Dear Editor,
Kirpal Singh Nijjar’s “Bloodless Ghalooghara” (WSN 1/29 & 2/ 22/93) faded quickly, from a readingpleasure into a giant guilt trip; and then he started to impose his own values: Sikhs are falling to some nameless enemy because they are losing their identity! He overlooks the males flaunting the Khalsa code wen donning the Western dress and dying their hair, but laments Chunnieless mothers shedding the Turki Bana, and naming their progeny Bob, Harry or Roger and not Boota, Ganda, or Koogghie. He resurrects the Gandhian Congress crusade of blaming the social evils of Indian society on the British.
Kirpal’s gloom and doom is in fact a renaissance: The Sikhism migrants and their offshoots are not refugees, but voluntarily the American Khitchari: His Bob & Roger Gandhi faces and Chunnieless Amys and Debbies boast numerous Sikh newspapers and Studies Chairs, Gurdwaras, and programs to rescue the Punjabi youth from the certain fate of India’s cannon folder. They are staunchly anti-Hindu, and their heritage preserving practices have fewer Hindu adulterations than those of Chandigarhwalas.
Kirpal’s six steps to salvation are laudable; but he must use some salesmanship wrapped in love and tolerance: You can’t win converts by ridicule, and rude and deroga try labelling. The nonconformance of American Sikhs is surely their characteristic Punjabi defiance to an unwelcome intrusion the Hindu like straitjacket being forced on them by their esteemed guests and visitors. Confident of their new freedoms they don’t feel obliged to conform to the old societal mores, “No sir, thanks,” they say; “each must strike his/her own path to heaven!”
The Hindus are going to swallow the American Sikhs because they lack identity! No way; I say: The: strength of a religion is in the practice of its truths, and faith and devotion of its followers; and not the crutches of societal mores.
Sukhbir Singh Indianapolis, IN
Article extracted from this publication >> March 19, 1993
