dalsingh101

We HAVE got serious problems with caste. A massive part of which stems from the modern incarnation of 'Jat culture' and the mindset it creates. Beating around the bush about this just makes it fester. It needs to faced up to squarely. Simples.

^^^ No, casteists are being sly and making every excuse and obfuscation for their inexcusable beliefs and behaviour.

Sounds like Surinder Shinda and his ilk have been more of an influence on some forum members lives and worldview than the Sikh Gurus....... What more is there left to say.......

I'm feeling that last post!

Says who? Like they haven't been drinking and sharing wives between brothers and buying women like cattle in the very recent past. No, you need to get it in your head - jats are the worst culprits. In pinds so called 'lower castes' aren't complaining about systematic discrimination/exclusion from other minority groups like lohars, khatris, tarkhans etc. who are usually in tiny numbers in a village They are talking about jats. You're just in denial about that. It's usually some jumped up 'son of a zamindaar' who will be perving and trying molest so called 'low caste' girls. We even had a confession earlier from someone who was told by his own grandparents of how jats would physically abuse people who worked for them. There is a longstanding problem in this department jats need to squarely face up to and stop trying to hide from or excuse. Again, a tactic to avoid shouldering responsibility by tarring other people with the dirt on yourselves.

^^ Seeing as jats liked to imagine themselves as some sort of ideal Sikhs, they need to take the bulk of the blame for absolutely and miserably failing to even attempt to practice egalitarianism between other Sikhs. No amount of obfuscation is going to hide that ugly truth. Trying to associate other jaats with your own actions is pathetic. Man up and face up to your societies absolute failings in this department. Your ridiculous attempts to try and blame the victims of oppression as people 'who just want someone to blame' says it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5db7DOrUY

Nah. Go talk to the so-called 'low caste' people who are leaving the faith and the others complaining about caste. They're all talking about jats and their behaviour. Face up to it.

If true, it probably goes some way into explaining why jats are generally loathed so much?

He built on foundations set by all sorts of Sikhs. Plus he wasn't a narrow minded supremacist like your average jat pindu likes to be now. Plus you need to stop harking on about the past and look at what is going on around you TODAY!!!!!

Not at all. I think the average pindu jat is a very gullible person will start following anyone who praises him, which the English used to full effect. This clever techniques of European manipulation (divide and conquer) is what played a massive part in jats acting like complete to55ers towards nonjat Sikhs, with illusions of grandeur pumped into their heads by whites, to keep them generally subdued. Note how this egocentric posturing by jats is in stark contradiction to the Sikh thesis, which hordes of jats ignore at will, because they have this weird 'need' to feel better than other Panjabis around them. Anything based on falsehood will fall, and we are seeing this now. Study some social psychology. Majority effect within communities is a well documented and studied area. Some of us older heads can remember times when Panjabi Sikh weddings weren't the drinking jamborees they so often are now. It was jats who liked to talk like this kind of stuff was some 'jat nishaan' and again, majority influence spread that gundh to the rest of the Sikhs who NEVER used to do such things. jats monopolise Panjabi and Sikh politics (Akali Dal, SGPC etc.), it's only right that they get hooked up for their failings. If a country was going down the toilet, it is only natural (and right) to blame those sitting on the pilot seat. Again, I've opened my mind to this. I remember way back, when Sikhs used to hire church halls for Sikh events because we weren't established then. I'm glad those Xtians didn't have the ignorant, exclusive attitude that many apnay exhibit today. If you want to build some pathetic jat fortress to hide behind, knock yourself out, I promise you it wont last long against the winds of progressive change.

I too am vehemently against such tendencies. I've stated before, one of the most profound things that weaned me away from this was an interaction with dasmesh pita's Akaal Ustat, which uncompromisingly tears apart any notion of Waheguru or dharam being somehow 'owned' or solely belonging to any particular group/faith. I come from a Singh Sabha background myself in terms of literary influences and interpretations of faith and used to be quite narrow minded in terms of interpretations outside of this. I have to say, freeing my mind from such judgmental shackles is one of the greatest things to happen to me. You simply can't see reality when you've blinkered yourself along the lines of ANY particular group. That just leads to the most gross, unsophisticated petty mindedness which looks even worse coming from someone aligning themselves to a religious identity. All groups have their positives and negatives, we can learn from all. The tendency to try and 'monopolise' the truth is pathetic, but sadly seems to be a very common human instinct across religions. In terms of our spiritual beliefs, we should aim higher than being members of some exclusive/elitist groups who are sole custodians of sat. That's most often a stumbling at the first hurdle where people have turned their endeavours at dharam into some ego fueling mechanism.

Your personal example doesn't detract from the fact that a lot of ignorant haughtiness has emanated from jat quarters for a good while now and has had extremely negative consequences for wider Sikh society. On top of this is the alcoholic, barn dancing jamboree culture which has spread to nonjat Sikhs due to majority influence, wherever jats picked that up from. It's harder and harder for the caste loving jat to act pompous because, as someone alluded to earlier, they've got serious drug and economic problems which makes grinning, self congratulatory prancing around about your caste and ability to drink copious amounts of alcohol look seriously demented. Maybe certain people need to take it as a hint from Waheguru to try and humble themselves a bit? In Jaap Sahib Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave Waheguru the epithet 'Garb Gunjan' meaning 'destroyer of false pride'. There are important lessons in that.

I get that, they aren't representing Sikh values. But to try and pass the buck and pretend that these guys have no connection to wider Sikh society, which, like it or not, isn't, nor has EVER been made up of purely strictly practicing 'perfect' Sikhs is plain cowardice and shirking of responsibility. It IS wider Sikh societies duty to look after their own wayward and lost. And it's a shame that some of you more 'perfect' brothers and sisters like to bury your heads to this responsibility.

Newly adopted kanjar culture passes for traditional jat culture........lol

Are we in denial? I don't know the ins and outs of it but if most of these 'Indo-Canadian' gangs are made up of guys from Sikh backgrounds, then running about in denial about it isn't going to help. Maybe we need to frankly face up to the problem and tackle it instead of chasing a PR agenda? It's like when anything good is done by apnay we run to label it 'Sikh' when apnay do gundh like this we slyly start trying to shake off responsibility by making it a 'Panjabi' or 'Indian' issue. From what I've encountered on the web, most of the guys who've been murdered in these 'Indo-Canadian' things have had names clearly pointing to Panjabi Sikh backgrounds.

I wasn't calling all music a stench. Just the crappy stuff that has dense people drinking stupidly and imagining themselves to be greater than they are. Simple.

See for yourself - we have plenty of 'no-brainers' amongst us who resolutely refuse to see what damage caste does to our society.

You can try and mask up the stench by trying to connect to innocent sufi culture, but the problem wont go away. That pure, spiritual sufi stuff isn't what people are complaining about here (and it certainly isn't what passes for Panjabi culture today). What you are doing is just obfuscation of the serious issue at hand.

Not at all. It's just part of a wider cycle of tragic romantic tales, this one just happens to have been falsely twisted into being a supposedly jat story, when it plainly isn't even Panjabi. Plus note of very few IF ANY of these stories are about anyone from a Sikh background. Plus if your wider thesis is that all of the garbage that passes for culture under the name of jats was propagated by nonjats (as you state above), I can assure you the wider society such opportunistic singers have come from are regretting this in droves upon witnessing the effect of such pandering on the 'uncouth, barbarian' (your own words) peasants in the long term. Something that has turned into such a distasteful thing that even progressive people from jat backgrounds are now turning their backs on it in disgust.

. Those cycles of folk songs aren't exactly 'literary' because they were generally oral traditions not written ones. So get that straight in your head firstly. Also pop your head into the V&A Islamic section one day soon and you can see a jar from the modern day Iraq area with the Heer Ranjha story referenced on it - that predates the birth of Baba Nanak by a few centuries. So there is a very strong case of some Panjabis 'appropriating' an Arab or Persian tale and them homogenising as some 'Jatt' story. Your 'metaphoric' reading is a modern day construct, probably from your own personal imagination. We had Guru Amar Das Ji start the masand system himself, which, when it became a hindrance to progress and unity was uncompromisingly discarded and rejected by Guru Gobind Singh. The point being that not all 'heritage' ends up positive, and that we have strong traditions of breaking away from things when they become distorted to the point of outright backwardness - initiated by our very Gurus themselves. So even if Panjabi folk music has its roots in 'classics', that doesn't justify clinging onto the rubbish it has metamorphed into, especially when it plays such a lewd role today with encouragements of getting p1ssed and amorous as well as solidifying and creating stronger caste fissures amongst Sikhs, who frankly can't afford to go down that path given the challenges they face in the 21st century.

Got it, it was the poets name. lol

^^^ How relevant are 'love songs' about Panjabi Muslims or excessive alcohol consumption to us Sikhs today anyway? Even that overly macho posturing that typifies the genre feels well out of place in the 21st century.

What did he have to say about it?

I've noticed a few attacks on Sikhs in the US (especially in New York) have been by people with those Latino/Mexican type names.