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sikhstudent99

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  1. We need 'education' more desperately than anything else. We need to educate our kom, not only with paper degrees but with the 'actual' thing. Policy making requires an educated intelligent brain which is well equipped with many other qualities such as insight, wisdom, morality, deep thinking, courage, free from corruption, free from avarice etc.. We will definitely need good Policies and their makers!! Do you know the meaning of the term 'democracy? Does an average citizen of Punjab know the definition of democracy? So, you still think India/Punjab in particular can be defined as a democracy in spite of all the recent events?

    I started answering your query but I have only just realized that you don't even know the meaning of democracy. Give me one good example of a democratic country in our present day times and I will know that you know the definition of the big word 'democracy!' Do you see our present day so called democracies behaving like democracies when you read or listen to the news? In my view, if India is a democracy it is definitely not behaving like one.

    Yes i know what democracy is but you do not

    Democracy an anything run by humans cannot be perfect cause humans are imperfect

    i dont remember the exact quote it was from churhill though im not his fan but he said democracy is the worst form of government exccept for all the others

    What would you suggest as an alternative for government?

  2. You should all try and get hold of the December 1984 edition of the respected high quality Indian news magazine 'India Today'. What you'll find in it will blow your mind.

    Straight after the mass slaughter and mass rape of Sikhs in Delhi a month earlier ordinary Indians were interviewed by the news magazine and asked for their thoughts. Ordinary middle class Indians in Delhi, all of them. Businessmen, doctors, housewives, students, teachers etc. Every single one of them....100%....said the Sikhs had it coming and the massacre of them was justified.

    So, you want figures....you want percentages ? Get hold of the December 1984 edition of India Today. That will give you the percentage of how many Indian Hindus are scum.

    Do you have a copy an would you scan it onto the internet for everyone to see

  3. is khalistan needed an why?

    how would trade policies work with khalistan having no ports no ocean for trade forcing it to rely on Pakistan an india for trade

    in a democracy like Punjab Sikhs still elect such corrupt politicians how would this change under khalistan if we can't do it now in punjab

    what type of country should it be should it be a democracy or run by religious leaders only

    would there be freedom of speech allowed an with freedom of speech you have to accept people saying things that will anger you

  4. what percentage of india hindu population is secular an what percentage hates minorities and why?

    considering that the biggest stars in india are muslim like shar rukh khan an salman khan amir khan saif ali khan an the list goes on an on

    there are a lot of secular hindus in india

    what percentage of india hindu population has hate for minorities

    usually politicians will use scapegoating for people to channel there anger an frusteration at an considering india has a huge povery problem

    an many uneducated people it is easy for greedy politicians to take advantage of this an use the people's frusterations an channel it against

    a group for there own political gain

    Jagdesh tytler is great example of scapegoating he is a very corrupt politician with no religion he was raised a Christian had a Sikh wedding and yet was one of the big players behind the anti Sikh riots in 1984 going to the slums an getting hindus to scapegoat Sikhs for there suffering then winning over

    them as voters to get him elected

    But would you guys say its 75 secular 25 full of hatred

    what percentage do you think is secular an what percentage do you think is biggoted

  5. Can I just point out that Sikhs don't have rituals. Rituals are worthless, Guruji tells us this many times in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

    ਜੇ ਜਾਣਸਿ ਬ੍ਰਹਮੰ ਕਰਮੰ ॥

    जे जाणसि ब्रहमं करमं ॥

    Je jāṇas barahmaʼn karmaʼn.

    If you know the Nature of the Lord,

    ਸਭਿ ਫੋਕਟ ਨਿਸਚਉ ਕਰਮੰ ॥

    सभि फोकट निसचउ करमं ॥

    Sabẖ fokat niscẖa▫o karmaʼn.

    then you will find that all these beliefs and rites are vain.

    ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਨਿਹਚਉ ਧਿਆਵੈ ॥

    कहु नानक निहचउ धिआवै ॥

    Kaho Nānak nihcẖa▫o ḏẖi▫āvai.

    Says Nanak, in Good faith meditate on the Lord.

    ਵਿਣੁ ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਵਾਟ ਨ ਪਾਵੈ ॥੨॥

    विणु सतिगुर वाट न पावै ॥२॥

    viṇ saṯgur vāt na pāvai. ||2||

    Without the True Guru, man finds not the way.

    SGGS Ang 470

    ?? Dhan Guru Nanak Dev Ji

    Nor do Sikhs believe in superstitions, hope that has helped Aishwarya Ji.

    True sikhism is against rituals but most sikhs do practise rituals of some form in all gurdwaras

    heck i learned they use milk to clean floors of some gurdwaras at a certain time of the year each year

    Pretty sure the gurus would demand that milk be used to help feed ppl starving an not waste milk till world hunger is gone

  6. https://m.facebook.com/OBD.Services/posts/504174176423989

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    Harjit Sajjan, MP for Vancouver South, named minister of defence

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    Canada's new defence minister is Harjit Sajjan, who has numerous military honours, including the Order of Military Merit, given to him by Governor General David Johnston in June 2014. (Governor General of Canada)

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    Canada's new defence minister isHarjit Sajjan, a decorated Lt.-Colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and the newly-elected MP for Vancouver South.

    Sajjan grew up in his riding, and later walked the South Vancouver streets as a detective with the Vancouver Police Department's Gang Crime Unit.

    He is a combat veteran, serving in Bosnia and on three deployments to Kandahar, Afghanistan.

    Full list of Justin Trudeau's new cabinetHarjit Sajjan reclaims Vancouver South for the Liberals

    Sajjan has received numerous military honours, including the Meritorious Service Medal in 2013, for reducing the Taliban's influence in Kandahar Province.

    "His approach, based on his knowledge of local culture and tribal dynamics, helped senior management to engage with influential Afghan tribal leaders, and led to the identification of insurgent command and control connection points," according to the citation on the Governor General's website.

    Sajjan was born in India and moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old.

    Harjit Sajjan, seen here in a picture with his wife Dr. Kuljit Kaur Sajan and two children, will be Canada's new defence minister. (Liberal Party of Canada)

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  7. Blocking roads,closing shops, striking is not the solution of anything. Why we making other people suffering. Some of them hv only source of Income to feed their families, someone hv to go hospital in emergency. Sikhs are saviors. If we hv issues with govt we can strike in park etc. Not by blocking roads and closing shops forcefully.

    Peacefull protests by educating the public about the issje will win support of ppl

    Not making there lives harder

  8. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/27/10-myths-about-afghanistan

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    Afghanistan

    10 myths about Afghanistan

    In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction

    Soviet troops prepare to leave Kabul on 25 April 1988. But did the mujahideen actually drive them out? Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

    Jonathan Steele

    Tuesday 27 September 2011 19.59 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 1 October 201412.26 BST

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    1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times

    Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is nowAfghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside.

    Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. Though they suffered a major defeat at Maiwand, their main army beat the Afghans. The British then re-drew the frontier of British India up to the Khyber Pass, and Afghanistan had to cede various frontier areas. In the Third Anglo-Afghan war, the fighting was launched by the Afghans. Amanullah Khan sent troops into British India in 1919. Within a month they were forced to retreat, in part because British planes bombed Kabul in one of the first displays of airpower in central Asia. The war ended in tactical victory for the British but their troop losses were twice those of the Afghans, suggesting the war was a strategic defeat. The British abandoned control of Afghan foreign policy at last.

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    The results of the three Anglo-Afghan wars undermine the claim that Afghans always defeat foreigners. What is true is that foreigners have always had a hard time occupying the country for long. The British came to understand that. From bitter experience they kept their interventions short, preferring domination over foreign affairs to the option of colonisation that they adopted in India.

    2. The Soviet invasion led to a civil war and western aid for the Afghan resistance

    Armed opposition to the government in Kabul long pre-dated the arrival of Soviet troops in December 1979. Every one of the Pakistan-based Afghan mujahideen leaders who became famous during the 1980s as the Peshawar Seven and were helped by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China had gone into exile and taken up arms before December 1979, many of them years earlier. As Islamists, they opposed the secular and modernising tendencies of Daoud Khan, [the Afghan PM] who toppled his cousin, King Zahir Shah, in 1973.

    Western backing for these rebels had also begun before Soviet troops arrived. It served western propaganda to say the Russians had no justification for entering Afghanistan in what the west called an aggressive land grab. In fact, US officials saw an advantage in the mujahedin rebellion which grew after a pro-Moscow government toppled Daoud in April 1978. In his memoirs, Robert Gates, then a CIA official and later defence secretary under Presidents Bush and Obama, recounts a staff meeting in March 1979 where CIA officials asked whether they should keep the mujahideen going, thereby "sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire". The meeting agreed to fund them to buy weapons.

    3. The USSR suffered a massive military defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of the mujahideen

    This is one of the most persistent myths of Afghan history. It has been trumpeted by every former mujahideen leader, fromOsama bin Laden and Taliban commanders to the warlords in the current Afghan government. It is also accepted unthinkingly as part of the western narrative of the war. Some western politicians go so far as to say that the alleged Soviet defeat in Afghanistan helped to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. On this they agree with Bin Laden and al-Qaida's other leaders, who claim they destroyed one superpower and are on their way to destroying another.

    The reality is the Afghan mujahideen did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield. They won some important encounters, notably in the Panjshir valley, but lost others. In sum, neither side defeated the other. The Soviets could have remained in Afghanistan for several more years but they decided to leave when Gorbachev calculated that the war had become a stalemate and was no longer worth the high price in men, money and international prestige. In private, US officials came to the same conclusion about Soviet strength, although they only admitted it publicly later. Morton Abramowitz, who directed the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time, said in 1997: "In 1985, there was a real concern that the [mujahideen] were losing, that they were sort of being diminished, falling apart. Losses were high and their impact on the Soviets was not great."

    4. The CIA's supply of Stinger missiles to the mujahideen forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan

    This myth of the 1980s was given new life by George Crile's 2003 book Charlie Wilson's War and the 2007 film of the same name, starring Tom Hanks as the loud-mouthed congressman from Texas. Both book and movie claim that Wilson turned the tide of the war by persuading Ronald Reagan to supply the mujahideen with shoulder-fired missiles that could shoot down helicopters. The Stingers certainly forced a shift in Soviet tactics. Helicopter crews switched their operations to night raids since the mujahideen had no night-vision equipment. Pilots made bombing runs at greater height, thereby diminishing the accuracy of the attacks, but the rate of Soviet and Afghan aircraft losses did not change significantly from what it was in the first six years of the war.

    The Soviet decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was made in October 1985, several months before Stinger missiles entered Afghanistan in significant quantities in the autumn of 1986. None of the secret Politburo discussions that have since been declassified mentioned the Stingers or any other shift in mujahideen equipment as the reason for the policy change from indefinite occupation to preparations for retreat.

    5. After the Soviets withdrew, the west walked away

    One of the most common promises western politicians made after they toppled theTaliban in 2001 was that "this time" the west would not walk away, "as we did after the Russians pulled out". Afghans were surprised to hear these promises. They remembered history in rather a different way. Far from forgetting about Afghanistan in February 1989, the US showed no let-up in its close involvement with the mujahideen. Washington blocked the Soviet-installed President Mohammad Najibullah's offers of concessions and negotiations and continued to arm the rebels and jihadis in the hope they would quickly overthrow his Moscow-backed regime.

    This was one of the most damaging periods in recent Afghan history when the west and Pakistan, along with mujahideen intransigence, undermined the best chance of ending the country's civil war. The overall effect of these policies was to prolong and deepen Afghanistan's destruction, as Charles Cogan, CIA director of operations for the Middle East and south Asia, 19791984, later recognised. "I question whether we should have continued on this momentum, this inertia of aiding the mujahideen after the Soviets had left. I think that was probably, in retrospect, a mistake," he said.

    6. The mujahideen overthrew Kabul's regime and won a major victory over Moscow

    The key factor that undermined Najibullah was an announcement made in Moscow in September 1991, shortly after a coup mounted against Gorbachev by Soviet hard-liners collapsed. His longtime rival, Boris Yeltsin, who headed the Russian government, emerged in a dominant position. Yeltsin was determined to cut back on the country's international commitments and his government announced that from 1 January 1992, no more arms would be delivered to Kabul. Supplies of petrol, food and all other aid would also cease.

    The decision was catastrophic for the morale of Najibullah's supporters. The regime had survived the departure of Soviet troops for more than two years but now would truly be alone. So, in one of the great ironies of history, it was Moscow that toppled the Afghan government that Moscow had sacrificed so many lives to keep in place.

    The dramatic policy switch became evident when Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of one of the mujahideen groups, was invited to Moscow in November 1991. In a statement after the meeting, Boris Pankin, the Soviet foreign minister, "confirmed the necessity for a complete transfer of state power to an interim Islamic government". In today's context, the announcement could be compared to an invitation by Hillary Clinton to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to come to Washington and a declaration the US wanted power transferred from Karzai to the Taliban.

    The move led to a wave of defections as several of Najibullah's army commanders and political allies switched sides and joined the mujahideen. Najibullah's army was not defeated. It just melted away.

    7. The Taliban invited Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan as a safe haven

    Osama bin Laden got to know the mujahideen leaders during the anti-Soviet jihad after traveling to Peshawar in 1980. Two years later, his construction company built tunnels in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan that the CIA helped him to finance and which he was later to use to escape US bombing after 9/11.

    He returned to Saudi Arabia, disillusioned with the Saudi royal family for collaborating with the US in the Gulf war against Saddam Hussein in 19901991. In Afghanistan, there was cause for disappointment too. The mujahideen's incompetence was preventing them from toppling Najibullah. Bin Laden turned his attention to jihad against the west and moved to Sudan in 1992. After Sudan came under pressure to deport him in 1996, Bin Laden had to find somewhere else to live. Najibullah had finally lost power in Afghanistan, and Bin Laden decided it might be the best place after all.

    His return in May 1996 was prompted less by a revival of interest in Afghan politics than by his need for a safe haven. His return was sponsored by the mujahideen leaders with whom he had become friendly during the anti-Soviet struggle. He flew to Jalalabad on a plane chartered by Rabbani's government that also carried scores of Arab fighters.

    It was only after the Taliban captured Jalalabad from the mujahideen that he was obliged to switch his allegiance or leave Afghanistan again. He chose the first option.

    8. The Taliban were by far the worst government Afghanistan has ever had

    A year after the Taliban seized power, I interviewed UN staff, foreign aid workers and Afghans in Kabul. The Taliban had softened their ban on girls' education and were turning a blind eye to the expansion of informal "home schools" in which thousands of girls were being taught in private flats. The medical faculty was about to re-open for women to teach midwives, nurses, and doctors since women patients could not be treated by men. The ban on women working outside the home was also lifted for war widows and other needy women.

    Afghans recalled the first curbs on liberty were imposed by the mujahideen before the Taliban. From 1992, cinemas were closed and TV films were shortened so as to remove any scene in which women and men walked or talked together, let alone touched each other. Women announcers were banned from TV.

    The burqa was not compulsory, as it was to become under the Taliban, but all women had to wear the head-scarf, or hijab, unlike in the years of Soviet occupation and the Najibullah regime that followed. The mujahideen refused to allow women to attend the UN's fourth world conference on women in Beijing in 1995. Crime was met with the harshest punishment. A wooden gallows was erected in a park near the main bazaar in Kabul where convicts were hanged in public. Above all, Afghans liked the security provided by the Taliban in contrast to the chaos between 1992 and 1996 when mujahideen groups fought over the capital, launching shells and rockets indiscriminately. Some 50,000 Kabulis were killed.

    9. The Taliban are uniquely harsh oppressors of Afghan women

    Afghanistan has a long history of honour killings and honour mutilation, going back before the Taliban period and continuing until today. They occur in every part of the country and are not confined to the culture of the Pashtun, the ethnic group from which most Taliban come.

    Women are brutalised by a tribal custom for settling disputes known as baad, which treats young girls as voiceless commodities. They are offered in compensation to another family, often to an elderly man, for unpaid debts or if a member of that family has been killed by a relative of the girl.

    On the wider issue of gender rights, the Taliban are rightly accused of relegating Afghan women to second-class citizenship. But to single the Taliban out as uniquely oppressive is not accurate. Violence against women has a long pedigree in all communities in Afghanistan, among the Shia Hazara and the northern Tajiks, as well as the Sunni Pashtun.

    Underage marriage is common across Afghanistan, and among all ethnic groups. According to Unifem (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) and the Afghan independent human rights commission, 57% of Afghan marriages are child marriages where one partner is under the age of 16. In a study of 200 underage wives, 40% had been married between the ages of 10 and 13, 32.5% at 14, and 27.5% at 15. In many communities, women are banned from leaving the house or family compound. This leads to a host of other disabilities. Women are not allowed to take jobs. Girls are prevented from going to school. In the minds of western politicians and the media, these prohibitions are often associated exclusively with the Taliban. Yet the forced isolation of women by keeping them confined is a deep-seated part of Afghan rural culture. It is also found in poorer parts of the major cities.

    10. The Taliban have little popular support

    In 2009, Britain's Department for International Development commissioned an Afghan NGO to conduct surveys on how people compared the Taliban to the Afghan government. The results suggested Nato's campaign to demonise the Taliban was no more effective than the Soviet effort to demonise the mujahedin.

    One survey reported on Helmandis' attitudes to justice systems. More than half the male respondents called the Taliban "completely trustworthy and fair". The Taliban took money through taxes on farm crops and road tolls but did not demand bribes. According to the survey, "Most ordinary people associate the [national] government with practices and behaviours they dislike: the inability to provide security, dependence on foreign military, eradication of a basic livelihood crop (poppy), and as having a history of partisanship (the perceived preferential treatment of Northerners)."

    Does the US understand why Afghans join the Taliban? Do Afghans understand why the US is in their country? Without clear answers, no counter-insurgency strategy can succeed. A 2009 survey commissioned by DFID in three key provinces asked what led people to join the Taliban. Out of 192 who responded, only 10 supported the government. The rest saw it as corrupt and partisan. Most supported the Taliban, at least what they called the "good Taliban", defined as those who showed religious piety, attacked foreign forces but not Afghans and delivered justice quickly and fairly. They did not like Pakistani Taliban and Taliban linked to narcotics. Afghans did not like al-Qaida, but did not equate the Taliban with this Arab-led movement.

    More featuresTopicsAfghanistan Taliban Russia Osama bin Laden History South and Central Asia

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    more on this story

    Karzai rules out more Taliban negotiations

    1 Oct 2011

    Karzai rules out more Taliban negotiations

    Pro-Taliban leader captured in Afghanistan

    1 Oct 2011

    Pro-Taliban leader captured in Afghanistan

    'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul'

    27 Sep 2011

    'Car bombs and suicide bombers were unknown in Soviet-era Kabul'

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    Mauryan

    27 Sep 2011 13:19

    106107

    Recent Afghan history is built on lies repeated a thousand times over. No one has taken the effort to truly understand the real events that happened. Myths have been propagated by various parties and it has snowballed into a false claim of David bringing down the Goliath. Thanks for the article.

    The real villain behind the issues in Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal is Pakistani military. Hopefully the truth about its involvement and influence on the destiny of Afghanistan needs to be spelled out in clear terms. Too much myths and lies have been used to cover it all up. There is no need to hesitate in calling a spade a spade.

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    jamesoverseas

    27 Sep 2011 14:18

    179180

    The reality is the Afghan mujahideen did not defeat the Soviets on the battlefield

    So what? The Taliban will never defeat NATO on the battlefield either, but when NATO troops are withdrawn it will be felt as a NATO defeat by all sides. Just as Soviet Citizens felt that the Soviet Union had been defeated.

    If you were familiar with Russian culture you would know that Russians at all levels of society felt Afghanistan as a defeat (you still see a lot of men of that age on the streets without limbs, begging in their uniforms) - something that is reflected in the local films made about it. You might want to watch 9 Rota by Fyodor Bondarchuk.

    Some western politicians go so far as to say that the alleged Soviet defeat in Afghanistan helped to cause the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

    I wouldn't disagree with this view. Given that it was a conscript army that was made up of ordinary society that took the casulties, it certainly fueled the feeling in society that it was ruled by a bunch of old men that didn't care about society.

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  9. How would that work? I could take a course on Christianity or Buddhism and pass it with flying marks; does that mean I'm a Christian or Buddhist in those instances?

    Unless the underlying basis for this type of suggestion is that the person taking the course finds themselves drawn towards the Sikh faith whilst revising, and somehow they decide to become a genuine Sikh due to this newfound admiration and respect for the faith? That's a big "if" and human nature being what it is, many would treat such a course or test as they would a driving theory test or something similar. The process would be open to abuse, and dare I say, it'd be a bit of a joke.

    What do you think is the solution

  10. Sorry, you're right. I should have said conquered instead of defeated (they've definitely been defeated in battles that took place on their home turf). but even then it isn't really true. The difficulty lies in that 'Afghanistan', and by extension, Afghans, didn't exist as a single nation or a single people until quite late in history. It was a historical backwater, just a no-man's land straddling the vacuum between two ancient civilizations. Successive waves of invaders and imperialists did construct outposts in parts of what is now Afghanistan and used it as a thoroughfare to access richer parts of the world, but none of them ever really managed to consolidate the entire region all at once. This is why you wont find any shrines to the Vedic Gods in the north and far west, even though there are quite a few in the southern lands that border the Hindu Kush. When Afghanistan finally scrambled to its feet and assumed the mantle of nationhood however, they never submitted to foreign domination ever again - even when somebody assumed nominal control the Afghans never gave up fighting them, unlike most of the conquered peoples throughout history ( including our own people).

    Lol, I wouldn't say I'm smarter than you, my frilly way of speaking just tricks people into thinking that.

    Ahh afghans an pashtuns had bin conquered by arabs hence why there muslim as well conqeured by turks under nadar shah as well as by mughul turks an biharis an the british after secind anglo afghan war who ruled afghanistan no different then how princely states

  11. What political tacts did they use who did they build alliances with

    There are only 11 million mongolions in the world out of 6 billion people yet making less then 1 percent of the population they built the largest empire taking countries like japan china russia iran afghanistan iraq

    What kept sikhs from building a massive empire an ther are 20 million sikhs today

  12. I went through this myself , by myself but I called his bluff after I came clean with my folks after 8 years of keeping quiet . The guy had left the country very soon after the initial attack and then returned when I started uni and used some musilmahs to get my phone at halls from my folks so he could threaten me . It was a nightmare that I had to confront because it was destroying my desire for bhagti , all I knew is the truth is what I needed to embrace and to man up and tell my folks . it was really really tough Mum was really hurt because I didn't feel like I could trust her with my pain but I knew that I had younger bros and sis to consider if they had done something stupid against that guy my siblings could have gotten taken into care and I would not allow that Man to have more power over my life ...pretty level-headed for a teenager. At the time it was tough training but it allowed me to see the others in pain and to help them . It made that guy implode that he couldn't scare me ...and I informed the muslimahs that they too had been used and this guys was a scumbag .

    please do not blame my folks they love us and taught us sikhi and helped us by putting all the hours together to raise us ...the fault is mine because I could only see the potential good in all and trusted a work colleague because he had stood up for those muslimahs in a similiar situ

    How did this man blackmail you

    Had you guys dated?

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