So Why Call Her Bad? From Her, Kings are Born!

kds1980 · #28 (**permalink**) 04-Aug-2009, 00:56 AM

Above: Receptacle where unwanted babies are dropped off anonymously. Immediately below (third photo from bottom): The cradle receptacle, as seen from the interior of the Home. All photos are by the author.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/sikh-sikhi-sikhism/25913-so-why-call-her-bad-her.html

Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913

sikhchic.com | The Art and Culture of the Diaspora | Unique House Serves Unique ... And Urgent Need!People

Unique House Serves Unique
... And Urgent Need!by MANVIR SINGH

Punjab is land of the Great Gurus, the land of prosperity, and the land of great saints and warriors.
Yet, inexplicably, it is stained with the sin of killing its baby daughters.
According to the Punjabi University, every fifth household in Punjab commits female foeticide.
During a recent trip to India, we went to the local gurdwara in Preet Nagar in Jalandhar, Punjab.
Bhai Parminder Singh from Amritsar (a parchaarak - preacher - sent by the Dharam Parchaar Committee, Amritsar) was doing kathaa (discourse) that evening. His kathaa was very simple, but effective. The way he spoke was very easy to understand and he got across our Guru's message really well.
Bhai Sahib said something which echoed in my ears: "Mothers have made their wombs into graveyards."
Bhai Sahib was speaking about abortion and how many Punjabis - not to mention the greater, all-pervasive problem across India - are killing their baby daughters before being born. I was glad to hear this active parchaar being done in the gurdwaras of Punjab.
The next day, my mum and I went to visit a place called "Unique Home", which is being run by the Bhai Ghanayya Ji Charitable Trust.
The Trust was established in 1993 with the goal of working towards the "Moral, Social, Cultural and Economic uplift of orphan children without any distinction of Caste, Creed and Religion".
The Unique Home looks after unwanted, unclaimed or orphaned children who have been discarded or neglected by society. Baby girls are found by roadsides, dumped near streams, or even left during the night in a baby cradle outside the Home.
The Unique Home is currently looking after 52 girls, mostly young children.
The main spirit behind this institution is Bibi Prakaash Kaur, whose aim is to rehabilitate those people whom society has disowned. The current seva is being done by Bibi Gurdip Kaur, who is the President of Bhai Ghanayya Ji Charitable Trust. Despite her old age, she is fully devoted to the service of the children.
Even though we had visited the Home without advance notice, we received a very warm welcome from the sevadaars.
When we entered, a young girl, probably 11 years old, shared a GurFateh with us and asked us to take a seat in the office room for visitors. Bibi Gurdip Kaur was away that day; another Sardarni was looking after all the children alone.
She came downstairs and warmly greeted us. She offered to get the children ready for us to meet them. Whilst we waited, a young girl aged perhaps 13 or so, came and asked us "What would you like to drink?"
I replied, "We are fine, thank you."
The girl then said, "We don't have anything to offer you. But can you kindly accept a cup of tea made by me as a form of parshaad (gift) from all the children?" I was left speechless and moved by the young girl's innocent love and accepted to drink a cup of tea made by her.

After a little while, the Bibi in charge came to get us and took us upstairs.
The home itself was much smaller than I had expected. She took us to a room that had a number of metal baby cradles. Inside the cradles were babies that had been abandoned or dropped off and were now being cared for at the Home.
It was really sad to see that there were at least a dozen or so, and I thought: how does one or two of these Sardarnis manage to change all their nappies and look after them all, in addition to looking after the elder children.
There was one little girl with Down Syndrome, standing there, smiling away at us. The Bibi hugged the girl and began to do simran with her. It was beautiful to see the Down Syndrome child hugging the elder woman and repeating "Waheguru ... Waheguru ..." after her.

I was amazed at the seva of these women who have given up their own lives, their own families, and their own aspirations, to live in the Guru's Hukam (Will) and dedicate their lives to rebuilding the lives of children who otherwise wouldn't have any life.
We learnt that the older girls in the home took care of the younger babies and they all supported each other as one large family. It was amazing to hear how some of the elder girls of the Home had been inspired by the dedication of Bibi Gurdip Kaur, elected not to get married and to commit their own lives to the care of the younger children.
Waheguru! These were the hidden gems of Punjab that were quietly going about, doing their seva.

After spending some time talking to the Bibi, we learnt about the astounding work they did by ensuring that all the girls were educated in English schools and, at a later stage, married into suitable homes.
All of this is done without any government support or funding, which is an immense challenge for the founder, Bibi Prakaash Kaur, and the other Gursikh caregivers.
Near the end of our visit, all the children got together and repeated the punj pauriaan of Japji Sahib and had a group photo taken with us. It was so nice to see the children get excited over seeing their own photo in the camera. There was one young girl (less than two years old), who had tears in her eyes.
But when you wiped them, the tears still didn't seem to disappear. It was as if the girl had permanent tears in her eyes. It was sad to see.
Despite our attempts to cheer her up, she looked very, very sad. Only the Guru knows what trauma the child had gone through. May Waheguru do kirpaa (shower His blessings) on all these children and the sevadaars.
Please do support the Bhai Ghanayya Ji Charitable Trust and the Unique Home by visiting the Home and giving a small donation or donating some clothes. Any help and support would be greatly appreciated by the sevadaars.
And please pass this request on to all your relatives and friends who are going to visit Punjab in the near future.
Their address is: The Unique Home, 1082-B Model House, Taran Wali Gali, Jalandhar, Punjab. Tel: 01.81.227.6066

[Manvir Singh lives in the United Kingdom.]
May 10, 2009

Soul_jyot · #29 (**permalink**) 08-Aug-2009, 01:19 AM

Female Foeticide: A Curse of History

By KHUSHWANT SINGH

Long ago, girls were killed to protect them from Muslim invaders. Now, it's dowry.

Punjab has a long history of doing away with newborn girls. The preferred method today is foeticide after a sex determination test, but centuries ago the practice was to bury them. This tradition perhaps goes back to the days of repeated invasions by Muslim armies from the northwest, who used to carry off girls as booty for their own pleasure or to be sold in the slave markets of the Middle East. Today, it is the extortionate dowries that parents of girls have to provide upon marriage. The custom of polyandry in Punjab probably arose out of the shortage of girls - the eldest son of a family would take a wife, his younger brothers would also have access to her.

One of Guru Nanak's oft quoted hymns condemns the denigration of women: 'We are born of women and nurtured by them, we fall in love with them and they bear us sons and daughters. How can you belittle women who give birth to kings?' His words had little impact - the killing of newborn girls continued as before, though practised more among the land-owning zamindars than by the common folk.

At the end of the first Sikh war, when the British annexed half of the Sikh kingdom, the Sikh zamindars of the region met John Lawrence, who had been appointed commissioner, to confirm their land holdings. He insisted on their signing pledges that they would not bury lepers alive, refrain from burning widows and stop burying newborn girls. The zamindars protested, saying Lawrence had promised that the two sides would not interfere with each others' religious customs. Lawrence agreed that he had indeed done so, adding that British religious custom was to hang anyone who followed these practices. That put an end to sati and the murder of lepers, and though female infanticide was checked it probably continued surreptitiously.

Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913

After Independence, and the passing of the Hindu Code Bill giving equal rights to inherit ancestral property to sons and daughters, things again took a turn for the worse with the murder of newborn girls gaining momentum, especially in propertied families. With medical science able to detect the sex of the child in the womb, the practice has become much more widespread, resulting in a situation today where the ratio of females to males in Punjab is the lowest in the country.

Religious leaders and institutions like the S.G.P.C. and the Akal Takht make only feeble attempts to put down this criminal practice and their efforts have failed miserably. Kuree Maar (daughter-killer) is a common abuse in Punjab - an abuse that those who indulge in the practice have learnt to take in their stride.

Vikram singh · #30 (**permalink**) 08-Aug-2009, 03:32 AM

Around India young women are becoming victims of a crime that is robbing them of their virtues and their wealth.
Every year parents from Britain take their ‘looser sons’ to India and allow them to destroy the lives of innocent girls who crave for a life in Britain – or so they think
Many of these culprits are Sikhs, they have plagued the Punjab, with thousands of girls who have become bride and signed their lives to misery and pain, as they allow themselves to be robbed of the ‘virginitty’ become objects that give these bachelors a ‘wwhhoore’ on command whilst they are on holiday, with never a thought to these women once they return to Britain.
Rahuk Bedi has written of the misery Jaswant Kaur who is one of more than 15,000 'holiday wives' spread across India's northern Punjab state who, after years of abandonment, still awaits her husband's return from Britain.
A fortnight after their lavish wedding in the border district of Gurdaspur, Karamjit Singh - considered a prize 'catch' for most Punjabi parents wanting their daughters married as he was a non-resident Indian settled abroad - left for London.
He promised his excited 21-year-old bride, who had never left her small town, that he would send her immigration papers within weeks to enable her to join him.
The groom and his family also carried away 700,000 rupees ($21,867.73) in dowry and gold ornaments which the bride's parents had raised by mortgaging their small plot of land and house.
Eleven years later, Jaswant Kaur still waits for news from her husband.
"We now learn that he already had a wife and two children in London when we were married" Kaur said.
"For him I was nothing but a sexual dalliance and a source of gratification for his greed in the dowry.
"Along with my family, I stand disgraced socially as an abandoned bride. I have no recourse to any redress whatsoever."
Jaswant, however, is one of the luckier ones. Karamjit Kaur from nearby Jalandar, 400km north of New Delhi, was not as fortunate. Her husband Raghbir Singh left her with his parents and returned to his job in Dubai in December 2002 after carrying away the mandatory dowry.
Three months later Karamjit's in-laws attempted to kill her by setting her alight when her parents were unable to pay additional dowry, a mode of bride murder favoured by thousands of greedy Indian husbands and their families.
Her parents lodged a police case, but were harassed in turn.
"All the police were interested in was making money out of our misery. They are doing nothing to investigate Raghbir Singh and his parents," she said.
"Lust, dowry and the lure of settling abroad are responsible for the plight of thousands of these holiday wives across Punjab" said Daljit Kaur, a lawyer and activist.
There was no legislation to safeguard them from being duped and dumped by Punjabi grooms mostly from the West, particularly Britain and North America and the Gulf Sheikhdoms.
Some men even married three or four times, managing to flee safely each time because local police favoured the boys' families.
In some instances, police took five to six years to even register a formal complaint.
Since 2002, only a small fraction of the 15,000-odd female victims had managed to lodge cases. But police officials in state capital Chandigarh privately conceded that such cases are difficult, if not impossible, to investigate because once the man has left the country, extradition was given little or no priority.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913
There have also been several cases of overseas Punjabi grooms taking their wives back, insuring them for large sums and then bringing them back home to have them murdered.
India's tortuously slow and corrupt legal and police investigation structure was insurance against them being caught, although since the mid 1990s a handful of convictions had occurred but under pressure from overseas authorities.
Punjab's intensely patriarchal social structure has a distinct gender bias against women, widely considered an economic liability as they need to be married off after payment of substantial dowries.
Abandoned brides become even more of a drain on their families.
"A woman who has been abandoned by her non-resident husband and returns to her parents' home is not welcome," said Balwant Singh Ramoowalia, head of the People's Welfare Society.
The children from such unions face even greater prejudice.
"Though social awareness programmes have been launched to educate people against this evil and the government lobbied to adopt more stringent laws, progress has been incremental" Kaur said.

Lucy Ahmed · #31 (**permalink**) 29-Dec-2009, 21:59 PM

It is appalling to read about the repression of women in this society.

Where is the humanity here?!!

What happened to the humanity in this society??

The mentality of the whole society should be changed!

I am not a Sikh and as for that I do not understand much of the believes, but in my society (in Borneo) we are taught to respect every living things...which is not only the lifes of human beings but also the all the animals...birds...fishes, the plants...and even the hills...the mountains (ain't they are growing too and have thier own life?!)...including all the seen and unseen spirits. Thus to harm anything living is a curse. In my society, women are the care takers of the home when the men went hunting in the jungle for food...thus the elderly women are given high regards in the society. The healers and the priestess were women in the society who were believed to ward off all evils due to that the women are very well respected in our society.

In our society too, it is the men who footage all the bills of the wedding ceremonies thus it is said..."A MAN IS A MAN and he should earn his respect as a man by paying all the necessities of his woman." As for that the woman, she is not to spend even a single cent when the man is taking her home instead he should be gradeful to the female's parents by giving them a high respect for once caring for his woman.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=25913

A Man should never expect for anything from the woman's side, but instead he should show his manhood through bravery and courage by giving and caring for his woman and family...IF NOT...HE IS NOT WORTH TO BE CALLED AS "A MAN" AT ALL.

Well...thats the believed of my ancestors, and I am sharing it with you guys here.