Diaspora relations

[Guest Learner]

Hi guys, I have some questions about diaspora relations. 

In Canada in general do Tamils and Hindus in general get on with Sikhs or is it neutral or is it a negative relation.

Secondally and finally , in the UK do Hindus get on with Sikhs /neutral/negative. Also is there rivalry between Hindus , Sikhs or Muslims and if so are Hindus and Sikhs on the same side or are they separate.

Thanks

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

13 hours ago, Guest Learner said:

Hi guys, I have some questions about diaspora relations. 

In Canada in general do Tamils and Hindus in general get on with Sikhs or is it neutral or is it a negative relation.

Secondally and finally , in the UK do Hindus get on with Sikhs /neutral/negative. Also is there rivalry between Hindus , Sikhs or Muslims and if so are Hindus and Sikhs on the same side or are they separate.

Thanks

I think inter-diaspora relations is a more interesting topic than inter-community relations within the diaspora and I will come on to that in a second. But first, regarding your question: There isn't really a generic 'diaspora community' within any country. We like to assume there is but there really isn't. For example it would be silly to assume that Sikhs living in stunning aestheticaly beautiful Vancouver have the same life as Sikhs living in what is arguably the world's ugliest, most boring and dullest city: Toronto. It would be silly to assume that the Sikhs that live in tight, compact and congested Vancouver, around Main and Fraser, live in the same type of houses and streets as Sikhs that live in the city of Surrey. But, when addressing other diasporas in other countries, we have a tendency to group them all as one. In the same way, Sikhs that live in the south of England not only have very different experiences with other communities than the Sikhs that live in the Midlands or north of England but we also have very different accents and dialects. Within London and the south of England there are really only 2 Sikh areas where Muslims dominate and there is some friction and that is East London and Luton. In the Midlands (Birmingham etc) and the North however, the Muslims not only have the large numbers but they also have the 'wrong' sort of Muslim in that they are jungle Mirpuri types. But, when a Sikh sitting in another part of the diapora hears stories from the Midlands Sikhs he or she will assume that it is the norm all over England.  Generally, in the UK, all the communities get along extremely well. There used be Sikh ghettos in the 1960s and 70s but now we all pretty much live and work alongside each other. With the Hindus, there is zero problems or friction anywhere.

With regards to inter-diaspora relations I think we'll have to wait a generation before many of the Canadian Sikhs get a little more educated and lose that unpadh mentality of equating better life on the basis of how big one's house is and how wide the road outside is. An extremely large percentage of Sikhs from the UK that emigrate to Canada do come back home within 6 months because it really is hard to leave a place full of culture, tradition, museums, the arts and life and move to a place with nothing more than identikit strip malls and a large house situated in a place the world has not only forgotten but doesn't know even exists in the first place. As the UK Sikhs are overwhelmingly an inner-city community there is a reluctance to move to the dead and boring suburbs anyway but that is made more difficult when it's another country. Also, in the UK, you have to understand that our houses are built to last 300 plus years, made of brick, the breeze block and then more brick. It's hard to move from a place where things are solid to a place such as Canada where the 'brick' is merely the illusion of solid when it is added to the front of the house as a false veneer. It's a hard to move from a solid brick house to a house in Canada where the houses are made out of paper and, in the case of BC especially, you don't even get to enjoy your own home because you have strangers living under your floorboards to the east, more strangers under the floorboards to your west and another stranger family at the back of your garden where your garage used to be. A Sikh moving from the centre of the world (London) to Canada is just like a Punjabi selling his property in Ludhiana and buying one in Uttar Pardesh instead simply because he gets one 5 times the size there and includes a swimming pool etc. The house might be bigger. But it's a backward step.

In terms of political involvement within the different diasporas, the Canadian Sikhs are at exactly the same level as British Pakistanis. If the number of MPs is a barometer for 'success' than one would have to say that British Pakistanis are an unbelievable success story, for they have multiple MPs, is the Home Secretary of the whole country and the elected Mayor of the most powerful and influential city on earth: London. But, as we all know, they are not a success story. They, just like Canadian Sikhs, operate by block voting their people in. They take over constituency memberships, get their man in and vote him or her in regardless of policies. The UK Sikhs should not be seeking to emulate this backwards method. In Canada, you also have to factor into the equation the extreme levels of inter-community jealousy and hatred within the various Chinese communities that ensure that a Sikh will always fill the void and get elected on the back of the split Chinese vote. In many instances in Canada, a Mandarin speaker will never vote for a Cantonese speaker, a Cantonese speaker will never vote for a Fujian speaker, a Fujian will never vote for a Vietnamese, a Filipino will never vote for the Hokkien etc. This infighting allows the Sikh candidate to fill the void and get everyone's votes. Not everything is black and white. There's a lot of issues at play.

[Dsinghd 230]

Sikhs and Hindus are from India.

Islam came from Arabia.

There is rivalry between India and Pakistan. Millions were killed in 1947 because of partition. Sikhs and Hindus fled Muslim Pakistan.

[puzzled 3,603]

Sikhs and punjabi Hindus get on well in the uk  because of the same culture, not so much with Hindus from other parts of India as the culture is very different.

Some sikhs get on well with muslims but in general You won't see many sikhs and Muslims socializing.

[Guest Be the change]

On 7/15/2018 at 9:28 PM, Guest Learner said:

Hi guys, I have some questions about diaspora relations. 

In Canada in general do Tamils and Hindus in general get on with Sikhs or is it neutral or is it a negative relation.

Secondally and finally , in the UK do Hindus get on with Sikhs /neutral/negative. Also is there rivalry between Hindus , Sikhs or Muslims and if so are Hindus and Sikhs on the same side or are they separate.

Thanks

You do realize that religion is an illusion right? 

Like we're all equal as God's children and creation. 

You should be the change that u want to see in the world and not see people as hindu or Muslim and as just the same. 

 

[Guest guest]

On 7/15/2018 at 7:28 PM, Guest Learner said:

Secondally and finally , in the UK do Hindus get on with Sikhs /neutral/negative. Also is there rivalry between Hindus , Sikhs or Muslims and if so are Hindus and Sikhs on the same side or are they separate.

its neutral and no one cares.  theres no sides.

hindus freely go to Gurdwara and you see occasional sikhs (including the occasional Singh- tsk tsk!) at mandir.  though i think the khalistani speeaches at Gurdwaras upset Hindus.

theres no 'rivalry'.

if anything, sikhs mistrust other sikhs, sadly.  

btw why do you ask?  kind of a creepy question, i wondering what your intent is.

[Guest guest]

On 7/16/2018 at 10:21 AM, Dsinghdp said:

There is rivalry between India and Pakistan. 

 

theres no rivalry.  sikhs and hindus in panjab don't care or bother about pakistan, they just see it as some foreign country and don't even bother about it.  only the india news media (not the panjab one) obsesses about pakistan.

[Guest guest]

theres no problem with sikhs and tamils in uk, which i think is what you are asking?  they get along, each keep to their own things otherwise.

sikhs get along easily with other communities.  you can see that all over India too.

[Guest GuestSingh]

Met a lot of nationals from Tamil, Gujarat, Kerala, UP, Maharashtra, Pakistan (inc. some western born) at work in the uk and apart from one or maybe two, the majority seem friendly and easy-going.

[MahadrasSingh 137]

 

On 7/16/2018 at 3:45 AM, Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh said:

With regards to inter-diaspora relations I think we'll have to wait a generation before many of the Canadian Sikhs get a little more educated and lose that unpadh mentality of equating better life on the basis of how big one's house is and how wide the road outside is. An extremely large percentage of Sikhs from the UK that emigrate to Canada do come back home within 6 months because it really is hard to leave a place full of culture, tradition, museums, the arts and life and move to a place with nothing more than identikit strip malls and a large house situated in a place the world has not only forgotten but doesn't know even exists in the first place. As the UK Sikhs are overwhelmingly an inner-city community there is a reluctance to move to the dead and boring suburbs anyway but that is made more difficult when it's another country. Also, in the UK, you have to understand that our houses are built to last 300 plus years, made of brick, the breeze block and then more brick. It's hard to move from a place where things are solid to a place such as Canada where the 'brick' is merely the illusion of solid when it is added to the front of the house as a false veneer. It's a hard to move from a solid brick house to a house in Canada where the houses are made out of paper and, in the case of BC especially, you don't even get to enjoy your own home because you have strangers living under your floorboards to the east, more strangers under the floorboards to your west and another stranger family at the back of your garden where your garage used to be. A Sikh moving from the centre of the world (London) to Canada is just like a Punjabi selling his property in Ludhiana and buying one in Uttar Pardesh instead simply because he gets one 5 times the size there and includes a swimming pool etc. The house might be bigger. But it's a backward step.

I think you nailed Canada pretty well. At this point its a cesspool of a long gone culture mashed with everything under the sun. Don't come here if you dont need to, we really don't  need more debt ridden panjabis buying up acres of large but empty homes. We have plenty to spread Sikhi here. As for Sikhs here we're starting to wake up and we do have a good reputation with the locals, more younger sikhs see through the gandh of ourselves and our elders, but we still have a lot to do. Hopefully we make something out of Canada.

[MahadrasSingh 137]

We're on pretty good terms, there may be a couple of weird groups like rise canada trying to stir stuff up, but most Canadians don't care about what happens in our panth. My dad and me have a lot of muslim/fiji/hindu friends from his work, they all seem very nice. A lot of Hindus do come by our gurdwareh, but we don't seem to have proper relations with either hindus or muslims.

Most of the indian youth if not sikh or panjabi drop relations with their culture/language the minute they come here. Panjabis and Sikhs due to Panjabiyat and Sikhi retain the most (culture and language) as our community is strong and large enough to form segregated communities from mainstream canadian culture. Other Indian groups can't do that as well (not saying they can't). So overall most of their youth really are neutral to us at best as they lack connections.

 

[ipledgeblue 315]

I worked in a big company a few years, and this muslim colleague always wanted to take the team to halal restaurants whenever going out for socialising or cinema. I knew some of the restaurants are halal due as I recognised a few from Housnlow, Nandos peri peri knockoffs basically.

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

On 7/22/2018 at 3:23 AM, MahadrasSingh said:

 

I think you nailed Canada pretty well. At this point its a cesspool of a long gone culture mashed with everything under the sun. Don't come here if you dont need to, we really don't  need more debt ridden panjabis buying up acres of large but empty homes. We have plenty to spread Sikhi here. As for Sikhs here we're starting to wake up and we do have a good reputation with the locals, more younger sikhs see through the gandh of ourselves and our elders, but we still have a lot to do. Hopefully we make something out of Canada.

You know, those are really good points, and not just regarding Canada, I think generally throughout the diaspora we are seeing a new younger generation who are beginning to open their eyes and seeing the large-scale gandh that pervails in much of the older generation...be it gambling, drugs, drink, fraud or sex. I have to tell you though, having lived in both Canada and England, there are things I saw in Canada among our people that just don't happen here in England. To me, the video below highlights this. This is how some of our old babe and bibian behave out in broad daylight in a public street in Canada, with families and children passing by. He says can I have a feel.....she says "yeah sure". Totally besharm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DapkjkILzmU

 

[Premi5 355]

On 7/16/2018 at 9:45 AM, Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh said:

I think inter-diaspora relations is a more interesting topic than inter-community relations within the diaspora and I will come on to that in a second. But first, regarding your question: There isn't really a generic 'diaspora community' within any country. We like to assume there is but there really isn't. For example it would be silly to assume that Sikhs living in stunning aestheticaly beautiful Vancouver have the same life as Sikhs living in what is arguably the world's ugliest, most boring and dullest city: Toronto. It would be silly to assume that the Sikhs that live in tight, compact and congested Vancouver, around Main and Fraser, live in the same type of houses and streets as Sikhs that live in the city of Surrey. But, when addressing other diasporas in other countries, we have a tendency to group them all as one. In the same way, Sikhs that live in the south of England not only have very different experiences with other communities than the Sikhs that live in the Midlands or north of England but we also have very different accents and dialects. Within London and the south of England there are really only 2 Sikh areas where Muslims dominate and there is some friction and that is East London and Luton. In the Midlands (Birmingham etc) and the North however, the Muslims not only have the large numbers but they also have the 'wrong' sort of Muslim in that they are jungle Mirpuri types. But, when a Sikh sitting in another part of the diapora hears stories from the Midlands Sikhs he or she will assume that it is the norm all over England.  Generally, in the UK, all the communities get along extremely well. There used be Sikh ghettos in the 1960s and 70s but now we all pretty much live and work alongside each other. With the Hindus, there is zero problems or friction anywhere.

With regards to inter-diaspora relations I think we'll have to wait a generation before many of the Canadian Sikhs get a little more educated and lose that unpadh mentality of equating better life on the basis of how big one's house is and how wide the road outside is. An extremely large percentage of Sikhs from the UK that emigrate to Canada do come back home within 6 months because it really is hard to leave a place full of culture, tradition, museums, the arts and life and move to a place with nothing more than identikit strip malls and a large house situated in a place the world has not only forgotten but doesn't know even exists in the first place. As the UK Sikhs are overwhelmingly an inner-city community there is a reluctance to move to the dead and boring suburbs anyway but that is made more difficult when it's another country. Also, in the UK, you have to understand that our houses are built to last 300 plus years, made of brick, the breeze block and then more brick. It's hard to move from a place where things are solid to a place such as Canada where the 'brick' is merely the illusion of solid when it is added to the front of the house as a false veneer. It's a hard to move from a solid brick house to a house in Canada where the houses are made out of paper and, in the case of BC especially, you don't even get to enjoy your own home because you have strangers living under your floorboards to the east, more strangers under the floorboards to your west and another stranger family at the back of your garden where your garage used to be. A Sikh moving from the centre of the world (London) to Canada is just like a Punjabi selling his property in Ludhiana and buying one in Uttar Pardesh instead simply because he gets one 5 times the size there and includes a swimming pool etc. The house might be bigger. But it's a backward step.

In terms of political involvement within the different diasporas, the Canadian Sikhs are at exactly the same level as British Pakistanis. If the number of MPs is a barometer for 'success' than one would have to say that British Pakistanis are an unbelievable success story, for they have multiple MPs, is the Home Secretary of the whole country and the elected Mayor of the most powerful and influential city on earth: London. But, as we all know, they are not a success story. They, just like Canadian Sikhs, operate by block voting their people in. They take over constituency memberships, get their man in and vote him or her in regardless of policies. The UK Sikhs should not be seeking to emulate this backwards method. In Canada, you also have to factor into the equation the extreme levels of inter-community jealousy and hatred within the various Chinese communities that ensure that a Sikh will always fill the void and get elected on the back of the split Chinese vote. In many instances in Canada, a Mandarin speaker will never vote for a Cantonese speaker, a Cantonese speaker will never vote for a Fujian speaker, a Fujian will never vote for a Vietnamese, a Filipino will never vote for the Hokkien etc. This infighting allows the Sikh candidate to fill the void and get everyone's votes. Not everything is black and white. There's a lot of issues at play.

It’s very interesting what you write about the Chinese. 

I would like to know more these divisions within China and the diaspora Chinese communities. 

[Guest jigsaw_puzzled_singh]

12 hours ago, Premi5 said:

It’s very interesting what you write about the Chinese. 

I would like to know more these divisions within China and the diaspora Chinese communities. 

Hi Premi.

I'm really glad it interests you because in so many ways it mirrors our own history and how we perceive ourselves versus how others perceive us in the sense that we could stand on the rooftops and shout all day about how we Sikhs and Punjabis are totally different to and have a different history in the west to the man that comes from Bombay, Madras, Karachi or Calcutta but whatever we say will fly over the heads of white people and Chinese people because to them we are all the same people. I'll refer to the 'mirror image' in what I'm about to say below:

We've all seen movies, photographs and read things about the early Chinese in the late 1800s in places such as California and British Columbia - building railroads and Chinatowns etc. Although China, just like India, is a massive country, nearly all of those Chinese pioneer immigrants were Hoisan speaklers from a tiny stretch of villages in Guandong province. i.e. The Hoisan speakers laid the foundation of the Chinese diaspora but after the Cantonese / Mandarin influx since the 70's and 80's they have been marginalised and their sacrifices forgotten.  (Mirror Image: Although India is a massive country nearly all of the early Indian pioneers in places such as California and British Columbia in the late 1800s were Doabi speakers from a tiny stretch of villages in districts Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. However, since others from other areas and all over India have arrived since the 1980's their sacrifices have been forgotten and they have been marginalised.)

The next big phase of Chinese immigrants to North America were Cantonese speakers in the 70's, 80's and 90's. They came in such large numbers that the Hoisan language was virtually pushed out. The next big phase of Chinese immigrants since the 2000s has been Mandarin speakers and because their language enjoys an elevated status they have pretty much sidelined Cantonese. The bitterness, however, remains in the sense that the Chinese diaspora are the vanguards of the old Chinese traditions and dialects whilst mainland China itself steams ahead with what it calls 'modernity'. The new Chinese will however appropriate the blood, sweat and tears of the original Guandong immigrants and use their history in the west as their own history and sacrifices.(Mirror Image: Indians from other areas in Punjab, Gujarat, Bombay, Tamil Nadu have in the last 30 years poured into North America and have appropriated the blood, sweat and tears of the original Doabi pioneers and used their history as their own collective Indian history in the west.

So you see when it comes to the Chinese vote in Vancouver (other places too but especially Vancouver where the Chinese are so numerous) there is a mixture of resentment against each other coupled with a natural diaspora desire to cling on to and protect old ways and languages in the face of the massive advance of Mandarin in China itself. Diasporas always do that wherever they are in the world. I think the Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan is a good way of illustrating what I mean when I originally talked about fragmented politics and filling voids. Harjit represents a Vancouver constituency that was, in the 1970's, 80's and 90's the Southall of Canada. It was THE Sikh area of Vancouver. Since the early 2000s however, with many Sikhs moving out of Vancouver and into  neighbouring cities such as Surrey, a relatively small Sikh population still remains but power in numbers is with the Chinese. The Chinese however are too busy disliking each other because of regional / dialect differences so they won't vote for each other in an election. This creates a situation for a Sikh to fill the void and this scenario is repeated in areas all over British Columbia.