For the most part, the movement for the creation of a separate Sikh homeland, called Khalistan (east-israel ??) is a mission being pursued by so called ‘Diaspora Neo-Sikhs’ who have made some money, have mustered up enough ambition to play politics, are not happy with crumbs being thrown at them by their host societies and, therefore, have chosen to play havoc at home where dollars, DMs and pounds can buy more rabble-raisers than they would in these parts. These protagonists of Khalistan are courting martyrdom by proxy. They have nothing much to loose if the movement fails.
Their outrage at Operation Blue Star is as phoney as a three-rupee-note. I, for one, hold no brief for the army action in Amritsar. (The terrorist misusing the sanctuary of the Golden Temple could have been, and should have been, routed out much earlier and in a far simpler operation. Mrs Gandhi was badly advised at the time and she paid for it with her life.) But where were these ‘Diaspora’ defenders of their faith when Bhindaranwale and his gun-toting goons were fortifying the innermost sanctums of this holy shrine and defiling Guru Nanak’s message of peace and harmony.
Thankfully at last that Bhindrawalla was killed in a 'Rat-Hole' inside the Golden Temple. And I am proud of my army getting rid of that traitor. He was no different from the Pathan youth who was taken in as a God-Son by the tenth Guru had stabbed and killed the Guru while he was asleep.
The 10th Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, the creator of Khalsa, also gave his life and the life of his sons, defending the profundity of the Hindu tradition. When he declared that henceforth there shall be no more temporal Gurus and that in future the Sikhs should follow the teachings of their forefathers contained in the Granth, he gave us a kind of written constitution which could not be tampered with the opportunists on the path of history. When he uttered ‘take the Good Book to be the Guru’ (Guru maniyo Granth), he did not create a new idol for idiots to worship; he urged them to use their brains and read the teachings of their forefathers and absorb the profundity thereof to their lives.
Culturally, ethnically, ancestry-wise, the Hindus, the Sikhs and Mussalmans of Punjab are no different from each other. They are, almost all, plain, hardworking, gregarious peasants who love life and lead it boisterously. This demand for a state called Khalistan has no validity on any ground.
To enumerate some reasons for this ‘contentious’ claim of mine, I would like to point out that :
(1) not all Sikhs come from Punjab; they are spread all over the subcontinent. Tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh himself was born in Patna, Bihar and did not even speak Punjabi: most of his work is composed in Awadhi, Braj-bhasha and Farsi.
(2) Sikhs have never had a state. They made conquests and raised kingdoms, i.e. the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh. Kingdoms don’t constitute a state and don’t allocate a nationality to the dwellers of that kingdom; they merely denote a temporal possession which is like quicksand and often changes with the passage of time.
The Neo Sikh fail to understand that Sikhism was not just the beginning of a thought process but also a culmination of the Bhakti-Movement that started in India long before Guru Nanak. Kabir (1398-1495) and Namdev (1270-1350) were not even Punjabi. I, son of an amrit-dhari Sikh, has always been brought believing that I am a Hindu. They say, "Read the Granth-Sahib and you will know that Sikhism is different from Hinduism," I would like to ask self styled scholars on religion how the Granth-Sahib (composed in Punjabi, Persian, medieval Prakrit Hindi and Marathi, Sanskrit as well as Arabiccan) be considered the ultimate when it does not carry even a single composition by Guru Gobind Singh except , Slok 54 (attributed), panna 1429, Raga Jayawanti. The only book that carries the compositions of Guru Gobind Singh is the Dasam-Granth but even the SGPC, leave alone provide for reading, doesn’t even list it on its official web-site. The tenth Guru was born (a very important chapter in Indian history) in Patna but Gurudwara Patna-Sahib finds no mention in the list of Historical Gurudwaras in the SGPC web-site. Why do the Hard-liners continue to deny the only source of the tenth Gurus compositions ? Is it because, in the Dasam-Granth, originally composed in Brij-Bhasha by the Guru, Gautam Buddha finds mentions as an ‘avatar’ of Vishnu ? If Guru Gobind Singh gave the Sikh two books to follow why did the akalis 200 years after his passing replace the Dasam-Granth with just one under the influence of the British ? The British law still states that Sikh are not just a separate religion but an altogether distinct race from the Hindus. That renders a person like me without a parentage.
Sikhism means following ones own feet and searching for ones own truth instead of being just a parrot prompted by other parrots. And I'm sure Nanak, Buddha, Krishna would approve. The Neo-Sikh and the Khalistanis can continue to believe that a Sikh is distinct from a Hindu but I know that they believe so, not because they are a separate religion but because they want to be.
Thanks.
Their outrage at Operation Blue Star is as phoney as a three-rupee-note. I, for one, hold no brief for the army action in Amritsar. (The terrorist misusing the sanctuary of the Golden Temple could have been, and should have been, routed out much earlier and in a far simpler operation. Mrs Gandhi was badly advised at the time and she paid for it with her life.) But where were these ‘Diaspora’ defenders of their faith when Bhindaranwale and his gun-toting goons were fortifying the innermost sanctums of this holy shrine and defiling Guru Nanak’s message of peace and harmony.
Thankfully at last that Bhindrawalla was killed in a 'Rat-Hole' inside the Golden Temple. And I am proud of my army getting rid of that traitor. He was no different from the Pathan youth who was taken in as a God-Son by the tenth Guru had stabbed and killed the Guru while he was asleep.
The 10th Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, the creator of Khalsa, also gave his life and the life of his sons, defending the profundity of the Hindu tradition. When he declared that henceforth there shall be no more temporal Gurus and that in future the Sikhs should follow the teachings of their forefathers contained in the Granth, he gave us a kind of written constitution which could not be tampered with the opportunists on the path of history. When he uttered ‘take the Good Book to be the Guru’ (Guru maniyo Granth), he did not create a new idol for idiots to worship; he urged them to use their brains and read the teachings of their forefathers and absorb the profundity thereof to their lives.
Culturally, ethnically, ancestry-wise, the Hindus, the Sikhs and Mussalmans of Punjab are no different from each other. They are, almost all, plain, hardworking, gregarious peasants who love life and lead it boisterously. This demand for a state called Khalistan has no validity on any ground.
To enumerate some reasons for this ‘contentious’ claim of mine, I would like to point out that :
(1) not all Sikhs come from Punjab; they are spread all over the subcontinent. Tenth guru, Guru Gobind Singh himself was born in Patna, Bihar and did not even speak Punjabi: most of his work is composed in Awadhi, Braj-bhasha and Farsi.
(2) Sikhs have never had a state. They made conquests and raised kingdoms, i.e. the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh. Kingdoms don’t constitute a state and don’t allocate a nationality to the dwellers of that kingdom; they merely denote a temporal possession which is like quicksand and often changes with the passage of time.
The Neo Sikh fail to understand that Sikhism was not just the beginning of a thought process but also a culmination of the Bhakti-Movement that started in India long before Guru Nanak. Kabir (1398-1495) and Namdev (1270-1350) were not even Punjabi. I, son of an amrit-dhari Sikh, has always been brought believing that I am a Hindu. They say, "Read the Granth-Sahib and you will know that Sikhism is different from Hinduism," I would like to ask self styled scholars on religion how the Granth-Sahib (composed in Punjabi, Persian, medieval Prakrit Hindi and Marathi, Sanskrit as well as Arabiccan) be considered the ultimate when it does not carry even a single composition by Guru Gobind Singh except , Slok 54 (attributed), panna 1429, Raga Jayawanti. The only book that carries the compositions of Guru Gobind Singh is the Dasam-Granth but even the SGPC, leave alone provide for reading, doesn’t even list it on its official web-site. The tenth Guru was born (a very important chapter in Indian history) in Patna but Gurudwara Patna-Sahib finds no mention in the list of Historical Gurudwaras in the SGPC web-site. Why do the Hard-liners continue to deny the only source of the tenth Gurus compositions ? Is it because, in the Dasam-Granth, originally composed in Brij-Bhasha by the Guru, Gautam Buddha finds mentions as an ‘avatar’ of Vishnu ? If Guru Gobind Singh gave the Sikh two books to follow why did the akalis 200 years after his passing replace the Dasam-Granth with just one under the influence of the British ? The British law still states that Sikh are not just a separate religion but an altogether distinct race from the Hindus. That renders a person like me without a parentage.
Sikhism means following ones own feet and searching for ones own truth instead of being just a parrot prompted by other parrots. And I'm sure Nanak, Buddha, Krishna would approve. The Neo-Sikh and the Khalistanis can continue to believe that a Sikh is distinct from a Hindu but I know that they believe so, not because they are a separate religion but because they want to be.
Thanks.