Anti-Sikh sentiment

The APPG for British Sikhs in its 2020 report defines anti-Sikh hate as "any incident or crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be religiously or racially motivated by hostility, hatred or prejudice against Sikhs or those perceived to be Sikh people, Gurdwaras, organisations or property". == By country ==

Canada Anti-Sikh hate speech has been on the rise in Canada. India In 1984, many Sikhs were massacred in India in-response to the assassination of Indira Gandhi. United Kingdom Sikhs started immigrating to the UK in notable numbers in the 1950s onwards via direct migration from India or by twice-migration (such as by via East Africa), with them experiencing racism from the onset of arrival. Some of these attacks involved the forced removal of turbans worn by Sikhs. Tamaki claimed the Sikhs were "terrorists" and "Khalistanis", complaining about seeing too many turbans and stated that multiculturalism was a "failure". In May 2018, a prominent Sikh leader Charanjeet Singh was shot dead in Peshawar. It was the tenth targeted murder of a prominent Sikh since 2014, and "stirred unprecedented fear - and fury - among the community's members, particularly in Peshawar." On 3 January 2020, Pakistani media reported that "scores of protesters surrounded the Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, on Friday afternoon, threatening to overrun the holy site if their demands for the release of suspects in an alleged forced conversion case were not met". There were also reports of stone-pelting on the shrine by a mob of angry local Muslims, that even threatened to convert it into a mosque. On 27 July 2020, it was reported that the Gurdwara Shaheed Bhai Taru Singh, which is the site of martyrdom of Bhai Taru Singh, had been forcibly taken over and was converted into a mosque and named as Masjid Shahid Ganj. In June 2023, two Sikh shopkeepers were attacked in a spate of less than 48 hours in Peshawar. One Sikh succumbed to his injuries whilst the other victim survived. == Scholarly views ==

Jagbir Jhutti-Johal stresses that instead of blanket-labelling all racist attacks against Sikhs as being "anti-Sikh", it is important to consider the intent of the attacker and if they actually were targeting Sikhs or rather mistook Sikhs for Muslims and intended to target Muslims. Thus, according to them there is a difference between actual anti-Sikh hatred and Islamophobic hatred where Sikhs are victims due to mistaken identity. Jhutti-Johal also criticized official anti-Sikh hate-crime statistics as likely being inaccurate, as many incidents are not reported due to a lack of trust some Sikh communities have in the local police, under-reporting (some Sikhs do not know what a hate-crime or hate-incident is and therefore do not report them), or anti-Sikh crimes are labelled as Islamophobic incidents instead. Furthermore, they argue that the apparent rise in anti-Sikh hate-crimes in stats may be due to increased reporting and awareness due to campaigning by Sikh bodies rather than a genuine increase in the number of anti-Sikh incidents. Furthermore, the official definition of anti-Sikh hate proposed by the APPG for British Sikhs in its 2020 report does not describe incidents where the attacker had Islamophobic motivations but due to mistaken identity, a Sikh was vicitimized by them rather than an actual Muslim. Jhutti-Johal concludes by stating that current systems and mechanisms of reporting do not address the issue of the conflation of race and religion, nor intended/perceived victim (Muslim) and actual victim (Sikh), and also raises the legal complexity of Sikhs being classified as both a race and religion in certain jurisdictions and how it could impact crime-reporting (thus, would an anti-Sikh crime be classified as a race-biased or a religiously biased one, or both at the same time?). Therefore, "anti-Sikh" is a reference to the actual victim (a Sikh) and not to the perceived target (Muslims), thus anti-Sikh hatred may not be proper Sikhophobia, that being actual hatred for Sikhs and being anti-Sikhism, rather it is misdirected Islamophobia. == See also ==