How to love your Sikh neighbour

On April 20, hundreds of thousands of people will gather on the streets of Surrey, B.C. for the Vaisakhi Day Parade, one of the largest in the world, according to event organizers. The parade commemorates the establishment of the Khalsa, a sacred community of initiated Sikhs.

“You have 750,000 people on the street. It’s not a joke. It’s a pretty big undertaking,” says Inderjeet Singh, a Sikh chaplain who serves at both the University of B.C., Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the RCMP.

According to the parade organizers, the event is both religious and cultural, but to Singh it’s mostly about his faith. He says the parade concept is shared from Hindu practice and adapted to centre on the Sikh holy scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib which rides on the main float. “It’s like your Bible,” he says “and there’s a couple of people who will sing some hymns [. . .] followed by school kids who come out and do some martial arts, called gatka.” Singh, who grew up attending a Catholic school in Malaysia (a predominantly Muslim country) and sharing meals with Christian neighbours seamlessly makes connections between his faith practices and those of other religions.

Common ground

Parade attendees also enjoy traditional Punjabi food, Chai tea, desserts, snacks and drinks all for free. “It’s crazy, the amount [of food] that they serve,” comments Singh; less than an hour after the festivities wrap up, the roads are open and the streets are spotless. “This concept of seva, meaning ‘service,’ which the Christians have as well, is a very big aspect of our existence. Everybody gets their hands dirty, they bring their gloves and they start cleaning and washing.”

“Coming together as a community and having conversations and shared experiences creates a greater understanding of each other and our respective faiths,” says Laura Ballance, one of the parade organizers.

Christian Courier also spoke to one of Singh’s colleagues at UBC, Sumarme Goble, who is a chaplain at St. Andrew’s Hall through the Presbyterian Church in Canada. When I asked Singh and Goble if they knew of any collaborative efforts between Christians and Sikhs in Metro Vancouver, they both mentioned the work these faith communities do to serve free meals to students. Most often this means running their own events; the Sikh students provide langar on Tuesday evenings and Christian students are involved with a soup dinner on Wednesday nights (among other initiatives). Singh has also heard that Christian and Sikh students might be planning an upcoming bangra dancing event together and has seen Christians help out with serving langar.

Multifaith inclusion is baked into Sikh practice. The langar served on campus and at gudwaras all around the world is always vegetarian. No pork because it would alienate the Muslims, no beef because it would make Hindus unwelcome. On principle, all faiths are always welcome.

A multicultural city

Dane Splinter teaches comparative religions at Surrey Christian School. When he first started teaching at the school in 2006, he says most of his students had roots in Dutch Reformed traditions and parents were sometimes skeptical about field trips to a gurdwara. But that’s changed.

“[Surrey] is very profoundly multicultural,” explains Splinter. “In every demographic you see diversity and our school has kind of followed that pattern.” Parents realize that if their children plan to get jobs, play sports or even be hospitable neighbours in Surrey they will need to have multifaith literacy.

Since Surrey Christian School has an open enrollment policy, there are usually a few students who aren’t Christians in each of Splinter’s classes and he says this creates powerful opportunities for students to take leadership and introduce their classmates to their own faith communities.

“The last time we went to [a gudwara], one of my students’ grandmothers was in the langar. So we walked in and she came out and she’s hugging all the students,” recalls Splinter. “So there’s a personal connection already.”

Beyond conversion

In her book Holy Envy, Barbra Brown Taylor wrestles with the tensions between interfaith dialogue and the evangelical calling to convert others to our own faith. She recalls an experience during a field trip with students to a mosque in Atlanta, the Imam said “our deepest desire is not that you become Muslim, but that you become the best Christian, the best Jew, the best person you can be.”

Splinter says that his encounters with Sikhs have given him the same impression. “If you were to talk to a Sikh, they would say that the best thing I could do as a Christian is to live my Christian faith authentically.” Splinter would even feel comfortable praying in front of a Sikh because he knows they wouldn’t want him to hide his faith. “I get to bring my full self as a Christian and my Sikh neighbour does as well.”

“It’s really important to me that interfaith work doesn’t just become like a stew where we just kind of say ‘oh, we’re all just the same, and we’re all in the same boat,’” insists Splinter.

In her 12 years of serving students at UBC, Goble says that she and the other chaplains have learned that expressing their faith in general platitudes to avoid offending anyone isn’t helpful.

“So now we really try to share from our own faith experience, our own journey, and then open it up at the end to say, ‘so how do you think about fasting and prayer in your tradition,’ or ‘how do you deal with the issue of suffering from your faith perspective?’” Goble says that speaking only on behalf of your own faith creates space for others to share honestly and specifically about their own experiences too.

In a world at war

This principle has become all the more urgent since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. “If we don’t have a history with that kind of grief or war, [chaplains] need to say that up front,” says Goble, referring to both group and one-on-one chaplain-student conversations. “Those of us who are Christian, feel a weightiness there and want to have compassion and empathy, but we don’t necessarily know how to lead conversations like that.”

Both Goble and Singh agree that multifaith dialogue has become more challenging in recent months. “What’s happening in Gaza is terrible,” laments Singh, “but it’s also Ukraine and Russia. It’s also the issue of the Rohingya in Myanmar and the Uighurs in China. It’s about the Chinese fight with the Taiwanese, with Tibet and Nepal. When you are in the University, you get people from all over the world and everybody’s got a story. Everybody’s got some kind of suffering. As chaplains, what we do best is to give them some hope.”

Every community has different tension points between faiths. The trends that Goble and Singh are noticing at UBC and the way Splinter is teaching his classes at Surrey Christian, might not match the reality of your community and that’s OK.

“I grew up in a small town just north of Chicago,” says Splinter, “what was needed in our town was intra-faith bridge building between Catholics and Presbyterians and Baptists.” Creating an open, inclusive and respectful environment is the key ingredient for both multi-faith and intra-faith dialogue. He says facilitating these dynamics has become a way of life for him.

“I believe profoundly that people who come from diverse philosophical or theological traditions can live alongside each other in mutuality, in peace and in harmony. I believe it and it’s in my bones now. It’s an essential part of my Christian faith,” says Splinter with conviction.

Multifaith dialogue shouldn’t be argumentative or conversion-focused, says Goble. She smiles when asked what she would say to a Christian who’s really focused on conversion when they meet someone from another faith.

“I tell them to relax a bit because it’s not us that does the converting, but it is God. And God’s Spirit is everywhere in every interaction we have with people, in every space that we go to, God’s Spirit goes before us and is there before we even arrive. It’s not up to us really to try to convince people.”