More than 500 Sikh volunteers turned out for “Turban Day” in Times Square April 15. Organized by Sikhs of New York, the aim was to make better known the beliefs and practices of Sikhism, the world’s fifth-largest religion.
Equipped with thousands of lengths of fabric in a wide variety of colors, Sikhs time some 8,000 turbans on tourists and New Yorkers.
Turban Day was created by Chanpreet Singh, the 24-year-old founder of Sikhs of New York. The group began as a student club at Singh’s alma mater, Baruch College, where the first Turban Day was held in 2012.
“I’ve been called names like terrorist, ISIS. I’ve heard things like ‘Go back to your country,’ all throughout high school and middle school,” Singh told Huffington Post Associate Editor Carol Kuruvilla.
Singh believes it is up to Sikhs to make their religion better known and understood. “We haven’t done enough to educate,” he said.
A 2015 survey from the National Sikh Campaign, which partnered with Sikhs of New York for Turban Day, found that 60 percent of Americans said they knew nothing at all about Sikh Americans. Americans were more likely to assume that a man wearing a turban was Muslim (20 percent) or Middle Eastern (28 percent), than they were to assume the turbaned man was Sikh (11 percent).
