The Sikh Revolution by Jagjit Singh

[Jai Tegang!]

@dallysingh101 Thanks for that link. I might also start using kindle reader or something considering the savings and ease of sharing, like you mentioned. I know what you mean about the small number of prints, it's very common for Panjabi books. I knew an acquaintance who studied literature in a punjab college and he says there have been good punjabi authors with decent material that will never go beyond the college libraries. These authors have to gift their books because there is no audience for it. 

[GurjantGnostic]

On 8/19/2021 at 1:15 AM, Suchi said:

I've looked at the content section and started to read the section on caste. 

However I did not see any explanation of the difference between caste/varna without which the book is incomplete. 

Also, I have read that there was no Bhakti Movement in the medieval period prior to Guru Nanak's Sufi influence.  Buddhism and Jainism were and still are considered as part of Hinduism as neither had a separate treatise. Both of these offer their own types of meditations. I have read that both came into being around 4000 years ago.

Sufism itself was discovered by an Islamic slave who rebelled against Islam's strict code of conduct and hence why Sufis were considered heretics.

So until I have cleared this up in my mind there would be no point in picking up this book. 

 

The Advaita and Bhagti movement are pretty well documented aren't they?

[dallysingh101]

 

15 hours ago, Jai Tegang! said:

I know what you mean about the small number of prints, it's very common for Panjabi books. I knew an acquaintance who studied literature in a punjab college and he says there have been good punjabi authors with decent material that will never go beyond the college libraries. These authors have to gift their books because there is no audience for it. 

Was talking to author Roop Dhillon about this. He was saying the exact same thing.

We need MASSIVE cultural change.  

Looks like my book is worth money now........

 

Make sure you get the 1998 edition with the yellow cover. 

[MisterrSingh]

17 hours ago, dallysingh101 said:

I'm slowly (after years of reluctance) starting to use pdf/online editions of works these days, It's not the same as having the book in your hand and being able to stick post it notes in (or fold the page corners) on particularly relevant parts. But I have discovered some advantages to electronic versions in that you can screen shot important pages and share them online rapidly, as opposed to faffing around for ages on scanners.

I bought a large-screen tablet last Christmas exclusively so I could digitise my book collection. It was that or another 2 IKEA book cases, which wasn't happening, because things were getting out of hand in terms of floor space, lol.

I've spent the last 9 months or so gradually finding high quality PDF versions of my physical printed books (because there's nasty, blurred versions out there, too), and then copying them over to my tablet. It takes time and some effort when you've got other stuff to do, but I'm  getting to the end of it now, and i'm pleased.

I would recommend backing up your digital books to an external hard drive or, what I do for extra safety, to re-writeable blu-ray discs. If your tablet or its micro SD card fail (which they eventually do), your books aren't gone forever. You can just get a new device, and then copy them over again.

[dallysingh101]

23 hours ago, MisterrSingh said:

I bought a large-screen tablet last Christmas exclusively so I could digitise my book collection. It was that or another 2 IKEA book cases, which wasn't happening, because things were getting out of hand in terms of floor space, lol.

I've spent the last 9 months or so gradually finding high quality PDF versions of my physical printed books (because there's nasty, blurred versions out there, too), and then copying them over to my tablet. It takes time and some effort when you've got other stuff to do, but I'm  getting to the end of it now, and i'm pleased.

I would recommend backing up your digital books to an external hard drive or, what I do for extra safety, to re-writeable blu-ray discs. If your tablet or its micro SD card fail (which they eventually do), your books aren't gone forever. You can just get a new device, and then copy them over again.

At this point I realise most (if not all?) of the thousands of books I've read in English have been about 'Sikhism, the modren religion' and are pretty useless for understanding Sikhi. A lot of the older stuff (pre and post annexation are very useful for historical information (like Forester, Malcolm etc.), but since they've been published our understanding of the motivations behind writing, conscious and unconscious biases, and the way such works are written embedded in outsider cultural constructs have grown significantly. We might get the odd rarity like Cunningham who tried to be objective, but most works are unsophisticated in light of how we understand written works today. Even post-annexation works in Panjabi can be infected with colonial biases that skews them. So whilst I'm glad I read them, I realise I have had to 'unlearn' much of what I learned from them to get a truer picture. 

I have to say, we are living in unprecedented times in terms of access to material with initiatives from orgs like thesikhbookclub.com panjabdigitallibraray, scribd etc. We can find really informative but previously hard to find/obscure works from there. Including original Gurmukhi puratan texts, so we can make our own minds up, based on original source material, instead of solely relying on third party interpretations. You're right, I do need to back stuff up. I had loads of images/documents on previous laptops that suddenly went kaput on me (that I have to retrieve sometime).     

[Premi5]

3 hours ago, dallysingh101 said:

At this point I realise most (if not all?) of the thousands of books I've read in English have been about 'Sikhism, the modren religion' and are pretty useless for understanding Sikhi. A lot of the older stuff (pre and post annexation are very useful for historical information (like Forester, Malcolm etc.), but since they've been published our understanding of the motivations behind writing, conscious and unconscious biases, and the way such works are written embedded in outsider cultural constructs have grown significantly. We might get the odd rarity like Cunningham who tried to be objective, but most works are unsophisticated in light of how we understand written works today. Even post-annexation works in Panjabi can be infected with colonial biases that skews them. So whilst I'm glad I read them, I realise I have had to 'unlearn' much of what I learned from them to get a truer picture. 

I have to say, we are living in unprecedented times in terms of access to material with initiatives from orgs like thesikhbookclub.com panjabdigitallibraray, scribd etc. We can find really informative but previously hard to find/obscure works from there. Including original Gurmukhi puratan texts, so we can make our own minds up, based on original source material, instead of solely relying on third party interpretations. You're right, I do need to back stuff up. I had loads of images/documents on previous laptops that suddenly went kaput on me (that I have to retrieve sometime).     

I've found a lot of literature written directly into English by Indians to seem about using as many long and uncommon words as possible , possibly to show off. 

We need more authors who write in English, who have been educated in the West I think. 

[MisterrSingh]

On 10/7/2021 at 4:01 PM, Premi5 said:

I've found a lot of literature written directly into English by Indians to seem about using as many long and uncommon words as possible , possibly to show off. 

We need more authors who write in English, who have been educated in the West I think. 

I agree completely. Indian (as in native to the country) insecurity reveals itself in the way they write English when they realise it's going to be read by foreigners, or when they want to impress their credentials upon fellow Indians they consider to be beneath them. They use a £100 word when a £5 word will do a better job.

Technically, the structure and vocabulary is good, but there's just something off about the way they express themselves, like they're trying too hard to the point where it comes across as if an A.I. has written it. Amateurs like me can clown around and throw in fancy words for a giggle, but professionals should know better. Indian writers who've been exposed to Western literature tend to suffer less from this problem.

[Premi5]

2 hours ago, MisterrSingh said:

I agree completely. Indian (as in native to the country) insecurity reveals itself in the way they write English when they realise it's going to be read by foreigners, or when they want to impress their credentials upon fellow Indians they consider to be beneath them. They use a £100 word when a £5 word will do a better job.

Technically, the structure and vocabulary is good, but there's just something off about the way they express themselves, like they're trying too hard to the point where it comes across as if an A.I. has written it. Amateurs like me can clown around and throw in fancy words for a giggle, but professionals should know better. Indian writers who've been exposed to Western literature tend to suffer less from this problem.

Do you think a lot of Indian authors are arrogant ? I have that impression from seeing some of them 

[MisterrSingh]

56 minutes ago, Premi5 said:

Do you think a lot of Indian authors are arrogant ? I have that impression from seeing some of them 

 

What do you mean? Like a chip on their shoulder? Or they think they're special or better than other Indians because they're pursuing a line of work that's beyond most of their fellow Indians?

[Premi5]

25 minutes ago, MisterrSingh said:

 

Or they think they're special or better than other Indians because they're pursuing a line of work that's beyond most of their fellow Indians?

I think they think they're better than others who don;t have the same education or qualifications, which is fair enough to a point

But arrogance seems commonplace amongst 'upper echelons' in general. A 'sociopathic' trait maybe