Thousands attend Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year celebration, in Plainview

In 1987, only 150 people attended what was the first Sikh New Year's festival hosted at the Guru Gobind Singh Sikh Center in Plainview that TJ Bindra helped found.

This year, about the same number of people worked as volunteers to direct traffic and serve langar, or free meals, to the 4,000 Sikhs and other community members expected to pass through the temple, or gurdwara, Tuesday evening.

“It’s a great feeling of comradeship," Bindra, 69, of Plainview, said looking at a few people enjoying lentil soup, makki ki roti and other eats under a tent outside the temple on Old Country Road. “This phenomenon of serving the community, if you go anywhere in the world. … Wherever there is a need to serve food, the Sikhs are there, and anyone can come.”

The thousands who visited the Plainview temple Tuesday evening prayed at the altar, listened to traditional hymns and ate under the large tent to celebrate their annual harvest festival known as Vaisakhi. The holiday, which lands on either April 13 or 14, marks the Sikh New Year as well as the Hindu Solar New Year.

For many who prayed Tuesday evening, the annual affair is a source of pride, a reminder their religion was born of strength in the face of persecution.

“We take pride in all the values that Sikhism teaches,” Sonia Bawa, 53, of Dix Hills, said before entering the temple. Those values, she added, include “the equality of all men and women, respecting everybody of any religion, caste or creed. Today is a day to celebrate.”

Across the globe — predominantly in North India, including the state of Punjab, and in Pakistan — followers celebrate the festival.

On the day Sikhs and Hindus celebrate Vaisakhi, other cultures across Asia mark their own spring harvest festivals, including Khmer New Year in Cambodia, Pohela Boishakh, or the Bengali New Year, in Bangladesh, and Bihu in the Indian state of Assam.

For Sikhs, Tuesday’s community gathering is “definitely one of the more important” days of the year, Manjeet Bawa said. But the feelings it conjures are no different from another day temple volunteers serve food to the community. The only difference is that most days, people are served while seated on the floor inside the temple, symbolizing that they are all equal.

“We feel very humble,” Bawa, 57, of Dix Hills said. “We feel very blessed by our gurus to give us such an amazing life, especially in this country where … we are free to exercise our freedoms.”

With AP