Indian grandfather assaulted in Alabama: Why Hinduism 101 for US cops won't help

Broken vertebrae do not know any colour. Or religion. Or do they? Those have now become the questions swirling around the tragedy that befell Sureshbhai Patel. The 57-year-old grandfather was left paralysed because he aroused the suspicions of a neighbor while on a walk in his neighbourhood in Alabama and when the police arrived everything went south. Patel who could not speak much English could neither understand what the police wanted from him, nor could he explain what he was doing. It was a moment of cultural incomprehension that cost him dearly. He was thrown to the ground with such force he was left paralysed. The story did not end there. The police officer responsible, one Eric Parker, has been arrested and charged. India send a consular officer to Alabama to deal with the issue. And the Hindu American Foundation has announced that it is working with the Department of Justice to develop a Hinduism 101 training for first responders. HAF states “The training is intended to improve the cultural competency of police officers and avoid the escalation of incidents based on language and cultural barriers.” And that’s where a controversy has erupted. The initial alert from the suspicious neighbor had been about a “skinny black man”. That’s what the Alabama police had responded to. In a much-shared post on Medium.com blogger Anirvan Chatterjee writes quoting tweets from civil rights activist Shaun King:

The Hindu American Foundation say they’re responding to the case by “creating a Hinduism 101 training for first responders.” This fails to address the root cause: Mr. Patel’s white neighbor asked the police to protect his wife from the “skinny black guy” on the street. Patel wasn’t attacked because he was Indian, or a Hindu — he was attacked because of anti-Black racism, compounded by utter disrespect for those with limited English proficiency.

This leads to the obvious question - how did this become a case of Hindu-bashing? Would Sureshbhai Patel have not suffered those broken vertebrae if he had been an Indian Christian or an Indian Muslim and still unable to speak English? [caption id=“attachment_2101937” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] 57-year-old Sureshbhai Patel was beaten up by Alabama police while he was walking in his neighbourhood. Courtesy: Twitter[/caption] Suhag Shukla, executive director of the Hindu American Foundation tells Firstpost that while it’s true the roots of the initial call are grounded in anti-black bigotry “the point is not whether neighbors conflated Sureshbhai with a black man, a Middle Eastern man, or a foreigner to evoke a perverse suspicion, but that in Sureshbhai’s plight, South Asians – most of whom in the US at least are Hindu – saw how easily and brutally they could be victimized.” Shukla says HAF which has worked in “diverse coalitions” is merely filling a “knowledge gap” even if this was not a case of “Hindu-bashing” per se.

Even if the attack on Sureshbhai was not prima facie anti-Hindu, the community would certainly be served well if law enforcement was sensitive to possible language barriers, cultural practices, or body language in its dealing with Hindus.

HAF does not have to wait for a full-fledged case of unquestioned Hindu-bashing to educate first responders. There’s nothing wrong with preemptive education. And it should not be an either or situation. Just because HAF wants to watch out for Hindu Americans the way Sikh groups watch out for the rights of Sikhs and CAIR stands up for Islamic Americans, it does not mean HAF cannot also speak up when those groups get targeted. But it’s not clear the Indian community always gets that message. Many in the community saw what happened in Alabama as a story of blinkered bigotry of a society that regards itself in such black-and-white terms it sees a Sureshbhai Patel as black just because he is not white. And from that it’s just a hop, skip and jump to the idea that Alabama was wrong not just because such a thing should happen to no one, black, brown or white but because an Indian was mistaken for black by the caller. And what needs to be fixed is that notion of mistaken identity. It’s happened before. After 9/11 Sikhs found themselves at the receiving end of the bigotry of those who saw Osama bin Ladens in their turbans and beards. Some Sikh community leaders quickly tried to educate the public about how Sikhs were not Arabs.

I keep telling everybody: “No! I am a Sikh! Sikhs are not part of the Taliban. Sikhs are not Muslims. Sikhs are not Arabs.”

That’s one approach – you got the wrong guy. There’s another approach – that tries to make it a moment that’s about everyone. Groups like SAALT or South Asian Americans Leading Together quickly issued statements trying to use it as a moment for community building.

For decades, xenophobic and racist rhetoric has been targeted at African Americans and Latinos in the political sphere. More recently, Arab, Muslim, and South Asian Americans generally have become the target of such rhetoric by government officials, sometimes impacting actions in their local communities.

To be fair, even if the caller thought Patel was “black”, the police officer clearly asks Patel if he is Indian. But that just means this could be even more a moment when two communities can discover that they are in the same boat. Law enforcement and first responders might need to be educated about Hindu Americans or even Indian Americans. But Indian Americans too need to be educated that their road to justice should not come at the expense of any another group because every time they say “You got the wrong guy” they are implying there’s another grandfather on a walk somewhere more deserving of being bashed.