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Vaisakhi: A time to
celebrate, and ruminate
As
editors of the World Sikh News, we do track the developments in the
domain among our peer group websites, newspapers, journals etc. And
as this Vaisakhi we were tracking some of the sites, we cam across a
beautiful article by Kawaljit Singh, described as president and CEO
of Redwood Development Group in Redding who has spoken about his
childhood when his surgeon grandfather would bestow kindness upon
poor patients.
Kawaljit Singh writes that he later realized that all that the
grandpa was doing was to live a life as per the Sikh tenets of
sharing with the less fortunate, working hard, making an honest
living, staying in a married life and taking care of the family
besides maintaining the Sikh Rehat. The author's dad had two
doctorates, one from Sorbonne. And the author himself pursued
graduate studies at Berkeley.
Read his own words: "My experiences are hardly unique...America
meshes well with Sikh beliefs, namely, freedom of speech, religion,
justice, liberty, and equality of all people without regard to
gender, race and religion. Sikhs do not believe in terrorism,
hurting the innocent, racial profiling, war based on religion or
proselytism.
"When I was growing up in India, I remember parents telling their
young daughters that if you ever find yourself in harm's way, spot a
Sikh, go to him and he will protect your honor and dignity and you
will be safe with him. It was true then, and decades later, it is
still true and always will be true. As a Sikh, I always will.
Grandpa must be smiling down and hopefully proud that I am trying to
be a good Sikh."
This Vaisakhi, as Sikhs across the world celebrate the spirit of the
Khalsa, we, as members of the world's youngest religion and a robust
community with a set of high moral and scientific values, need to
ask ourselves: "Are we living as per the tenets of our religion?
Will our forefathers be smiling upon us?"
There are more than 26 million Sikhs worldwide; almost 3 million
live outside India, from where they originated. One million make
their home here in North America. Sikhism, the youngest of the world
religions, barely 500 years old, has no link to other religions.
Khalsa is a spiritual brotherhood and sisterhood devoted to purity
of thought and action.
The
distinctive form of the Khalsa with the turban makes Sikhs the most
visible. The turban is mandatory part of Sikh faith, not a social
custom, or a hat that can be casually taken on and off. Sikh
Americans are identified by their turbans. As the Sikhs celebrate
the Vaisakhi also as the International Turban Day, it is necessary
that we look inwards to ask ourselves whether we are the true Khalsa
as envisaged by the Guru deep within and without.
Just as our cover story asks why in India, the official
establishment stays miles away from the joys of the community and
fails to recognize the contribution of the Sikhs to the country, so
do we must ask why invariably groups of Sikhs are aligning
themselves against each other in a matrix of not discussion and
debate but of bitterness and public squabble. For control of
gurdwaras, over the issue of Dasam Granth, about separate SGPC for
Haryana, Sikhs are quickly drawing battlelines among themselves.
This Vaisakhi is the time to review whether we are not dissipating
the panthic shakti instead of coagulating the forces of Sikhism.
11 April,
2007
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