By Bonnie Bajaj
Living in Oklahoma where very, few Sikh families live and being the daughter of liberal Sikh parents, I had never known much about Sikhism, Coming to Gurdwara every other Sunday was something I just did not look forward to, I had always dreamt of being like my. friends who went to church and had cut hair. I go to a Christian school where we have to go to chapel every day and bible classes are required through the eighth grade, It amazed me that all my friends knew about their own religion and I didn’t know about mine. I knew more about Christianity than I knew about Sikhism. I was embarrassed to tell people who! was because I didn’t even know what I stood for. I did not know what Sikhism was, the new age. It accepts people of all races and cultures. It was the only faith which does not claim a franchise over God. Sikhism is the first religion who loves all people, not just the people of one particular faith alone, and reveals that that kind of. God creates the universe and everybody is entitled to his love, I learned that we are supposed to love everybody of all classes and races because we have the same father , God, We shouldn’t steal and we should share our earnings with the needy. We should obey God, but most importantly we should wish well for whole humanity.
Today I am a new person. I have my own two feet and when someone asks me, “What are you?” or “What do you believe?” I stand on my own feet and tell them about my identity and my faith.
Things have changed dramatically for me once I reached my early teenage years. It was then that I learned to play my first shabads, and soon going to Gurdwara was something I looked forward to because I enjoyed playing shabads. But I still didn’t really know what a “Sikh” was.
When a person would ask me, “What do Sikhs believe?” the only answer I was able to give them was that we believed in one god, and keeping our hair long was our uniform. But that was not good enough for them and definitely not good enough for me. Later, I signed up to Join a Sikh camp in Pittsburgh. It was there that] began to know myself and who I was, and what was my place in society.
After going to the camp, I discovered that I don’t want to be one of the crowd. I am unique and have my own identity, and identity which no one can take away from me, That is why I am proud to be a Sikh.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 8, 1989
