Every time I turn on the bloody television and put on a Punjabi channel. Every time I hear Punjabi news. Every time I get on damned Facebook and get a glimpse at the News Feed. All I hear and see is nonsense; complete utter bullshit about Darshan Singh and Dasam Granth.
I am sick and tired of it.
Its one old man, and a Granth that isn't a Guru to the majority of the Sikh population. And everybody's up in arms about it. Its like civil war erupting around me. All I want to know is what the heck is everyone fighting about?
I've heard all the stupid stuff enough times by now. I just want the real thing, what the heck is the real deal here that everyone's so ready to split each others heads apart for? Is there something I am missing?
Here, let me tell you what I see. Then please fill me in on what is so important about one old man, and a Granth that isn't the Guru (to the majority of us average Sikhs).
I witness a period in Sikh history where the golden phrase of "Sikh intellectuals" goes something like this: "the times have changed since the Guru period or Khalsa Raj, and due to the change in time we must understand how to combat the new battles we face." These intellectuals mean to tell me that no longer is armed combat an appropriate response for us, for no longer do we face such dangers.
Everything is about becoming a clever, sophisticated, intellectual with plenty of book knowledge in order to combat the evils that face us on pen and paper, in the academia where the images of civilizations are etched in stone.
I have been bullshitted to for long enough.
I look around me and I see a troubled world much the same as in Guru Nanak's times. The imperialistic rule of the Mughals destroyed the lives of many innocent human beings because various tyrants thought they were doing the right Islamic thing in the world due to the words of their advisers. The imperialistic rule of America and the West is continuing to destroy the lives of many innocent human beings because the various tyrants (yes, the Presidency is a tyrannical position when Congress does nothing to check it) are being led by their advisers to believe that they are doing the right thing for Democracy in the world.
Whereas we the Khalsa should have been in the front lines of negotiating diplomacy and peace, and upholding justice in the world; I witness our leaders kissing the asses and licking the boots of puppet politicians so that we may be recognized as “Americans” or be accepted in the Western world.
Sure you can say that oh, well we do not live in an Utopian world. That there is so much from the past which we can no longer change. That the past has so devastatingly affected our present condition. All that I call bullshit. Bullshit that we create to cover our own distracted and inadequate asses.
You see my argument here is not on a tangent from where I originally started; it is rather digging deeper and deeper into the root cause of the disease that continues to plague us in the Panth. A disease that if we do not become aware of as Panthic individuals, we are bound by fate to be the cause of our own destruction.
The cause is not simply cleverness, excessive reliance on book knowledge, being sophisticated, or even intellectuality. The cause is our distraction from Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The cause is our inadequacy in upholding Sikhi principles. The cause is our inability to practically bring Guru’s wisdom in our lives.
Just think about this for a second. During the major period of struggle in Sikh History where we were butchered and tortured in masses, where we lost 50% of our Sikh population in one day, how do you think Sikhi continued to exist, and not just exist but flourish? How the hell is it that we exist today if so many of our people were being destroyed?
Did the Kesh Fairy tell our Shaheeds “hey if you get them to not cut your hair but your scalp and leave the hair to me once you’re dead, I’ll make sure that in the future there’ll be Sikhs to carry on Sikhi?” Did the Kesh fairy do that?
Or how about the Genie? Hmm? Did the Genie give our ancestors one wish and they oh so romantically wished for Sikhi to continue on through their death? I wish. Then we could find this Genie today to solve our problems.
No, we did not have fairies and genies fulfill our wishes. No, we did not have a reproduction farm to fast produce thousands of Sikhs to combat the injustice in the world. There weren’t a million Sikh women popping out thousands of teenage/older aged Sikhs to continue fighting for the struggle.
What we had in that time were people that truly believed. What we had was a Panth full of Inspirational individuals. If the Panth is a glass, then the glass was overflowing with Inspiration. What we had was a Panth that took the Wisdom of the Guru seriously, not just intellectually or ritualistically, but practically. It wasn’t like the movies where the death of one inspires many. It was the lives of the few Sikhs that inspired the lives of the many human beings around them. So that when one Sikh was mutilated, it only strengthened the validity of the truth which Sikhs stood upon.
Truth.
If we accept Truth as one of the highest, if not the highest, value in our lives to strive for, then we must accept the reality and direness of our present Panthic condition.
We have a drunken and drugged up Panjab to deal with. Over at least 60 – 70% of our current population lives there, in the land that contains at least 90% of our history. We have Sikhs who matha-tek to random self-declared babas, sants, khalse, pictures, idols, whatever is told to them to be holy, etc. We have Sikhs who get drunk and cause domestic problems. We have Sikh boys who are getting caught up in drugs and alcohol, and Sikh girls who are selling themselves. We have Sikhs committing mass suicides because they can no longer handle the oppression from the State. We have Sikhs killing their daughters because having a daughter becomes a financial liability for them.
Forget other Granths, most of our population barely understands Sri Guru Granth Sahib themselves. Spoon feeding of Sikhi knowledge from katha vachiks has become a norm and has created a Sikh population that is easily and willingly brainwashed by self-proclaimed Saints and Baabe of the Panth. Panjab is one of the poorest states of India in education, and consequently our fellow Sikhs are severely uneducated.
If we begin to list the number of problems facing us in the Panth, this blog could go on forever.
I want to ask you the question again, what are we fighting about with these Darshan Singh and Dasam Granth arguments? Are these things seriously as important as everything else facing us today? Is an argument about the validity of parts of a Granth which is not the Guru more important than the living state of human beings? Would you see Guru Nanak sitting here arguing about a Granth while a wildfire is rapidly destroying a population of people?
We are distracted from the Katha of Truth, and so we make clever arguments about how we need to tackle the issues of today. Truth stares us in the face every Sunday when we ritualistically matha-tek. The real question now becomes, how much longer will we go as a Panth till we accept the Wisdom of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji? Or will be become the sad story in the dust of history of a people that rose from the depths of darkness and death to a Kingdom of Enlightenment, only to die off in the traps of Maya?
