Us Should Return Stolen Land To Indian Tribes, Says United Nations

[dalsingh101]

Singh559 - sorry if we shifted your topic to the context.

I feel A LOT of empathy for people like the one's in your OP. The wider impacts of colonialism on communities is something that is never given enough attention for obvious reasons. We've been on the receiving end too but didn't get it as bad as some others. If anything, the colonialists considered us useful canon fodder for their imperialist ambitions. A big question for us today is how to conceptualise this period. For some it is something to be celebrated, for others it represents a period of disempowerment which effects us till this day.

I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. :biggrin2: I guess if the will is there and it is strong enough, then I suppose someone will have to take notice.

Everyone will have to pitch in brother! lol

[VanHelsingh]

Yeah, sorry Singh559. :blush2:

Trying to bring it back around to the topic, has anybody read a book called The Grapes of Wrath? It's a great bit of literature from one of America's finest writers, and it's all about farmers and their families from 1930s America who had to leave their homes and their farms because of something called 'The Dust Bowl', which basically left their land unable to grow crops, thus they couldn't eat and survive, therefore the big banks and companies moved in to claim the land forcibly.

There was huge migration to California of these, what we would call, pendu-type families who knew nothing but how to farm, but obviously needed work. California promised fruit-picking opportunities but many folks didn't make it that far and died during the cross-country journey, and those that did reach California soon realised that for every 1 job there were about 50 men willing to work. Therefore the land owners would pay an absolute pittance to the workers (not enough to feed one man let alone a whole family), and that was before the locals would treat the families like total crap because they considered them to be 'Okies', i.e. like the pendu term I previously mentioned.

Anyway, the writer makes a vague point (from what I gleaned from the text even though it's not explicit) about how these farmers and their families were suffering, and how they lamented their predicament and their misfortune, but it was ironic how when the forefathers (and in some cases, grandfathers) of these same families were forcibly evicting (i.e. killing) Native Americans to take over their land, the American people viewed it as progress and their God-given right totake this land from the 'Injun'. I think the writer makes the argument that the God-made disaster of 'The Dust Bowl' which destroyed the lives of countless families was considered a tragedy by these people, but the wholesale attempted expelling and extermination of Native Americans from their OWN land was considered fair play.

[dalsingh101]

Hmm...Steinbeck

Read it 18 odd years ago but I'm pretty sure I wasn't old or worldly experienced enough to fully appreciate it then, although I remember I enjoyed it. I'm trying to revisit a whole bunch of old classics I read when I was younger. When I do, the experience is often almost like reading a totally different book in terms of picking up subtleties that I missed before.

Might add Steinbeck (I think it is?) to the list , though it'll probably be a few years before I get to it. lol

Interesting notion of 'karma' or poetic justice you allude to there. I doubt many white Americans would feel that way though......

When you think about it, Austrailia, New Zealand, America dragging Africans and even Indians to the Caribbean islands, colonising large swathes of Africa. The share extent of western European colonialisation over the last few centuries is staggering. And underlying all the 'modernisation' or 'progress' is displacement and death in enormous proportions. It's proper eye opening to consider that such a relatively small amount of people could do this.

Makes you view the moralisation Panjabi Sikhs were bashed upon the head with when colonised in a different light.....hmm

[VanHelsingh]

Yeah, John Steinbeck. It's a very thought-provoking book. Some of the passages in it are poetic and I was immediately reminded of things from a Sikh perspective and our own painful history.

Here's my favourite passage from the book. Don't worry there's no spoilers.

…For man, unlike any other thing organic or unorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man — when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes.

Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bomb would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died…

…And this you can know — fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.

I do wonder about the 'karma' issue when it comes to the world. Sure, there's karma on a micro scale in our daily lives or with people we know or know of. But karma on a macro level over hundreds or thousands of years spanning the acts and deeds of whole nations and their rulers, etc., I wonder if karma is visited on nations, and whether this concept applies to anything greater than the individual?

As people who believe in God, surely this concept shouldn't be alien to us? If man reaps what he sows, then surely whole nations or empires who have built themselves by spilling the blood of the innocent and the downtrodden, well surely there must be some retribution?

[Singh559]

You better be sorry guys. Nak vich mircha padoo je hoje panga. tere mummy de parounte khajoon je hoje panga

jk lol appreciate the deep discussion.

[dalsingh101]

Thanks for sharing that quote: Both of you, Kaljugi and Singh559. That last bit of yours (Kaljugi) is profound and ju made me da larf singh559, and given teh grimness of recent topics I needed it!

As people who believe in God, surely this concept shouldn't be alien to us? If man reaps what he sows, then surely whole nations who have built themselves by spilling the blood of the innocent and the downtrodden, well surely there must be some retribution?

Well Baba Nanak's Babar vani seems to suggest that India had to suffer due to the foolishness of it's rulers. As for periods over a longer time frame - if we look at global history, we see cyclic turns of events, which empire hasn't dwindled? Today we can look at the proud purported founders of 'western civilisation' the Greek and see their broke arse in panic. Persians had a powerful empire but all is less than hunky dory in Iraq/Iran today and only God knows where these Brits are going to land in due time?

<div>But then Japji, in amongst a list of the bad people in the world says 'asankh amar kar jahey jor' which suggests that their will always be despots, or those who use force to hold sway over the weak.</div>

What you ask is a deep and interesting question though. I don't know how large scale oppression and subjugation of people by one group over others plays according to the concept of 'hukum'?

If everything is within hukum, then isn't just happening according to the will of Waheguru? Then we have 'hukum rajai chalna, Nanak likhia naal' which seems to imply that we can actually go against the grain of hukum?? Maybe a knowledgeable (as opposed to know it all and haughty) brother/sister can elaborate?

Sometimes you see certain communities (who I wont mention but use your imagination) and they have had it so bad from others it makes your heart sink. Wholesale slaughter, disenfranchisement on their own land and the destruction of their culture/way of life, then they have these deep rooted social ills that plague them... Waheguru!

Check these guys out:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/jailing-of-maori-separatists-stirs-colonialera-resentment-7786146.html?origin=internalSearch

[VanHelsingh]

Yep, hukam does seem to be the sticking point. The reason I asked the 'macro karma' question is because of something that I've been thinking about for a few number of years. BTW this is still on-topic but slightly diverts from the original theme of the thread (*ducks for cover as Singh559 throws a chapal at me*).

I'm sure we've seen the martyrdom video of Mohammed Sidique Khan just after the London bombings in 2005. Ever since I saw that video, a few things he said have stuck with me, and I've been trying to reconcile the general concept of religion in terms of what I know of Sikhi and other stuff, lol.

If you remember he said something (very loosely) along the lines of "You crusaders invade our lands and you kill our women and children. The governments you elect are responsible for the death of our people in Muslim lands, which means you [as in the public] are also responsible for the fate that befalls innocent Muslims.....", etc, etc.

I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow, and if I'm being honest, a wry smile at the selective memory of some people. Do these "martyrs" forget the blood their Islamic forebears have spilled in the name of Islam empire building? Do they not remember the Ottomon Empire, and closer to home, the Mughal Empire who were the epitomy of spreading a faith by the sword? Hundreds and thousands of rapes, murders, forced conversions, deaths, mutilations, executions, God knows what else. Oh but I suppose all those lost lives were fair game because the final objective was for the glory of Allah? Yet, the Western endeavours of the likes of the U.S. and Britain in recent years are a drop in the ocean compared to the thousands of years of misery and bloodshed Islamic empires have inflicted on the world in the name of their God. Now the shoe is on the other foot and they talk about injustice, mass murders, and the shedding of innocent blood.

Ironic.

The relatively recent issue of Palestine and Israel also is applicable. BTW, I'm sympathetic to the Palestinian cause as I believe the actions of the Israelis are hugely unjust but nobody seems to have the will to act on behalf of the Palestinian people. But just look at how Muslims around the world rally for the Palestinian cause, and how they use incendiary issues like Kashmir and Palestine to gather support for their cause. Of course, two wrongs don't make a right but this Islamic blind-spot for truth and genuine justice infuriates me. The root of the problem is they think their faith and their God is the only truth and everything else is Kaffir.

Now they are feeling the brunt of oppression and slaughter they fight back and complain about being on the end of injustices. But when they were the cause of destruction, misery and death it was all for the glory of Allah.

So I suppose the above is a rather long-winded way of saying (or asking) I wonder whether the current fate befalling Muslims and their regimes around the world is some kind of karma for the thousands of years of horror, pain and absolute misery they inflicted wherever they raised the flag of their moon and crescent? Their recent suffering is a relative drop in the ocean compared to the amount they've dispensed to other parties for centuries. Nowadays we see how Islam is under attack on many fronts, be it from the military of various countries under the guise of combatting terrorism, and some quarters of the media and their genuinely Islamophobic policies which serve to stigmatise Muslims, etc., and it really does seem as if there is something happening in places that, if you're religious or even believe in a higher power without belonging to any particular denomination, then these events must have a deeper cause and must originate from somewhere especially if we believe in the concept of Hukam, cause-and-effect, etc.

Of course, you could also argue what sins have Sikhs committed in the past that we've had to suffer at the hands of the Indian government for varying reasons, and what karma was in play since then? So as you can see the issue isn't as straight-cut as it seems. But like I said before if you believe in a higher power in whose hands this whole world functions then nothing happens with out His say.

I don't know, I've just bashed these ideas out in a few minutes and they've been swirling around in my head for years, and therefore probably aren't in a logical or coherent order. Apologies if I've offended anyone.

[Singh559]

Macro karma - an interesting concept. Basically you're saying that karma doesn't only occur on the individual, level but also on a community level that extends down the generations. A Sakhi I heard goes along the lines of this (please correct the inaccuracies as I'm sure there are some) : Guru Gobind Singh Ji and the Khalsa Fauj and just finished winning a battle against the Mughals. Many Sikhs and thousands of Mughals were killed across in the battlefield. Guru Gobind Singh Ji instructed the Sikhs to respect each individual's belief system and follow their last rights accordingly. The Singhs left and when they saw the countless number of dead bodies and thought it'd be okay if they simply cut a corner and burned the bodies because they believed it would have taken too long to individually bury the deceased Muslims. Upon returning to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, Guru Sahib asked the Sikhs whether they had properly done the last rights respecting the dead's beliefs and they replied there were too many so they burned them all. Guru Sahib said you had done a horrible act and that "kall nu thode avdi alloud di pehchaan ni auni" "You won't be able to recognize the faces of your future generations". Ties into how macro karma can effect the entire community, now we've got honey singh and a lot of people who don't share the roop of our father - Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Obviously this is an over simplification if one is to assume that this one incident caused all the mishaps today, i think a part of it all is not being able to completely understand all the implications that occurred in history and how it shapes us now. All we can do is take care of the present the best we can. One small action now can and will have a more and more significant event as time goes on I'd assume that one action x number of years ago will have a bigger effect.

You reap what you sow.

[lsingh]

Does this mean we have a case in the UN for the restoration of our sovreign Punjab that was taken from the Sikhs by an expansionist British Empire ?

[VanHelsingh]

@ Singh559 - Wow, I did not know that sakhi. Maybe that's why our Gurus always stressed compassion towards the enemy? I'm guessing they knew that even what we would consider a relatively lesser 'sin' would be revisited on us many years into the future.

@ Isingh - I get what you're saying but then India can turn around and say to us "You had your chance before partition. Pakistan took their opportunity so why didn't you take yours?".