Austrian Times Puts The Sikh Religion Into Focus

[JagtarSinghKhalsa]

In the wake of the shootings at a Sikh temple in Vienna - Austrian Times correspondent P. Paul Singh, himself a Sikh, has this special report on a normally peace-loving and successful minority.

Although the recent violence in Austria has shed a negative light on the Sikh religion the global community of Sikhs is more used to being in the news for positive reasons. India’s most easily recognized community because of their uncut hair and turbans, the Sikhs are mope frequently in the news than one would expect given their numbers.

From the election for a second successive term of Dr Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy to the recent clashes in Vienna, the Sikh community, a truly minor minority, takes an overly large share of world attention.

From a ban on turbans in France and other western democracies to their assimilation in political systems of the countries, they have been getting world attention for their meteoric rise in the fields of agriculture, science, education and medicine.

Now Sikhs with turbans sit in the House of Commons in Canada and New Zealand, besides India. And a couple of Sikhs with shaven hair despite the ban on hair cutting have been Federal Ministers in Canada. One of them was even Premier of British Columbia.

If Dr Manmohan Singh has given the Sikhs a respectable identity worldwide for his economic reforms and clean image, this buoyant and adaptable community has devoted the past centenary to finding new ways to express its separate identity – by getting rich.

Sikhs are not only one of the most enterprising and mobile communities from the South Asian sub-continent, they also have a global presence. A popular joke in India is that when the first astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon for his "small step for man", he bumped into a group of Sikhs strolling there.

With a humble origin from a small village – Sheikhupura - in undivided Punjab near the present Indo-Pak border in 1469, Sikhism has come a long way while introducing the concept of voluntarism, equality of sexes, casteless socialist society and the golden principle of "sangat in pangat" – congregation in queues - where every devotee has to sit in a queue on floor to partake "langar" – vegetarian food. Also Sikhism was first to denounce smoking besides introducing several scientific practices, including preservation of the environment by growing trees around all places of worship.

Though they fought the tyrannical Muslim empire in their initial years and made some supreme sacrifices for the protection of Hindus, they became targets of hate crime in the Americas after the 9/11 terrorist attacks more because of their physical appearance which resembles Muslims than anything else.

Since many Sikh families had stayed back in Pakistan at the time of partition, they were in the headlines as the Taliban in Swat valley and other areas forcibly occupied their houses to extort jazia, a tax charged from non-Muslims. Sikhs, both in India and worldwide, protested before the Pakistan government launched a clean up operation to free its land of Taliban.

Since partition Sikhs and Sikhism have come a long way. Though their recent history has been dominated more by some unsavory controversies than of image building of a most vibrant, progressive community supported by the youngest and scientific religion. The Sikhs remain one of the most literate and affluent communities in the world.

Not many would know that father of the 1984 Olympic games 192 km road race cycling champion Alexy Grewal is a Sikh. And for that matter, India’s first individual athlete to win an Olympic gold medal, Abhinav Bindra, is also a Sikh. Sikhs who are known more for their love for hockey - they have represented as many as ten countries in the Olympics - have also taken to cricket recently and Monty Panesar has become the first Sikh to represent England, the first country other than India, in Test cricket. Ravi Bopara, who also plays for England, is a clean-shaven Sikh.

It is not only sports that put Sikhs in limelight but their contribution and sacrifices in infrastructure development as well as their role in two world wars have been high. Thousands of Sikhs perished while making the great rail line in Africa and several other thousand attained martyrdom while representing British forces in the two world wars. The maximum number of gallantry awards among non-British soldiers has gone to the Sikhs. In India, too, General JJ Singh, became the first chief of the Indian Army in 60 years of free India while Air Chief Marshal Arjan Singh and Air Chief Marshal Dilbagh Singh led the Indian Air Force with distinction.

These distinctions and achievements apart, Sikhs continue to haunt newspaper headlines for more than a centenary now. It was their Ghadar movement that started from Americas that played a pivotal role in India’s freedom struggle. At the time of partition, they opted to go with India leaving behind their historic places of worship – the gurdwaras – including their birthplace Nankana sahib in Sheikhupura district in Pakistan.

Between early 80s and late 90s, they were again in limelight for their underground movement to create an independent Sikh homeland, the Khalistan, led by a charismatic country religious preacher, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. The movement split the Sikhs. The Khalistan movement led to the shelling of their sacred sanctorum or the holy of the holiest shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in 1984 by Indian army. Months later, the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards to avenge the attack on the Golden Temple. Her assassination led to a pogrom of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere and made Congress their "greatest enemy".

The story appears to have come a full circle now as Italy born Congress President Sonia Gandhi has for the second successive time chosen Dr Manmohan Singh, a devout Sikh, to be Prime Minister of India. And intriguingly, for the first time since Independence, Congress has asked for votes in the name of a man who does not belong to the Nehru-Gandhi clan.

It is a presence that outweighs their size in terms of population - and one of which the worldwide community is proud. Statistically speaking, Sikhs are just 0.2 per cent of the world population. Sixteen of 22 million Sikhs live in Punjab, four million in rest of India and the remaining two million are scattered all over the globe with their concentration in Canada, the US, England, Australia, Germany, Kenya, Tanzania and several other countries.

[sikh in melbourne]

nice1

[hawk13]

Those who shears his hair being a sikh ceases to be a sikh by his action he is called sirgum or headless person as per wordings of guru Nanak to pir bahrudin in macca and sikh rehat maryada. So persons with shorn hair shuld not be called sikhs as unshorn hair is first condition of sikhi.