Fifth in a series by the author in response to Donald Trump’s presidency:
Langston Hughes
My twenty year self, I vaguely remember, found the idea of America to be alluring for a number of reasons. Opportunity beckoned for sure and every year a large complement of the graduating class at the elite Engineering school I attended in India would leave for graduate studies in the US. I was also secretly motivated by the prospect of listening to the bands and musicians I idolized, live, in those days an utter impossibility in India. This aspect of my motivation remained unadvertised as I felt it was too banal to acknowledge, but it did not stop me from gleefully seeking out concerts by the likes of Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash, B.B.King, J.J.Cale and many others, during my years as a graduate student in the New York area.
The true import of the decision I had made to leave the country of my birth and move to America didn’t strike me until years later, when somewhat ironically, I started embracing my identity as a Sikh, thousands of miles away from the land of my forebears. As I started delving into the convoluted accounts of the struggles of the Sikhs in India in the seventies and eighties, which culminated in the chilling violence of 1984, I had an epiphany. The accounts I was able to access in the US, from unimpeachable Indian Civil Rights organizations, journalists and academics, were largely unavailable in India, where they were either banned or not in circulation. I became truly aware of the freedoms of the society I had embraced and had the shocking realization that these freedoms were not a given in every country, including mine, which while spouting Newspeak without a trace of irony, dubbed itself the ‘largest democracy in the world’.
Of course I was not naive! I did not think that America was an utopia and I was very aware of the divisions, injustices and hypocrisies that walked hand in hand with everything that was great about this nation, but having developed an acute appreciation of the freedoms that native born Americans inevitably take for granted, I was sure that there was no other place that I wanted to be.
Many aspects of my journey as an immigrant were unremarkable. I finished graduate school, went to work for storied technology companies and achieved a measure of success, first as an engineering professional and then as a business leader. My greatest joy of course came from starting a family and watching my children grow up, secure in the knowledge that they would thrive and prosper in a society that they belonged to in a way that I as a first generation immigrant, never would. In hindsight, it seemed that my decision to leave my homeland and make a life for myself halfway round the word had been a good one and it was with great pride that my wife and I became US citizens.
As a practicing Sikh with an unshorn beard and a turban adorning my head, I was always acutely aware of the fact that in some sense I represented the face of ‘the other’. My unique appearance had always been the subject of mostly friendly curiosity, but I was completely unprepared for the shock of 9-11. Even as fellow Sikh Americans and I were reeling from the savagery of the attacks, we found ourselves to be collateral damage in their aftermath. All over America, Sikhs were savagely attacked out of fear and ignorance. All over the country Sikhs responded to the attacks with dignity and forbearance, making great efforts to explain who were and the values we stood for.
It was an eerie moment of collective deja vu for my community. I came from a generation of Sikhs who had grown up hearing terrible tales of the bloodletting of 1947 that followed the Partition of India into Pakistan and India, when an international border had appeared overnight in the middle of the Sikh homeland of the Punjab. And of course my generation had come of age in India during the turbulent eighties, when Sikhs, a minuscule minority, had been subjected to terrible violence. Yet, while the unsettling wake of 9-11 brought back memories of both Partition and 1984, I did not, for an instant feel that my embrace of America had been a mistake.
The second major shock came in the summer of 2012, when a hate crazed bigot walked into a Gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship in Wisconsin and opened fire, taking the life of six strangers whose only crime had been their ‘otherness’ . Of course every Sikh was shaken, but the tremendous outpouring of love and compassion from Americans of every creed transformed the terrifying moment into one of grace and hope. On a deeply personal level, as I stood at the lectern at the magnificent Trinity Church in Boston, looking down at an interfaith congregation of fifteen hundred that had gathered in solidarity with me and my fellow Sikhs, my heart soared! This was my country and these were my people. I could not have been prouder.
And then came Charlottesville.
With the rest of the nation, I watched dumbfounded as jackbooted and helmeted white supremacists and neo-nazis openly marched in the streets, spewing hatred at Jews and racial minorities. I was not in the least bit surprised when Donald Trump’s dog whistles at the most despicable of his supporters, turned into foghorns. Several months ago, I had written a letter to the president elect, asking him to choose his path carefully as it would determine what kind of leader he was going to be and how history would judge him. Every action he has taken and every statement he has made since taking the oath of office seemed to indicate that this was a man intent on playing to our basest instincts. His response to Charlottesville clearly and unequivocally answered the question that I posed to him.
For the first time ever, thirty years after coming to America, I find myself wondering. Was it a good decision?
As I try to deal with the climate of mean spiritedness and bigotry, that has been unleashed upon us, in the name of ‘Making America Great Again’, drawing upon every reserve of inner strength and the uniquely Sikh ethos of Chardi Kala (ever ascending spirits), I stumble upon the writings of a well known poet which give voice to my feelings more eloquently than I ever can myself:
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me? Surely not me?
The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
I salute Langston Hughes! And I salute this nation, my home, whose greatness will never be tarnished by demagogues and bigots.
Sarbpreet Singh is a playwright, commentator and poet, who has been writing while pursuing a career in technology for several years. He is the author of Kultar’s Mime, a poem about the 1984 Sikh Genocide. His commentary has appeared on NPR’s Morning Edition and Worldview, The Boston Herald, The Providence Journal, The Milwaukee Journal and several other newspapers and magazines. He is the founder and director of the Gurmat Sangeet Project, a non-profit dedicated to the preservation of traditional Sikh music and serves on the boards of various non-profits focused on service and social justice. He is very active in Boston Interfaith circles and serves as a spiritual advisor at Northeastern University.