Ranjeet01

+1 All those Punjabi men who hang around park benches coming home absolutely mullered, just to get away from their wives. Also the Punjabi men that do double shifts leaving home at 5am coming back 10pm, have their roti, knock back a few pegs and straight to bed. Only to repeat again the next day, doing overtime which again done to get away from their wives.

The shaming culture you speak of also impacts in controlling males as well as females. It may seem from the outside that Asian community is a Patriarchal and women are oppressed, but the reality is that Asian Society is by and large a Matriarchal and a lot of the oppression of females is actually done by other females. However the Western interpretation/narrative is a very black and white straight forward. The subcontinental culture is not a straight forward one, there are a lot of our culture has a lot of subtleties, complexities, nuances that are interwoven which are a result of thousands of years of cultural baggage.

I think the word "Fundamentalist" is a very misinterpreted word. The word fundamental means going to the basics. However, it is been deliberately misinterpreted to mean something else. It has somehow described to mean narrow - minded extremist. The word moderate has also been interpreted to kind of mean something else. The correct description would be is why risk - averse, sparrow reverting Sikh against self-determination.

The Hajj and Umrah is nothing more than industry. 2 million muslims travel yearly to the Hajj and tens of millions for the Umrah. It enables billions in revenue and it also keeps the centre of gravity and allegiance to Arabia. The Wahabbis and Saud familywho control Mecca and Media are from the centre of Arabia, the region of Mecca and Medina fall into the Hejaz region which makes up the western portion of the Arabian peninsular. They seem removal of the relics and historical sites as the restoration of Islam back to it's purest form in the 7th century.

The cowardly elements within Indian society makes fun of Sikhs, it's these same cowardly elements that are also the crafty, conniving backstabbers. These cowardly elements are also very mercantile in nature and have sold out time and time again and have collaborated with the invaders.

To prevent a predatory animal doing what they are designed to do is against Maharaj 's hukam. Our Tenth Master had a bird of prey,that bird would have hunted.

Leave them at it, it is part of nature. Never seen David Attenborough or any other wildlife documentary presenter stop a lion attacking a zebra or wildebeest.

Perverts are everywhere, however this particular problem from other communities has affected our community over the past few decades as Bhai Mohan Singh of Sikh Awareness Society would attest to. Let us be aware of our community's faults, but let us not get into this reverse moral equivalency where we try to find equivalency between blatant multiple organised grooming that has been around for decades, covered by local authorities and police as well as by the particular community in question with a few cases that may involve Sikhs.

I normally meditate on naam simran. The Lord resides everywhere.

We do not pray to Amritsar

Poodna This is a photo from a news report. The thing about news reported is that journalists do not tell the whole story. There are probably a whole load of other factors that we do not know of. I am no first aider, but for all we know one of the people on the scene probably thought that was the right thing to do.

He felt it was the right thing to do at the time, you do not always think in a logical manner in those situations. We were not there in that situation to warrant that question of how the dastar saved the boys life.

What he did was on spur of the moment, in those circumstances you do not tend to do think but do things by instinct. If he did what he did to help save a life I am sure Maharaj ji would understand. We do not want to think like what happened in Saudi Arabia when there was a fire in a girl's school but they wouldn't rescue them because the girls were not niqab covered.

It does not make sense for there to be mixed marriages in Gurdwaras, because for a Sikh it makes a mockery of the Anand Karaj and of Maharaj ji. A Gurdwara is open to all but there are rules that need to be followed and respected. If they require a marriage or civil union there are ways to do this.

If you have a look at what Kamc has written in his reply to me in regards to what he expects from his MP, that would be the answer. It shows how well integrated the Sikh community is.

It was the Sikh Federation which is pushing the manifesto. After all they are a lobby group and they are hedging across the political spectrum regardless who is coming into power. According to their tweets they have 160 elected MPs supporting their Manifesto. There are plenty more Sikhs in the UK that involved in the grass - roots level as Councillors, the question how do you get more at the national level. When you are voting in elections, there is unfortunately more style than substance, perception is seen as reality. We need younger fresh faced, articulate, media savvy Singhs and Singhnias as candidates. We need to find a way to bypass the Gurdwara committee endorsements. One must remember, just because you have a Sikh MP it does not necessarily mean that they will represent Sikh interests. Which poses the question is it better to have a Sikh MP that does not support Sikh interests or to have a non-Sikh MP that does?

I think it is time that we stop pushing all the responsibilities on Gurdwara Committee members, after all we are free to choose who we vote for. No pardhaan is pointing a gun to your head at the ballot box.

Sikhs see human first then whatever that person's particular labelled identity, particular when you have quotes from our Gurus such as " Recognise the human race as one" and "Before you see Muslim, Christian or Hindu let's see a human first". We do not really have an us v them mentality, there is no derogatory term for a non-Sikh such as Kafir or Mleccha used in other religions. This mentality we have has a lot of virtues, but it does put us at a disadvantage in a voting block. I think the reason why Canadian Sikh community votes in large blocs is because the community is by and large a post 1984 community. The emigration was largely a political emigration and plays a much larger part of the psyche of the Canadian Sikh. They have had to endure much more of the sufferings of the Golden Temple invasion and the riots, murders and massacres where there was an attack against the Sikh identity, Canadian Sikhs have a much more innate understanding of sticking together as a cohesive unit because of this than the UK Sikh who did not really had to go through this. Just my observations.

Does Parchaar or Kathas need to be done in the current Gurdwara. The solution is simple, either you open another Gurdwara or you find another venue. Our Gurus were pragmatic and found practical solutions, we must do the same.

Questions for the Sangat: How many of you voted? Was there a Sikh candidate in your constituency? Did the Gurdwara influence your vote? If you had a Sikh candidate in your constituency, did you vote for them? If you did not vote for the Sikh candidate, what were your reasons for not voting for them?

I have to disagree with you there, there are complexes and jealousies in all communities. We can't wait for our community to be some "perfect" community to further our interests. There are a lot of good things that our Sikh orgs, even Gurdwara do and people do acknowledge that even in our own community and our Gurdwara for all their faults can put their differences aside to Co - ordinate with each other. I just think it is something else, probably something in Sikh dynamic and more specifically in the UK Sikh dynamic. Canadian Sikhs are very politically active and they have representation politically, is there something we can learn from them. Even Canadian Gurdwara have problems and the Canadian Sikh community also has the same kind of jealousies and types of animosities that UK Sikhs have.

We are too equal as community which means for the sake of equality, we denigrate ourselves and put others in front of us which is never reciprocated by the other. Our voting patterns and habits are not the same as other communities. We need to see what makes us tick. Other communities have more of a herd, follow the crowd mentality, which means in the democratic sense they can be mobilised to vote as a bloc. However since Sikhs are supposed to be lions, we do not act as herd-like and we do not necessarily follow and vote for a Sikh. We are probably more individualistic in our thinking and more critical of our fellow Sikhs which means we cannot galvanise collectively. On one hand it is a good thing but maybe not so much in a democratic voting sense. Another virtue of ours is "The human race as one", this means that in a voting sense we will put a non-Sikh before a Sikh, which all very noble but means that it may give other communities an advantage as they do not have this viewpoint. Just some random thoughts.

I think you are correct.

Does anyone have any idea how many Sikh MPs we now have in parliament?

Like I said on another post, Sikhs believe that "Human Race is one" but we forget that Sikhs are human too. Does being self-less, removing the ego and being the lowest of the low mean that we must become doormats in the eyes of non-Sikhs?