By Kirpal Singh Nijjar Continued from the January 29th 1993 issue
In our infinite wisdom or stupidity, it is we who are trying to advocate against the usefulness or necessity of our glorious institutions like “Hair” or “Amrit”. It is we, who in an attempt to cover up our own impotence are joining the ranks of our enemies in dubbing such persons who still have the courage and conviction to carry out the Guru’s teachings, as crazy, fanatic, old fashioned, or fundamentalist.
Aren’t we making ourselves fools of the laughing stock and letting our enemy to reduce us to be just a “herd of sheep?”
10.0UR MEDIA DIS
ORIENTATION: In order to help our enemy, and to make the dismantling of our institutions complete and irreversible, we have gone beyond the call of our duty and gotten even our Sikh media disoriented. With our economic power, or with the sheer weight of our numbers, we have been able to impress upon our media to glorify our own down fall. We have forced them to start glorifying the “Gandhian (Mohan Das & Indira)” image of clean shaven men and bob haired women, in preference to the “‘Sabatsoorat” images of “Guru Gobind Singh and Mata Sahib Kaur Ji”. To see, watch any Sikh TV program, or open any Sikh magazine or newspaper (including the WSN).
If you closely look into our media, then you will find the abundance of the “Gandhian” image being flashed all over the place in the photo and personality selection, while the “Sabatsoorat” image is treated with lots of reservations. In addition you will see that, on the one hand the names of the persons with the*Gandhian” faces are glorified with the bestowing of the long and heavy titles like “Sardar”, “Sardarni”, “Kaur” and “Singh”., while on the other hand the names of the “Sabat soorats” are intentionally deprived of the same very lilies.
This is how we have forced even our own media to fall in this trap of muddying the waters, and to ignore the long established Khalsa traditions built on the sacrifices of thousands of real Singhs and Singhanees during the five centuries of our existence.
AS INDIVIDUALS CAN WE DO ANYTHING?
Looking at the not very pretty picture from the battle field, the natural question in front of all of us is.
“In this bloodless Ghalooghara, can we as individuals do anything to revive ourselves to avoid our’s as well as our future generations’ death, or do we have to leave everything to our fate?
SOLUTION:
More than 90% of the solution to any problem is the recognition and realization of the problem in question. Therefore as a first step we need to recognize the problems facing us today.
Despite our very hopeless performance in the battle field fortunately everything is not lost yet. Although very small, we still have little time to react. Therefore to recover from the otherwise mortal wounds, each of us, need to stand in front of the mirror and honestly ask ourselves the following questions
1, Am I wounded as a Sikh?
- Are the members of my family wounded as Sikhs?
3, Do we as a family have any chance of recovery?
- If yes, then how can we dress our wounds and recoup?
Once planned, then we collect our courage and DO IT.
Every one of us will need to follow the plans which suit best to our particular situations; however as a starter the following steps are suggested
* RE—EDUCATES. Ourselves in
Gurbani to dispel ignorance, and to come out of our comatose state, *RE—GAIN…our consciousness through our detoxification from alcohol.
* RE—POSSESSES. Our Guru Granth Sahib by becoming literate in its teachings.
* REORIENT… ourselves by finding out our bearings.
* RECOVER… our “turbans, chunees & hair”.
* REESTABLISH.OUR LOST INSTITUTIONS of Gurbani, Hair, and Amrit.
This is one of the ways with which we can avoid any of the dreams of our enemies from becoming true. Dr. Harbans Singh in his book the “Heritage of the Sikhs” has mentioned about such an interesting Christian dream of the late nineteenth century. A dream which luckily got thwarted by the special efforts of Sikhs like Bhai Vir Singh, and Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, etc. and did not materialize then, but could very well become a reality in our modern day bloodless Ghalooghara settings.
The basis for this dream was the fact that after the fall of the Sikh Empire in 1849, the Sikhs abandoned their faith on a massive scale, from an estimated 10,000,000 strong in Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Punjab to a mere 1,411,848 in 1868(a fall rate of more than 83% in less than 20 years!!), and a very meager gain to 1,716,114 by the 1881 census. Looking at such an alarming flight Tate one cannot refrain from concluding that it was a very realistic dream.
The mention of this dream appeared in the Khalsa Akhbar of Lahore, May 25, 1894, from the pen of its editor, Giani Ditt Singh ji, and reads as follows.
“An English newspaper writes that the Christian faith is making rapid progress and makes the prophecy that within the next twenty-five years, one third of the Majha arca will be Christian, The Malwa will follow suit. Justas we do not see any Buddhists in the country except in images, in the same fashion the Sikhs, who are now, here and there, visible in turbans and their other religious forms like wrist bangles and swords, will be seen only in pictures in museums. Their own sons and grandsons timing Christians and clad in coats and trousers and sporting toadstool like caps will go to see them in the museums and say in their pidgin Punjabi: Look that is the picture of a Sikh the tribe that inhabited this country once upon a time. Efforts of those who wish to resist the onslaught of Christianity are feeble and will prove abortive like a leper without hands and feet trying to save a boy falling off a rooftop .n
In view of the above note, the question that we need to ask ourselves is
“With our present day shortsighted, careless and callous attitudes towards our future, is that what is in store for us?”
Article extracted from this publication >> February 26, 1993
