On February 7th, near Macquarie Hall at San Jose State University, a Sikh student was targeted and assaulted by five individuals. During the attack, the perpetrators forced the victim to the ground and removed his religious symbols, including his turban (Dastaar). While the victim is Sikh, the animus behind the attack was explicitly Hinduphobic, as confirmed by university official Kathryn Kaoudis during a campus town hall, the attackers misidentified the student’s religion and used “Hindu” as a slur to shame and dehumanize him.
While the Sikh Student Association has been exemplary in their timely support and educational outreach over the past week, the university’s formal communication channels have largely failed to address the specific anti-Hindu bias that motivated this violence.
This oversight is particularly distressing given the documented rise of hate crimes targeting the Hindu community. According to the California Civil Right Department’s “CA vs Hate” data, anti-Hindu incidents now account for 23.3% of all religiously motivated hate reports in the state, making Hindus the second most targeted religious group in California. For a university that strives for inclusivity, the silence regarding this specific threat feels like a passive invalidation of the safety concerns shared by Hindu students and residents in San Jose…