This is the picture I took during Nagar Kirtan also known as Sikh Parade in Yuba City in Californa in Nov 2005. These 3 young lads were sitting on the footsteps of a float in the parade. Float was a large rig truck which was moving slowly. Notice the boy in the middle is wearing a t-shirt with two imprints on it of - Bhagat Singh and S
ant Bhindrawale and phrase "Singh Soormay" under the pictures.Second picture shows the closeup. These boys interested me a lot as I was about their age in 1979/80 when I first time heard about Bhindrawala. He had come to the village next to ours at a conference. I attended the conference along with all my classmates. The kavishari jathas that came with Bhindrawala sang warrior songs encouraging the use of violence by individuals to achieve political goals. To our adolescent minds it sounded very empowering but we knew little about its consequences. When I look at these boys I see the innocence that we had at that age. These kids are most probably born and raised in USA and trying to connect to their roots through its symbols. Not they know the difference between the ideologies of the two guys depicted on the t-shirt. Sad thing is it will take them easily another 20 years to figure out the difference.
