Sardarji

[ms514]

Sat Sri Akal:

What grades are you folks getting in English?

The story is about the man's before. He describes how he felt BEFORE the incident occured. He goes into lengthy detail of how long and how deeply he hated Sikhs, how he considered them inferior and how they were not equal to Muslims.

The most important and most powerful line in the composition is this:

"The world of hate in which I had lived all these years, lay in ruins about me. "

His description of everything before was how much hatred he had felt...and how this action of one Sikh one day literally shattered all his hatred in an instant.

Then he mentions:

"He reminded me of my grandfather with his twelve-inch beard. How closely the two resembled each other! "

How he had considered Sikhs almost as a lower animal, and yet he suddenly, being so close to a Sikh, came to associate the Sikh with his grandfather (signifying that he realized the humanity present in both and stopped seeing Sikhs as some lower being).

Also, the ever popular 12 o'clock joke's mockery is replaced with supreme respect, as the individual finally comes to realize what the earlier statement "Sir, for us it is always striking twelve", which earlier he had mistaken for stupidity, but later learns that it means that a Sikh is always at the ready to defend himself and others.

Might I recommend ESL? :doh: :e: :nihungsmile:

P.S. This is very much along the lines of Qazi Noor Muhammed, who wrote Jangnama. He spent the entire composition calling Sikhs dogs, but in the end, after having seen them in battle, their demeanor and their ethics, commented that he has called the Sikhs dogs in the composition, but they are lions, who are the strongest of warriors and yet bound by the strictest of moral codes. Both are true testament to the Sant-Siphai Jeevan of the Khalsa, whose life demands respect and admiration even from its enemies.

[Mehtab Singh]

wow

even i didn't read it THAT carefully and analytically :doh: :TH: :doh:

[Sony]

This article is not only about Sikhs... I think one of the most important things we need to take away from this is how we have such misconceptions of people. Even on this forum we have seen many posts were a certain group of people are labeled as a whole.

I actually stopped reading the article in the beginning, then seeing the replies to the article i decided to read through. its hard to read through all that, hearing the things said, but i dont think we would have appreciated the true sig of what he was trying to say if he didnt show how he had really felt before...