Valarie Kaur

A third-generation Sikh American born and raised in Clovis, California, Valarie is a writer, filmmaker, and lecturer in religion and ethics. As a Harvard Presidential Scholar, she recently received her masters in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School. For more than five years, she created, wrote, produced, and developed the first feature-length documentary film on hate violence in post-9/11 America – Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath.

The world premiere of Divided We Fall in September 2006 sent Valarie on a packed international speaking and screening tour which continues today. She has been invited as an authority on the subject at more than one hundred universities, colleges, and religious centers across the country. She has been featured in print, radio and television media including CNN, NPR, the BBC, and Frances Moore Lappe’s book You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear. The State of California recently presented Valarie with an official commendation recognizing her work as a scholar, activist, and storyteller.

Valarie presently serves as founding director of the Discrimination and National Security Initiative at the Harvard Pluralism Project. She will continue to study the intersections of religion and law in post 9/11 America at Yale Law School in 2008.

How does your faith inform and guide your social activism?

When I steal away to the edge of the world and stand before the sea at night, I look up into the universe.  These are the moments I most remember the heart of the Sikh faith: Oneness -- the oneness of God and of humanity.  Guru Nanak, the first teacher in the Sikh tradition, taught that this recognition of Oneness inspires an unending flow of compassion and service, or seva.  It is only through loving and serving those around us that we experience the fullness of the divine.

My faith in this Oneness has inspired me to pursue a life fighting for social justice.  It has compelled me to stand in solidarity with those whose voices are buried, whose bodies are abused, whose faces are rendered invisible to the dominant culture.  And it has taught me to find deep joy in the activism itself -- not the results -- for acting out of love and not fear is to experience the divine.  "Higher than truth is truthful living," said Guru Nanak.  The acting itself is the point of life.  This is how my faith inspires my every moment, every fiber and every breathe.
 
In what way does your faith empower/affirm you as a woman?
 
The Oneness at the heart of the Sikh faith necessarily spells out a radical equality between all human beings -- across race, religion, class, and especially gender.  Sikh scripture holds that the body is a vessel for the soul, and God ferries us across the ocean of the world, for we are all equally beloved in the eyes of God.  While my faith asserts the empowerment of women, my faith community -- especially in the Indian and Punjabi culture -- is fundamentally patriarchal.  My faith empowers me to fight domestic violence, abuse, mistreatment, and oppressive gender roles within the Sikh community and the larger American culture. 

Who has been the most influential woman in your life?

My mother.  Her laughter, her strength, her wildness, the way she pulled my brother and I outside to dance in the rain when we were small. She was born in India, studied literature in college, and hoped to become a lecturer but had an arranged marriage at eighteen. She followed her new husband to America and although my father was good and kind, he could not give her the home she had left.  She encountered deep painful hardships in this new country.  When I was born, she vowed that she would give me the freedom that she never had -- and she has defended that freedom with a ferocity that still amazes me.  She is the guardian of my life.

Do you have an Ah-ha moment?  What is it? What made it so special?

I went to high school in a small, conservative hometown, where many of my friends and teachers tried hard to convert me to Christianity.  I would go to hell if I didn't accept Christ as my lord and savior, they told me with love in their eyes.  I treated their demands with love in return and searched my soul for the truth, but one day, I broke.  While sitting in the Sikh gurdwara on Sunday morning, I became angry -- angry with every church, every pastor, every Christian.  I stood up right there and then, went out into the street, the red scarf of my salwar kameez flying in the wind, and marched right up to the church on the corner.  I knocked on the big wooden doors, demanding to be let in, so that I could confront the priest who damned us.  The door opened and there stood a small woman with white hair in a flower-printed dress.  She was alone, practicing the organ.  "Can I listen?" I asked.  She invited me in, and I sat and listened to the haunting beautiful organ, looking up at Jesus and the cross, and Jesus' arms widened into lines and colors that made the heart of Sikh scripture, "Ikh Oankar: God is One" and I wept.  "Why are you crying?" she asked when she was done.  "I just can't believe there is such a thing as an exclusivist God -- a God who doesn't love me."  I looked in her eyes, waiting for her answer, for her answer would be The answer.  She paused and said, "I can't either.  God is too big for any one religion."  I laughed, and she laughed, and we were ambassadors, she and I, standing at the edges of our religious traditions, in the heart of Spirit, discovering the truth.  This was my first experience of reconciliation in interfaith dialogue.