Sikhs spread knowledge, good food

Thanks to the United Sikh Association at NYU, the ninth floor of the Kimmel Center smelled more like an Indian resturant than a student center last night.

The United Sikh Association hosted its fourth biannual Langar event, the kickoff to a week of festivities devoted to encouraging awareness of the Sikh community at NYU.

"It's our fourth time doing Langar," said CAS senior Nimeeta Sachder, the president of the United Sikh Association. "We wanted to expand, so we turned it into a week of events."

Sikh Awareness Week continues until Friday, ending with a martial arts performance in Gould Plaza at 4 p.m.

CAS junior and United Sikh Association treasurer Chanpreet Sawhney said in the Sikh culture, Langar means "free kitchen."

"It was started in the Sikh temples to eliminate the caste system," she said.

The menu was strictly vegetarian, allowing the group to provide food for observers of any religion, including those that restrict meat consumption, Sawhney said. This principle of inclusion goes along with the equality ideals put forth by the event's organizers, also demonstrated by the white and orange cloth panels laid on the floor so that guests could kneel together and literally be on the same level.

Hundreds of people attended the event, with lines that stretched all the way around Kimmel's ninth floor. Attendees had to take off their shoes, and footwear piled up along the walls.

"We have food for 400, and last semester there were 360 people," Gallatin freshman Satinder Hayre said.

Stern sophomore Sandeep Guleria, the association's co-vice president, said Langar is the beginning of a series of events put on by the United Sikh Association in order to educate people about the Sikh religion.

"We hold [Langar] twice a year to raise awareness of what the Sikh religion is," Guleria said. "A lot of people associate us with the image they see on TV."

Students joining in Langar were open to the information the United Sikh Association's members provided.

"I was interested in this group in particular," Gallatin sophomore Hillary Juster said. "I wanted to hear what they had to say, to be informed."

Stern freshman Adrienne Spohr agreed.

"I'd always had a misconception of what Sikhism was," Spohr said. "I'd always thought it was a subset of Islam. It was a reality check."

Kate Thuma is campus editor. E-mail her at kthuma@nyunews.com.