Raise Your Voice Against The Curse Of Casteism In The Sikhs

[JSinghnz]

Why do people always have to take things to extremes? We don't have to all intermarry for this caste issue to go away. Why can't we just learn to get along? People stuck to their castes back in the day, but they still fought side-by-side.

The people discriminating against other castes don't know Sikhi. If a Jatt doesn't let a Chamar take prashad from the same place as other people, then that Jatt isn't a Sikh of the guru.

I'm from a Jatt background. I'm proud of it. It's part of my blood. It's almost like an ethnic group within itself. That doesn't mean that I think I'm better than people who aren't Jatts. A lot of songs big-up Jatts, but that don't mean other people gotta develop an inferiority complex and start hating on us. Those songs are for us. Go ahead and rep your people if you want, nobody is stopping you.

What about all the songs repping Punjabis, and saying how we the best? You think Gujjus or Tamils get <Edited> off? Maybe we should intermarry with them so we don't have any beef.

Why stop with South Asians? Maybe every ethnicity around the world should intermarry so that we would end up with one generic race and have world peace? Probably not gonna happen.

Respect each others differences and treat each other as equals.

Please take some time to go through this thread and understand the message conveyed here.

WE HAVE TO CHANGE OUR ROTTEN, OLD MINDSET .

WE HAVE TO BE PROUD TO BE A SIKH AND ONLY A SIKH, NO IFFS, NO BUTS.

[Shamshere]

Why do people always have to take things to extremes? We don't have to all intermarry for this caste issue to go away. Why can't we just learn to get along? People stuck to their castes back in the day, but they still fought side-by-side.

The people discriminating against other castes don't know Sikhi. If a Jatt doesn't let a Chamar take prashad from the same place as other people, then that Jatt isn't a Sikh of the guru.

I'm from a Jatt background. I'm proud of it. It's part of my blood. It's almost like an ethnic group within itself. That doesn't mean that I think I'm better than people who aren't Jatts. A lot of songs big-up Jatts, but that don't mean other people gotta develop an inferiority complex and start hating on us. Those songs are for us. Go ahead and rep your people if you want, nobody is stopping you.

What about all the songs repping Punjabis, and saying how we the best? You think Gujjus or Tamils get <Edited> off? Maybe we should intermarry with them so we don't have any beef.

Why stop with South Asians? Maybe every ethnicity around the world should intermarry so that we would end up with one generic race and have world peace? Probably not gonna happen.

Respect each others differences and treat each other as equals.

Well first of all the songs bigging up Punjabis are largely only listened to by Punjabis so it's no real problem. Having said that I don't understand what Punjabis are doing that is so great for them to sing these songs. We're number one in alcoholism and female foeticide. Maybe more people should sing about this and highlight the problem.

You jatts are not a separate race ok. That is just your profession not your ethnicity. You don't hear English people claiming they're a seperate race due to what job their ancestors did. The caste system is what will stop Punjab and the rest of India from progressing in to a first world nation. Thank god the gurus were not jatt otherwise we'd never hear the end of it.

[RebelSingh]

You jatts are not a separate race ok. That is just your profession not your ethnicity.

actually jatts are from a scythian race, like rajputs n other panjabi tribes. also jatts only became farmers/landowners after banda singh bahadur, then bit more with the misl period and then practically every jatt became a farmer/landowner after maharaja ranjit singh rewarded them with it. agree with u tho that jatts need 2 stop this crappy boastin n be-littlin of others, especially as jatts get cussed in pakistan by other tribes. Sikhs r sikhs, end of

[UKLondonSikh]

Sherdil = Why do people always have to take things to extremes? We don't have to all intermarry for this caste issue to go away. Why can't we just learn to get along? People stuck to their castes back in the day, but they still fought side-by-side.

UK = Paji greater levels of marriages across biraderi boundaries are the best way to eliminate the problem at source. Matrimonial descriptions which reference background are one of the biggest cancers destroying unity of the Sikh Panth from within

Sherdil = The people discriminating against other castes don't know Sikhi.

UK = Agreed

Sherdil = If a Jatt doesn't let a Chamar take prashad from the same place as other people, then that Jatt isn't a Sikh of the guru.

UK = Agreed and to be fair, after the Hindu Mahants responsible for such discrimination were kicked out by the original pavithar Akali's in the 1920's most such practises ceased to exist but it had unfairly tainted our reputation which is why we need to be vigilant that not even a single similar case like that should occur in the rest of this century and beyond.

Sherdil = I'm from a Jatt background. I'm proud of it. It's part of my blood. It's almost like an ethnic group within itself. That doesn't mean that I think I'm better than people who aren't Jatts. A lot of songs big-up Jatts, but that don't mean other people gotta develop an inferiority complex and start hating on us. Those songs are for us. Go ahead and rep your people if you want, nobody is stopping you.

UK = Paji i've read your posts. You're one of the good guys that fair enough you respect the Saka ancestry of the Jatt tribe but the problem is other people take this pride baqwaas to crazy degrees. The litmus test of if someone is a sincere Sikh is whether he would allow his daughter to marry a good Sikh from a gareeb background. If you pass that test and your ancestry is whatever then fair enough ... but a lot of people are not as open minded as yourself I'm afraid.

Sherdil = Why stop with South Asians? Maybe every ethnicity around the world should intermarry so that we would end up with one generic race and have world peace? Probably not gonna happen.

UK = It's gana happen one day Paji. The question is are we as Sikhs mentally ready for that or are we gana remain stuck with artificial boundaries within our Qaum when people who are non-Sikh have the greater purity of heart to marry across even so-called racial lines with consideration for personal attributes and qualities rather than ancestry being more important for them.

Sherdil = Respect each others differences and treat each other as equals.

UK = I hear your point Paji but why not let's make the emphasis to demolish internal differences between Sikhs ... in order to ensure that all are indeed treated as equals. The other method hasn't really succeeded after 1849 so why not demolish jaath-paath-biraderi at the foundation upon which it's built - separate matrimonial circles and bakhre bakhre Gurdware.

Well first of all the songs bigging up Punjabis are largely only listened to by Punjabis so it's no real problem. Having said that I don't understand what Punjabis are doing that is so great for them to sing these songs. We're number one in alcoholism and female foeticide. Maybe more people should sing about this and highlight the problem.

You jatts are not a separate race ok. You don't hear English people claiming they're a seperate race due to what job their ancestors did. The caste system is what will stop Punjab and the rest of India from progressing in to a first world nation.

UK = Pretty much I do agree with you Shamshere

http://www.sikhsanga...per-local-area/

[dalsingh101]

Here's a short pertinent video.

Please share your thoughts.

[VanHelsingh]

Very interesting video. As someone who doesn't know much about Panjabi politics and domestic policies it was certainly the kind of way I'd like things discussed. Never knew Panjabis had it in them to discuss these kind of issues without getting into fist-fights. :biggrin2:

[Sherdil]

I think the fellow in the above video has highlighted the main reason why other groups are mad at Jatts. It's because Jatts have, in a way, hijacked the politics of Punjab. I don't think it was an intentional hijacking. It just worked out that way because, as land owners, the Jatts wielded the most influence.

I disagree with him when he says Punjab would be worse-off if it was independent from India. I would argue that India has designated Punjab to be the agricultural center of the country. If you make agriculture the focal point of Punjab's economy, then naturally Jatts will be the ones to benefit. If Punjab was independent, it wouldn't have to worry about feeding the whole subcontinent, therefore it could focus more on industry. This would lessen the influence Jatts have on the state.

As long as Jatts control Akal Takht, I think this problem will continue. Sadly, with the emergence of a Badal Dynasty, I think it could be a while before we see non-Jatts involved in the decision-making process of Punjab.

[UKLondonSikh]

Sherdil = As long as Jatts control Akal Takht, I think this problem will continue.

UK = Paji, whilst I agree with the main gist of post #67 and indeed several of your recent posts elsewhere ... I think an important point needed to be made that, in actual fact, Jatts do not control the Akal Takht, they never have done and they never will do. In the 21st century, the Akal Takht can only be run by Amritdhari GurSikhs (though I don't claim them to be infallible) and therefore it is not relavant whether any Jathedar's grandparents were engaged in agriculture, carpentry, weaving, tanning or trading etc, etc. This allegation is pimped against our Qaum by our enemies and we need to be vigilant that we do not repeat it ... as our enemies ignore the facts on the ground that 80% of the Jatt tribe are Muslim+Hindu ... but they always try to paint GurSikhi as being related to "anti-Sikh Jattism" when the two can never be intertwined as all Amritdhari's cease to consider themselves Jatt or any other label once they become members of the Khalsa Panth.

Sherdil = Sadly, with the emergence of a Badal Dynasty, I think it could be a while before we see non-Jatts involved in the decision-making process of Punjab.

UK = Paji i'm not aligned with Akali Dal (Badal) in 2012. I would have favoured a PPP victory in the elections earlier this year. However, this is another fallacy that non-Jatts are not involved in the decision making process in Punjab. According to latest estimates Jatts comprise half of the overall Sehajdhari Sikh population of Punjab. Sikhs as a whole comprise 60% of the population in the state. Furthermore the Akali Dal (Badal) + BJP Coalition is comprised of a commensurate proportion of reserved seat candidates as well as traditional Hindu BJP representatives.

UK = Nevertheless the percentage of Jatt politicians from both Congress + Badal parties that hold a casteist agenda represents a huge hurdle towards unity + progress for the Sikh Panth, as these folks were instrumental in helping Indira.

That's why it's critical that we Sikhs in the Diaspora try to set a United precedent for Punjab to follow.

http://www.sikhsanga...per-local-area/

UK = One allied point to the above link, is that how do we tackle the menace of separate matrimonials circles and discriminatory requirements insistent upon a groom being of a particular historical sub-section 313 years after the creation of the Khalsa Panth? Especially since Muslim Jatts in 1947 and Hindu Jatts in 1984 didn't really bother to enquire about the ancestral background of the Sikhs they brutally killed nor (as "PanthicUnity" Paji rightly pointed out on another thread) ... if the innocent Sikh victims they butchered to death believed in the Dusht Daman story or not.

[dalsingh101]

I'm really surprised at brothers/sisters who've bought into the Saka/Scythian theories and talk about them as if they were proven, established facts. Some of you regulars might have noticed that I do have an ongoing interest not only in history but also the processes behind the writing of history - historiography.

The truth is that the theories put forward by colonialist white Europeans where based on the most tenuous links, with pretty much no (or very little) evidence as support. This goes for the both the 'Aryan invasion' theories and the 'Scythian' one. It's telling that whilst Europeans demand the most inscrutable evidence for proof of history as our people put it, they themselves can put forward bullsh1te like this with claims to authority. But look closer and you'll learn essential (and often uncomfortable) truths about people, supremacy, imperialism, slavery, propaganda.

When our society started to come under the notice of the British (late 1700s), we weren't doing too badly. It's also a fact that white supremacist thinking was taking a hold of the European mind in a strong way at around this time. So imagine the thoughts going on in the minds of a colonialist supremacist at what he saw:

With a strong warning against using our ancestors actions and achievements for personal ego enhancing purposes today, I'll state that (amongst other things) they saw in the Sikhs/Panjabis and their society/culture: high levels of bravery, reflection, adaptation, organisation, freedom, open mindedness, reform and dynamism. This is written all over early European accounts, even when the writer has been a jealous observer. Now to the white supremacist mind this didn't compute, because here we had these BROWN people who clearly demonstrated values and characteristics that they felt where their especially their own and specific markers/evidence of their own supremacy over non-whites. So what they saw completely put white supremacist theories in the dustbin (where they belong in my opinion).

So how did European 'intellectuals' resolve this striking dissonance?

By rewriting history based on the most tenuous of 'links' that somehow twisted matters so that the non-white achievers they saw before them, somehow became white - or originated from 'white lands'- hence the Aryan/Scythian buckwaas. Not only this, it also served in a justifying capacity for their imperialism along the lines of 'your ancestors where whiteys like us who conquered this place and ruled over it in the past, we are just carrying on that tradition'. The kind of jazz Edward Said spoke about in his famous work Orientalism, which I'll now quote:

"In a quite constant way, Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him his upper hand. And why should it have been otherwise, especially during the period of extraordinary European ascendancy from the late renaissance to the present? {Dal note: This was written in 1978, I think a lot of people would question the matter of European ascendancy today in 2012 - if anything there would probably be talk of a decline but the wider points being made by Said are on the ball with regard to Saka/Scythian theories alluded to earlier} The scientist, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about the Orient because he could be there, or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient's part. Under the general heading of knowledge of the Orient, and within the umbrella of Western hegemony over the Orient during the period from the end of the 18th century, there emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academic, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthropological, biological, linguistic, racial and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution, cultural personality, national or religious character. Additionally, the imaginative examination of all things Oriental was based, more or less exclusively upon a sovereign Western consciousness out of whose unchallenged centrality an Oriental world would emerged, first according to general ideas about who or what was an Oriental, then according to a detailed logic governed not simply by empirical reality but by a battery of desires, repressions, investments, and projections."

(emphasis mine - Dalsingh)

Edward Said in the introduction to the book Orientalism - 1978

Okay, going back to the post annexation situation, it isn't hard to imagine that some (many?) of our defeated people lapped up the idea that they were related to the same or similar stock to the new conquerors, having your @rse kicked can do that. However, in this post hoc analysis scenario we find ourselves in today, I put it to the forum that only the most magnificent specimen of an <banned word filter activated> wouldn't be able to see how the 'theories' worked strongly in favour of the colonialists in maintaining control over the Panjab and that this reality heavily motivated their emergence and promotion. I mean I've read these old colonialist theories, most of them are as weak as "Jats are descendant of the Massagetae, and the the evidence of this is that 'getae' sounds like Jat."

Having outlined the historical context of the emergence of such tenuous and obviously motivated 'theories' the big question for us should concern the matter of why some of our own brothers (and sisters) are STILL swallowing this crap, hook, line and sinker today????

[dalsingh101]

I think an important point needed to be made that, in actual fact, Jatts do not control the Akal Takht, they never have done and they never will do. In the 21st century, the Akal Takht can only be run by Amritdhari GurSikhs (though I don't claim them to be infallible) and therefore it is not relavant whether any Jathedar's grandparents were engaged in agriculture, carpentry, weaving, tanning or trading etc, etc. This allegation is pimped against our Qaum by our enemies and we need to be vigilant that we do not repeat it ... as our enemies ignore the facts on the ground that 80% of the Jatt tribe are Muslim+Hindu ... but they always try to paint GurSikhi is being related to "anti-Sikh Jattism" when the two can never be intertwined as all Amritdhari's cease to consider themselves Jatt or any other label once they become members of the Khalsa Panth.

I think you are being overly (and dangerously) idealistic here. If we have a community that is prone to insularity and they form a majority of an organisation, their characteristics WILL effect the institute. Hell, in the UK, you can work for a firm with only a handful of closet racists in powers of position and feel its effect, let alone a situation with a majority of people who have exclusionist, supremacist leanings and hold the levers of power. Not to say every last Jatt has these tendencies, but those that don't only don't because of the influence of Sikhi or some other egalitarian ideology.