Going back several years before 9/11 to the Oklahoma City bombings and the
Persian Gulf crisis, the feeling of being caught up in anti-Muslim racism and hatred, and then after 9/11, being at the forefront of that kind of violence…whenever I spoke to Sikhs — whether they were elders in the community, or my peers, or kids — they told me about how they made sense of the hate violence. They talked about
it in terms of a stream of persecution that we as Sikhs have faced since the
very beginning. The way that they choose to face it is by drawing strength from
stories of resistance in the past. There is this feeling that we are Sikhs and
we are going to be persecuted, and the way that we are going to overcome it is by remembering our legacy of
fighting. So, when I ask [Sikh] people what it means to be American, for them
America is supposed to be this place where we can have a home. We’ve never had a home in Punjab, we’ve never had a home in India; this country has presented itself in our mythology
as a place where we can have our stores and our homes and raise our kids and make it
because we work hard. America is synonymous to a haven of liberty, and I think that’s similar for many immigrants who have felt persecuted. At the same time, after
the hate violence took place I asked many Sikhs whether they wanted to go back
to India, and there was this utmost refusal, like, “No. I’m American. Why don’t people see me as American?” I think for them to be American is to sacrifice to be here. They had to
sacrifice so much just to make a home here; that alone should count as enough
for them to be American. And there’s something about the physical landscape, the social landscape, the freedom to
create in this landscape a new beginning. I think that’s all a part of what it means for them to be here. Does that make sense?
[laughs]
ID: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Now I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about you and your movie. How
was your sense of identity affected by the making of Divided We Fall? Or was it affected?
VK: Yes. Yes it was. Being 20 and being out on the road, I initially felt like I was going to be behind the camera capturing this
unfolding, but it wasn’t long before the stories broke me down and I was crying next to people. Soon
after, the camera spun around on me as people began to tell me to go home, to
go back to my country. I had seen myself through the eyes of some people who
saw me as “not saved,” but I had never seen myself through the eyes of people who saw me as foreign. I was this
suspicious character; I was somehow un-American. I had to fight to be seen, to be counted, to be recognized. And, I think when
identity politics becomes dangerous is when people stop there. So when I’m fighting to be counted, why am I not counted? But soon I realized it wasn’t just me [fighting to be recognized] but my whole community, and not just my
community but the Arab American community, and not just them but Latinos and
brown-skinned people, and before that, Japanese Americans. This has been the
story of nearly every community that has come to American shores, whether
Catholic or Jewish or… wanting to be counted, and needing to be seen. What’s been fascinating for me being on the road is I’ve been in places where I have my own stereotypes. I was in the Midwest, in Nebraska, where I had an all-White, predominantly Christian audience and
most of them had never heard of Sikhs. Everyone stood up and gave a standing
ovation after the film. [I was] able to talk with them and realize that there may not have been a lot of racial
or religious diversity amongst them, but there was so much diversity in terms
of political opinions and lifestyles and people coming from different families — all kinds of diversity, so much so that people began to tell me about times
when they felt like outsiders in their own lives. To have people who fit the
White, straight, male American norm tell me
about when they were outsiders has given me a real glimpse into what it is to be
human. I recognize this universal human struggle to be understood, to be
acknowledged, to be recognized. To link my struggle, and my community’s struggle, with the American struggle has been a way for me to not become embittered by this
violence, but to use it as a way to tell a story that could make people see a
need for solidarity, make people realize we all have a stake in being counted,
and if we all stand up for one another we can work toward that vision. Does
that answer your question?
ID: Yeah. I think when I asked the question in the back of my mind I was wondering if this experience pushed you more toward your Sikh identity or away from it, but it sounds to me -- and you can let me know how far off base I am with this -- that it seemed to broaden your identity. Not toward Sikhism or Americanism but
toward a broader concept of being a human being.
VK: That is absolutely right. And it was a journey to get here. I’d felt like I’d been an outsider to my community all my life, and then I do this project and
within a year of doing it suddenly I am invited by Gurdwaras and community
centers [to speak], and the Sikh community is shoving me the microphone and saying, “Speak for us, daughter. You are our spokesperson”. And afterwards, at all of these events, to have elders come up and say, “You spoke very well, and by the way you should consider wearing all five
articles of faith, consider wearing a turban. You should be dating a Sikh boy… by the way, have you met my son?” “You should tell all women to marry turbaned Sikh boys, and you should tell all
women how to dress because they shouldn’t be dressing the way they are.” It was this barrage of the community not seeing me for who I was and wanting me
to be something that I wasn’t. And in the beginning I loved it. I was like, “Wow. I’m accepted.” I’d never had that experience before. I could barely do the prayers and now I’m being asked to interpret the theology and what it means for us to be in
America. But once I started doing things that destroyed that picture for them,
I realized that being that for them was inauthentic to who I was. Once I
finally had more courage to be who I was, I began to see myself as someone who is fighting to push the boundaries of who
counts as American and who counts as Sikh. I feel like I’m fully both but at the same time I’m on the margins of both. In terms of my own identity, I finally have the
courage to say publicly that the center of any community is important because
that’s where certain traditions are preserved and passed on, but the edges of any
community are equally important because that’s often where those very traditions and interpretations originate. I see myself
as an artist and a storyteller on the edge, and to fully
not hate that in-between-ness — because I hated it before, I hated being in between – but to stand in it and own it and say, “Yes, my first name is Valarie and my last name is Kaur, a Sikh name; no, I can’t speak fluent Punjabi, but I memorize certain passages of the Ādi Granth.” I incorporate classical Indian dance into my worship even though sound and
singing and reciting is the center of Sikh practice. I’m learning how to have more courage in the ways I live out what it means to be
Sikh to me, and that courage only came from traveling so much, and realizing
that the Sikh community is already pretty diverse. And yet those [diverse]
voices are drowned out because you have a certain minority saying, “No! This is what it means to be Sikh.” And maybe that’s the case with America, too: “No! This is what it means to be American, to wave the flag and support the
president.” Having the luxury and privilege to be blessed to travel so much, to talk to so
many people, to understand the sheer diversity within America and the Sikh
community has given me more confidence and courage to be who I am as a Sikh and
as an American.
ID: So has the post 9/11 America changed your political outlook or affiliation? I ask because I read
your Salon Magazine article and I found it very interesting.
VK [laughs]: I should say that it’s not clear in that article that I was raised very Republican and grew up
listening to Rush Limbaugh. My own political worldview began to change when I
was a senior in high school. When I began to articulate the way I felt about
issues, that’s when I began to have a departure, before 9/11. I registered as Independent
because I felt that both systems were incorrect, and I just recently switched
so that we could get Bush out. But I would say that I was already pretty
progressive before Bush was elected, and was shocked that he was elected the
first time. Then after 9/11, as things began to unfold, what I really began to realize as far as my own state as political citizen is
just how vulnerable we are to violence at the hands of systems of injustice, of
systems of government. I think I was of the opinion that yes, as an American
you can demonstrate; we have a history of demonstrating. So before the Iraq War
began, I demonstrated. We [at Stanford] had this peaceful, intelligent protest,
using our Stanford name to issue public dissent, and we felt very proud of that. Then in New York, just having been a legal
observer at this demonstration, I was arrested and denied my rights and
handcuffed. When I asked the officer to loosen my handcuffs, for him to then
twist my arm and injure me intentionally, to make an example of me, to be
detained — having lost feeling in my hand — for 16 hours… [To have that happen] in the American system of justice that I had taken so
much pride in was a deeply confusing, disorienting experience. I wondered what
part of my experience was legal, what part was illegal, what part was just
human cruelty. I was deeply perplexed and I fell into a depression that lasted
for months and months afterward, and as my injury turned into chronic pain
syndrome — it’s been how many years? Three years and I’m still battling this chronic pain, [and] the physical, physiological,
emotional, legal repercussions of that single event. I remember the single
thought I had when I was in jail was,
“Okay, here I am: I’m an American citizen, I can speak English, I’m articulate, and yet I’m being treated as if I’m not human.” I felt that I was treated as an animal. I’ve documented cruelty all my life but never thought that I could experience it directly.
