Sikh History Month is celebrated every April as a time to recognize Sikh identity. It is observed around the world to recognize Sikh history, culture and contributions. But it is also a month of grief. 

For me, it is not just history. It is an inheritance.

When I think about Sikh history, I picture abandoned homes in Punjab, doors left closed for generations. I picture farmland that once carried family names but now stands quiet and unplowed. I picture the stillness that settled after 1947, when entire communities vanished overnight. People who once lived side by side were suddenly turned against one another by a border. That border did not just redraw maps; it rewrote destinies.

In 1947, as British colonial rule in South Asia ended, the region was divided into two new nations: India and Pakistan.

The partition led to one of the largest and most violent migrations in human history. Millions of people were forced to leave their homes based on their religious identity. It split neighbors, friends and entire communities.

For my family, history did not stop in 1947.

Growing up, I did not learn about these events from textbooks. I learned about them through my father’s stories. Through quiet conversations at home and moments where history suddenly stopped feeling distant and started feeling personal.

My father was 10 years old in 1984, the year of the Sikh genocide. In October of that year, after the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards, widespread anti-Sikh violence erupted across India, particularly in New Delhi. Organized mobs targeted Sikh homes, businesses and gurdwaras, leaving thousands of Sikhs dead and many more displaced. My father was in New Delhi at this time and saw the violence with his own eyes.

He remembers people just like him being targeted. He remembers the fear in the streets. He remembers what it felt like to know that being visibly Sikh made you vulnerable. He was a child, and yet he had to understand danger before he could fully understand the world.

But that violence did not begin in 1984.

People who had lived side by side for centuries were suddenly told they belonged on opposite sides of a line. A line that was drawn by colonial powers. Overnight, communities that had once lived together turned against one another.

I think we still underestimate how deeply that wound runs.

In 1947, villages that were once shared between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus became battlegrounds. Violence spread across Punjab as families fled toward safety, not knowing where that safety even was. Trains arrived filled with refugees and, at times, full of the dead. Entire towns were emptied within days. Many families left believing that they would return in a few weeks. More than half of them never did.

Even today, there are abandoned homes in Punjab that remain locked in time. Some houses still stand empty because their owners were never able to return. 

The border did not just divide land. It divided memory. It divided trust. It divided people who had once lived intertwined.

I believe that loss still lives quietly in our generation, even if we did not experience it firsthand. 

Sikhs are often visibly identifiable because many keep uncut hair and wear turbans as part of their faith. When he left India that same year, he had to cut his hair before flying out of the New Delhi airport. As a Sikh boy who had kept his kesh (hair) his entire life, that was not just a haircut. It was survival. It was the kind of survival that forces identity to bend under fear.

Growing up, hearing those stories changed the way I understood history. It stopped feeling like something distant and started feeling like something that was too close for comfort. 

To this day, I cannot imagine what that moment felt like for him. Sikh identity is not just cultural. It is spiritual. Cutting his hair was not just a decision. It was a choice made out of fear of being identified and harmed. I refuse to let that reality be softened or forgotten during a month meant to honor our history.

Sikh History Month cannot just be about celebration. It must also be about honesty. If we only celebrate without acknowledging what we endured, we reduce our history to something easier to talk about.

We talk about resilience, but resilience means something had to be endured. We talk about pride, but pride exists alongside pain. I believe both deserve equal space.

I believe it is important to acknowledge that Sikh history is marked by displacement, violence and survival. Sikh history carries the weight of Partition, of 1984 and of families who have still not been able to return home. It is marked by stories that were so close to being erased.

For me, Sikh History Month is about remembering the empty villages and the people whose names never made it into textbooks. It’s about recognizing how borders and politics reshaped lives in ways that still affect families generations later. Most of all, it’s about refusing to let our history be reduced to something simple.

It is also about honoring my father, a 10-year-old boy who had to navigate fear before he could fully understand it. His survival is part of the reason I am here.

We are often told that history is in the past. But for many Sikh families, it lives in stories told at dinner tables. It lives in photographs tucked away in drawers. It lives in the decisions our parents made to protect us.

Sikh History Month should not only celebrate who we are. It should remind us of what we survived to still be here.