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who cares about others and how they live. focus on yourself. you will die by yourself not with all the other jathebandian. if those people are fake let them be fake. waheguru will deal with them. the courage comes from simran and bani and reading about all those great gursikhs. just follow what the gurus said.

Khalsa Ji The recent events in the Sikh community regarding the Rajoana case are reminiscent of the events of 1984. During the earlier part of 1984 videos were being distributed of Sant Jarnail Singh who until now was not widely heard of. Sant Ji’s passion and depth of conviction struck a chord with numerous Sikh youth in the west. The vast majority of the youth such as myself who were born in the UK were 20/30 something who were moneh, drinkers, and smokers etc. The other younger Sikhs who had arrived from India later would also fit into this category. The Gurmat Parchar by the immensely charismatic Sant Ji gripped the attention of many. Sant Ji would explain the Sidhants of Gurmat, the sacrifices made by Mahan Gurmukhs of the Panth, the injustices endured by the Sikh nation, and the deliberate sacrilege committed against Gurmat etc. Sant Ji’s enigmatic personality was the talk of our local community at the time. Our little sleepy village town in South East England had a handful of Amritdhari Sikhs but the rest fell into the previously mentioned category. At about the same time as Sant Ji’s parchar the BBC were covering events leading up to the attack on Sri Harmander Sahib. There was keen interest in the community to view the events that would unfold on daily basis. The moneh Sikhs youngsters started adopting the Khalsa Saroop and taking Amrit and keeping Rehat. These youngsters now started taking a keen interest in Gurmat and in the local Gurdwara Sahib. They formed committees and arranged large scale Gurmat Parchar from various taksals, sampradas, and Sikh institutions etc. The Parchar helped keep the Rehat intact and attracted many more to join the Khalsa fold. The youngsters in the community were full to the brim with enthusiasm and their jyosh {high spirits} were unparalleled. They introduced many activities into Gurdwara Sahib. Punjabi classes were already taking place but Gurbani Santhya and Gurmat Sangeet were new for us. The events of June 1984 seemed to be a unifying force for the youth. Saturday night was a wonderful time to engage in Seva and Simran as opposed to clubbing. On a national level large scale protests were held in London etc. Which would be attended by thousands. With regards to UKLondonSikh's posts I would just like to add that I was pleasantly surprised on a trip to the Pehowa area of Haryana , India. We met Amritdhari Gursikhs who were born into baania , Brahmin , and Khatri Hindu families. They said that they adopted Gursikhi after listening to Sant Mann Singh's Parchar. We also visited Sant Ji's educational and health institutions where Hindu staff members are Gurbani Nitnemi and engage in Waheguru Simran , again they embarked on this after listening to Sant Ji's Parchar although not all have adopted the Sikhi saroop yet. Waheguru.

Khalsa Ji Thank you for your message. Whilst I'm drafting a reply please find two photos which I feel are a reflection of the Gurmat Parchar by Sant Ji in the early 80's. Thank you.

I totally agree with ChuckSinghNorris on this one. Let your Sikhi be your own. Take inspirations from those who are worth it and ignore the ones who aren't. We spend so much time judging other people, observing their behaving and dwelling on them. The best thing is do focus on bettering our own lives for the better. Let's focus on becoming one with Maharaj and developing a beautiful Gursikhi Jeevan. Everyone's path is different so one cannot compare. Just my view . . . :happy2:

I have heard this so many times, as an excuse for people not to come to this path. At the end of the day your Guru is the prime example to follow. Keep looking at your Guru's life and example and you wont need to look at anybody else's. Theres a line in Ardasa which says " Jina dekh ke andith kita..." Follow it.

Gurbani puts it perfectly...............if you want to play this game of love with me (Guru Sahib)..........then place your head in your hand and don't pay attention to public opinion. If someone asked me how do i get into Sikhi (living by Gurbani and practicing Rehat). First thing i say is start reading Gurbani in the language you understand the best. Then contemplate over the Bani you have read and start practicing. Eventually the person hits a point where their intellect is limited on understanding Gurbani. Thats when they need to start listening to deep Katha from Gurmukhs, so their intellect can be opened to know the higher realms. Some people stop at just reading Gurbani themselves and thats where you get all these contradicting opinions of a Shabad or pankti or tuk......its ignorance. There are two ways to this: either start following rehat and start reading Gurbani now and then attain the understanding later by contemplating over Gurbani many times and listening to katha from Gurmukhs. This is the Gurmat way. Or follow the mind and start reading Gurbani, without following rehat and then struggle with a bigger ego, which does not allow you to follow Gurbani at a deeper level. In this case the hard way is the better choice.

You probably would be to be fair. People will almost certainly think that you are a namdhari and when you tell them that you are not, they will most likely think it strange as to why you are wearing a 'namdhari pagh' when you arent one. Obviously there is nothing wrong with changing your dastaar style but you can expect to get some stick for it from family and friends.... we live in a judgemental world where people have already created caste and jathebandi connections with their style of dastaar. Now to be completely honest, alot of mainstream Sikhs do not like namdharis so I suspect that you wont make lots of friends by wearing a dastaar that supposedly represents their group.

It's up to you my friend. The current naamdhari style pug is not the most sturdiest or appealing style of dastaar to tie and guarantee won't last an active day without rising above the "sun-tan" line by the evening...

The current pug that "naamdharis" tie is a blend of the kenyan pug influence and the typical old style keski. As most naamdharis came from tarkaan (carpenter) backgrounds and had links with East Africa, they were influenced by the folds that the East African Sikhs did. If you observe carefully, the naamdhari pug itself is based on the strokes of the dummala which is commonly used to tie keski/choti dastaar. Old mainstream pictures of the kookas under Baba Ram Singh clearly show an ucha boonga and dummala style. After the exile of Ram Singh, the kookas lived in isolation from mainstream Sikh community in Bhani, Ludhiana during when Ram Singh's successor Hari S architected the "conspiracy" theories of Sikh Guru lineage being linked to Ram Singh, re-incarnation of Guru Gobind Singh etc It was during the times of Partap S (after 1930s really) when the kookas started travelling out of Bhani to villages which were predominately tarkaan (mainly villages where the Channa, Matharu clans resided) which inadvertently lead to 4 or 5 visits to Kenya. During these travels a small number East African Sikhs from tarkaan backgrounds converted to the "naamdhari" beliefs and those adopted the now known style of naamdhari pug which got promoted amongst the naamdhari elites. This style then spread during the mini-propagation of naamdharism in the few families in Thailand and some of the villages in Ludhiana and Jallandhar. Ram Singh (the dastaar style is clearly a dummala and not the modern day naamdhari pag)

Khalsa Ji There may be numerous challenges facing the Sikh community , the solution should be adopting Gurmat Sidhant as per: ਦਾਸ ਦਾਸਨ ਕੇ ਪਾਨੀਹਾਰੇ ॥ Dhaas Dhaasan Kae Paaneehaarae || I am the water-carrier of the slave of Your slaves. ਗਉੜੀ ਬ.ਅ. (ਮ: ੫) ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ : ਅੰਗ ੨੫੪ ਪੰ. ੧੯ Tolerance and nimrta can overcome challenges. Waheguru.

I should add, the other week I tried to watch a Panjabi film by Babbu Maan called 'Hero Hitler in love'. Now occasionally I will enjoy a quality movie, even a foreign one with subtitles. Brothers and sisters should note that plenty of countries sell their 'arts' to massive global markets even if the language isn't English. Think of all the Hong Kong/Chinese martial arts films for a good example i.e. crouching dragon. The other day I saw a good film called Sin Nombre which again had no English. My point is that quality arts can also sell and they don't have to be in English. But when I try and watch Panjabi films they are generally so straight pendu and rubbish, I can rarely get to the end of them. That Hero Hitler in love for example was straight weird. Panjabi films in general are small minded, poorly acted affairs with no depth. Again, we can see other people make quality foreign films and sell them abroad - if we ever raised standards of films and made them relevant to more than some tiny demographic (like plenty of others seem to manage) this could also be a potential component of a robust and diverse economy. Maybe we should try and brainstorm and see what things could have potential for Panjab's economy, just as a mind widening exercise?

Personally I think the major change that is needed is 'cultural'. By this I mean existing attitudes towards education must change, currently apnay only value education as some sort of vehicle for potential economic uplift. This has to change and education must be seen and encouraged as a means for a personal development and growth as much as financial progress. I've seen very discouraging attitudes towards towards education from apnay, especially pendus. It is telling that frequently relatively wealthy pendu families often have sons who are completely indifferent to education, and then they manage to come to the west they can only work as semi-skilled labourers - if they are lucky. What is unusual about this is that in most societies the attitude towards and achievements in education are usually higher amongst the more affluent than the poor as a rule. Note the difference in working class and middle class attitudes and achievements of the British in this respect. In our society however, we don't seem to have this and I have often met sons of relatively wealthy farming families working on building sites as labourers or driving trucks and other totally unskilled work like that. When you talk to them, they are all indifferent to education. That indifference to education needs to change, especially from those who could afford to actually pay for their children's education. Instead these people spend fortunes on getting their children to the west through dubious means, often taking out big loans - only for their children to do the types of jobs unparh people would do. Instead they should spend their money and time on encouraging and investing in their children's education - in private institutes if need be, seeing as the state facilities are rubbish. That way these people can get out aboard and do more than menial work. Attitudes towards reading and writing by the bulk of Sikhs must drastically change also. Here in the west reading for pleasure is a norm for a large proportion of people (baring chav types). You see this when you are out and about, people are reading papers, books in parks, trains, buses etc. Generally, levels of literacy are high. It is rare to come across someone who is completely illiterate, even if we do have lower levels of literacy in certain lower socio-economic groups - in the Panjab however you can meet hordes of people who can't read and have no interest in the contents of books. The worse thing is when you get ignoramuses misquoting Baba Nanak in a way to suggest that books are useless........ Apnay don't seem to recognise the general value of creativity in all spheres of life, be this industry or arts - very little thinking outside the box takes place unless they are thinking up scams. This seriously effects the economy. Consider how someone who can creatively write in English can theoretically pen a best seller, and earn a fortune, whilst a theoretically brilliant, creative Panjabi writer has no or little chance to do achieve something similar in Panjabi. We should consider using our creativity to produce things that we can sell to the world - not just to ourselves. The current agricultural economy is a potential road to ruin given the abuse of pesticides/fertilizer by farmers, water allocation and especially natural climate change. If the weather significantly changes and there is less water in future due to climate change (not an unlikely scenario), farming Panjabis may be suddenly plunged into serious dire straights as the land becomes an arid desert. Then our state's economy will totally collapse and we may even reach famine proportions, with images of hordes of half naked, emaciated apnay being beamed all over the media. As for increasing service based industries, I don't think our people are particularly suited to this as they often don't how how to act and present themselves. I would say they would be better off with manufacture and crafts. I said it before, I believe the potential for Panjab is massive but it is locked away by small mindedness. Petty jealousy of other's success, and subterfuge creates an environment that is not conducive to development. We need to follow the 'American dream' model where opportunities are open to all and success is encouraged and applauded and not scuppered or looked upon resentfully. The truth is that we are usually our own enemies when it comes to progress. The deeply ingrained, underlying cultural/psychological factors that make this true are what needs to be overcome to unlock our full potential.

Farmers who jumped into green revolution resulted in today's depleted ground water tables. Once well known in education now the literacy rate is hovering at the record low bottom. Central government is at fault but larger fault is in our own people. Quality of education is extremely low that majority of engineering school quota stays vacant every year because punjabi students couldn't do good in entrance exams. Our people vote for a person who gives them free electricity but does not worry about loans that punjab is taking from outsiders. Our people both in punjab and NRI are thinking that having lavish tight space malls or having junk fast food outlets makes punjab prosper? Not really. That may look like good from outside but inside it is all junk and rusted. The only industry that i see is export material from Ludhiana but i don't see how that helps punjabis except in state revenue in taxes. Most of the worker force is from Bihar and their day pay rate is less than a one time meal. It may help country's GDP but i don't think state makes anything except the tax revenue which is probably given to central government for the interests on loans they took in 80's or 90's. However these such industries are fully to blame to dump toxic wastes in punjab river/streams and will cause health epidemic later on. EDUCATION is the only KEY ! Nobody can stop anyone in Punjab to get a proper education. Take an example of south India who does not worry about how good they look from outside. They extremely put very high value on education; a lot more than North indians. This is probably why we see south indians claiming the majority share of silicon valley work force.

Blaming it all on the government is lame and totally disempowers us from making change for the better. Panjabis themselves have as much a hand in this situation as anyone else. Apnay drink like fish outside of Panjab, so blaming the government for this habit is a cop out. Apnay aren't showing ANY creativity in terms of diversifying the economy of the state and don't even seem to know how to use fertilizer and pesticides properly - over using them. The state education system is a joke and besides many apnay seem to have an apathy to higher/further education in any case. As for drugs, let be honest, a lot of that comes from over the border. The smack anyway. Plus if there were ever a people ready and willing to get intoxicated, you'd find them amongst ours. The Panjab government is dominated by Sikhs, so if it is corrupt etc. our own people are a big part of the cause. Like our lot don't blow big money on needless ostentation, like weddings. It is sad that a state with some of the hardest working people IN THE WORLD NO LESS!, and advantage in terms of foreign money that gets pumped into it from diaspora Panjabis as well as the absolute fortune accumulated in Gurdwara donations - simply can't get its act together. This weak culture of blaming all of our woes on outsiders - a constant victim mentality that too many Sikhs exhibit sucks! The potential is more than there, what is needed is creativity.

when a person gets drunk, kaam will follow him/her automatically..........it'll pollute the thinking and will make one do bad karams.....