Behind Bezhti

[just_someone]

Vaheguru Jee Ka Khalsa, Vaheguru Jee Kee Fateh

A Sikh defence to all the Bezhti stuff going on has finally been published this morning in the Guardian....

/www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1391895,00.html

Behind Behtzi

Colonial attitudes linger, finding their most xenophobic expression among liberal defenders of free speech

Jasdev Singh Rai

Monday January 17, 2005

The Guardian

Freedoms are never absolute, least of all in multicultural, multiracial societies where responsibilities to co-exist must limit them. Most British people recognise this, which is why the career of the football commentator Ron Atkinson was ended when he made a racist remark. Britain's Asian communities are generally less fazed by colour prejudice, but are sensitive to offence of the sacred: culture and the sacred defines Asians. The Sikh community's reaction to Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's play Behzti illustrate this.

In her statement - published on these pages last week - Bhatti, now self- declared "Sikh warrior", missed the point. It was not the substance or message of her play that invoked the wrath of so many Sikhs, but the deliberate, sensational and offensive use of sacred icons.

Sikhs, like Christians, do not mind criticism of their religion or exposure of hypocrisy. A genuinely creative production can get the message to the right people without causing gratuitous offence. Even satire can work without being offensive. Indeed, Sikhism, like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, has pluralism at the very core of its beli

ef system. But when a line is overstepped, conflicts begin.

The sacred is variable in different communities. Hindus, renowned for tolerating any provocation, get into a rage if beef is taken into a temple. For them, the cow is the foundation of piety. For Muslims, Muhammad is the embodiment of Islam, and sacrilege is to portray him in any physical form or abusive context. Criticism of most other aspects of Islam will not offend - it is even encouraged.

For the Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib, the text in complete form, is sacred. The Granth Sahib is the embodiment of the Sikh gurus and is treated as our living spiritual guide. The gurdwara is where the Guru is in residence and therefore has a different significance than a synagogue, a church or a mosque. The Sikhs zealously maintain the sanctity of the Guru Granth Sahib while being happy to engage with criticism of other aspects of our religion.

Behzti's theme is sexual and financial abuse using Sikh characters. Most Sikhs could not care less about this. But by setting the play - unnecessarily - in a gurdwara, Bhatti disrespected the sanctity of the Guru. An offended Sikh can of course stay away from the play, but most Sikhs feel they have to maintain the gurdwara's sanctity. This may not make sense to non-Sikhs - just as chaos theory is beyond classic scientific logic, the sacred is beyond the discourse of human reason.

These cultural reactions are not limited to Asians. To Christians, the body of Christ is part of the sacrament. Most Christians are deeply hurt when Christ is depicted in a degrading fashion, as he was most recently in Jerry Springer - The Opera.

Nor are these cultural, "irrational" reactions limited to religious communities. When the Australian prime minister patted the Queen on the back in a friendly gesture, it threw the English establishment into a spin. The monarchy, an idiosyncratic institution in the rational, modern world, is treated as a sacred living icon of secular British culture.

Neither

is rationalism alien to eastern cultures. Science and mathematics thrived both in the great age of Hindu civilisation and Islamic ascendancy. Eastern cultures have long traditions of theatre, reform movements and of absorbing criticism. But when a creative work offends the sacred, it loses its message.

The Sikh approach to free speech appears paradoxical. Sikhism emerged challenging both forced proselytisation by Islamic invaders and caste restrictions among Hindus. The Guru Granth Sahib, the text, uses rational discourse to deconstruct proscriptive, superstitious and suppressive ideologies. All the Sikh gurus used practical rational examples to attack superstition and blind ritual. Yet Sikhs will throw out a person who walks into a gurdwara hall with shoes and uncovered head. The sacred is different to the irrational.

Sikhism believes that the rational is as speculative, variable and subjective as any other construction of belief. From that philosophical premise, the sacred cannot be dismissed. Jacques Derrida similarly analyses the subjectivity of rationalism. Further, Sikhism holds that language is limited. The Guru Granth Sahib uses several tools of communication including poetry, music and pragmatic symbolism. Again, a 20th-century western philosopher - Foucault - has also articulated the limits of language.

The sacred may not make sense in the constructed paradigms of rationalism, but it sustains people through traumatic times, as well as giving strength to the successful. Offending the sacred wounds those whose hopes and culture are orientated around the subjective inscrutability of sacred icons.

Fifty years after the end of colonialism, most British people are comfortable living with people of different colours. But many are still uncomfortable with different cultures. The legacy of colonialism lingers, now disguised as a defence of "free speech". Ironically, it finds its most xenophobic expression among liberals. Forty years ago, it was the British way to condemn racism but t

o defend remarks like Atkinson's in the name of free speech. No longer.

Asian communities look forward to a day when cultural pluralism is likewise claimed as the British way of life.

· Dr Jasdev Singh Rai is director of the Sikh Human Rights Group

Jasdev@shrg.net

[rKr]

At long last a constructive statement to answer the distorted media attention and response we have recently been subjected to.

May Vaheguru keep Jasdev Singh in their kirpa and seva for a long time coming.

[sikhlionz]

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice :wub:

[H4RPAL]

Now, if only the media were to really take notice of this.

[rKr]

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/londoner/do...doner-jan05.pdf

MAYOR BACKS LAW TO BAN RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION

Act of faith

The Mayor has welcomed government plans to extend the laws against religious discrimination and the incitement to religious hatred.

At present Jewish and Sikh communities are protected under the Race Relations Act as ‘ethnic groups’. Muslims and Hindus receive no such protection. The new legislation would give the same protection to all religious communities.

The moves to ban incitement to religious hatred are contained in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, currently before parliament. They will be reinforced by measures in the Equality Bill to make it illegal to deny goods and services on religious grounds.

The law should help to prevent situations like those in France where Muslim girls have been denied the right to wear their headscarves to school and Sikh boys their turbans.

The protection of religious minorities is now a priority for the Commission for Racial Equality. Chair Trevor Phillips said: ‘Prejudice is increasingly and overtly not about race, but about culture and faith. The gaping hole in legislation has affected British Muslims in particular. The rise in complaints over the past year or so has revealed their lack of legislative protection.’

Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and other religious leaders have all come out in broad support of the government’s proposals.

The Church of England has voiced support in principle but is waiting to see the detail. Muhammad Abdul Bari, Deputy Secretary Gener

al of the Muslim Council of Britain, welcomed the move saying: ‘Religious discrimination should be unlawful in the same way that race discrimination is unlawful.’

The new incitement law would work both ways he added – it would not just protect Muslims but the Muslim community would also be subject to it: ‘Everybody would have to be careful of what they did, said and wrote that could incite religious hatred.’

However, the Board of Deputies of British Jews said the law as it stands is pretty ineffectual. The Board’s Director General, Neville Nagler, said: There are so many conditions that have to be fulfilled before any prosecution can be brought that it makes it very difficult to actually prove incitement.’

Dabinderjit Singh of the Sikh Secretariat, took a similar view. ‘At the moment the law against incitement is hardly ever successful. So what would be the point of extending it to include other religions without totally rewriting it first?’ he said.

The government points out that the new measures are not intended to interfere with legitimate debate about religion. Offensive words and actions must be threatening, abusive or insulting and must either be intended or likely to stir up hatred. Hatred is a strong term going beyond simply causing offence or hostility.

[AK-47]

very good reply, i wonder if the mahan bahadur fearless sikh warrior gurpreet bhatti will even understand what singh has written!

i totally agree that people who have no faith in god be in whatever form, will find it terribly hard if not impossible to coprehend what passions or love a belief in vaheguru/god/allah can produce.

i was trying to explian 'goonge ki mithai' the concept of a deaf and dumb person trying to describe the taste of mithai (sweets) to a christian once, and he tried to compare the concept to the glory of having a child. He didnt seem to realise that we all have children and hence we all should at least be able to TRY and explain what it feels like. But how can a dumb person even start to describe the taste of mithai?!?

in the same way these people with their limitations will never be able to understand where we come from or what dharam means to us.

[S1ngh]

Excellent ARTICLE !!! THat's niceee ...

15 min fame is like a poison..

Few years ago.. Narinder kaur got into that poison for that National tv show and later on she was weeping and asking forgiveness from her husband (who made mind for divorce) for sick stuff she did for tv fame. Gurpreet bhatti is acting the same as narinder kaur acted in starting stage, hope she banged her head somewhere else and come back to the reality before its too late.

One thing we really learned is that we gotta have media on our side before planning to do any major protesting..

[Mahavir]

Who is this narinder Kaur?

[Bachan Vidya]

exactly!

5 mins of fame, soon forgotten! :wub: