ISDhillon

Well Lion King Ji, I found that post very patronising why do you presume that those who go to the dera are going away from sikhis this is not sikhism but orthodox sikhism, you keep talking about putting your faith in gurshabad how have people who go to the dera not put faith in gurshabad you have not answered any of the things i wrote in my previous post, it is very shallow to think that you have the right or true interpretation of sikhism cos you dont, a sikh is free to learn for him/herself and if they go to the dera they will learn whether it is right or wrong, thats why we can never fully sing the praises of god because we dont know everything. The shabad you have used is used quite frequntly by orthodox sikhs and I translate in my own way cos i dont believe their is one interpretation, i believe that the verse refers to the power of naam or kamai of naam eg, sarab rog ka aukad naam, which is what i see at the dera so if you think about it the verse does not support your claims. The difference in this discussion is that i am not telling people to go to dera but i am stopping others to give the dera a bad name by all means abstain until you learn more but dont preach hat cos you will end up suffering no matter how much naam simran you do cos with one mouth you repeat the name of god and with the other mouth you <admin-profanity filter activated> about babaji and how much does sukhmani sahib tell us about santa ki nindak i could go on forever, I am not criticising Mr Samosas post I am saying i am glad that guru helped him in that way but for us a different way worked and that was helpfull too. Anyways thats it for the moment, :TH: And its bhaaji not bhenji ISDhillon

Dear Mr Samosa Singh Ji, My mother has done paath all her life it is this paath which eventually changed her karma and she was lucky to have it in her kismet to go to Babaji dera and get sorted out, tell me how is this not with guru kirpa the guru is a guide and he guided my mother to Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji so you see you do not have a monopoly on how gurmat is to be interpreted I have been very patient and respectfull but people keep using their own opinion as being right and I am intolerant to that, I said before Guru Arjan Dev Ji sent his wife to Baba Buddha cos she couldnt have a child surely by your definition guru ji could give her everything? why did she not just do paath etc and everything else you have suggested in your post I would seriously suggest you go there and see for yourself cos we dont go there anymore we only go to the normal gurdwara like everyone else but I will forever defend the rights of all people to go to the dera and have sent many people their and they know the true reality of their condition, the guru is a force more than just gurshabad guru gives you good karma and for us the guru showed the cure through Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji I am very happy for your father and mother best of luck to your whole family. You then venture into "its manmat" territory no Mister Samosa it certainly is not, about 50% people who are at the dera are amritdhari and they all get cured by guru ji kirpa you can have a personal opinion from yourself but dont speak for sikhism and akj people in my humble opinion dont know squat about what they are talking about in this sense I go to the forum quite frequently but they never let me have my say cos theyre scared of the evidence i have which when compared to what their baba wrote prooves their baba wrong I have also sent evidence to the sgpc but they dont respond to me cos of ego but thats ok cos i can shut my mouth tomorrow and time will still show what the truth is, I do not value their opinion unless it comes from sikhism. They use their baba to trump another baba and thats the greatest hypocrisy! Let me know if you would like to know more but please draw your inferences from sikhism of 1699 and not a new version, thanks and sorry for any offence ISDhillon

IM SORRY BUT YOU CAN SHUT THE HELL UP THERE, WHAT THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING. WHAT THE HELL GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO CUSS AKJ, AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT TRYING TO MAKE IT LIKE JATHA VALE ARE SEPERATE FROM THE REST OF THE PANTH WHO THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE 150592[/snapback] Firstly who do they think they are when they tell ALL SIKHS to reject Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji if they do that to him then can I also not reject them? is there not a double standard here that one group has appointed authority unto itself to give hukum on issues which they know nothing about where in sikhism does it say I should have any affiliation with these groups and dont tell me to shutup I do not believe this organisation has behaved responsibly when addressing this issue cos i have tried to dicuss this with them in a civil way, If you dont like it thats ok but dont think I am gonna be silenced just cos people dont like open debate, and as for your hell this and hell that if that is what you have learned from sikhism then i feel sorry for you i have the right to defend my beliefs from fanatical preachers and if they condemn something i hold to be true i can do the same if you have a specific question then by all means ask it but if not it may be best for you to keep it lipped!

Its about spontaneity when the theatre was attacked after several periods of peacefull protest people just reacted uncontrollably but their is something sinister about the plackards it is also the same pigs who wanted to parade sikh converts on stage in trafalgar square and yet they get away with dissing our guru on stage and how come they are not beheading themselves for disrespecting guru nanak. Also this is about ego, cos if we dont take some hard line now then government will look weak and people will swing to the right for bnp ,but this way you punish some and keep the votes and you condemn the cartoons and keep the muslim votes too. Anyhow my personal opinion I am just a silent spectator to the misery that is unfolding in the world the shabad of "jagat jalandhaa raak lai apne kirpa dhaar jis duare ubharai tithee lai ubhaar..." springs to mind. WJKK WJKF, ISDhillon

In my personal opinion I think the cartoons are wrong cos we would not like the cartoons of our gurus however the protests now are nothing to do with the cartoons this has been furmenting for a while now and I believe fanatics have hijacked these cartoons for their own agenda. Isreal and palastine? - well the way I see it is that firstly the westerners should not have pumped all the jews back into arabian territory but then one might argue that thats what civilisations do with territiry "jo so lai hai nij bal si lai hai" - "those who got took with power" - i think thats what it means but what strikes me is that our gurus were born in punjab but we dont kick such a fuss can we not claim rights for pakistani punjab, its all about what the people are teaching their children in the homes etc some kids grow up in the knowledge that they have to die one day for the cause, I think politics of fear is used quite frequently in middle east but the problem with this is that you can not reverse societal order you can only evolve it to a high consciousness. Alot of the claims for kashmir are always to do with the same statement ie self determination rights of kashmiri people but the way I see it is that self-determination is not dictated by governments, land or religion, in sikhi we believe man is a sovereign being cos the divine essence lives in all of us but the muslims dont believe man to be self-governing they believe in societal morallaw which is shariah and that man has to be under that law. I know I have gone of the track anyways, I believe that as sikhs we have to look at what is the issue here: rising unemployment and lack of education, people have to be in work otherwise they have too much freetime to think about stuff and become extreme and also they have to have access to unbiased education unfortunately these things can only come through democracy and secular society because as yet their theocracy have been a big failiure they have not really done much in the world other than cause greif, its too easy to blame west for everything, I as a sikh know that essentially I would like punjab to become a vibrant economy so will work hard to acheive this but I doubt they have the same aspirations and opportunitities in their countries. Iraq war? its a tricky one initially i was against it but my support has increased simply because i live in the hope that it will be a role model for other countries in the region but who knows?, time will tell. Sikhs need to focus upon sarbat da bhalla and that can only happen if we start with us first and we have a long way to go its not all about war at some point you have to use the pen aswell. I hope that helps, ISDhillon :TH:

"all i can say vadhbhag singh sucks Pakhandee people go 2 his so called dera he wasnt a tru sikh I HAVE NO RESPECT 4 HIS MEMORY OR HIM PAKHANDEE BABA,,,,,,,,DEATH2 DA TRAITORS " Is this what sikhism has taught you? where is the evidence that he was a traitor and a pakhandee?, please advise. Thanks ISDhillon

Dear Mr Samosa Singh Ji, My mother has done paath all her life it is this paath which eventually changed her karma and she was lucky to have it in her kismet to go to Babaji dera and get sorted out, tell me how is this not with guru kirpa the guru is a guide and he guided my mother to Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji so you see you do not have a monopoly on how gurmat is to be interpreted I have been very patient and respectfull but people keep using their own opinion as being right and I am intolerant to that, I said before Guru Arjan Dev Ji sent his wife to Baba Buddha cos she couldnt have a child surely by your definition guru ji could give her everything? why did she not just do paath etc and everything else you have suggested in your post I would seriously suggest you go there and see for yourself cos we dont go there anymore we only go to the normal gurdwara like everyone else but I will forever defend the rights of all people to go to the dera and have sent many people their and they know the true reality of their condition, the guru is a force more than just gurshabad guru gives you good karma and for us the guru showed the cure through Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji I am very happy for your father and mother best of luck to your whole family. You then venture into "its manmat" territory no Mister Samosa it certainly is not, about 50% people who are at the dera are amritdhari and they all get cured by guru ji kirpa you can have a personal opinion from yourself but dont speak for sikhism and akj people in my humble opinion dont know squat about what they are talking about in this sense I go to the forum quite frequently but they never let me have my say cos theyre scared of the evidence i have which when compared to what their baba wrote prooves their baba wrong I have also sent evidence to the sgpc but they dont respond to me cos of ego but thats ok cos i can shut my mouth tomorrow and time will still show what the truth is, I do not value their opinion unless it comes from sikhism. They use their baba to trump another baba and thats the greatest hypocrisy! Let me know if you would like to know more but please draw your inferences from sikhism of 1699 and not a new version, thanks and sorry for any offence :TH: ISDhillon

The dodgy things that are said about the dera are not a testomony to manmat but it is easier to be orthodox about something rather than engage and learn why such things take place, the evidence you use is not from sikhism or its history it is from a man-made organisation and we will not be dictated by a revivalist movement which is itself the cause of so much controversey, yes I do not agree with people tying things to the nishaan sahib but there are reasons why this happen I have been to the dera and people do get cured their those who say they dont are speaking from orthodoxy ie YOU KNOW NOTHING BE HONEST ABOUT IT!!!! I have tried several times on tapoban to put my point across proffessionally not just about this topic but many others but they wont air it for public view because they know that they are in the wrong and isnt falsehood the greatest manmat? A ritual is only a ritual when people do it because they think they will be offered salvation people at this dera do these actions for a reason and it works!!!! I have never been back there because I have no REASON to go but some people have a REASON and you will only know when it happens in your families and then you will go screaming Jai Babe Di up the mountain side and guess what its ok cos this dera is guru ji kamai also. Please feel free to ask more questions about dera I will answer if I can. Thanks, ISDhillon

Satsriakal Lion King Ji (this response is an exact replica of the one I have sent another member who think he's right also but this is slightly edited) I have written many posts to revoke what the people have said about Baba Vadbhag Singh Ji on tapoban but because the moderators are fanantics and they want to allow speech that reflects their own man-made maryada I have not been allowed to have my say but I will tell you . The malaysia story is of no consequence to me I will tell you why here in the uk we have a similar gurdwara from this dera and they too have made people ill so no-one goes to that gurdwara however the dera in india is true and my own mother who was ill for 6 years of her life has got better and that too with gurus kirpa from this dera that you know nothing about she has had a total recovery!! and is more into sikhi than ever before and has never returned to the dera either. And for your information the akj is also a man made organisation which has self-appointed authority unto itself and we will not be dictated to by a revivalist movement stay up all night and debate that! Secondly sikhism has always been a liberal faith it is a faith where a person has an inimate relationship with their guru no-one other than the guru can give guidance for the soul so you will fail at every couse because their is nothing from my guru which suggests this dera is manmat its just your personl opinion and I dont care for it, now other than what you personally think of as manmat then do tell me what our guru says of Baba Ji and the dera if you can find nothing to validate your claims from sikh sources then I would advise you to stop giving hukum on issues you know NOTHING about. Finally, I would like to say the tapoban site is not as free as one might think I have read alot of stuff on the site some of which is quite disgusting but when somoeone provides hard evidence on a range of topics that shows they are wrong they will never air it on the website because they fear no-one will be able to give a befitting come back , ask and see if they have the courage to admit they supress debate. it is shocking but its ok because they themselves with time will be the cause of disunity in the panth I dont need to say anything time will tell. I am not an akj hater but what annoys me is how they attack sikhs who have done service for the panth such as naamdharis and then have the audacity to call them manmat when they themselves have been the cause of so much controversy. There are sikhs today who are good peole but this organisation has smeared their reputation because of blatant orthodoxy NOT because they are gursikhs themselves. Please dont be offended by my words the hypocrisy infuriates me, ISDhillon I never wrote this to you Lion King Ji this is just what I was prevented from saying on the forum, noone as yet has been able to respond and say how the dera has nothing to do with sikhism without becoming hypocrites themselves because the evidence they use is the one you have used a letter from a man I do not believe in, sorry mate it wont change my mind its ok I am the true knower of the reality which me and no-one can take that away from me. :TH:

Lion Kingh Ji there is nothing wrong in my story as I understand it narsingh is an avatar and why cant their be more than one manlion watch the video and get educated: http://simarjot.com/simarjot/babavadbhagsinghji.php

Lion King Ji I really have not attacked you and I dont have the energy to write about Babaji in length but I did write quite a bit a while back and it was in response to people who had been affected by the soul of another dead person I then retold them my family experience please read below there is quite alot of info in my response, stuff I missed out was that after the jadooo toonaa stuff was rebutted some nihang faction decided to smear babaji and created lies about his ruthlessness in battle you will regularly hear stories about stuffing muslim dead bodies with pork and marrying all muslim widows to low caste hindus through slave markets, these are lies, what in fact happened was that babaji swore that he would avenge one of the mulims at that time who attacked jalandhar but the muslim guy died and so he exhumed his body and burnt it so that he would not go to jannat on judgement day, this does not mean that babaji was a believer in islam i think it was just done to make an example out of the tyrant. btw they have nothing to do with seperate maryada and dhirmal. Anyhow here is my response from a while back on another website about possession in sikhi its got some info of baba ji in it you will have to sift it out though as it was a personal recollection from my experience: My Mothers Family My mums brother (uncle) was to be married in the year of ‘82’ I was only 2 at the time so didn’t really know much of what was going on around me. My uncle took refuge in our house during this time as he did not want to get married to this woman (aunty) from India. She came over anyway and the family did not want to return her so they pressurized their son into marrying this awful women. When she became nicely established in the family nest she realised that my mother harboured my uncle and felt that she was a potential threat to her legalization in this country and therefore resented my mother from the beginning of her marriage to my uncle. (This will come into play later) Years of illness? My mother was very ill at the age of 25 – 30 she kept slipping her discs in her spine and I remember once having to use a spoon to prize open her teeth when she went into a fit, she used to walk on her hands and feet around the house as she could not stand up because of the pain and agony she was in. She was then prescribed a course of steroids which made her really obese. I never really noticed much of this because she was my cuddly old mother it didn’t matter during those years as long as she was there. She was once prescribed convalescence where she went to a popular seaside resort for 1 month and we never heard site nor sound of her just the 1 postcard is all I can remember ,our dad used to say to us that she was tired and had gone on holiday, the doctors said she needed counselling cos she was depressed. Strange goings on! One day we went to the temple and my mum just sat at the back of the hall laughing to herself, she then got up and came over to me and said this is bloody <admin-profanity filter activated> I’m going home, I was shocked. One day we had visitors my dads brother came round and in the proper style of a desi family they all started drinking Bacardi, my mum and me my brother and sister were sitting in the other room and for some reason she got of her seat walked into the front room where the men were sitting and took the alcohol out of their hands one by one and proceeded to tip the entire contents down the sink including the bottles which had not been opened. The men all looked at my dad dumbfounded he didn’t know where to look he proceeded to tell them that she hadn’t been feeling well lately. Abuse One night we were all asleep and there was a terrifying scream sounded like an old man I didn’t dare get out of my bed I was too scared. The next day my mum was putting self-embrocating cream on what looked like cut marks on her back I started thinking my dad was hurting her and my resentment towards my dad had started to grow. I must take this time to state that our mother was never funny towards us children we were always treated exactly the same as we are today. These episodes continued they included irregular ticks, spitting, swearing, grunting and knightmares and for 3 years I never remember my mum coming with us to the gurdwara I think my dad was scared to bring her. Physical change I never noticed the change in my mothers face and body I don’t know whether it was because I was too young but when I look at the pictures of my mum when she was possessed and how she looks now no-one today could say they were the same person, even the sceptics. Her eyes were puffed up, she looked like she was on crack. Good karma My mum could not hold a steady job because of the way she was, she went to an Indian suit shop one day and the women asked her if she would like to do a few hours in the shop and that the work would not require much just showing women cloth etc. she started working there and her employee bless her soul said to her that if she like she could help her get better, they believe in a sikh baba called Baba Vadh Bhag Singh Ji and ran the langar at their dera, my mum wanted to get better but boy she did not know what she was in for. Baba vadhbhag singh ji Baba ji was a follower of dhirmal, that’s right one of the reprobates, however as his spiritual powers grew he defected and became a sikh, he was from the family of the sodhis and therefore had that bond with Guru Gobind Singh Ji, he also fought in the khalsa battles with the moghuls. He is looked at with contempt by the sikh community because of his link with dhirmal, and for this reason the sikh community regards this person and their legacy as a taboo. In the mountains of Himachal Pradesh their was a place called dolidhaar it is a waterfall, and at this waterfall there was a tree, baba ji one day sat by this tree and the village folk told him he should not sit there cos there was an evil demon called naarsingh. Naarsingh Naarsingh is known in the hindu mythology as the manlion demon, he is quite a scary looking thing with horns and teeth and all. Naarsingh used to kill the village people in the district and eat them I believe he also had several brothers and sisiters which were similar to him I cant remember the specifics it very sketchy to me now. The test Naarsingh came out of the water and asked baba ji why he was not scared of him that he would eat him as he was hungry, baba ji said to him if you are more powerful than me then prove it there is a small cage here (I have seen this cage) make yourself small enough to fit into it, he then shrunk himself down to a size of a hobbit and went into the cage, baba ji then used his power to entrap the demon the demon pleaded with him and promised to give up his ill ways. Baba ji then let him out, and roped the demon into his service for the rest of eternity at the dera, his soul hovers at the dera. Treatment The idea is that you go under the waterfall (doolidhaar) and this shocks your system cos the water is blessed supposedly by the touch of god, however it is not that simple. What I saw when I went there was quite horrific, there was a women who refused to go under the waterfall so this singh dragged her by her hair and forced her to say waheguru she kept refusing so then he pulled out a chimta (instrument) and proceeded to smack this on her head until she became passive this women had so much power her eyes rolled up into their whites and she kicked him in the balls and started to run up the mountain side, to get away but there were a party of security sants waiting for her and they dragged her back down to the water fall. A boy who was brought by his parents was very scared I think they thought he was ‘ill’ too they didn’t look after him and went into the waterfall without him I could see the fear in his eyes it was more than just the fear of cold water, when they came back they asked him if he went under the water fall he said yes, I said that he was lying and that he never went anywhere near the water I did this for his own good he went under the water unwillingly. Frenzy The next bout of treatment involves going back to the valley to a gurdwara called manji sahib, this is where it all happens. The souls of baba ji and naar singh go into the people who are possessed and shake the spirit out of them and this is quite something. The men and women jump up out of the blue and start shaking their heads around violently, mens turbans go flying into the air, there is spit flying through the air and the stench of vomit is unbearable. When my mum went to this temple she cried a lot and started to talk In a mans voice, he told one of the sants who he was and where he came from and who sent him. There was a lady who sat not to far from us and she laughed at my mums vulnerability towards the end of the night she too started dancing erratically and screaming jai babe di at the top of her lungs I could hear a voice in her saying “hun haass” meaning laugh now! The possessed people don’t always get better there some of them spend most of their time beating one another up it reminds me of a scene out of from dusk till dawn where all the people in the bar turn into vampires and start fighting, although there was never any blood shed. If you have been possessed then married to someone it is harder to get rid of it cos that thing gets married to you also. There is supposedly a spiritual net that these digressed souls are collected in, they are not punished they are just given their due. If you take the largest boned limb from a funeral pyre you can tame and train the soul by powdering the bone and feeding it to your victim, the soul recognises the largest limb more. And would welcome the opportunity of having a new body. A mental disorder does occur this is when the mind doesn’t realise which soul is influencing it because there are 2 at the same time in one body. Perpetrators My mum was not told directly by the sant who? did this too her ,what they said was that spiritual ethics did not allow them to divulge that information, but they said that when she would come back home she would realise who it was cos that person would drop such a bombshell on our lives that we would never be able to confront them with our accusation. When my mum came home from India she received a call from her sister and she asked them why her brothers family had not come to see her now she was back from India, her sister said to her you should be asking your husband what he’s been up to whilst you’ve been in India. My mother asked no its ok why don’t you tell me, her sister proceeded to tell her that whilst my mum was in India my dad had gone round to my aunties house and touched her up and she was forced to lock herself in her bedroom. My dad had actually not done this at all he even offered to swear by this at the temple if need be but she (my aunt) knew that one taboo could trump another! And to this day my mum has never spoken to or seen her brother in 15 years. Miscellaneous Every hollah guru gobind singh ji after blessing the sangat at anandpur goes and puts his panja at baba vadbhag singh ji dera and blesses the parshad if the parshad is pure the sangat are released (shutti) if it is impure they have to chuck the parshad awayand make it again until it is pure enough to be blessed , this is because during the last part of baba ji’s life he told his sister that he was going to god ,and that his body should not be burned , he did indeed leave his mortal coil and ascended the heavens this was an attempt to ask god for recognition so that those who had spiritual disorders could find relief somewhere in sikhi, when in communion with god he realised that his body was being burned and by time he assumed his mortal coil half of his body had been burned and he screamed out to his sister why they had burned his body she cryed out loud saying she didn’t think he was going to ever come back and his body would rot and that would be a dishonour to him. There was at that time a dog at baba ji funeral and the dog was killed and baba ji assumed the coil of the dog when baba jis horse saw that his master had died he became furious and galloped into the mountains and smacked his hoofs on the side if a cliff rock these hoof prints are in the mountains and when somebody touches them they start to ‘play up’ if their possessed thers a lot of shakti in those hoof prints. I think they believe that Guru Gobind Singh Ji puts his panja there to honour baba ji for his service to humanity. I know a lot of people will disagree with me but this is what I am told. This may well be superstition but my mothers better for it, and theres something there that cannot be measured by scientists and that is the spirit. I am not advertising any dera this is for information purposes only, and you should only go there if your ill and not the theatrics!!. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji is a khalsa, I have been to the dera in hp and its quite a spooky place but at the same time it has helped many people including some of my closest family members I would like to write more about Babaji but I could be here for a while there is alot of history. I would not bother reading anything on the website referred to by the last poster (no offence) as I have found that it is a forum of fanatical opinions when engaging in hardcore facts about sikhi I find that when you challenge them on sikhi they always bring up the sayings of their own enlightened master rather than backing up their new maryada and rituals from sikhi of the 1699 version, sorry but thats how i feel about the organisation. Intolerance breeds intolerance!!!!!

The quoran is an indirect revelation from god via an angel called gabrielle, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji is a direct revelation from god because gurus were one with god at all times therefore this is the only direct revelation from god. You see muslims dont even believe that we can become one with god so therefore they never grasp the nature of what it means to have a direct revelation, Guru Nanak Dev Ji explains it quite satifactorily when he says "Jai se mai aavai kasam ki baani..." i reveal as the word comes to me. Hindu scriptures are inspired by reverberations that can be heard in different spiritual regions this is the source of the vedas they are not from god either that is why the presiding deity of a spiritual region is the object of their worship. With regards to the "noone can write a surah like it i dare you...." this is easy tell them that you will accept their challenge if they can find even one verse in quoran that can awaken your soul like 1430 pages of bani can, if they say they can then their whole philosophy comes crashing down because in their theological position self-realisation is a farce. And this is the fundamental difference between scripture and revelation or bani, that bani is not a maryada, bani is for your soul, the divine essence within has the opportunity to rekindle its intimate bond with god through the primacy of direct revelation - sounds like boring philosophical words but it is the vital difference between the nature of bani which is guru and the purpose of quoran which is opinion, ie, our prophet never left theirs did!. We need to start to fully understand sikh doctrine before we engage in debate with other faiths many muslims I met say that for all the equality that sikhi preaches it failed to produce even one female guru from its 10 and even elected a child of the age of 8. This misunderstanding shows how they view our religion in reality the answer is that guru is bani and bani has no gender, the vehicle for bani was flesh in a male form, today the vehicle is paper which is neither male or female it has nothing to do with political times or social conditions its about how we veiw the guru - does the body really mean anything? Good luck :TH: ISDhillon

Khanda Daa Mukti (Salvation Through Khanda) Aavaw khanda da bardush karaw Come let’s exercise our double-edged swords Zalam da rooh noo azaadi devaw Free the trapped souls of the tyrants Bani inna noo mittaa na lugai Gurbani doesn’t seem sweet to them Paar khanda da japee naal marai laalkarai But they scream in ecstasy when embracing our double–edged swords Anaak naal takhat see vakaundei With pride they showed their strength Takhat naa rehi baas tukre tukre Strength vanished, now just dismembered remains Atam noo millai phere ek mocka Now we have given their souls another chance Jummeh aw jeevan jis kaye gursikha To be born in a life as a gursikh Phere naa zalam da nazar takreh Never again allow the glance of the tyrants Sareer teh rooh khanda karoo bakreh The double-edged sword again will separate the soul from its body By ISDhillon

Satsriakal Balbir Singh Ji I hope you are keeping well I read your posts now and again on the other forums and thankyou for your kind words but let it be known that I am a worm amongst saints. I know I can be really harsh sometimes but I think I let the krodh get the better of me perhaps I need some anger management. Humbly ISDhillon

Well folk’s looks like the race is on for the new superpower, I have been watching CNN lately and in terms of economy they say that the battle for global superpower is between India and China, although they admit china may overtake cos they don’t have religion. Then just today the people of Bolivia elected a new president who is an indigenous member of Bolivia this is the first indigenous president. Their was originally a lot of hatred from America because this individual has made a remarkable stance, in the age where knowledge is more important to the modern world the president says that indigenous knowledge is what the 21st century will be all about, this does not mean he intends to take us back to living in jungles. He was seen to pray to the Andean gods on national TV, we have always been lead to believe such people had been colonised, and then he went further to state that whilst he understood that cocaine could not be used for drug purposes his country was committed to the production of coca leaves for medicinal purposes, is this a shift in thinking we are seeing? Will South America become more powerful? – looks like the Chinese have got their mitts on the new president first as they were seen holding hands with the new president and have struck deals with Bolivia already, why is India lagging behind, it has plenty of indigenous knowledge after all most of India is village life. And what role do Sikhs have in the economy? - I have heard that Sikhism is about creating a trans-capitalist world is this even achievable?. Any way just sharing some thoughts, ISDhillon :i:

"Not sure what the laughing smiley is all about." They dont have to be about anything I use them quite freely. "But I do feel you are a very "gay and proud of it" fellow and therefore will not listen to anything anyone else has to say." No this is a direct example where your personal feelings have hampered your objective judgement, throughout my whole post I have never tried to further any agenda, I have approached this subject from a neutral footing, the fact that you think I am gay is a reflection on yourself I hope see your error. "Im unsure what you hoped to achieve by your post?" Understanding "As you have advised other people in the sangat maybe you should actually read the post." I said that because you gave no reason and further on I stated that you should draw your inferences from gurbani, a personal opinion is devoid of any qualification and therefore must be rejected as a non-entity. "Once again I believe you are just writing what ever makes your agenda and nothing to do with other posts." If that was the case then why are you even responding surely when a dog barks you do not respond to it. "This is not my belief and it does not say anything like this in my original post (i know I wrote it and have re-read it)" Your whole idea was based on kaam and that if kaam is the only measure of a homosexual relationship then what other than sodomy is your pretense. "Once again thanks for taking the time to reply. " Its my pleasure and I will share in your laughter. ISDhillon

Hello Jitty, I dont think your prejudiced at all although at the end of your post you do say that you would tell your children it is wrong but you dont know why and perhaps that is a relationship between you and your conscience, however I must correct you your ideas about lust have already been dealt with not just by me but also sikh scholars, homosexuals are active co-equal participants in this society who are committed to one another and put a lot into society and have excelled in every sphere of human endeavour even procreation (but ssshhhhh its a best kept secret)your argument about lust is shrivel in the wake of that, you seem to think that they are all rampant sodomites and with time people such as yourself will get a rude awakening when they discover that reality is not in agreement with them. Anyhow thanks again for sharing with me your personal opinion but in future I would advise participants that they should draw their inferences from gurmat as I have done, my intention was never to write a whole page but it was to go a little further than what the jathedar did. Kind regards, ISDhillon

Wicked warrior ji, :TH: I thankyou for your participation in this discussion hoever i do disagree with you, the soul has many virtues such as truth, purity, divinity and finally love, the reason why anand karaj is not the same as marriage is for this very reason that love is not to do with lust, homosexuals recognise and intimacy on a spiritual level with one another and it is the love betwen 2 souls that serves as blueprint for loving god thats why the guu says "Jinne prem kiyo tin hee prabh payo" only those who love won acheived the lord, because love shakes you out of your bondage to your dead past and you realise that your copnvictions to date have been wastefull, if conditions are not met for all people then bhagti of god is not possible. Again peadophilia is not consensual it cannot be used as anrgument because a child can never be in a position mentally and physically to make such a chjoice. Gurfateh.

Hello there supreme Ji I am male. Why? Alot of what you have said is repetition and I cant keep having the same argument but what I will address is this new material: "just losing our values for a decent modern society? " I have wrote about this before also : In India there used to be a religion which existed prior to Sikhism, in this religion there was a core concept of societal moral law, this law seeked to make man responsible for the immoral acts they committed and justice was therefore seen as assuring salvation for the immoral individual so they would not have to face the wrath of god, society also had to purge its lands of immorality in order to not incur the wrath of god. In Sikhism this concept is incompatible, when the purpose of man is to achieve salvation when alive a man or a women has to live a life in balance so they can focus upon that ideal, morality is therefore an individual effort it is not a societal responsibility, there is no wrath from god there is just rebirth for all and that includes the one with the most highest moral values as well as the greatest sinner on earth. However after sometime the concept of man being a measure of his/her own morality slowly faded and the idea of moral law became an unseen cultural endeavour and there was a notion of guilt and shame that was born through such a culture. Today it is not as bad instead another religion which existed the time of Sikhism had a hierarchical structure in society and the whole of society was assimilated into its own pigeonholes and given definition by those higher up in the rungs this lead to the birth of division in Sikh society and formation of differing groups rather than sovereign individual members in the religion. Unless you can add anything new to support your argument that same-sex marriage is anti-gurmat I will not be responding to you further, I have also raised this issue with the SGPC I doubt I will get a response but can always hope and pray. I will raise any issue I feel like and don't presume you have more authority it is easy to give hukum from keyboard go and speak to homosexuals and learn how far from reality your views are. Raabraakha

"your entitled to your opinion... your lucky sikhism does not dam homosexuals to the hellfire like the abhamic faiths (islam, christianity,judaism)." You are entitled to your view also and if you had read my post you would have learned that these other faiths do not condemn a committed relationship of two human beings who are in love with one another and put alot into society what they condemn is a city called sodom where men raped other men that is not the homosexuality which is referred to in todays age. " if everyone became homosexual there would be no population to carry on this world." and I cant imagine that will ever happen, it has existed from the beginning of time such as alexander the great, but we are still here today and it does also make me laugh slightly, sorry mate I just feel it is an incredibly feable argument. " I believe homosexual is learned behaviour" then their must be alot of heterosexual parents who have been caught by their children bonking members of the same sex. Come on be real! "if and when it becomes accepted in society it only undermines heterosexual relationships as the responsiblities for man and women relationships are to procreate and bring up the children." homosexuals look after children too, I have freinds who have had children by surrogacy and their children are incredibley well brought up and it is not genetic because these kids are heterosexual, sometimes you just have to accept what is, and I dont know how it undermines a heterosexual relationship if you feel threatened then your homophobic plain and simple and that is not gurmukh either. "Homosexuals do not have these responsiblities to society they are selfish because they have CHOSEN their gay lifestyle... they do not contribute to the up bring of the next generation of humans into the world." I have already addressed this issue above. "Age of concent did not exist in old times it is human society that dictates these rules depending on where you live." exactly and we have the opportunity for growth and acceptance and that is why we should not be homophobic, and the consensual thing is is not just about whether society agrees, it was wrong when societies did not allow for marriage to be consensual those people then took away a human beings fundamental right i wonder if the clergy have ever addressed that abomination. "So now homosexuality is acceptable why wont people accept peadofiles next? and then beastialists, then God knows wot next. " I have already addressed this above. "It is a downword spiral that corrupts modern day soceity.... that is why we should not accept it as the norm." This is one of my favourite typical arguments from the oldies, that the foundations of society will breakdown but this has never been explained I dont think they know what that statement means either, its just an obscure concept used when people cant explain the reason why something exists which is repugnant to them. "Manas kee jaat saabeh ek pehchaanbo" ISDhillon

Satsriakal Randip Singh Ji, :TH: Your post was great it is true that the union of 2 souls are writ in heaven and enacted on earth and no one can deny that divine hukum of akal purakh, May the guru give you all the blessings. ISDhillon

Heterosexuality is also not accepted by the gurus, and you dont need to worry about population everything seems to be working out in the natural world where homosexuality is rife, and my guru accepts all homosexuals so I therefore do not give a toss what you mortals think. I suggest you actually read the whole post or go back to school. Have a nice day, :TH:

As you might be aware their are certain factions which exist in canada which aim to destroy all that we have fought to protect such as equality and humanitarianism, the view by the jathedar and certain politicians on this issue is so myopic it is blinding. Happy reading: Satsriakal Folks, I have read quite a bit about this issue and have also written a lot about this issue on many forums this is my gathering of evidence and personal opinion from my understanding it is in no way the truth it is just a fair attempt at a sikh perspective, and have also spoken to many people who are homosexual, the saddest thing about this issue is that we can all CHOOSE to reject homosexuality, however a homosexual cannot CHOOSE to reject their sexuality therefore we can possibly condemn an innocent group of people for eternity for no reason whatsoever. I also find that people favour a knee <admin-profanity filter activated> reaction rather than look at this issue without prejudice. I have not found an ounce of evidence to support a ban on same-sex Anand karaj, anand karaj is not a marriage, shaadi, viaah or wedding. We need to look at the defnition of all others before looking at the anand karaj. A marriage is typically from a semitic backgound defined as: Gods blueprint for the continuity of his creation - this therefore suggests gender specificity. Anand karaj however is defined as: Gods blueprint for self realisation through the loving bond of a civil union. Therefore I can see no problem with same-sex unions in sikhism. The biggest defeat that dogma has faced is the evolution of society and homosexuality has defied all faiths bar sikhi as sikhi never took a position on sexuality only its over-indulgence. Which is with good merit. So what facts in sikhi have people used as arguments lets look at things in detail: PERFECT FAMILY I have yet to experience this concept, lived in the west for 20 years and have learned that love is our greatest culture people say we need a male and female role model my grandfather was a paedophile ,suffering made his children better people they didn’t turn into paedophiles. So what if 2 men look after a child, I think its worse to raise a child on your own I mean 2 heads are better than one, our mother Mata Sahib Kaur devan was a virgin all her life, she was a virgin for a reason and that is that the perfect mother has no biological link with her children the perfect link is through the spirit which is in the sacrament of amrit the double edged sword destroys all earthly distinctions including sexual orientation, that fraternity are bound by the common love of a mother and father that need not give birth to them that is truly the perfect family unit. BHAI KHANNAIYA JI This man administered water to both the enemy and the khalsa without discrimination, this angered a portion of the sangat, he was forced to present himself before the guru when asked why he quenched the thirst if the enemy he said to the guru it is you who has said ‘it is the same light that exists in all’, the guru then gave Bhai Khannaiya Ji some ointment and said go do your job properly, the group of Sikhs which acted in outrage were shamed. Tell me if I were to go before the SGPC and state that the same light exists in 2 people regardless of their gender and that being the reason I support same sex marriages do you think I would be presented with a siropa? I think not the SGPC are new-age masands and nothing else. GURDWARA AND LOCKEROOM There are many similarities between a gurdwara and a lockeroom they both are separated by gender, in the lockeroom its for modesty reasons in the gurdwara it’s for allowing the sangat to focus, maybe we should now make a third division for homosexuals, NO!!!. In my opinion the gurus taught man to awaken his moral responsibility hence rejecting the purdah of Islam, we have lost sight of the teachings of our gurus. BABA VADHBHAG SINGH JI *Please do not turn this debate into an argument about dhirmalias* Pseudo-saints have argued that a marriage is between the female part of the soul and the male part, if a person becomes possessed by a spirit prior to marriage it is possible at the point of marriage for a soul to be married to its host and new partner. I have seen this in the symbolic reverse-lavans that take place at Manji sahib at dera Baba Vadhbhag Singh Ji in the mountains in HP the man or women who is possessed have to walk backwards around the bir they call it putthe-lavans _(backward circambulation) this may sound silly, but it has symbolic implications for a soul ,and the host divorces its parasitic soul, this can happen with the dead soul of a male with a living male and vica versa for a female, this long winded explanation proves there is no such thing as female and male soul, gender is limited to this mortal coil anything to the contrary is crap. TIME/YUG Homosexuality has existed from the beginning of time anyone who says it’s a western thing or kaljug are blind, orthodoxy is something that has crept into our faith because people choose to follow a conduct blindly without understanding its message, these people are an embarrassment, sikhi is a liberal faith, we can update our praxis as we see fit, deification of our glorious history has lead to an imbalance of thought and no spontaneity when it comes to making political decisions. There are no schisms in sikhi just schizmoids parading as jathedars. LOVE A homosexual male can only love a women as a sister or mother figure or friend NEVER as a lover, so the definition of man and women being the perfect family unit is flawed and as we strive for sarbat da bhalla this does not look after the welfare of homosexuals. A heterosexual person will always find it hard to digest homosexuality therefore we should let homosexuals themselves be the measure of their love and commitment towards one another this is not a discussion for religion it is outside the realms of loving god because god loves all regardless of their sexuality god even created homosexuality, amrit is viable for gays and lesbians alike i wonder if a hermaphrodite has ever taken amrit?. BESTIALITY AND PEODOPHILLIA etcetc What if tomorrow people, whose sexual preference is bestiality, want to marry animals? Homosexuality is consensual like heterosexuality, bestiality and paedophilia can NEVER be consensual. Religion teaches us not to be obsessed with sex, people have taken the opinion that homosexuality is just sexual and have given total disregard to the minute possibility of a homosexual relationship having anything to do with LOVE, in this respect I believe testosterone has got the better of these scholars and they may want to control their androgynous fervour by being more open minded (not weak!), don’t you know its a kurahit in sikhi to have lust?. SEMITISM Sikhi teaches us to establish a relationship with the divine this is possible to any human being regardless of their sexual habits. People mention Sodom and Gomorrah which were destroyed supposedly by gods wrath, OUR RELIGION IS NOT SEMITIC WE HAD A DIRECT REVELATION FROM GOD, Quran which depicts this story is an indirect revelation from an angel called Gabrielle, angels are not without sin Satan being a good example, that is the beauty of sikhi all our gurus ,pirrs ,bhagats had the same perspective if you cant see god in all you cant see god at all!!!!!. Please dont bring other religious traditions into consideration when discussing issues such as these we will not follow by example of other traditions but come into our own, and if people find that hard to digest then let them choke we have made a lot of sacrifices as minorities, and should therefore understand the position of other minority groups!!. Anand KARAJ Anand Karaj: the union of 2 souls not a <admin-profanity filter activated> and a <admin-profanity filter activated>! People talk about family life preferable over celibacy and promiscuity WRONG AGAIN!!!, sikhi rejects gristhi and sanyasin and commands us to be sant sipahi (teesri panth), on the battlefield you will not shy away from the protection of a khalsa if he or she is homosexual. The 4 lavans talk about marriage being essential so that we help spiritually nourish one another through our love for one another and achieve union. Some people say homosexuality is a disease or a disability I know of homosexuals which have excelled in every field of human endeavour including sainthood! Culture has had a large impact on the way we marry there was never any circambulation of GGS during lavans this is bipran-mat that has crept into our faith therefore further reinforcing gender stereotypes ie, the brothers have to hold the sister cos she’s a girl and she’s really weak and might start crying but we all know its so she doesn’t do a legger! (lol). HUMAN PURPOSE It was never mans purpose to have children or continue the human race it is to learn to love one another and through that wonder, fall in love with god if these conditions are not met for all types of people we will have what we have to day a stagnant society, just because you tell people homosexuality is a crime punishable by death has not stopped god causing to be born homosexuals within those very regimes, so how many time will we keep falling on the same hurdle until we learn to accept that it is a reality and we should understand and integrate it within the doctrines of sikhi instead of applying self appropriated notions of common sense and decency to situations we can never understand. This dilemma is the same as the diabolic interpretations western and eastern scholars have made of our faith, in general we have to suffer their short comings and lack of understanding cos our own people have not made any satisfactory attempt of rebuttal of their writings and in the same way these people are jumping on the same bandwagon with every other dogma encrusted religious tradition by saying that homosexuality defies the lords will and is against nature, but really they are disgusted with homosexuality and its various camp stereotypes. The sad reality is that we are becoming like the mughal emperors, they were people who never repeated the lords name whilst they were alive but were quick to hide behind their religion when executing our gurus, such narrow minded conceited people who never took the time to understand the message behind something DIFFERENT. AIDS People talk about sodomy and aids, yes their right, knowingly spreading any disease is a sin but what does that have to do with homosexuality? this is a discussion about the civil union of 2 people who are in love, their bedroom antics are not open to discussion. Raping men by sodomy I believe is the sin in the city of Sodom, love was never in the equation, if sodomy is the sin then how will we find the sin of lesbians? Objective disorder? Flamboyancy and camp stereotypes exist in the gay (and lesbian but not flamboyant, more masculine) culture, because growing up gay people are not made to feel that their existence is normal they are in a sense made to feel sinister(try to imagine being made to feel like that), societies non-approval causes gay people to react in a way to get acknowledgement from society albeit abusive this is an “overriding fear” mechanism, they go to the extreme of their gender preference(extreme femininity/masculinity). In demanding their acknowledgement, if from a young age children were told that sexuality is individual, everybody would settle into their uniqueness and there would be no bullying, cos nobody would “stand out” and hence be “not normal” cos this fear mechansim would cease to exist. With this in mind I would like to discuss contribution to Sikhism, would you want to contribute to something which was embarrassed of your existence? And if any person is not satisfied, you can never be in a position to contribute cos you’ll spend the majority of your life hiding who you are. Failing marriages: violence/alcohol and drug abuse I dont want people to marry somebody who has entered the marriage scene and fail cos there is no other acceptable place for them to acheive the basic necessity of companionship, cos the society wont accept them. everyday we state in the moolmantar that god is nirbhau fearless and nirvair without hatred we too need to become nirbhaur, a gay person will enter a marriage in fear of rejection, in fear of ending up lonely, in fear of their life being at the mercy of someone whose sense of righteosness is in upholding their family honour, in fear of them never having children. Taboos need to be wiped out so that we tell our society there is a place for everyone. Saintly behaviour? when Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji created the khalsa he mentioned that his aim was dusht of the tyrants that refused to allow the saints to repeat the name of god this was in response to the increasing number of executions by the then mughal emperor auranzeb, one of the saints was sarmad, Sarmad was in love with a hindu boy called Abahy Chand and look what sant naranjan singh ji says about him: "During the time of Aurangzeb, a missionary came from Rome. He asked everyone the same two questions. "What is Patience, and what is Gratitude?" What do they mean? He would accept only an explanation that would remove all his doubts. This missionary saw Aurangzeb and explained the aim of his visit. "You write Koran everyday. You are called the highest emperor. You have employed 1400 Muslim priests" he said. Everyone tried to explain through logic and examples, however, the missionary was not satisfied. (Logic, arguments, and examples often lose the real essence, your vision becomes foggy. Gratitude and Patience are inter-connected. They are the two wings of spiritual life.)" (Aurangzeb had a famous Saint by the name of Sarmud detained in the dungeon.) "Now, this missionary wanted to see Sarmud also. So, he was taken into the dungeon to meet this Saint. He found this Saint in chains, but, when the missionary had his Darshan (saw the spiritual Glory) he immediately felt Peace. He bowed and presented his question, 'What is the meaning of Patience, and Gratitude?" This Sadhu said, "Come back tomorrow. I am going to be executed soon. I want to take a bath. Please bring me water and a piece of cloth for my last bath tomorrow. After that bath, I will demonstrate the practice the virtue of Patience and Gratitude. I will show it to you. Be sure to note down what you see.' Next day at dawn, this missionary presented the Saint with water and a piece of cloth. This Saint stood up, and took a bath while in the chains. (Listen carefully now. Patience and Gratitude, is being explained.) He wrapped the cloth around his waist and closed his eyes in prayer. He asked this missionary to stand up, and to shut his eyes, also. (People with a Spiritual Life impart their lessons by actually living them.) Sarmud put his spiritual hand on this missionary's head. Now the missionary started seeing what was previously invisible. He saw that there are countless spirits on one side ready to destroy the red fort with a magnificently adorned elephant waiting outside, ready to mount. They are all resting on Sarmud's palm, but he is gesturing to stop the destruction with the finger of his other hand. Dhann (wonderfully glorious) is the Sadhu Sarmud! He is going to be executed. But he is telling these spirits to stop, do not destroy anyone! The Sadhu said, 'Look, Khuda (God) has made me so powerful and has given me anything I wanted. All my thoughts are soaked with gratitude. These chains on this body cannot bother me.' 'Second, and last demonstration of Patience will be tomorrow. You see, the executioner is sharpening his sword to chop my head off. You have seen that I can destroy the whole city with a gesture of my finger. But, I am not going to utter a curse, even! I will simply tolerate everything with greatest forbearance and contentment.' (In fact, only a person with Contentment can live the life in Patience and the Gratitude.) 'My God has greatest Mercy on me so that, although I am being executed tomorrow, I am going to return only fortitude' Sarmud said. The missionary bowed at his feet and returned to Rome with a real understanding of 'Patience' and 'Gratitude'." (From: Anmol Bachan, p 44-5 - compiled by Sister Surjeet Kaur Gandhi) Sarmad was in fact a gay martyr he was also a saint of dara shikoh who was a follower of Sri Guru Har Rai Ji also and was familiar with mystic lore, now a lot of people will say he was not gay here is proof it is a long read and I will continue below this, BTW the reason why Sri Guru Arjan Dev Ji did not include the writings of gay saints into SGGS was not because of their lifestyle he did a study of kachi and pakki bani, pakki bani is dhur ki bani: “Coming back to the start, Chandni Chowk is the most historic street in the world, say scholars. It is here that Dara Shikoh, Sanskrit scholar and the future King of India was dragged in rags through thronging crowds ..who loved him..so much so that one of them cursed his throne grabbing brother, Aurangzeb to leave Delhi forever ..and Aurangzeb never returned(He is buried in the Deccan) It is here that Sarmad, the digambar (nude/ skyclad) Sufi fell in love with Abhay Chand, the Hindu merchant’s son.. and renounced the world. It is here that Aurangzeb ordered his execution.. apparently for ‘insulting Islam’, but essentially for befriending Dara and influencing the masses of Delhi with his blending message.. Three executioners tried unsuccessfully to behead him.. till Sarmad himself handed Abhay Chand the sword..singing’ Come my beloved, in whatsoever garb thou come, I recognise thee well’..His severed head walked the steps of the Jama Masjid before thousands of Dilliwalas and had to be restrained from destroying the whole city..the legend says. He was followed by the Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur, who he and Dara Shikoh loved dearly- beheaded at Gurudwara Sheesh(Head) Ganj, again in the heart of Chandni Chowk. “ “Sarmad, a mystic poet beheaded in 1661 "Armenians in India" pp 167-77 ; pp 179-81 & p 194, by Mesrovb Jacob Seth - Calcutta 1937 [167] Armenians and merchants have been synanomous words in India, for it was trade and commerce that attracted the Armenians to this tropical country from their homes in the delectable and snow-clad mountains of Armenia, from the days of remote antiquity. Apart from eminent merchants, clever diplomats, great soldiers, able governors and administrators, casters of huge pieces of ordnance and manufacturers of firelocks, which, according to Marshman, "were superior to the Tower-proof muskets of the Company", the Armenians have given to India a poet of great merit whose fame spread over Mohammedan India as a saint and a scholar, in the middle of the 17th century, and to this day, his memory is revered and kept green by all lovers of the noble, the beautiful and the sublime, not only in this country, but in the countries where the charms of the beautiful language of the immortal Ferdosi. Nizami, Saadi, Hafez, Jami and Khayyam, have captured and captivated the imagination of millions. But who was this remarkable poet whom even the mighty Emperor Aurungzebe, the last of the Great Moguls, dreaded and ultimately beheaded, as can be seen later on. Let us first tap the European sources for reliable information about this remarkable Armenian. In the Oriental Biographical Dictionary by Thomas William Beale, revised and enlarged in 1894 by that eminent Persian scholar and historian. Henry George Keene,(*1) [168] M.R.A.S., we find the following authoritative account of Sarmad :— "Sarmad, the poetical name of an Armenian merchant who came to India in the reign of the Emperor Shah Jehan. In one of his journeys towards Thatta, he fell so passionately in love with a Hindu girl(*2) that he became distracted and would go about the streets naked. He was well versed in the Persian language and was a good poet. In the beginning of the reign of Alamgir [Aurungzebe] he was put to death on account of his disobeying the orders of that Emperor, who had commanded him not to so about naked, This even took place about the year 1661 (1072 A.H.). Some say that the real cause of his execution was a Rubcu [quatrain] which he had composed, the translation of which is: "The Mullas say that Mohammad entered the heavens, but Sarmad says that the heavens entered Mohammad " His tomb is close to the Juma Musjid at Delhi. Following in the footsteps of his compatriots, Sarmad came out to India as a merchant from Persia by sea He set up in business in the town of Thathah in Sindh, on the shores of the Indus, where his business thrived exceedingly and he spent his days in comfort and peace. During his sojourn in that city he contracted a close friendship with a Hindu lad, Abhai Chand by name. This was the turning point in his life, for unlike his calculating and serious minded countrymen, he neglected his business, lost the equilibrium of his mind altogether and relinquishing his life of comfort and peace, he lived thenceforth the austere life of a naked Hindu fakir- (ascetic) and in this nude state he would go and sit at the door of his beloved Abhai Chand. The following translation of a distich shows the true sentiment of the distracted Sarmad : "I know not if in this spherical old monastery [the world} My God is Abhai Chand or some one else." The boy's father seeing the earnestness of the ascetic, and the purity of the attachment, allowed him to come to his house with [169] the result that his son Abhai Chand became so much attached to Sarmad that he could not bear to live apart from him. Soon after this, both left Thathah and went to Delhi. Shah Jehan was then the Mogul Emperor of India. People flocked round Sarmad and many found him to be a man of great sanctity and supernatural powers. The eldest son of the Emperor, the unfortunate prince Dara Shikoh, whose devotion to Brahmanical dogmas and theosophical beliefs is well known, was one of Sarmad's constant visitors and staunch admirers. It was Dara Shikoh who brought the miraculous powers of the saint, (Sarmad) to the notice of his august father, the Emperor Shah Jehan. The prudent Emperor deputed Inayat Khan, one of the Umara (grandees), of his Court to ascertain the real facts. The grandee visited the naked saint and his report was most favorable if not reassuring. Prince Dara Shikoh was one of the many disciples of Sarmad and the tutor had predicted that Dara Shikoh would be the next Emperor after Shah Jehan. Which prediction was not however fulfilled through the treachery of Aurengzebe who ascended the throne of the mighty Moguls by first imprisoning his father and then murdered his two brothers, Dara Shikoh and Murad Baksh. Aurangzebe hated Sarmad for having been a partisan of Dara Shikoh on whom he had promised to confer the throne When Aurungzebe had usurped the throne, he taunted Sarmad about the succession of his favorite disciple, Dara Shikoh to the throne, which he had promised him. Sarmad calmly replied : “God has given him the eternal sovereignty and my promise is not falsified." Needless to add that the Emperor was greatly displeased and incensed with this sarcastic reply of the naked (*3) saint and from that moment he decided to put an end to that poor man's life. The favorable moment was [170] not long in coming, as Sarmad, who was a Sufi,(*4) had expressed sentiments of a heretical nature in the following distich, ridiculing the nocturnal journey of Mohammed to heaven . "The Mullas say that Abroad went to heaven. Sarmad says that heaven came down to Ahmad". According to the Sufis who believe in the unity of the creator and the created, there is nothing objectionable in this doctrine, moreover as in the opinion of certain Ulama, the Miraj, or the nocturnal journey of Mahomed to heaven was allegorical and spiritual, but a fanatic and a bigot like Aurungzebe, could not possibly tolerate such a blasphemy, open and palpable, that was likely to shake the foundation of the Mohammedan faith. The supreme moment had at last arrived for Aurungzebe to wreak his vengeance on the harmless naked saint and scholar and he immediately ordered his execution. It is said that when the condemned man was being led away from the tribunal to the place of execution, he uttered, ex tempore, 24 quatrains. The crowd was so dense that one could pass through it with great difficulty. When the executioner, a low caste man of the sweeper class, approached him with his naked sword, he wanted, according to custom, to cover the condemned man's head, but Sarmad hinted not to do it, then he smiled and addressing the executioner said :— "The friend with naked sword has now arrived In whatever disguise thou mayst come, I recognize thee, He also uttered the following distich : “There was an uproar and we opened our eyes from the eternal sleep. [171] Saw that the night of wickedness endured, so we slept again". Aqil Khan Razi, the court chronicler of Aurungzebe, writes that when the executioner was about to inflict the fatal blow, Sarmad uttered : "The nakedness the body was the dust of the road to the friend, That too was severed, with the sword, from our head". According to another version Sarmad uttered : "My head was severed from the body by that flirt, who was my companion, The story was shortened, otherwise the headache would have been too severe". One of the companions of Sarmad, one Shah Asadullah, went up to him and told him "Do cover your nakedness and utter the creed in full and you will be let off". Sarmad looked up, said nothing in reply but uttered the following couplet : "A long time since the fame of Mansur became an ancient relic, I will exhibit with my head the sallow and the cord”. Sarmad died cheerfully and with complete resignation like every Armenian that has suffered martyrdom, for his religion, at the hands of the Mohammedans during the past 1300 years. Prince Dara Shikoh, the disciple of Sarmad, and the rightful heir to the throne of the Moguls, was beheaded by the order of his younger brother, that consummate hypocrite and fanatic Aurungzebe, in the year 1069 A.H. (1659 A.D.) and two years later, Sarmad shared the fate of his royal pupil, “and from that day", says a native historian, "the house of Timour declined both in glory and power". He was beheaded in 1661 near the Jama MusJid at Delhi, for heresy, in the midst of an unprecedentedly huge crowd and though not a Mohammedan, yet he was buried under the steps [172] of the great mosque where his grave is venerated to this day, by Hindus as well as Mohammedans, who make offerings of flowers, light candles and burn incense on the saint's revered grave, after his martyrdom 275 years ago. Sarmad was considered well inspired and a man of sanctity. The people of India have not forgotten that the harmless naked saint was killed by the order of Aurungzebe because he loved Dara Shikoh and championed his cause. It is recorded that on the day of the execution, the Emperor said to the ecclesiastics (fudala) that a man was not liable to be executed merely for his nudity but that he should be required to pronounce the Islamic creed. Addressing the saint, they said "How is it that inspite of your great learning, you only utter the first half of the Kalima(*5) or creed and not the remaining part"? Sarmad replied that "I am still absorbed in the negative part, why shall I tell a lie"? So, according to this version, Sarmad's execution, at the suggestion of the Emperor was made according to the Islamic Law. So far as can be seen, the execution, in the opinion of the fanatic Aurungzebe, was necessary from a religious point of view. Living the life of a nude mendicant, composing delightful quatrains, some of which may well be compared with those of Omar Khayyam, yet Sarmad interested himself in politics by becoming a partisan of Dara Shikoh whom he predicted to be Shah Jehan's rightful successor. This was gall and wormwood to Aurungzebe. Sarmad was the center of attraction to the public at Delhi. Dara was condemned and beheaded because of his apostacy and Sarmad was condemned and killed for having contributed partly to that apostacy. Deeply as he disliked his eldest brother Dara, for his politics and leanings towards the tenets of non-Muslims and mendicants, (majazib), his first act, as soon as he came to power, was to remove that arch heretic and those who had aided and abetted him in his apostacy and political activities. Sarmad who was a Sufi and [173] a mystic philosopher was a great Persian scholar and had read science and metaphysics with such well known and distinguished scholars as Mulla Sadr-ud-din Shirazi, Mirza Abul Qasim Fandarsaki and other eminent scholars of the time. Sarmad was so filled with divine love that to him the king, the judge, the executioner, the whole universe, including himself, were the same. The soul itself and the universe were merged into Divinity. He had no consciousness of himself. The following letter which Prince Dara Shikoh addressed to Sarmad shows the high regard the royal pupil had for his saintly master: My Pir and Preceptor— Everyday I resolve to pay my respects to you. It remains unaccomplished. If I be I, wherefore is my intention of no account? If I be not—what is my fault? Though the murder of Imam Hossain was the will of God: Who is (then) Yazid between (them). If it is not the Divine Will, then what is the meaning of "God does whatever He wills and commands whatever He intends”? The most excellent prophet used to go to fight the unbelievers, defeat was inflicted on the army of Islam. The exoteric scholars say it was an education in resignation. For the perfect what education was necessary?" Sarmad's reply to the above epistle consisted of two lines, in verse, which can be translated thus :— “My dear— What we have read, we have forgotten, Save the discourse of the Friend which we reiterate.” Sarmad's name stands prominent in the republic of letters. Daghistani calls him eminent in learning and Arabic scholarship. His impromptus are very popular in Delhi. His poems consist mostly of quatrains. In a quatrian(*6) Sarmad says that he follows Hafez in qazal and Omar Khayyam in rubaiyat. [174] All the biographical works of the Persian poets that have been written after him contain appreciative and highly eulogistic notices of Sarmad. His favorite companion and disciple, Abhai Chand who was the son of a wealthy Hindoo rajah, according to Nasrabadi, left his father, mother, home and wealth and adopted the life of a mendicant and took to sitting on ashes like the Hindoo faqirs. According to the same writer. Abhai Chand, died soon after Sarmad was beheaded through intense grief. As we have said, Sarmad was a Sufi poet and there are verses which he composed that might be construed by a bigot as being against Islamic religion and on account of such opinion, he brought on his head the wrath of the Emperor Aurungzebe who was a stem puritan all his life and a bigoted champion of orthodoxy. His fanaticism, intolerance and his inordinate zeal for the Mohammedan religion were the main causes of the downfall of the glorious Mogul Empire in India. Sarmad who was a theist, taunted the fanatic Aurungzebe with the following caustic quatrain ; declaring his religious convictions and openly proclaiming, to the chagrin of the Emperor, that he was not a Mohammedan. It can be translated thus :— “O ! King of Kings, I am not a hermit like thee, I am not nude. I am frenzied, I am distracted, but I am not depressed, I am an idolater, I am an infidel, I am not of the people of the faith, I go towards the mosque, but I am not a Muslim.” No complete collection of the quatrains of Sarmad have been published, though a few of them have been lithographed [175] at Lahore, Delhi and Bombay, with biographical notices of the poet in the Urdu language. According to Dr. Rieu, more than 400 of the quatrains of Sarmad are preserved in MS. in the BritishMuseum. There is in the well-known Oriental Library of Rampur State a MS. copy of the Diwan of Sarmad, containing the portrait of the poet, with his disciple Abhai Chand. Francois Bernier, M.D., a French physician at the Court of Shah Jehan, writing of naked Hindu faqi'rs, in his Travels in Hindusthan, refers to Sarmad as follows : "I have seen for a long while a very famous one in Delhi, called Sarmet, who went thus stark naked along the streets, and who at length would rather suffer his neck to be cut off, than to put on any clothes, what promises or menaces soever Aurung Zebe might send to him. " On hearing of Sarmad's death, Bernier wrote as follows:— "I was for a long time disgusted with a celebrated Fakir, named Sarmet, who walked in the streets of Delhi as naked as he came to the world. He despised equally the threats and persuations of Aurungzebe and underwent at length the punishment of decapitation for his obstinate refusal to put on his wearing apparel." Another European, Niccolao Manucci, in his “Storia do Mogor” (as translated by William Irvine, 1901) writes :— Vol. I, p. 223 : Dara held to no religion, when with Mahommedans, he praised the tenets of Muhammad, when with Jews, the Jewish religion ; in the same way. when with Hindus. he praised Hinduism. This is why Aurungzebe styled him a kafir (infidel). At the same time, he had great delight in talking to the Jesuit fathers on religion, and making them dispute with his learned Mahommedans, or with Cermad [sarmad] an atheist much liked by the prince. This man went always naked, except when he appeared in the presence [176] of the prince when he contented himself with a piece of cloth at his waist.” And on p. 384, he says : "After the death of his brother. Dara, Aurungzib ordered them to bring to his presence Acermaad [sarmad], the atheist, to whom Dara had been devoted, and asked him where was his devoted prince. He replied that he was then present, 'but you cannot see him for you tyrannize over those of your own blood; and in order to usurp the Kingdom, you took away the life of your brothers and did other barbarities. On hearing these words. Aurungzebe ordered his head to be cut off." We have seen in the beginning of this Chapter, on the authority of that well-informed author of the "Oriental Biographical Dictionary", that Sarmad was an Armenian who like his countrymen, had come to India for the purposes of trade. which in those days was the sole occupation of the Armenians in India. And in the prefaces to the Lahore and the Delhi editions of Sarmad’s quatrains (rubayat) by learned biographers he is called an Armenian by nationality and a Christian by religion yet there are some Mohammedan historians and biographers who say Sarmad was a Jew(*7) from Kashan in Persia and a convert to Islam. There lived in Calcutta an eminent Persian scholar and a journalist, the late Syed Agah Jalaluddin-al-Hossaini, known as Muyyid-al-Islam, who was, by a strange coincidence, .a native of Kashan, the supposed birthplace of the poet, Sarmad. In order to satisfy ourselves about the vexed question of the poet s nationality we thought of seeking his advice in the matter some eight years ago as he was a great authority on Persian poets, their lives and their works. [177] We called on the veteran journalist who had unfortunately lost his sight during the latter years of his life and found him lying on an easy chair, in the editorial office, dictating an editorial to his scribe for his favorite Hablul-Malin. After the usual salutations and compliments we asked the Persian sage about the nationality of Sarmad and the country he hailed from. He was greatly surprised that we, a countryman of the poet, should have any doubts in the matter, as Sarmad was known to be an Armenian from Persia. When we told him that a certain Mohammedan writer had said in a public lecture that Sarmad was a Jew from Kashan, he was -highly amused and remarked sarcastically that it was not possible for a persecuted, miserable, unkempt, unwashed and unlettered Jew of Kashan to rise to the proud and enviable position of a famous Persian poet. When we were wishing him good-bye and expressing our thanks for his kind courtesy, the good old man wished to know the reason of our enquiry about the poets nationality. We told him that we intended writing an account of Sarmad in one of the leading Armenian journals and did not wish to commit ourselves, whereupon he said in an authoritative tone, “go and write that Muayyid-al-Islam says that Sarmad was an Armenian from Iran" (Bero benevis khe Muayyid-al-Islam meegooiad khe Sarmad Armanee bood az Iran). Sher Khan Lodi, who was a celebrated poet in the reign of the Emperor Aurungzebe and had ample opportunities of seeing Sarmad, states, in his Life of poets, called Maratal Khial, that Hakhim Sarmad was an Armenian from Faranghisthan (Europe) and was originally engaged in trade when he came out to India. .... [179]There are some interesting anecdotes, founded on traditions, about the supernatural powers of Sarmad, prevalent amongst the people of Delhi to this day, for the truth of which we cannot vouch. It is said that the Emperor Aurungzebe who was a puritan, had strictly forbidden the use of bhang as a narcotic because of its deleterious effects. One of the many spies of the King reported to him that Sarmad, in defiance of the royal fiat, was addicted to the vice of smoking bhang and that he kept the drug in an earthen pot near him always wherever he sat. This was good news for Aurungzebe who was always trying to find fault with the poet whom he hated with a deadly hatred. He paid a sudden visit to Sarmad and found the poet lecturing to his disciples. He at once noticed the earthen pot and asked Sarmad what it contained. The poet suspecting that the Emperor had been apprised of the contents of the earthen pot, replied nonchalantly that it contained some milk and on the Emperor pressing him to show him the milk, Sarmad most unconcernedly uncovered the pot and lo and behold there was milk in it. His disciples who knew what the earthen pot contained originally were simply amazed and spread the news of the miracle performed by their master in converting the harmful bhang into harmless milk. There is another anecdote equally interesting. One day Sarmad was watching a mollah praying earnestly and with great devotion in the Juma Musjid at Delhi. The poet told his followers that the mollah's god was under his (Sarmad's) feet. A spy immediately carried the news to Aurungzebe who was praying in the mosque at the same time, it being a Friday. The irate Emperor came up to Sarmad and ordered him immediately to give a satisfactory explanation for his blasphemy. Sarmad who could never be intimidated by Aurungzebe, told him to send for the mollah and ask him to confess what he was praying for. The nervous ecclesiastic, who was trembling in his shoes in the presence of the stern monarch, nolens volens confessed that he was praying to God to grant him some money to enable him to get his daughter married. Sarmad remarked that the mollah had spoken the truth for once in his life and asked Aurungzebe to get his men to dig [180] the ground where he stood and on digging the place they found some gold coins buried there. Sarmad was jubilant over the discovery and told the astonished Emperor in his usual cynical tone that he was not wrong when he said that the mollah's god was under his feet. Aurungzebe was nonplussed and confounded but the news spread with lightening speed that Sarmad had worked another miracle. Any wonder then that Aurungzebe hated Sarmad with the deadly hatred of a fanatic and wished to put an end to the life of an unbeliever who was looked upon as a saint and a holy man by the public in the early years of his reign of intolerance and religious persecution. Whilst these lines were passing through the press, we were informed by the gallery assistant of the DelhiFortMuseum that there is an inscription on Sarmad's tombstone. We reproduce his letter which is as follows :— "In reply to your enquiry. I beg to inform you that at the head of Sarmad's grave, there is a masonry pillar with lamp niches and on it has been fixed an incised slab of stone containing the following inscription in Persian :— Which can be translated thus :— When Shah Sarmad in the reign of Alamgeer [Aurungzebe] set out on a journey to Paradise. Poor Akbar said the date, "This is the grave of Sarmad the Martyr”. The people in Delhi greatly venerate the grave of Sarmad and daily burn lights and incenses and sprinkle fresh roses and flowers on it. The Muslims who come to Delhi from far and near never miss a visit to the grave of this saint. Besides, the musicians sing religious songs at the grave of Sarmad nearly every evening and particularly on Thursdays. A class of [181] illiterate Muslims also celebrate the festival of Basant near its grave." Peace to his soul, rest to his ashes and may the revered memory of the great poet be cherished and kept green, for ages to be, in the land where he suffered martyrdom for his open defiance of Islamic rituals and customs. .... [194] We cannot conclude this chapter without recording our grateful thanks to Hakim Habibur Rahman, the well-known Yunani physician of Dacca and a good Persian scholar, for having brought to our notice, some eight years ago, that the renowned poet SARMAD was an ARMENIAN. .... Notes (*1) [167] Keene is the author of several learned works on Indian history notably of the Mogul period. His Turks in India and The Mogul Empire are master-pieces. He has compiled interesting Guide Books to Delhi and Agra, replete with historical and topographical information. He was Judge at Agra in 1879. (*2) [168] According to Mohammedan historians and biographers it was a Hindu lad of the Bunnia caste, Abhai Chand by name. (*3) [169] In a quatrain (rubai) addressed to his relentless persecutor the Emperor Aurungzebe, Sarmad gives the reason of his nudity: “He who save you the sovereignty of the world. Gave me all the causes of anxiety. He covered with a garment those who had any fault (deformity) To the faultless he gave the robe of nudity." (*4) [170] For a history of the origin and the growth of Sufism in Persia, see the note at the end of this Chapter. (*5) [172] The first part of the Kalima, which is in Arabic, can be translated thus : "There is no God but God" (La Ala Allalah) and the second part, "And Mohaaunad is his prophet" (Mohammad rasool Allah). It was quite natural that Sarmad refused to utter the second part of the Kalima, not being a Mohammedan. (*6) [173] Sarmad pays a well-deserved compliment to Hafez and Khayyam, two of the greatest poets of Persia, in the following quatrain :— "I have no business with the fancy and thought of others, In composing a ghazal I adopt the manner of Hafez, But in rubai, I am a disciple of Khayyam, But do no quaff much of his wine." (*7) [176] There are no records of Jews coming to India from Persia for the purposes of trade in the 16th, 17th or 18th centuries. The Sassoons, the Jacobs and other merchant princes of Bombay came From Baghdad in Mesopotomia, so did the Ezras, the Gubbays and the Manassehs of Calcutta in the early part of the l9th century.” “It is true that Muhammad Saqi Musta'ad Khan and Muhammad Hashim Khan Khafi Khan have not mentioned the executions of saint Sarmad and Guru Tegh Bahadur in their works. But that does not detract anything from their credibility as writers. Perhaps, they looked upon Sarmad as a great saint, a pir of theirs, and with their hearts full of reverence, they could not think of his death, much less of recording it. We have a similar example in Sikh history. Bhai Gurdas, we know, was a great devoted Sikh. In his Varan, he has made a number of references to the Sikh Gurus from the first to the sixth and to many a leading Sikh of their days, but he has not made any mention whatever of the martyrdom” Its shameful and Disgusting it is disgusting that a man enters the anus because it is a point of defacation. Well tell me, a women urinates and bleeds from her <admin-profanity filter activated> is that not just as disgusting? In Sikhism the human being is male or female only by body, the reason why we have sexual organs is not only for procreation, the sperm content in a man is far in excess of the need to procreate, however that does not mean we should abuse our sexual organs and fulfil all our raw impulses, we need to find a balance and that screams Sikhism to me. When I say balance I mean becoming at ease with our sexuality if you find a partner who is compatible with you then get married whether gay/straight, and then start on the true path of anand karaj which means to support one another through all times and learn to love the lord together and help one another spiritually be one anothers support system if we read the anand karaj we truly realise how above and beyond the necessity for procreation and sexuality truly is, I would suggest that a lot of the non-liberal amongst us give some thought to that instead of diguising their true disgust with their own interpretations of gurbani. Relationships should be based on love sexual affection is an expression of that love but not the basis of the relationship. Interpretation of bani Mahalla 3, page 788 “They are not said to be husband and wife, who merely sit together. They alone are called husband and wife, who have one light in two bodies." This quote is used to support heterosexual marriage but in the real translation this quote is not gender specific the translation is just easier to say man and wife. Nobody has an inherent right to interpret the scripture at their own leisure, the guru asks us to use our bibek if I am not wrong this means a discerning sense of discrimination, to say its against nature is ridiculous there is nothing to suggest that humans were put on this earth to procreate this as we know is not mans purpose the bani is in front of us we can either read it as it is or try to interpret it in an attempt to further our political gains. Time is the true test of falsehood we can either keep on waiting for homosexuals to slip up and do something to be condemned for or we can co-exist in harmony. The winner of the diversity competition for the sikh coalition has given an excellent portrayal of respect for the 'other'. The other exists in direct contrast to the former whilst both parties stick to their respective identities they reinforce and further define one anothers individual characteristics this is the only solution for a plural society, who would have thought that atheists would (ying-yang) be able to teach the theists a thing or two about mutual co-existence. Those who still have hatred or fear towards homosexuals need to do some naam simran to get rid of their krodh and lobh respectively, and the clergy need to do some naam simran to get rid of their ahankar for feeling they have a special right to condemn/excommunicate/punish a section of society. We all need to do some naam simran to get rid of our attachment (moh) to this world by giving a damn where people shove their bits. Sexuality is fluid and comes by virtue of our past karmas these karmas were neither good nor bad actions they were an expression of our individuality. Tradition By tradition the sikh people in punjab and diaspora marry within their caste system even though the practice is denounced by the sikh faith, by tradition hindu widows should immolate themselves on their husbands funeral pyre. So to conclude folks there is no problem with sexual orientation all people have a place on this earth and unions are not for creation such a purpose is not compatible with Sikhism. If I have offended you I apologise profusely a thousand times I don’t mean any animosity i am just passionate about sikhism NOT about homosexuality, but if someone is going to introduce a subject regarding sikhi for the first time, which by the way I commend the clergy for, I feel it is a learning curve for all of us to engage in debate that way we can find a position that is amicable to all of us and that my friends is SARBAT DA BHALLA. Ps: Let me pose a question to yourself: what are the possible short-term and long-term effects of gay-marriage that you fear to be so damning within Sikhism? And why are we looking to mortals is our guru not here today what does our guru say on this issue, I will tell you he says you are free to choose as a sovereign spirit. :e: :nihungsmile: :TH:

Rajs has been infecting the sikh philosophy website also I think this is the best article for you to learn about sikhism it even allows you to understand why christianity is incompatible with sikh thought when claiming the divinity of christ happy reading The Sikh Doctrine The Sikhism The Vision of Sikhism for a New Civilization Metaphysical Pillars Sikhism on the Eve of 21st Century The Sikh Doctrine Political Pluralism Sikhism as a Renaissance Movement The World Historical Mission of Sikhism Contributor: Dr. Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia Vice-Chancellor Punjabi University, Patiala(INDIA) The Sikhism Over 500 years ago in sub-continental India arose Sikhism - one of the five major world religions - as a unique renaissance and resurgence of the human spirit. The spirit of man, realizing afresh its kinship, its integral bond, with the Spirit Divine, liberated itself out of the obsolescent, dogma-encrusted existence and came into its own, efflorescently, as a dynamic force, a creative impulse. The elan vital of Sikhism had great potential for ushering in a new civilization qualitatively different from the earlier Indic and Hindu civilizations. Thereby raising humanity to a new level of cultural and civilizational progress. In its universal dimension Sikhism introduced a new concept of man, of society and state and in its historical dimension, this religion awakened medieval Indian society out of its collective amnesia, its inertia, and shook it out of its bondage to the dead past. The Vision of Sikhism for a New Civilization But the vision of Sikhism for a new civilization, for a new post-feudal, trans-capitalist, socio - politico - economic dispensation could not be realized owing to the feudalization of the Sikh movement soon after the Banda Bahadur period, with the correlative processes of the Brahminization of Sikh society & Vedanticization of the Sikh doctrine. The futuristic vision of Sikhism has become all the more relevant and significant for humanity in the 21st century and the third millennium. Sikh religion with its holistic world view can and should play a leading role in evolving the ideology of the global civilization and in shaping its institutional super-structure with the Khalsa as the embodiment of the Spirit-in-history - a concept introduced by Sikh philosophy for the first time in the world's speculative and sociological thought, as we shall see later.Modern Western civilization which, in a sense, gave rise to a particular kind of 'modern' world view and vision, was based on certain fundamentals that made it different from medieval and ancient civilizations on the one hand and would, hopeably, distinguish it from the post-modernist 21st century and the third millennium global civilization on the other hand. The ideational postulates of modern Western civilization, evolved in different ways, involved the dichotomy and dialectic of the noumenal and the phenomenal; of the spiritual and the terrestrial; of mind and matter; of soul and body; of value and fact; and of subject and object. The sociological correlates of this world-view, humanism, secularism, unitarian polity, cultural hegemony and homogenization etc., refer back to the same dichotomy and dualism. Empiricism asserted that the sensory, phenomenal world was the only (knowable) reality. Humanism (distinguishable from the post-modernist kind) made man the measure of all things, without any reference to any transcendental reality or principle. History asserted that values were of a relative nature. Existentialism postulated the priority of individual existence over essence, over transcendental ideals and ideas. Secularism which in the form of so-called secular nationalism became the ideology of modern nation-state, was again based on the separating division of the secular and the religious domain. This kind of secularism, or secular nationalism, conceded no conceptual room to religious minorities, religious identities and religious institutions. Metaphysical Pillars The dualism under reference was based on the following metaphysical pillars : Metaphysically, it was held that reality is of material nature, with a rational structure, having an atomistic composition; independently existing (material) objects and phenomena could be known, independently of the subject through reason with its analytic-reductionist methodology.The all-powerful, mighty reason reigned supreme in nature, history and society during the past few centuries of the modern era, uptill the first half of the 20th century when it faced an impasse which, in a sense, was the impasse of modern Western civilization and its dichotomous world-view and dualistic ideational postulates. The necessitated a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking, a post-modernist vision. This does not mean going back from reason but going beyond reason to the realm of spirit. This means a shift from the old concept of reality in the sense of static being to the new concept of reality in the sense of dynamic becoming. The new concept, termed "post-modernist view", discards static categories of dualism -- both ontological and epistemological; for the new vision reality is of the nature of an organism involving integral bonds, linkages, inter-connections from the terrestrial to the transcendental. Reality is not an assortment of unrelated objects or coincidentally related phenomena; it is, rather, a web of relations, a network of systems nesting in systems of wholes-within-wholes. Reality is, thus, knowable through "systems thinking" replacing the analytic-reductionist methodology of reason. On ontological level, the new conception envisions reality as Spirit which instantiates itself in organismic relationships between (the earlier categories of) the noumenal and the phenomenal; between the individual and society, and between man's religious and secular life -- all seen as interwoven into distinct configurations, all interlocked in wholes-within-wholes in a network wherein the identity of each component is recognised, while being a part of the whole. This is not merely an abstract metaphysical concept but a holistic viewpoint that has revolutionary implications on social, political, economic, religious and cultural levels. This constitutes the ideational founding of a new global civilization of the future which would be based on the notion of spirit in the same way that modern Western civilization was built up on the concept of reason. Sikhism on the Eve of 21st Century On the eve of 21st century and the third millennium, mankind is turning to religion in a new way, as the Spirit has manifested itself from time to time in religious revelations. In this context, Sikhism, with its futuristic vision, can play a leading role in evolving the ideology of the coming global civilization. Sikhism is distinct among world religions in that its basic category is spirit and not being; its vision is holistic and not dualistic. For the Sikh religion, God is the creative Spirit (Karta Purakh) distinguishable from, say, the Vedantic and Vedanta-based religions for which Brahman is Sat (Being), Chit (Consciousness) and Anand (Bliss), but not Creator. Before Nanakian speculative throught, whenever the notion of Spirit appeared, it was seen as manifesting and revealing itself in space (nature), in the Word and in the human soul. With Sikh thought comes, for the first time in the history of speculative thought of the world, the concept of the Spirit descending, through the Guru-medium, in (historical)time, in history. The spiritual aspect of the Spirit (spiritual sovereignty)becomes immanent in the Word (Guru Granth) and the temporal aspect (temporal sovereignty) becomes determinate in the societal category known in Sikh parlance as the Khalsa Panth, Guru Panth. The Khalsa is my determinate form I am immanent in the Khalsa -Guru Gobind Singh The Khalsa is, verily, the Spirit-in-history created by the Divine Will in order to usher in a new dispensation on earth : religious, social cultural, economic and political. This, verily, is the phenomenal form of the time-transcendent Spirit manifest in the corporate being of the Khalsa -Prahilad Rai This new dispensation which can provide a blueprint for the emerging global civilization is characterised by liberalism, (new) humanism, universalism and pluralism (religious, cultural and political) - these being the four pillars of the edifice of Sikhism in its institutional form. Liberalism means liberation from dogmatised belief, and from rites and rituals, from static, never-changing code of conduct: The fetters around the feet are sundered The Guru has emancipated me. -Guru Arjan Dev The Sikh Doctrine It is significant to note that in the Sikh doctrine, there is no institution, comparable to the Roman Catholic Church, with an inherent right to interpretation of the Bani; prescription of code of conduct and excommunication from the community of faith-followers. There is no clergy, no theocrat in the Sikh religion. A Sikh has a direct, unbreakable, integral linkage and communion with his Guru and God (Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa). He has the inherent right to seek for himself the enlightenment from the Guru Shabda and mould his life accordingly. He is a free, sovereign spirit, as he partakes of the Divine sovereignty. This is the meaning of the archetypal self-surrender of the first five Sikhs at the creation of the Khalsa. From here also flows the second postulate of Sikhism : humanism (radically different from the old conception). The first Prophetic message of Guru Nanak was: "No Hindu, No Muslim " Here, the first Prophet of Sikhism was stressing the primacy of the human spirit, being the primary identity, that partakes of the essence of the Divine Spirit. The secondary identity (or identities) depending on the variables of time and space are significant, as the primary essence becomes determinate in and through a network of secondary identities - religious, ethnic, cultural, regional, etc. For the same reason, these secondary identities should not be homogenised into a single all-embracing identity. The new humanistic approach of Sikhism, stressing the primary human identity of man, provides a new basis for the equality of men and women and of communities whether in majority or minority. Guru Gobind Singh expresses the essential humanism of the Sikh religion in its sociological form in these words : Recognise all humanity as one in spirit. Universalism is another cardinal value in Sikhism. Sikhism is a universal religion in two senses of the expression. First, it is not bracketed with a particular ethnicity (Punjabiat), or a particular region (the Punjab). The whole earth having been revered as "mother earth" by Guru Nanak in his Japji, there is no particularised promised or holy land. The different ethnicities of the first five Sikhs (Panj Pyare), baptised by Guru Gobind Singh while creating the Order of the Khalsa, imply that Sikhism is not an ethnicity-specific, region-specific religion. Guru Gobind Singh says that God cannot be bound to a particular creed, place or era (Jaap Sahib), nor can He be bracketed with any particular ethnicity ( Akal Ustat ). He is the Lord of all the peoples of the world. This makes Sikhism a truly universal religion, unicentral on religious level, while being pluricentral on cultural, ethnic and social levels. Sikhism is "universal" in another sense also. Its primary essential concerns -- social, political, cultural economic -- are of a universal nature, embracing humanity as a whole. Unfortunately, during the last hundred years or so, the universal concerns of Sikhism have become subordinate to and eclipsed by the existential concerns of the Sikhs in Punjab. The time has come to demarcate the two sets of concerns so that the universal concerns of Sikhism - such as human rights; eco-system; depletion of natural resources; effects of value-neutral technology; sustainable models of growth and development; equitable distribution of wealth; terrorism, particularly state-sponsord terrorism, etc. could come to the centrestage. Pluralism - both political and religious - is another characteristic of the Sikh vision of social reality. Monolithic, unitarian polity cannot ensure co-equal participation and partnership of different layers of hierarchised societies and of the minorities in particular. Political pluralism alone can realise participation and partnership of all sections of society on an equal footing in a truly representative dispensation as envisioned by Guru Arjan, the fifth Prophet of Sikhism. All are co -equal partners in The commonwealth Political Pluralism Political pluralism is correlative to religious pluralism, which simply does not mean the co-existence of different faiths and various religious communities, or even equal respect for all religions. What is more important is the conceptual basis of religious pluralism. Here again, the distinctiveness of Sikhism - which should not be interpreted as it superiority in theomachy-needs to be highlighted. Sikhism does not claim to be the full and final revelation of God, the full and final determination of the Spirit, the full and final revelation of all that is known and knowable; such absolutist, exclusivist claims lead to religious fundamentalism and intolerance. The infinity of the Divine attributes and aspects, the relativity of different revelations and the limitations of human cognition- as stressed by Guru Nanak in his Japji-leave no room for the concept of " full and final relvelation." Hence the co-validity of all revelations in their respective contexts, and of different paths to God, as proclaimed by Guru Gobind Singh . Same are the temple and the mosque And same are the forms of worship. Sikhism as a Renaissance Movement Sikhism, which once arose as a mighty renaissance movement, a revolutionary force, a dynamic praxis, for paving the path of self-sublimating, self-realizing salvation of the soul in the world hereafter, as well as a new dispensation on earth (halemi raj in the language of the fifth Prophet of Sikhism, Guru Arjun), is today in need of an internal reformation and renaissance. The first Sikh reformation arose in the last quarter of the 19th century in the context of a deep crisis after the loss of political power in the year 1849 coupled with the correlative processes of feudalization of the Sikh movement, Brahminization of the Sikh society & the Vedanticization of the Sikh doctrine. At that time the very physical survival of the Sikhs was overshadowed by a question mark. No wonder, then, that the existential concerns of the Sikhs -- social, cultural economic, political -- took precedence over the universal concerns of Sikhism. This lopsidedness that has continued for over 100 years has to be rectified so that the universal concerns of Sikhism, referred to earlier, come back to the centrestage. The first Sikh reformation also led to a symbiotic relationship between religion and politics, between the religious and political institutions, resulting in exploitation of the one by the other and vice versa, depending upon the exigencies of the given situation. This symbiotic relationship, forged on a mistaken, distorted concept of miri - piri unity, needs to be immediately brought to an end, so that the religious and the political praxis operate, autonomously, in their respective domains. The concept of miri - piri unity in essence means that Sikhism embraces the other-worldly spiritual concerns of the soul as much as the this-worldly temporal concerns of man, society and state, but without coalescence of the religious and the political power, authority and institutions. The miri - piri unity does not mean a monistic unity but a differentiated unity. The trend towards emergence of clergy in contemporary Sikhism, including the Takht clergy - appropriating unto itself authority, power and jurisdiction which do not doctrinally and historically vest in it - needs to be forcefully countered. The clergy( There being no anointed clergy in Sikh religion, there is no Church-like authority or institution with inherent right to interpret the Scripture, to excommunicate a Sikh from the community and to prescribe a code of conduct for a Sikh who is directly responsible for his deeds to his Guru and God. There is no theocrat, no clerico-cracy. The Akal Takht jathedar is not a theocrat or a vice-deity presiding over the temporal affairs of this sacred institution of Sikhism; he is a sewadar, or at best of spokesman of the voice and will of the community articulated through intra-community deliberations in different forums, particularly the democratically elected Sikh institutions.) as a mediatory class or institution is not envisaged in Sikhism, there being a direct relationship between a Sikh and his Guru and God (Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa ). The growing role of the clergy, particularly of the Takht clergy, is leading not only to ritualization of contemporary Sikh society but also to suppressing and repressing the essential liberalism of Sikhism. Sikhism blended a spiritual vision of life with the spirit of enquiry and a liberated state of mind. This catholicity of outlook -- an essential element of Sikh liberalism - is threatened by the growing clout of the clergy which, as a class, breeds on self-appropriated authoritarianism with inherent tendency towards intolerance, sectarianism and dogmatism. Recognition of and respect for difference; acceptance of the Other; co-validity of multiple viewpoints - these are essential aspects of the Sikh value pattern. Another aspect of the internal Sikh reformation and renaissance relates to the evolutionary relationship between the universal and the historical dimension. A living religion, particularly of institutional type, has to, synergically, develop in both universal and historical dimension. Without the universal dimension developing simultaneously, an institutional religion dries up as a sect; and without the historical dimension it ends up (at best) as an abstrtact thought-system. In the case of Sikhism, after the Guru-period, the synergical, evolutionary unity of the universal and the historical dimension broke down. This break-down leads to an agonizing question : Has the universal in Sikhism exhausted itself in one particular historical determination - ethnicized Sikhism in its contemporary Punjabi form ? Or whether in future, t here would evolve many more historical determinations of the universal in Sikhism ? This question relates to the historical variables of region and ethnicity. As stressed earlier, Sikhism, essentially, is neither a region - specific nor an ethnicity - specific religion. The Punjab is the natural habitat of the Sikh community but not in the sense of the ' promised land ' or (exclusively) the holy land. De-regionalization of contemporary Sikhism is an essential aspect of the second (internal) Sikh renaissance. The World Historical Mission of Sikhism Sikhism is also not an ethnicity - specific religion. De-ethnicization of contemporary Sikhism is also essential for the second Sikh reformation, if this religion is to really become a universal religion. The mere presence of the Punjabi/Indian Sikhs in different countries - the Sikh diaspora - does not mean that it has already become a universal religion. De-ethnicization of contemporary Sikhism is also necessary for it to become a universal religion. Christianity arose within the Jewish milieu, Jewish tradition, Jewish ethnicity. But St. Paul took Christianity beyond its original Jewish milieu, tradition and ethnicity. A similar development is required for Sikhism. In this context, the historical role of Siri Singh Sahib Bhai Sahib Harbhajan Singh Khalsa Yogiji in implanting Sikhism in American milieu and ethnicity is, in a sense, comparable to that of St. Paul. The American Singhs -- the American followers of Yogiji - constitute a historical experiment towards universalization of Sikhism, in contemporary context. The Punjabi/Indian Sikhs in North America also, transcending their nostalgia about the Punjabi Sikh identity, should culturally contribute towards the making of the American Sikh identity. Religiously unifocal, but culturally multifocal : that is how contemporary Sikhism would have to evolve to realize its World historical mission. In realizing the World historical mission of Sikhism the present state of Sikh studies would also have to be kept in view. Over the past few decades Sikh studies abroad by Western scholars have been done from the Christian perspective which has also conditioned the approach and methodology of the Indian Sikh scholars overawed by the Western scholars. In fact, the intellectual agenda of the meta-narrative of Sikhism has been set by the Western scholars with the indigenous Sikh scholars remaining bogged down in reacting to the Sikh discourse of the Western scholars. The Sikh scholars would have to go beyond their present reactive role to a really pro-active role in setting the ideational agenda of discourse about Sikhism. This is essential for two main reasons. The Christian and the Sikh perspective constitute, epistemologically, two different frames of reference, the categories of which are not symmetrical (For instance, the Sikh conception of the Word is qualitatively different from the Christian view. In Sikh thought, the Spirit, besides becoming immanent in the societal category Khalsa, also, becomes determinate in the Word (bani) which, as such, is elevated and revered as the eternal 'living' Guru in the form of Sri Guru Granth. Christian thought holds that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. " The Word became 'flesh', that is, incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ who, as such, is the focal point of the faith and worship and not the Bible, the Scripture. That is why the Western studies of the Sikh Scripture are so off the tangent, for the concept of the Divine spirit becoming determinate in the Word (bani) is incomprehensible in the Christian perspective in which the process is reversed : The Word becoming embodied in the person of Jesus Christ.). Secondly, a religious tradition needs to be approached in terms of its own self-definition, in terms of its self-defined identity. This, epistemologically, requires an unmediated experiential insight-through socio-religious osmosis - which is not possible in the case of the ' outsiders ', whatever be their cerebral brilliance or methodological novelties. There are some of the urgent issues that contemporary Sikhism would have to address, before it re-starts on the path of realizing its World historical mission. It is imperative for the Sikh renaissance today to re-discover its essential values, to re-focus its vision, to update its praxis. This is how Sikhism would be able to impart its futuristic vision to the ideology of the new World civilization in the offing. This is how it would be in a position to play its role in the evolution of the institutional web of the 21st century society and the third millennium civilization. This is how the Khalsa once again would become the motor force of history : the Spirit-in-history.