Master Tara Singh

[ekgurjaskhalsa]

I want to know why a man who fought for Sikh rights and home land is not respected in Sikh community ? Why Sikhs have negative views about Master ji .

Please go through this book and you will know what he did for the panth http://www.scribd.com/doc/36619916/Master-Tara-Singh-Souvenir-1981, its time we should start repecting the man who raised his voice against injustice and discrimination .

I have heard that he was the one to turn down Dr Ambedkar and 50,000 other dailts to take amrit and become sikhs on the orders of Gandhi

I heard it from some dhadi jatha

[Nalwa]

It was Gandhi who was against Dalit joining Sikhi not Master ji, more on Master ji

[Singh559]

Great discussion.

I thought Akaal Takhat Sahib jathedar declined the Dalits?

So sad this happened.

[jatwal]

I heard some state of heads in Delhi ( under the British rule) sent high ranking sikh army officers to try to talk some sense into Baldev Singh and accept Sikh empire boundries prior to 1848. And the british envisioned three country, India, Pakistan and old sikh empire.

Churchill did say "without sikhs the war might have been lost", and the british were pushing for the three countries.

[Singh559]

I heard some state of heads in Delhi ( under the British rule) sent high ranking sikh army officers to try to talk some sense into Baldev Singh and accept Sikh empire boundries prior to 1848. And the british envisioned three country, India, Pakistan and old sikh empire.

Churchill did say "without sikhs the war might have been lost", and the british were pushing for the three countries.

Man...

[Jonny101]

Ideally, what the Brits should have done is give back the land to the people they took it from. They took North India from the Sikhs and to the Sikhs they should have given it back. Instead they gave it to the Hindus and Muslims to divide amongst each other.

One lesson we can learn from 1947 is that no matter how much land the Sikhs own or how rich we become, but in today's world it is demographics which wins the day. The only reason Sikhs don't have their own country is because demographically we are insignificant. Before partition, we did not form a majority in any district even though we dominated Punjab economically and culturally. In the end, half our population was rendered homeless and we lost land which was the birth place of our faith. Had Sikhs even been 1/3 of undivided Punjab's population, that would have made a huge difference. Today all Sikhs should focus on is doing Parchar of the Sikh Dharm. We need to increase our demographic count. If you cannot do parchar yourself, give Daswand to any group which is going parchar to non Sikhs like the Singhs in Madhya Pradesh. Parchar is the only thing that matters most right now.

[proactive]

I heard some state of heads in Delhi ( under the British rule) sent high ranking sikh army officers to try to talk some sense into Baldev Singh and accept Sikh empire boundries prior to 1848. And the british envisioned three country, India, Pakistan and old sikh empire.

Churchill did say "without sikhs the war might have been lost", and the british were pushing for the three countries.

I highly doubt that. The British were eager to cut and run. If you read the partition documents, although the British made statements about being sympathetic of Sikh interests, they did absolute zilch to help the Sikhs. They always told the Sikhs to make a deal with either the Hindus or the Muslims. Some British officers who claimed to be be sympathetic to the Sikhs were actually urging them to join Pakistan!!

The simple facts are that the British through their intrigues annexed the Sikh empire in 1849 and in 1947 they betrayed the Sikhs by not taking into account Sikh interests and partitioning the Punjab into three and creating a Sikh state,

[proactive]

Ideally, what the Brits should have done is give back the land to the people they took it from. They took North India from the Sikhs and to the Sikhs they should have given it back. Instead they gave it to the Hindus and Muslims to divide amongst each other.

One lesson we can learn from 1947 is that no matter how much land the Sikhs own or how rich we become, but in today's world it is demographics which wins the day. The only reason Sikhs don't have their own country is because demographically we are insignificant. Before partition, we did not form a majority in any district even though we dominated Punjab economically and culturally. In the end, half our population was rendered homeless and we lost land which was the birth place of our faith. Had Sikhs even been 1/3 of undivided Punjab's population, that would have made a huge difference. Today all Sikhs should focus on is doing Parchar of the Sikh Dharm. We need to increase our demographic count. If you cannot do parchar yourself, give Daswand to any group which is going parchar to non Sikhs like the Singhs in Madhya Pradesh. Parchar is the only thing that matters most right now.

Totally agree with you. In the modern world, it is demographics that counts. The SGPC understood this before partition and their parchar was probably the most effective it had ever been. In the 1930s and 1940s, they were able to bring in hundreds of thousands of low caste Hindus in Sikhi. So successful were they that the upper caste Hindus in UP were complaining to the Congress leadership that so many low castes were becoming Sikhs.

The Sikh leadership has done nothing since 1947 to increase the number of Sikhs. The last census showed that the Sikh population percentage in Punjab has started to decrease. Although the Indian census is open to manipulation by the government, this still shows that the Sikhs need to make an effort to retain the Sikh majority in Punjab.

[Mehtab Singh]

Can I add military might as a major factor as well?

[Shamshere]

Look at the awful leaders we have had in Punjab.

In fact we have not had a decent leader since Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

As a whole, Sikhs may be more successful (financially) than Muslims and Hindus in India but without good leadership we cannot govern ourselves. Please don't mention Bhindranwale, he was a great religious man but he was not someone to run a country.

The muslims despite being poor had an elite part of their society which consisted of the likes of Jinnah. Jinnah was a single minded man and he got what he wanted. Even after partition he wasn't happy and tried to get Kashmir and Hyderabad to join Pakistan. Master Tara Singh may have been good but he was not at the level of Jinnah and Nehru when it came to leadership, they were extremely stubborn men.

We Sikhs never had that organised elite and we still don't.