As a member of the Sikh American community, I am writing to you because you are a state legislator identified by the Civics Alliance as a member of their “American Birthright Coalition.” I wanted to make you aware of the “American Birthright” social studies standards’s dangerous, offensive, and ultimately false characterization of the Sikh community and faith tradition, and to urge you to publicly distance yourself from this project and reject any further efforts to impose the “American Birthright” standards in your state.

For your awareness, there are more than 25 million Sikhs around the globe, which makes Sikhi (Sikhism) the world’s fifth-largest organized religion. Sikhs first came to the United States in the late 1800s and there are an estimated 750,000 Sikhs living in America today. We are integral parts of our communities throughout the United States with a long history of contributing to the civic life, economy, and cultural fabric of our nation. Despite our growing population in the United States, public ignorance of the Sikh faith remains high—which makes Sikhism’s inclusion alongside other world religions in state social studies standards critically important. Over the past 15 years, 20 different U.S. states have moved towards meaningful inclusion of Sikhism in their standards.

Unfortunately, there are only two mentions of Sikhism in the “American Birthright” model standards, and one of them calls for students to learn about “Sikh terror” as they “describe the history of independent India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka” in their 10th grade history classes. This simplified and sensational mention ignores essential context about how post-colonial India often claimed minority religious groups were terroristic to justify discrimination and violence against them. More critically, it is a slap in the face to our community given the more than 20 years of work we have done throughout society to reject the false labels of “terrorists” or “extremists.” 9/11 brought a wave of hate crimes and discrimination against our community; our children were not immune, facing severe bullying because of turbans and other articles of faith as they were called “terrorist” and “Osama.”

The Sikh American community will not stand idly by as we are denigrated by the “American Birthright” standards. I urge you to call on the Civics Alliance to change their representation of Sikhism in these standards and/or entirely distance yourself from this project and any legislative efforts to implement it. At the end of the day, every student deserves to see themselves—their community, their history, and their identity—reflected honestly and holistically in what they learn in schools. This should be extended to Sikh students as well, who are in their classrooms not to dispel harmful stereotypes about themselves to their peers but to learn, grow, and thrive.

Thank you for your consideration.