What's *really* Going On In Sikh/india Politics

[Singh132]

It's a well known saying amongst Muslims that a Hindu sees a storm approaching and begins to prepare. The Muslim prepares when the storm has hit and the Sikh starts to think about preparing once the storm has passed.

Once again we see how the Sikhs are being reactive instead of proactive.

I know people don't like long posts so I'll try to make my message brief. Anti-Sikh forces want to see Sikhs become 'radicals' again. They want to create situations in which young Sikhs turn to violence. They want us to react. The leaders of this movement will already be bought by them and they can once again lead the Sikh youth to massacre and genocide.

This hasn't happened once, it has happened over and over. How did we lose in 1849 to the British? It wasn't for not having a strong army. The leaders were bought and led us to destruction. Why didn't we get anything in 1947 when we had such power in the army? We couldn't even use our Sikh soldiers to protect the Sikh refugees coming from Pakistan.

And in the movement from 78-94, who were the leaders? They were people like Zaffarwal, Chauhan, Dr. Sohan Singh and others whom I won't mention. Where are they? Doing just fine, thank you. There were enough sell-out traitors in the leadership that the entire "Movement" was a disaster and directionless.

Once again, they're trying to get a reaction out of us. Once again, they have the structures thought-out and established to mislead us. The people trying to incite us within our community and outside are already hard at work. Not only will they get an opportunity to crush the amritdhari youth, they can shut down any parchaar and as an added bonus, we'll be terrorists in the eyes of the world and dismissed wherever we may be living as violent extremists.

This isn't some crazy conspiracy theory of mine. I assure you it is the truth. And when we make stupid statements about "taking care" of people or people, we're playing right into their scheme.

I hope Guru Sahib does kirpa on his Panth and our youth and we don't have to repeat history once again.

[mann_kaum_layee_qurbaan]

right on singh. they are using our quam's hot headedness and morally weak leadership to incite youth to portray the image they want to project to the world.

we should learn from the past and question everything, especially so called khalistan ideologues who are happy to send people on "missions" and in the meantime chill in gov't rest houses.

this battle will be a media battle. this time around, the pen will be superior to the sword. the sword is not to be abandoned, but used iwth discretion and utmost humility and sharda. the pen should be weilded freely and often.

so to all the youth out there, start writing.

peace.

[ISDhillon]

If hindus prepare then why have they been subjagated by every civilisation throughout history?, fear if anything makes people prepare, I dont think the sikhs need to prepare you should deal with people after they have fully spent themselves otherwise you dont know how much more they have got in store for you, our problem is that we have always been feircely independant I cant imagine that we would be any better off if we started to rely on others, secondly "hindu preparation today" is nothing short of mirroring zionism eg babur masjid and temple mount, even indira used the persecution of jews as a pretext for invading and liberating bangladesh. Hindus by and large have been using the foreign policy of other countries as a manifesto for their domestic policy for eg, putting bhindranwale on binladens bandwagon by using american rhetoric of "terror" to describe the situation in punjab, using china as a frame of reference when minority groups assert themselves as "this would not be allowed in china". So what have we learned from this? its simple hindus do not know how to run a country and india is not a sovereign power, whereas sikhs being feircly independant have adopted measures which india does not know how to deal with, remember it was sikhs themselves who turned on each other both after Maharaja ranjit singhs death and operation bluestar, only something sovereign can topple something sovereign. So if anything sikhs need to learn to be more cohesive and arrive at decisions together, the concept of sarbat khalsa has remained dormant since banda singh bahadar, the sikh clergy have been pick and choosie with what issues they wish to deal with and sikhs themselves then prioritise their own issues and this is where we get division in the sikh community which evetually leads to sikhs asserting themselves against one another and not for a common shared cause.

[dalsingh101]

So if anything sikhs need to learn to be more cohesive and arrive at decisions together, the concept of sarbat khalsa has remained dormant since banda singh bahadar, the sikh clergy have been pick and choosie with what issues they wish to deal with and sikhs themselves then prioritise their own issues and this is where we get division in the sikh community which evetually leads to sikhs asserting themselves against one another and not for a common shared cause.

So true.

I think it was M. Ranjit Singh who disbanded Sarbat Khalsa in favour of his own absolute authority. I know it was still going on way after Banda Singh's shaheedi, up until the mid 1700s.

The problem with what you said is that (naturally) one Sikh will feel certain priorities are of key importance whilst another will feel something else completely different is of the most importance.

Where Sikhs fall down is political astuteness to be able to form strategic plans that are solid. The days of picking up guns and toppling governments seem behind us. The other thing is the ease with which Sikh organisations seem to be infiltrated by either outsiders or hostile elements within the community. I would go as far as saying it is even easy for organisations to be SET UP within the Panth by outsiders.

One of the most strangest things I can't understand is why Sikhs in general seem to be incapable of grasping that in any society you will have a wide range of opinions from one side of a spectrum to another. It may well be that it is this simple lack of understanding that is causing internal conflict. But we have to admit, that compared to many other communities Sikhs do seem split up quite badly and that the differences between us seem to be growing not shrinking.

The question we need to ask I guess is "How do we deal with diversity in the panth without making it self destructive?"

[rupinder singh]

So if anything sikhs need to learn to be more cohesive and arrive at decisions together, the concept of sarbat khalsa has remained dormant since banda singh bahadar, the sikh clergy have been pick and choosie with what issues they wish to deal with and sikhs themselves then prioritise their own issues and this is where we get division in the sikh community which evetually leads to sikhs asserting themselves against one another and not for a common shared cause.

Very well pointed out! It's the lack of consensus cohesive decision making that brings us down. In reality we are as far from the Sarbat Khalsa concept as could be. We can clearly see this dysfunctional behaviour at grass root levels in all our local Gurdwaras, committees and what not.

[ISDhillon]

"How do we deal with diversity in the panth without making it self destructive?"

True, I think that firstly we have to remember that if sikhi is universal then we should always take a universal approach, "universal" for a long time has always been concerned with "sikhs" rather than "sikhism", temporal affairs have been confused with political affairs, and this is why there is a self-destructive element in sikhism, I think that we as a religion have always had a holistic world view, we see religions, cultures languages etc being connected in a relationship of interdependance with khalsa as the driving force in history, the role of religion however is increasingly becoming "an act of domination".

Lets take a look at certain temporal affairs in sikhi for eg, abortion, death penalty and euthanaisia. The reason why we object to these issues has always been the need to "accept gods will", yet we find ourselves tackling these issues as if they were independant of one another, then sikhs themselves start to pitch one issue against the other as if their was only a certain level of "accepting gods will" that sikhs should abide by.

Then lets look at the issue of marriage in sikhi we want an anand marriage act, yet one one jathedar says homosexuals cannot marry, next one says only keshdhari can marry, 3rd day only sikh can marry sikh but no interreligious marriage, this approach is neither universal or holistic, rather sikhs should say either all humans can marry or only humans who are amritdhari period. And then ask the community to support this decision.

Extremist organisations need to be dealt with impartially by the government by introducing incitement to hatred bills, but not just the ones who say something against sikhs, why is it that we do not say anything to extremist organisations such as the maoists or lashkar, LTTE organisations, the pick and choose approach does not stand us in good stead as it is not the welfare of all that we are concerned with rather we are concerned only about our survival.

Education in punjab and economic development should also take on a a more universal approach, the role of environmental welfare is an ideal setting for institutions in punjab the need for IT proffessionals does not ring true in punjab its as if the educational institutions choose those courses which will allow the punjabis to go abroad and "escape" hence the "survival of sikhs" not sikhism, sikhs should invest in sikh values not sikh people, sikh people should put sikhism on their redemptional agenda, just recently I have decided to do a course in sustainable development because I want to make a meaningfull contribution to this earth for future generations when I am no longer here and I know that for all the human rights issues we fight for none of it is worth it if there is no earth here to sustain future generations.

Institutional linkages are very important, in this resepct functioning with autonomy is ok for internal sikh matters but universal concerns of sikhism should be mediated through established organisations, it is not necessary for our contribution to be acknowledged solely by our identity, sikhs should understand that we can work together with others rather than the need to be independant redeemers of mankind.

Any way just having a rant,

Indy

[Mehtab Singh]

What intrigues me is, that out of the blues, once again Sikhs are in the limelight, sadly a negative one. Last year we had cases of Sikh boys having their kesh forcibly chopped off, then the jhootha sauda issue, and now this portrait issue. It looks like a well-planned scheme to me, but the question is, why Sikhs? And, why all over again?

[N30S1NGH]

good post singh132, this reactive attitude will give us beating, made us run around the circles once again.

[dalsingh101]

What intrigues me is, that out of the blues, once again Sikhs are in the limelight, sadly a negative one. Last year we had cases of Sikh boys having their kesh forcibly chopped off, then the jhootha sauda issue, and now this portrait issue. It looks like a well-planned scheme to me, but the question is, why Sikhs? And, why all over again?

Why? Because we are small and ripe for attack. We have no strong media voice and are inconvenient as a community to the vast majority of larger societal systems. Our emphasis on Sikh identity grates against both the Saffron agenda in India and the attempts by western society to merge everyone into one big brainless lump. Our values of directly fighting for our rights is exactly what larger conservative societies want to stamp out of the common people to keep them as convenient compliant sheep. I imagine they want to stamp that spirit out of us by involving us in endless controversies which spend our energy, emotions and intelligence.

Sikhs should stop choosing leaders who are not highly educated and lack the characteristics of foresight and honesty. Sadly we choose people who are the exact opposite. We need to ask ourselves why are we so easily excitable as a community. It seems anyone with half a strategy can push us into some self destructive corner. Pindu simplemindedness plays its part in this I imagine.

[ISDhillon]

I imagine they want to stamp that spirit out of us by involving us in endless controversies which spend our energy, emotions and intelligence.

exactly, and also depending upon how successful our reaction is other communities learn to do the same if they are confronted with the same situation so a level of responsibility is consistenetly ignored by our leaders, the nishan sahib is more than a flag its a sign of our standards in history, one thing that silences indian governement is when sikhs in the diaspora get certain privaleges from their host governments that they do not afford to sikhs themselves in their native, indigenous country of origin.