Balkaar

Are you the Emperor of all Hindus? You couldn't possibly know such a thing.

For some time now I've observed that the more Sikhs attempt to distance themselves from the Hindus and strengthen their endeavours against Hindutva, the more closely they begin to embrace Muslims, and the more open they are to the prospect of building alliances with them. Only a few years ago Sardar Simranjit Singh Mann was openly raising the slogan "Pakistan Zindabaad" after the country legitimized a Sikh Wedding Act ( which was in all likelihood calculated to stir up trouble in Indian Punjab rather than to advance the rights of Sikhs). The horrors that have befallen our people since 1947 seem to have blinded a lot of us to older savageries. Placing our trust in any of the other religious communities of the subcontinent, with their loathsome track records of lies and broken promises is foolhardy. Who cares how many Muslims show solidarity with us? We should be more concerned about our Panthic solidarity, winning over our noncommittal brothers and sisters sitting on the fence, than with the troublesome business of attracting 'allies' from the outside, 'allies' who mean to use us as pawns in their own religious machinations.

Veerji, they called it 'Black Diwali' so that the ignorant Sikhs who know nothing about their religion and who, unfortunately, constitute the majority of its 'adherents', don't discredit the rest of us and our movement by letting off patakey/lighting lamps because they have no idea what Bandi Chhor is. In other words, it was a way to make sure the message got through to absolutely everybody. If they had elected to call it 'Black Bandi Chhor' instead, it is likely that hundreds of clueless fuddus in Southall would have had no idea what was going on and business would have carried on as usual - parties, dancing, food.

Hah, if these Hindus had an ounce of gray matter between the billion of them, they would relinquish all claims to the Kohinoor diamond out of gratitude to the British. Let's face it, if not for the seizure of India by the East India Company the Hindus would only have gone on to be conquered either by some Muslims again (for the umpteenth time), or by the Sikh Empire. The Hindu Sarkaar which has given our people no end of trouble exists only because the British Imperialists, whom the Hindus ironically demonize throughout their national mythology, handed them the reins and gave them the power they were too weak and too cowardly to ever acquire for themselves.

I'm sorry to see you leave brother.

Probably because they're too busy kidnapping and raping innocent little girls to find the time to become extremists. Virtually every single 'Asian' or Pakistani grooming gang in this country is made up of Mirpuris. Come off it.

I've encountered a lot of Pakis in my time, most of them were not sufis. They never even claimed to be.

Good point.

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.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh signed the Treaty of Amritsar with the East India Company in 1809 which prohibited his Southward expansion across the Sutlej. All that was left for the Sikhs was to expand towards the Northwest, across the Khyber Pass, and into Afghanistan. But the Afghans were formidable opponents who knew their inhospitable terrain better than the lowlander Sikhs ever could. The Afghans have never been defeated on their home-soil, not even by contemporary white armies. Like the Mongol Empire, the Sikh Empire was effectively forged by a single, brilliant man, Ranjit Singh. He carried it on his back until his death. But like Genghis Khan, his successors were weak and inept (although it bears mentioning that Ranjit's were much more useless than Genghis's), which is bound to happen under a system of hereditary monarchy and aristocracy like the one Ranjit Singh carelessly introduced to the republican Sikh nation. Also, the Sikhs and their opponents were quite evenly matched. The veer above has mentioned that the Mongols however were much more tactically advanced than all the peoples who opposed them, even those of Europe. Combat in Christendom was dictated by archaic standards of chivalry - a lot of all-out charges using clunky heavy cavalry. The Mongols were lightly armoured, more manoeuvrable and far better horsemen. They used to feign retreat and then turn around on their saddles, firing volley after volley into the pursuing enemy ranks. But they too succumbed to the inevitable fate of powerful institutions, to corruption and infighting. Their empire fractured into several 'Hordes', the Golden Horde, the White Horde, the Blue Horde etc.

Aurangzeb, yes, not sure about Abdali. Abdali was only really interested in acquiring loot and slaves, not territory. If he had converted all the kafirs of NW India to Islam then he could no longer, in good conscience, steal from them or carry out his intermittent raids. It would have been in his best interest to keep India infidel so he'd always have somebody to pillage.

I quite agree. Many of the Muslims I've encountered are decent enough people. Their religion however is backward and dangerous. The pleasant Muslims I alluded to are only the way they are because they don't actually know what's written in the Koran, or if they do, they choose not to take its rabid hysterics very seriously.

Having children put an end to that sort of romance for you?

Try Cynthia Keppley Mahmood's objective account of the Sikh Independence Struggle "Fighting for Faith and Nation". She wrote another one, which I haven't read, called "A Sea of Orange: Writings on the Sikhs and India" which sounds like exactly the sort of thing you're looking for. I'd also recommend "The Game of Love" by Harjinder Singh. Not so much a scholarly undertaking as one embarked upon out of pyaar. It offers a much more intimate portrayal of the Kharkus, Singhs and Singhnis involved in turbulence of the 80's/90's. There aren't all that many books focusing on the treatment of Sikhs at the hands of India - most writers on Sikh history would rather frolic about in the 18th and 19th centuries, where all discussion is strictly academic.

Everything about them is just so weirdly duplicitous. They revere elephants and monkeys as creatures favoured by their Gods, and yet they have no qualms about killing them when these animals become an inconvenience. They can be worshipping their 'mother' Ganga one minute, then filling her up with their coke cans and faeces the next.

Not at all true in the case of Sikhs. Our ancestors were held up as the fullest realisation of manhood in the whole of Hindustan, according to the martial race theory. The British definitely emasculated the people of Bengal (perpetuating stereotypes about effeminate and slight-framed 'babbus') so that they could rule over them, but Sikh compliance was secured by massaging the collective ego of the Sikh people. The Brits arrived at the conclusion which the Sikhs of the time had believed about themselves all along - that they were superior to other Indians. And now, here was the 'proof', in that clever white man's book.

Nor me. I also don't agree with those here expressing a sympathy for his logic, in spite of their condemnation of it. Then again Bhenji, I'm not a parent myself, and unless I'm being grossly presumptuous, you don't lead me to believe that you are either. People with children of their own just think differently from you and I.

And I'm certain that the rest of Pakistan is fed up with those rapist Azad Kashmiris giving the rest of them a bad name (well, an even worse name). That link doesn't seem to be working. I'm not sure how it would affect Khalistan's chances. The revelation that Azad Kashmiris actually want to be part of India might embolden the Hindus and give them more confidence in their disputes against those who don't wish to be part of India any longer, such as a large section of the Sikh nation.

I don't disagree that culture can exert a powerful influence for bad. The Masai culture of East Africa extols the virtues of female genital mutilation, to take another example. But dallysinghji, Miss Khan slept with just one guy. Her behavior doesn't conform to a single interpretation of the word 'promiscuous', which means having multiple sexual relationships, or a cavalier attitude towards sex. All this talk of her so-called 'promiscuity' is untrue and unfair. Of course she should never have been sleeping with a guy out of wedlock in the first place, but the comparisons of her being made by several individuals to 100% bona fide slappers are uncalled for.

That's also true. Unfortunately, we can never be sure how he behaved in relation to his daughter, because the only person who could provide testimony to counter his own is gone. He killed her. A sad waste of life. Miss Khan didn't deserve her fate.

Hollywood/Bollywood's handiwork I think.

I disagree. Left to their own devices evil men will do evil things. But if you want a good man to do an evil thing, you need religion. There's this friend of mine, a sometimes Muslim. He's a better person than me in many respects. But at the bidding of a certain book conjured up in the ancient Arabian wilderness, this good, kind man put his newborn son through the wicked ordeal of having his foreskin sliced off. At the behest of this very same book, he also enjoys the flesh of animals who have been bled to death with prayers mumbled over their thrashing, broken bodies. Such awful things would never have occurred to men if not for the 'godly' telling them that these cruelties were in fact sacred duties. For instance, nobody ever thought to ritually chuck somebody into a volcano until they were told that this would appease some bloody-handed deity. So I am not surprised that peaceful religious individuals can transform into nutty murderers in an instant. Religion (or some religions) has the power to do that.

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As the name suggests, the Sarbat Khalsa were mass-councils where the entire Khalsa Panth gathered during times of privation. It was the Sikhs' system of government in the days of the Misls. The proposals they agreed upon, Gurmattas, became Sikh law - After Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the second-highest authority in the Sikh world is invested in the Panth, the community of believers. Five representatives are elected from amongst the throng - they needn't be the Jathedars of the Takhats (although in the event of another Sarbat Khalsa, political intriguing will probably ensure that they will be). The last Sarbat Khalsa was held in 1986, the first in over two centuries. The Panj Piaaray declared the establishment of Khalistan, and the independence of the Sikhs from India.

Have to agree with you on that - nobody ever talked about burning people forever until gentle Jesus arrived on the scene in ancient Palestine. If the noxious idea of a permanent hell had never been given the breath of life, Muhammad and his Islamic death cult may also never have existed. Lol, your point about the anti-Christ is also fair. It may interest you to know that Satan, the prince of evil and darkness, kills just 10 people according to the Good Book, whereas the Biblical God is said to have personally murdered at least 2.5 million people. Faced with the alternative of becoming either a Christian, or a Satanist, the latter would seem to be the more moral choice :giggle: