The
Life History of Sukhdev (Sukh) S. Sandhu
Life
History Assignment
Rachel Sheidler
Wright
State University
03/15
Sukh, a first generation
immigrant from Northern India, and father of three young daughters, would
describe himself as a hard working, responsible, conservative libertarian. As Senior Vice President of Investments for a
local bank-brokerage firm and the owner of a martial arts school with several
others across the country that bear his name in the eastern half of the United
States, one would never suspect the adversity and stereotypes Sukh witnessed,
struggled with, and overcame to become a successful father, husband,
businessman, and entrepreneur.
While interviewing Sukh in his
dining room with the pitter-patter of little feet running above our heads and
cute little faces peering around the corner, I realized that your past may not
define you, but you also can’t let it
define you.
Born the youngest of four to Indian
parents in England in the early 1970s when his father was earning his PhD at a
prestigious university, the family soon packed up their belongings to travel to
a variety of countries for his father’s sabbaticals.
In 1979, the family relocated to
Boston, MA after Sukh’s father accepted a job teaching at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. After his
father accepted two job offers at the University of Dayton and Wright Patterson
Air Force Base to work in the research departments for The USAF and NASA’s fuel
research department, Sukh’s mother and sisters moved from the village out of
India to Boston while Sukh’s father, himself, and his brother moved to Dayton,
OH. Prior to moving to Dayton, Sukh was roughly
ten years old and had never met his sisters till they arrived in Boston; the
family wasn’t financially stable enough to support the entire family under the
cost of living in the United States. It
wasn’t until several years later that the family would be reunited in Dayton.
Now located in Dayton, Sukh’s
parents began sponsoring their siblings and their children to immigrant from
India to the United States. After their
arrival, Sukh explains that they got involved in the quickest entrepreneurial
way they knew how: the restaurant business.
After opening their first Indian
restaurant at the Dayton Mall, the business quickly flourished, adding up to a
total of fifteen restaurants today in the Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, and
Northern Kentucky area all owned by various family members.
However, upstanding family
background and personal convictions couldn’t shield Sukh from the racism,
prejudice, and stereotypes exhibited toward his family members and himself
throughout his life.
As an adolescent, Sukh vividly
remembers walking with his father and brother to his father’s work because they
couldn’t afford a vehicle. They cut through a park in Dayton (in and around the
mid 80’s) during a baseball game. Once
the kids in the game saw them they started yelling racial slurs like “Q-tip
head” and “Iranian.” Sukh’s father wore
a turban in based upon the ethnicity of their religion and race of northern
India, Sikhism. Sikh’s are considered
the warrior caste of India, a monotheistic religion of peace through
strength. “My brother, father, and I
kept walking and I remember my father telling me not to look at them, but as we
got near the gate, one of the kids came over and spat on my father,” Sukh
recalls. Sukh says he and his brother
“went ballistic, jumped the fence, and went to town.” However, ironically, Sukh’s father was more
upset at his sons for fighting. “He
basically wanted us to turn the other cheek, but that’s not in my makeup,” he
said laughing. Needless to say, we got
in fights a LOT! He said laughing.
Perhaps, taking the abuse isn’t in
his makeup because prior to this event, Sukh faced extremely overt racism while
growing up in Boston, getting beat up daily for not being like the other kids,
“hence why I got into martial arts and own martial arts schools,” he
jokes.
As if facing his own peers and
battles wasn’t enough, Sukh witnessed and eventually caught on to the fact that
even though his father was teaching at MIT with the highest level of intellectuals
possible, he wasn’t making enough money.
Sukh attributes racism and his father’s lack of promotions and respect
in the work place to a part of why they were so poor and living in a two
bedroom flat with five people and drug addicts in the lobby. However, Sukh acknowledges that they may have
been better off if they took government assistance, but Sukh’s family’s values
weren’t going to change to get a little extra income. Rather than accepting help, “we will figure
out a way to save and figure out a way to work harder to get to where we need
to be,” he said. That as our father’s
moto. Along with hard work and
education, Sukh adds that values passed down through generations include
“respecting your elders, taking care of what has come before you so you have
something for tomorrow, and leaving the world a better place for those that
come after you.”
Despite the fact that the baseball
diamond incident occurred in the Midwest, Sukh still asserts that racism is
more subtle here than in Boston. He claims
that in Boston, “you knew exactly where you stood. The Irish told you they didn’t like you to
your face, Italians would tell you the same thing, so did the Blacks, so did
the Latins. When we came to Ohio, it was
the opposite. People were friendly and
nice to you to your face but not necessarily behind your back.”
While attending Centerville high
school, Sukh was one of the only ‘brown’ kids in the school. Other kids, while in Sukh’s company, would use
offensive terms toward those that were different but immediately afterwards,
would assure Sukh that he ‘isn’t like them.’
Regardless of how well the kids worked to reassure Sukh that he was
‘acceptable’ in their eyes, Sukh often found himself wondering what they would
say about him when he wasn’t around.
After high school and college, the
racism remained subtle in the workforce.
At Sukh’s previous financial firm, as the only non-Caucasian at his
level or above, he was constantly witnessing other employees getting promoted
past him. “I couldn’t get to the next
level even though I was the number one or two guy in terms of qualifications,”
Sukh explains. This racism only made
Sukh work harder, with his dad’s advice always in the back of his mind, to never
use racism as a reason not to be successful.
Growing up, living, and traveling to
all the parts of the globe he has been, he still ascertains that racism is
everywhere. Everyone thinks it has just
to do with “color” of skin, it thrives when there are different religions,
social /economic statuses and individuals that others are envious of. There is no doubt that it “lives” in our
great nation, however, Sukh believes there are even worse examples of this
hatred of mankind in most other parts of the world.
There were even mixed feelings
between both families when Sukh proposed to his wife. On his wife’s side of the family, they were
apprehensive about the fact that Sukh was a Sikh and not a Catholic, when in
reality Sikhism and Catholicism share very similar ideological views. Both religions believe that there is only one
God, devote one day a week to a service in which they pray and sing hymns,
participate in Baptisms into the faith, and condemn similar social issues, such
as abortion (Leubscher). Sukh allowed
himself to be educated by his wife’s uncle, a Catholic priest, and her
practicing grandmother in hopes of easing the tension.
However, Sukh’s family’s opinion
on the marriage, his mother in particular, couldn’t be solved with education
alone, and he attributes the problem to ethnicity rather than religion. Sukh says his mother wanted him to marry “the
typical Indian village woman” rather than a Caucasian woman from the United
States. Despite his mother’s reactions,
Sukh’s convictions remained intact, “I could either make my parents happy for
the next twenty years of their life or I could make myself happy for the next
sixty years of my life. I knew in my
heart that if I found the right person, her caring, humbleness, sincerity, and
character would shine through regardless of whether she was the same ethnicity.” Fortunately his wife won his mother over, “to
the point where I sometimes think she cares about her more than she cares about
me,” he jokes.
After the birth of their first
child in 2009, followed by two more children in 2011 and 2014, Sukh and his
wife decided to raise their children in an environment in which they are
exposed to the culture of both of their parents while creating a culture of
their own. “We engage them in all things
Indian and all things that are American.
It can only help them be better stewards when it comes to how to
interact with all those that they meet.
When you don’t have the ability to understand that someone is different
from you, that’s when bigotry creeps in,” Sukh said.
Racism and family attitudes
aside, Sukh finds that the way he identifies himself and the way society
identifies himself has never aligned.
Sukh is often referred as an Indian American, an identity he doesn’t
consider himself being. “[It’s]
nonsense. Why should I have to pick my
ethnicity over my allegiance to my country?
I am a first generation immigrant and now citizen of the United States
of America. If you want to distinguish
me, distinguish me as a brown American or black American. Terms like African American, Chinese
American, Indian American or Italian American are ways of putting country
second and ethnicity first.” Pride for
your country and nationalism should matter more than ethnicity. The USA is called the “melting pot” for a
reason.
Being from India, Sukh often has the
inconvenience of explaining to others that his family actually originated from India, and are legitimate Indians,
rather than being the “Indians” Columbus came upon when he discovered
America. “It isn’t my fault Columbus was
an idiot,” Sukh said jokingly. “He was
trying to go to India, landed on America, and called everybody Indians. The people he encountered aren’t Indians;
they are Native Americans. Even Native
Americans call themselves Indians because [the term has] been engrained in
their brains for generations. They are
Native Americans; India is on the other side of the globe.”
As Sukh was providing these
examples, I begin to wonder why society places such an importance on
identifying others based on where they are from or the color of their
skin. Perhaps for demographic data, but
for what other reason? Placing labels,
sometimes even incorrect labels, on others that they don’t identify with
dehumanizes them. The victims have to
struggle in dealing with the confusion of others along with their own confusion
while struggling with whether or not to adjust their own identity with the
identity others peg them to be.
Tying back to the confusion
between Indians and Native Americans, when asked about stereotypes about
Indians, Sukh told me it was easiest to understand through a joke comparing
Indians and Native Americans, “dots (referring a bindi, a sometimes colored
mark Indian women wear on their forehead for various occasions) (Sanskriti Magazine) not feathers,
cabbies not horses, quickie marts not casinos.
The stereotype is that Indians are either cab drivers or they own the
local 7/11s. They are stingy, small
framed, nerdy, and don’t know how to interact with others.” In reality, Sukh says, “India is a massive
and diverse country.”
As if dealing with identification
issues and stereotypes isn’t enough, Sukh claims that the swastika, made famous
by Hitler’s symbol for the Nazi Party, is actually “Sanskrit meaning prosperity
and peace.” Sure enough, “the word
‘swastika’ comes from the Sanskrit [word] svastika – ‘su’ meaning ‘good,’
‘asti’ meaning ‘to be’” (Rosenberg).
Indian cultures and other cultures have been using the swastika for the
past 3,000 years to symbolize luck, power, and strength (Rosenberg).
It wasn’t until Hitler’s time and
adoption of the swastika did the connotation change. Now, many do not know the original meaning of
the swastika because it was such a well-known symbol of hatred and death in
association with Hitler. To
differentiate between whether the swastikas seen around the globe are for
negative or positive causes, some are “varying its direction – trying to make
the clockwise, Nazi version of the swastika mean hate and death while the
counter-clockwise version would hold the ancient meaning of the symbol, life
and good-luck” (Rosenberg). Imagine
being accused of supporting Hitler when in reality the swastika has a deep
cultural meaning to you.
Sukh closes the interview with a
truth and piece of advice for those facing oppression because of who they are,
“There is always going to be racism. If
you’re different there is always going to be people that don’t like you,” he
said. “People claim racism when they
want something out of it. Beyond that,
all they do is fit the stereotype of what it is. Stereotypes are around for a reason, so don’t
be the stereotype. The way you rise
above [racism] is by proving you can rise above it.”
References
"Bindi
- Meaning and Significance of the ‘Dot’ on Forehead." Sanskriti
Magazine. N.p.,
25 Nov. 2013. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.
Leubscher, William
M. "Chicago’s Catholics & Sikhs: What Unites and Divides Us?"
Chicago Catholic Examiner.
N.p., 12 Aug. 2012. Web. 7 Mar. 2015.
Rosenberg,
Jennifer. "The History of the Swastika." N.p., n.d. Web.
<http://www2.lhric.org/EASTCHESTER/schools/ms/teachers/trenholm/document
s/Swastika.pdf>.