Marriage

[Singhstah]

Hi Avtar. I hope my reply will help you but yet agian many religious questions have a response which is subjective more than objective. Well looking at it generally all religions be it any, want their children to marry from the same religion. I think its the way we humans have divided our selves. We say we are all equal (Avan allah noor upaya gudrat ke sabh bande) and yet we divide our selves at times. Its not that a muslim, christain etc person is any way different from a sikh. It is just that our beliefs are different.

My personel opinion is some one should not marry from outside their religion because it has some extra complications and the main one being whicvh religion your child will follow, then will the person survive with the partner when following different rules/ beliefs. At the end God is one, but then we have different ways of living and someone marrying another person from another religion may have some complications. It may be easy to say fine one child will follow religion A and the other B, but its difficult in practice.

I have a friend who wants to marry a hindu and she is a close friend and the only advice i gave her is will her parents be happy and will u continue to be a sikh. I asked her never to leave sikhi after all what Guru ji's have done for us. She said her bf said she will be allowed to follow and i had told her its easy 2 say...once sum1 gets married and it is usually seen that the husband religion previals over the whole family. Yet again her parents are religious and she told me that she doesnt want to leave the boy because its her first love. The answer for that is every 1s first love is their mom...moment we are born we are so close with our mom. So if first love is a factor then its her mom and her parents she should follow because they will want the best for you.

I hope i may have helped a bit. And im sorry for any wrong sayings or so :-).

Not only that, but will she be pressured into also doing Hindu rituals and fasting? Most importantly what about the children, what religion will they follow?

These are all things people don't seem to think about, or if they do, they don't care because they are more interested in having a cozy life than following Sikhi.

[VanHelsingh]

...she doesnt want to leave the boy because its her first love.

What a load of [self-edited]. So a man is more important than her faith? I really don't know what to say without coming across badly.

No man or woman is worth deserting your faith. Love, romance, etc., are nonsensical constructs designed to weaken us spiritually. The only 'love' we should harbour is for our Creator. Whilst I'm not saying I've reached that stage of perfection just yet, I understand I need to work towards this goal. Loving another human being (in terms of male-female relations) is artificial. Obviously it makes people feel better, and allows us to tolerate the daily grind of life but its nothing more than a coping mechanism.

Apologies if this sounds cold-hearted, but investing so much 'love' and faith into what is essentially a fallible, fickle human being is just madness.

[Punjabiboyz]

Hi Kaljugi, Its true we should love our faith/ God the most. We should love God, but there is no harm in loving other human beings. It is love amongst us that makes life worthwhile and yes God is the uppermost. If you have to choose amongst God and another human, the wise will and should choose God cas no one is above God.

[Matheen]

It's got nothing to do with loving human beings.

The Buddha Dal Maryada and all other Sampardaic and even the new SGPC Maryadas state that Sikhs should only marry Sikhs.

Puratan texts specifically mention that marital relations with Muslims are taboo.

There's nothing to discuss really.

[VanHelsingh]

The Buddha Dal Maryada and all other Sampardaic and even the new SGPC Maryadas state that Sikhs should only marry Sikhs.

That's the problem Matheen Ji. The average Sikh has no idea about these Maryadas, and dare I say even if they were aware of such rulings, I doubt they'd pay any attention to them.

To be fair, I've only learnt that Marayada rulings are passed on a regular basis, since joining this website. I thought we were all following unchanged Marayada from hundreds of years ago. I've taken time to look into the faith and tried to learn "stuff" that I really should've known about years ago.

Some people - whilst they aren't what we'd term as 'evil' or 'wicked' - simply don't want to know about religious edicts. How would we explain to these people why we need to follow Marayada, in particular this 'marriage' edict that we're discussing in this topic?

Its all good and well me saying 'Love God, Don't desert your faith for a partner' etc., but in practical terms how would this message (of not to marry out of Sikhi) be delivered? How would it received by not only our people, but the wider population who perhaps aren't aware of Sikhi?