After watching one slam after another against the Sikh community in the form of films and TV shows and what not, Sikhs finally put up a fight - and made a difference.

But was it enough?

Those who took up the gauntlet explain. This is about how Sikhs fought Agent 47 (Hitman 2: Silent Assassin) and his creator, video game publisher Eidos Interactive.

The Hitman2 game that has players traveling the globe wiping out mafia bosses and ninjas will now be a bit more politically correct. The original version of the game imitated the 1984 Golden Temple battle in Amritsar when thousands of Sikhs were killed in an attack by Indian troops.

Eidos, the UK games publisher, has agreed to amend Hitman2 following negotiations with a group of Sikhs. The momentum that was built up by the campaign is impressive. In the twenty days between October 16 and November 8, more than 100 international organizations and over 10,600 individuals from over 36 countries voiced their outrage and signed a petition to recall Hitman2. Another 4000 plus emails went out to retailers asking them to stop selling Hitman2. The BBC broadcast interviews with members of the Sikh community. Politicians joined the recall effort.

And then, suddenly, it was all over.

An agreement was reached. Sikh characters were to be removed from further shipments of the game. Any turbaned characters that could not be removed were to be depicted in a positive light. The agreement also included removing inflammatory text referencing the 1984 genocide; removing the pictures of idols and the bottles of whiskey from inside the building; and calling the building a palace rather than a Gurdwara.

Eidos and IO Interactive (the developer) committed to effect changes in the game's versions on the PC, Sony Playstation 2, and Microsoft XBox platforms. They also agreed to adapt the next edition of the game to be published for the Nintendo GameCube platform. Hitman2 for Playstation2 (PS2) has been modified.

However, copies of the game already sent for distribution were not to be recalled.

For the Sikhs involved, the agreement with Eidos was an exercise in coalition building. And this is how it happened.

Triggered by just one email, in the United States word about Hitman2 spread like wildfire in the Sikh CyberSangat. Sikh organizations, mostly of the youth, almost simultaneously found out about the offensive game and they took action. All were trying to contact Eidos and each other.

The Sikh Coalition scrambled to craft a petition asking Eidos for a recall. The final petition was worded with input from various other organizations such as SikhNet, Sikh Communications Council (SikhComm), SCORE and SMART.

Jasmit Singh programmed the petition on-line so that each time it was signed, a copy was emailed to Eidos. As they began receiving thousands of emails, Eidos realized the gravity of the situation.

SMART then reworded the petition to make a broader plea to interfaith and civil rights groups because the gory battles of Hitman2 took place not only in a Gurdwara but also in a Mosque, a Church and a Buddhist temple. Both SMART and SCORE worked on building this alliance. Almost one-third of the 100 organizations that signed the petition were non-Sikh.

A week into the campaign, Eidos took the bloody images and text references to 1984 off their web site. But that was all they were willing to do.

In the UK, where Eidos is based, Ashminder Kaur, an Oxford lawyer and Sikh Coalition representative, began negotiations with Eidos executives. A video of Hitman2 in action was created and posted online for those involved in the negotiations to understand exactly how the game portrayed Sikhs. The game was hideous. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that something had to be done.

While the Working Group on Sikhs and Education (WORKSE), the Metropolitan Police Sikh Association, and the International Association of Sikh Lawyers were looking at legal options with the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) in London and the Crown Prosecution Service, the Sikh Secretariat was looking at the political angle by drafting Parliamentary Questions to be raised with the UK government.

A media battle had also been launched by Dabinderjit Singh of the Sikh Secretariat and Sukhvinder Singh of the British Sikh Federation. The BBC carried six interviews in a two-week period. Articles also appeared in numerous other print and online media.

Back in the US, the Sikh Coalition, SikhComm and SikhNet started work on a retailer strategy to stop the sale of Hitman2. Public relations consultant, Ed Vasquez, who proposed the idea, was hired to execute it. A letter from the Sikh community asking retailers worldwide to stop selling the video game was faxed to 20 major retailers such as Amazon.com, Buy.com, EBay, and WalMart. Signed petitions were also emailed to each retailer. According to Ek Ong Kaar Kaur of SikhNet, over 4000 emails went out in the first two days alone.

A letter writing campaign to elected officials was started. Political support gained momentum as the Lt. Governors of California and New Mexico endorsed the campaign against Eidos.

Although Amazon.com continued to sell the game claiming it to be a free speech issue, Buy.com, EBay, and WalMart agreed to take it off their shelves. Though Buy.com recanted on their verbal agreement not to sell the game, Eidos was losing thousands of sales every day from WalMart alone.

At this point, Eidos contacted the Sikh Coalition and asked for a written agreement for the campaigners to stop contacting retailers. Sikhs had put enough legal, economic and political pressure to bring Eidos to the negotiating table, even as a media campaign against Eidos was in the works.

Eidos decided to deal with the Sikh Coalition because of its online petition. Subsequently, the petition was closed on November 8.

The involved Sikhs felt that Eidos had demonstrated corporate responsibility. The company apologized and went on to state that it had learned its lesson from the blunder and will "observe and respect cultural, religious and ethical sensitivities in its future products."

Uneasy, some Sikhs have asked why, if there was so much momentum built in such a short time, did we settle so quickly, why did we stop short of a full recall of which there have been instances, did we sell short? In walking away with a settlement, have we let down the other communities that lent support or lost the opportunity of building strong, wider linkages that would stand us in good stead now and in the future?

Sikh Coalition, SikhComm, SikhNet, SMART and SCORE maintain that this was the best deal they could work out. After carefully researching the prospect of bringing a lawsuit against Eidos, both in the UK and the US, they concluded that a legal battle did not have merit. Even in the UK where the laws against minority defamation are stronger, there was not a strong legal case - Eidos was playing on that. A media campaign may not have worked either.

Interestingly, the BBC was contacting Sikh representatives on almost a daily basis to take a more aggressive stance. However, on the Sikh side there were concerns that further negative publicity against Eidos may have increased the desire of consumers to buy the game and may have given the Sikh community a bad image.

Eidos was under pressure, but there was concern that maybe the campaign could not be sustained. There are thousands of retailers and thousands of copies of the game had already been sold or shipped out.

Though the Sikh community is now out of it, Eidos' worries seem not to be over.

According to SMART, some Muslim groups, including the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, are in the initial stages of forming a strategy to take on Eidos.

In 1997, the Muslim community was successful in forcing Nike to recall a line of shoes because a logo, meant to look like flames, resembled the word 'Allah' in the Arabic script. Nike agreed to a recall, made an apology to Muslims and donated $50,000 to an Islamic school in the US.

What lessons are to be learned from this experience?

Although Sikhs came together at lighting speed and got almost 10,700 signatures on the petition, it is still a small percentage compared to the several hundred thousand Sikhs living in the US alone. The average Sikh has not even heard of Hitman2.

"The panth needs to be more cohesive and build a communication network to facilitate interaction and enable communities to act," says Harpreet Singh of the Sikh Coalition.

While the success of the Sikh effort depended entirely upon communication through the Internet, the majority of the community is not online and could not engage in the campaign. There was a huge disconnect between Sikhs who are online and Sikhs who are not, not only in terms of the technology barrier but also the generation gap. Activism in this and several other efforts comes from the younger generation.

Maybe it would help if information on skill sets of the community is pooled to be swiftly tapped into when forming appropriate teams to best handle challenging situations.

"We need to work through the Gurdwaras to reach our people," says Harpreet, "and the co-sponsors [organizations that signed the online petition] need to take on the responsibility of informing their local communities."

"But you can buy Hitman2. It is all over the shelves," said nine-year old Gurkaran Singh strolling down a mall with his mom last weekend. "Maybe we should buy all the copies and destroy them."

Looking back, Manjit Singh of SMART says, "We may have had more success had we involved interfaith and civil rights organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the AFL-CIO in the campaign."

Both Harpreet and Manjit acknowledge the need to continue building the interdependence between the Sikh organizations. As for the future, Harpreet summed it up by saying, "This was a model for other campaigns. We have the infrastructure and the contacts in place. It will be easier the next time."