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Introduction: America, like the Sikh tradition, is ultimately an experiment in pluralism. In this essay, I reflect on the upcoming Sikh festival of Vaisakhi (April 13/14), the lessons my mother taught me, the image of a young boy kneeling in service, and my own journey to citizenship. Writing as a Sikh American, immigrant, and storyteller for peace and justice, I explore what it means to carry this responsibility into the evolving story of this nation, and how traditions of service can help us nurture empathy, belonging, and the shared work of advancing pluralism and multiculturalism, as core American values.
_______________________________ Every spring, Sikhs around the world celebrate Vaisakhi. It is one of the most important days in the Sikh calendar, marking the birth and remembrance of the Khalsa in 1699, when the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, called upon Sikhs to commit themselves to a life of courage, service, and equality. In gurdwaras, which are Sikh temples, the saffron-orange Nishan Sahib flag is lowered from its tall pole and washed with milk as part of a ritual cleansing. A fresh cloth is wrapped around it before it is raised again, symbolizing renewal. Communities gather for parades honoring the Panj Pyare—the Five Beloved Ones, followed by music, food, and celebration. But my earliest memory of Vaisakhi was actually a lesson taught to me by my mother. I must have been eight or nine years old. My family and I were visiting a gurdwara in West London, where many members of the Sikh diaspora gathered. As always, we removed our shoes before entering and placed them among the hundreds lining the racks near the entrance. Usually, we would go upstairs to sit in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture we regard as a living teacher. Worshippers bow their heads, sit in meditation, and listen to shabads, spiritual hymns whose poetic verses form the heart of Sikh scripture. But on this particular day, my mother stopped me. Instead of going upstairs, she handed me a cloth and asked me to clean the shoes of the worshippers. At first, I thought I was being punished. But what she was teaching me was seva—service to others, which in Sikhism is considered one of the highest forms of prayer. To kneel down and clean the shoes of strangers is an act of humility. It reminds us that dignity belongs to everyone. That no task is beneath us. That service connects us to one another and to something greater than ourselves. I didn’t fully understand it at the time, but the lesson stayed with me. And in many ways, it has shaped my life. I come from the Sikh tradition, the world’s fifth-largest religion, yet one that is often misunderstood, both in the West and sometimes even in India, where the faith originated. Growing up in England in the 1980s and 1990s, my father wore a traditional Sikh turban. Strangers would sometimes accuse him on the street of being a terrorist. For much of my life, that word has been used against Sikhs as a racial slur, sometimes out of hate, but often out of ignorance and fear. After the attacks of September 11, those misunderstandings intensified dramatically. Religious scholar Simran Jeet Singh writes powerfully about this in The Light We Give. A Sikh with Punjabi roots who was born and raised in Texas, Jeet Singh has also experienced being called a terrorist because he wears a turban. He often points out the irony behind one of the insults directed at him: “Go back to where you came from.” If he were to do that, he says, he would go back to Texas. In some ways, I grew up with a similar irony. I was raised in Eastbourne, England, right on the coast, about fifty miles south of London. On a clear day, you could see France across the channel. Like most kids, I spent my days riding my bicycle, climbing trees, and exploring the neighborhood. But I was also a kid who stood out. My family had come to Britain in 1972, as refugees, escaping war and persecution in Uganda during the era of Idi Amin’s dictatorship. Four years later, I was the first person of color, as far as I know, born in the small English town where I grew up. There was racial violence directed toward immigrants across the UK at the time, fueled in part by the racist rhetoric of British politician Enoch Powell. Some days, that violence spilled into our small town. Led not by politicians in suits, but by young men wearing green bomber jackets, DM boots with white laces, and union jack tattoos on their arms. One of those neo-Nazis knocked me from my BMX bike when I was five years old. I still carry twenty-six stitches on my face from that attack and others. I’ve been beaten up so many times I’ve lost count. Once, my head was stomped so badly that I woke up in a hospital. On the playground, I was bullied and called names, “smelly immigrant,” “curry boy.” Kids would shout, “Go back to where you came from!” So I did. I ran straight across the street to our house, the only place I knew. My mother was my primary teacher. She was an artist and a registered nurse. I remember her white Florence Nightingale–style uniform and the upside-down watch pinned to her chest so she could read it while taking a patient’s pulse. I looked up to her in so many ways. Around our kitchen table, and as she cooked, she would tell me stories to help me make sense of what often felt like a chaotic and violent world. She told me about my grandparents, freedom fighters in India who came from rural villages of farmers and carpenters who challenged and eventually helped dismantle imperial British rule. She told me about their life in East Africa, how my grandfather, with his own hands, built a water well, so passersby could drink fresh, clean water in the scorching heat, and how my grandmother won a red chili–eating competition and used the prize money to buy a weaving loom to support the family. She told me stories of courage, determination, and love, stories of activists and freedom warriors. Those stories helped me imagine a bigger world and a bigger version of myself. Then she would say to me, “Now go back onto that playground and tell them who you really are.” I did. And it helped. Even in India, Sikhs are a minority who have faced violence and persecution. There are many ironies embedded in these misunderstandings. One of the greatest is this: Sikhism is built on principles of equality, justice, and unconditional love for humanity, even for those who might wrong us. In many ways, Sikhs were among the earliest social justice advocates. Our tradition teaches respect for all faiths, service to community, protection of the oppressed, and the recognition that every human being carries divine dignity. Many Sikhs wear the turban, as a crown, and also so they can be spotted in a crowd and can be called upon to help, regardless of their faith, background, or political affiliation. When I was a child, my mother introduced me to something she called the Journey of Five. The idea was simple: encounter and learn from five spiritual or cultural traditions different from your own. Only after listening deeply to others, participating in their customs and traditions, could you truly understand what it meant to be a Sikh. Our journey took us many places: midnight Mass at a church, visits to mosques, synagogues, and Hindu temples, and conversations about faith and belonging. For most of my life, I assumed this teaching came from Sikh scripture. Only later did I realize it was my mother’s own interpretation of Sikh values. But in many ways, that is exactly how living traditions work. They adapt and evolve. To my mother, curiosity was sacred, and humility was the path to wisdom. Some of my earliest memories of Sikh values also come from visits to Punjab, where my extended family lived in rural villages known as pinds. When I visited as a child, my mother took me to one of our ancestral villages in the lush green fields of northern India. There were no curfews, and what felt like no rules or schedules. It felt like the whole village gathered in one house, with many things happening at once. Some people sat on cushions watching a six-hour Bollywood movie. Kids played on the veranda. Older women led folk songs while tapping rhythm on a tolki drum with a metal spoon. It was less about watching the movie than about just being together. While we were in India, my mother also took me to the most famous langar in the world- Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, better known as the Golden Temple. The temple sits in the middle of a vast pool of water, surrounded by marble. Visitors cross a bridge to reach it. The building has four doors, symbolizing openness to people from every direction. It was built low to the ground to express humility to Earth and nature. Tradition even holds that the first brick was laid by a Muslim. Like all Sikh gurdwaras, it is built around a langar, a community kitchen that serves free vegetarian meals made by volunteers, to anyone who walks through the door. Every day, around fifty thousand people are fed there. When I first visited as a six-year-old, my mother and I sat cross-legged on the floor alongside people from every walk of life—rich and poor, men and women, people of every religion, color, and ability, serving one another and sharing a meal as equals. I never forgot that. Especially in India, where the caste system sees entire swaths of people as “untouchables,” not even worthy to eat food with. Eating at the Golden Temple didn’t just feel good, it was a political act, quietly revolutionary, breaking down centuries of social hierarchy, one meal at a time. Back in England, my mother had her own version of langar. One of my most vivid childhood memories begins with her voice ringing out the front door of our small concrete house on Chaffinch Road: “Tea’s ready, boys!” I would come downstairs to find ten burly men crowded into our kitchen; their trucks parked four-deep on the cul-de-sac. They were laughing with my mom, telling stories, connecting. They were the neighborhood garbage collectors. And as they made their rounds, our house had become their favorite stop. Morning tea at the Sirah household meant English tea in my mother’s best cups and British biscuits shared around the kitchen table. Sometimes there were so many of them that they spilled into the garden. Why does this memory stay with me? Partly because the image is so vivid. But mostly because of what it taught me: that dignity and love belong to everyone. No exceptions. From our tiny kitchen on a dead-end street in southern England, my mother was doing her part to build a fairer society, in the simplest way she knew how, by making tea, sharing food, and inviting people to tell their stories. She instilled in me the Sikh values of nirbhau (no fear) and nirvair (no hate). She taught me persistence (sangarsh), a commitment to truth (sach), and the importance of chardi kala, maintaining an optimistic spirit even in the face of adversity. What I observed in her actions became the blueprint for my life. It’s a lesson I’ve tried to carry into all my work, from helping multifaith communities, especially Muslim and Jewish communities, grapple with tensions since 9/11 and the conflicts that have followed, to using arts, music, storytelling, museum exhibits, and other folklife approaches to address historical sectarian divides in Northern Ireland and the west of Scotland. Fifteen years ago, when I came to the United States on a Rotary Peace Fellowship at the University of North Carolina, activist folklorist and teacher, Dr. Elaine Lawless, taught me to see these values, along with my status as a new immigrant and a person of color with a British accent as both an opportunity and a responsibility. She encouraged me to pay attention to communities struggling for justice, to listen for untold stories, and to use my art and experiences, to create space for conversations about the issues we, as a nation, need to face. I took that call to heart and made it central to everything I do. Since then, I have led an institution, the International Storytelling Center in Tennessee, for a decade, curated America’s National Storytelling Festival, and facilitated both small and large community dialogues through this socially engaged lens. I’ve witnessed people, young and old, across political and cultural backgrounds, come alive, gain agency, speak in their own voices, and feel empowered to make change. Not by imposing my story or my values, but by cultivating spaces where people feel comfortable, sometimes even vulnerable enough, to discover and share their own. As a folklorist, artist, peacebuilder, and as a Sikh, I’ve come to see storytelling, as a sacred communal art, with a profound sense of responsibility. An ancestral teaching, yet highly relevant for our modern world. When I first moved to East Tennessee, I arrived in a place where I didn’t know a single person. It was daunting. But I remembered my mother’s lessons. In the American South, joining a church is often one way to find community. But there were no Sikh gurdwaras where I live, and very few Sikh people. I found comfort in remembering that, in Sikhism, we often regard every place of worship as a Sikh place of worship, spaces where we can learn and be in community. Despite differences in tradition and belief, there is a sense that something larger binds us all. So, as new friendships began to form, I started inviting people onto my front porch and into my living room. Together, we talked about the social justice issues we cared about. It felt important to bring those conversations into spaces of safe, inclusive, everyday ritual. I began inviting the world into my home, and in turn, I used my home and the resources I had most access to, to celebrate world traditions with my neighbors. We observed Muslim Iftar during Ramadan. We marked Christian Easter. One year, a Jewish friend and I realized that Peseach, Jewish Passover and Sikh Vaisakhi fell at the same time, so we organized a gathering we called “Peseach-khi.” We made masala matzah balls and tandoori latke cakes, invited neighbors and friends, and shared the stories of Exodus alongside Sikh stories of liberation and freedom, along with the poetry of Audre Lorde and bell hooks. Later that year, during Hanukkah, I found a menorah at a local Target and, with the guidance of a rabbi friend, invited Episcopalian friends over to light the candles and say the prayers. Storytelling is powerful on stages and under festival tents, but the stories we share in small, intimate spaces, around kitchen tables, on front porches, in neighborhood cafés, may be even more so. These are the spaces where we can meet each other with curiosity, humility, and wisdom. Since I had moved to this region to lead a nonprofit institution, one of my first professional tasks was to go out and meet the community. Here I was, once again, the new guy in town, a Brown European liberal in a predominantly white conservative region. I thought to myself, how’s this going to work? I met a man for coffee. He was a self-made philanthropist and a highly influential figure in the region, but the first thing he did was ask me for my story, so I told him about my upbringing, my parents fleeing Uganda. He smiled. He went on to tell me that not many people knew this, but during that time, he had been a cargo plane pilot delivering food and supplies to refugees fleeing across the Ugandan border into Kenya. I was stunned. That’s what you might call Southern hospitality. Here I was, sitting with someone who had helped my people thousands of miles away, before I was even born. I got to shake the hand of a man who already knew my story and was already part of it, and I would not have known if not for meeting him in person. But this chance encounter was something deeper. A reminder that strangers can be connected in ways we don’t yet understand. A reminder of something my mother taught me: when we create space to truly share who we are and where we come from, we can discover unexpected threads that bind us together, moments that may occur years from now, even generations to come. And what I’ve come to believe is that if we really believe in healthy discourse and dialogue, we’ve got to be willing to face the discomfort. We cannot be afraid. Today, the United States, is in the midst of an identity crisis. The painful legacies of our past, the Civil War, slavery, Jim Crow, it’s always been there, beneath the surface. It may feel like it’s bubbling over at the moment, but how do you see this particular moment in history? Is it horrifying? Sad? Dangerous in its uncertainty? All those things may be true, but I also see it as an opportunity. Some of the greatest moments in human history come from a collapse or an upheaval, which often sprout movements that advance far beyond what we previously knew. But we know turmoil or new movements doesn’t just spring up overnight- the past is always informing the present. Around 2017, I attended a talk by Dr. Bernice King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., just a few blocks from my home in Johnson City. She said something that has stayed with me: “There’s something Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump have in common: both have woken this country up to the great disparities that already exist.” Regardless of political belief, when I share this reflection, people often find themselves nodding in recognition. We need ways to understand how the past informs the present. And we need spaces where everyday people can recognize their own power, to shift culture, to make small but meaningful changes, and to engage in conversations that help us imagine a different kind of world. One that is more just, more humane, and more connected than the one we are living in now. Today, I try to build the same kind of home my mother built. A few years ago, before a Black Lives Matter rally in my town, I invited five people to dinner: two activists organizing the protest, the town’s Republican mayor, an African American minister, and myself. I spent the day cooking Punjabi curry. When everyone arrived, I said, “Before we talk politics, we’re going to break bread.” As we ate, the tension softened. People told their stories. They listened. And when the rally came, the mayor not only attended, but he also helped ensure that police protected protesters from white supremacist groups that had come to provoke violence. That evening reminded me of something my mother understood instinctively: conversation changes when people sit together as equals. Sometimes, all it takes is a kitchen table. My work has required a lot of travel across this nation, and I’m grateful for that. Over the years, I’ve set foot in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and in the Mississippi River. I walked for three days and nights on the Appalachian Trail. I once sat in a New York City Lower East Side café lit by candlelight after Hurricane Sandy, and the next day walked to the United Nations, to share a poem, on the International Day of Peace, and I’ve been sent a bouquet of flowers by Dolly Parton, as a gesture of thanks for training her team of literacy educators through her Imagination Library project. I’ve been invited to Charleston, South Carolina, following the 2015 massacre at Mother Emanuel Church that took nine lives. There, in honor of Cynthia Hurd, one of the victims, I led a workshop at an inner-city high school to help students make sense of their own stories and identify how they relate to what was happening in their city and the world around them. It was also impossible to ignore how close we were to the port that served as the point of entry for nearly half of the enslaved Africans brought to the United States. There was a palpable connection between that history and the tragedy that had just taken place. What I’ve observed through these experiences is, as a diverse nation, as complex as any other I have lived in or visited, the United States is very much a story in progress. It is vibrant and multifaceted, but it also contains deep flaws that are holding us back from becoming all that we might be. I’ve witnessed this tension firsthand. I happened to be in Baton Rouge when Alton Sterling was killed. And I’ve been here through the reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, watching peaceful candlelight vigils take place alongside the troubling rise of white supremacist violence. Across the country, we are still grappling with the legacies of slavery and the Civil War. These histories are not so distant. We still need spaces for reflection and dialogue as we reckon with them. And even as we try to come to terms with the past, the present continues to bring new challenges. In recent years, my life has gone through another transformation. I became a United States citizen. I was able to vote for the first time in a national election. While the result was not how I’d hope it would turn out, as a Sikh American, this has only deepened my sense of purpose and responsibility to learn from people with different beliefs, perspectives, and ways of life beyond my own. I’ve found myself devoting more of myself to this pluralistic endeavor through an artistic, socially engaged practice, rooted in Sikh and activist principles of understanding and revealing the essence of our shared humanity. My mother’s stage was our small family home. I have tried to carry that spirit into a communal art and form of work that is both portable and can be shared. Something that can move across communities, disciplines, and social movements. While my work has taken me across the country, from the halls of the United Nations, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the US Senate advocating for bi-partisan peace policies, to helping Appalachian communities discuss what to do with their confederate monuments, to classrooms and churches in towns across America, all in an effort to hold safe and intimate spaces where vulnerability is welcomed, and where shared dialogue can open pathways toward deeper understanding. It has now been fifteen years since I first got my visa approved at the U.S. embassy in London, for what was meant to be a two-year course of study. There’s no question I’ve had incredible experiences with remarkable people. But lately, I’ve been asking myself: what have I come to understand about the Journey of Five, Vaisakhi, my upbringing, and moving to the United States in this time? Growing up, it was sometimes hard to be different. There are people in the world who teach that difference should be feared, not celebrated. But from an early age, I came to understand that diversity is not something to fear, it is something to value. Discrimination against people is wrong. But discriminating between people, looking at how we are all different and belong to unique stories, is crucial. Recognizing this is the best way to develop a world based on mutual respect and understanding. If we imagine a garden with only one kind of flower, or a forest with only one kind of bird, it feels incomplete. It takes difference to make something whole. It may sound romantic, but in many ways, that idea is foundational to the United States, a country shaped by immigrants, by many stories coming together. I live and call this country my home today, but the first time I came to America, I was twelve years old. My brother was sixteen. My parents had saved for years for one of those classic American vacations. We went to Disney World and had our picture taken with Mickey Mouse. We visited SeaWorld and met baby Shamu. And of course, we went to New York City, where my father took us to see the Statue of Liberty. My mom and brother stayed at the bottom, but my dad and I took an elevator halfway up and then climbed the rest of the way toward the crown. It was a long climb for a kid. When we finally reached the window, we looked out over America… and realized we had left the camera at the bottom with my mom. This was before cell phones. But we were fortunate, a kind Chinese American man, an immigrant, offered to take a photo with his own camera and send it to us. Weeks later, after we had returned to the UK, that photograph arrived in the mail. I’ve always remembered that person’s kindness and the effort he made for a family he would never see again. I think of the hospitality and kindness I’ve witnessed across the vast majority of people and places, in all directions of this nation. I think of the way people welcome one another with curiosity and generosity, the dinners and potlucks, the cenas Americanas. How people have, for decades, brought their traditions and stories from all over the world into one shared space. I see this kind of communion as one of this nation’s greatest strengths. Something that I can see people are striving to cultivate further, as a collective cultural superpower. In Sikhism, the tenth Guru asked all Sikhs to recognize the entire human race as one. When we meet others, we are called to remember that we are human first. Becoming a United States citizen deepened my sense of responsibility to this idea, to contribute to this country’s ongoing story. Because America, like the Sikh tradition, is ultimately an experiment in pluralism. Its strength lies in the diversity of voices that shape it, inviting empathy where there might otherwise be fear. For me, exploring the truth and meaning within other people’s beliefs, and how people create meaning in their lives, whether rooted in faith or not, continues to be an essential part of my own journey, learning about different lives and worldviews. The Journey of Five was never only about religion. It was about vulnerability, about stepping into other people’s lives and ways of seeing the world. I no longer feel like an outsider observing from a distance. I understand now that I am part of this nation’s story, as an immigrant, as a new Appalachian, as a new Sikh American, connected also to a broader world. Vaisakhi marks the arrival of spring for Sikhs, but it is also a season of renewal, harvest, and new beginnings for many. A time to imagine the future we want to help build. A time to renew the values, people, and traditions that have guided our lives, whether they come from faith, family, culture, scripture, lived experience, constitutional or civil rights, or the places we call home. History shows us that moments of turmoil can give rise to transformation. Stories of struggle can become stories of hope. They can activate the storyteller in all of us, drawing us to the most powerful place we have to build community, challenge inequality, and imagine the story we wish to live into as a nation, and how that story shapes our relationship with the wider world. As we gather around our kitchen tables. Storytelling teaches us to listen and to listen in new ways. A society that listens, that bears witness to multiple stories—the sorrow, the pain, and also the joy—creates a culture rooted in empathy, love, and kindness. These connections become the foundation for building repair, healing, and the possibility for positive change. Storytelling is humanity’s most accessible, truly democratic art and social force for social change. People often ask me what the “formula” is for "compelling storytelling." I’m not sure there is one, but if there were, perhaps it’s this: think about what you care about most, values you feel are worth lifting, even if some larger powers are trying to silence them. Tell a story and your truth about it. And if that story moves your heart, chances are it will move the hearts of others, too. Today, when people ask me about my storytelling methods, I don’t point to a PowerPoint or a scientific formula. I tell them about my mother. I share my experiences of where I come from, as well as the nation I have chosen to call home, a nation that is made up of millions of stories, heartbreaking, poignant, complicated, infuriating, and fascinating narratives that go far beyond soundbites on the news. The kind of stories that come from personal contact. I think about the lessons from strangers, from everyday encounters. The Journey of Five, as something that can be scaled up, down, and out across this nation, as I move deeper into the place I call home. Especially when it feels like things are so large and overwhelming, it’s something I know I can turn to. I think about a small kitchen in England. I remember, Tea and biscuits. I remember garbage collectors gathered around a table. And, I remember a boy kneeling to clean strangers’ shoes on Vaisakhi. By Kiran Singh Sirah Sign Up to Storytelling: Gift of Hope Newsletters & Blogs |
