, most Americans don't know who Sikhs are,'' Singh said. "That scares me.''
ਸਤਿਗੁਰਬਚਨਕਮਾਵਣੇਸਚਾਏਹੁਵੀਚਾਰੁ॥
