Showing posts with label Sikhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sikhism. Show all posts

Tuesday, 2 April 2013

SEX AND SIKHISM

SEX AND SIKHISM

By: Sirdar Kapur Singh


1. Victorian prudery had banned public reference to sex even through innuendo or oblique suggestion. Sex was ungenteel and highly inelegant. Even an inevitable indulgence in it had to be heavily veneered with patriotic respectability: young ladies were taught to mutter to themselves “God save the Queen”, or “Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves", to remain clean and unpolluted by a direct experience of orgasm. During the thirties when this writer was a young student at Cambridge, he was obliged to cross the English Channel to procure and read a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence. In India, where the imperial shadows of Queen Victoria have been rather lengthy and deep, an urbanite Hindu sect that arose in the Punjab, in the seventies of the nineteenth century and which tailored the Veda to their personal requirements, has inserted in their ‘scripture’ the directive that, throughout, during sexual congress, the parties must keep their minds off all thoughts of sex and continue muttering, "Om, Om," The purifying name of God.
2. Now, in the seventies of this century, pre-marital sex experience, teen-age sex involvement, group sex, wife-swapping, promiscuity, homo-sex, oral sex, and public propagation of all kinds of sexual behavior and deviations, through cinema and television, through journalism and fictional literature is a tolerated part of the European social scene.
3. In India, less than a thousand years ago, magnificent temples in utter devotion and absolute veneration to the greatest and the holiest of the holy gods were raised, such as at Khajuraho (10th & 11th C) and Konark (13 C), whose grandeur and cost in gold and labor, whose high artistic skill and architectural scale and aesthetic form are amazing and breath taking for the modern viewer. The exterior embellishments of these grand and holy structures depict and portray, sex unions between men and women, in frieze after frieze, in infinitely varied postures, of skillfully chiseled stone entablatures that show not only the highly matured artistic sensitivity of the sculptor but also display a masterly knowledge of Hindu Erotica. It would appear that, in the mental climate of the times in which these sacred edifices were created, some deep and fundamental relationship between the erotic and the numinous experience was perceived and commonly accepted.
4. Early Vedic culture aimed at kindling sex passions of male and female, purshagni and yoshagni, as highly desirable and legitimate human pursuits. [1]   Rigveda teaches Aryans to pray to the Fire-god for immortality, that is birth of children through sexual activity. [2]   The Rigveda, does not merely suggest a nexus between the sex activity of man and his deepest desire and yearning for a final escape from death but it also seems to lay down the doctrine of equating his sexual virility with the summum bonum, the highest goal, the highest achievement and the ultimate success: “He achieves not, he, whose penis hangs limp between the thighs; achieves he, whose hairy thing swells up when he lies” (X 86. 16). [3] This Vedic libidinal insight seems a remarkable precursor of the insights of certain modern utopians who see liberation of man through liberation of his instincts. Herbert Marcuse argues that modern man has been paralyzed by the “surplus repression” imposed by political and economic monopolies of our technological society, which bondage and predicament can be removed only by “eroticising the entire personality” of man, so that, he may “once again learn to love and create.” [4]
5. Manu, the great custodian of the Vedic tradition, considers sex as one of the two pre-eminent elements in the dynamism of the psyche of man, the other being "hunger"and declares that the basic occupational lifestyle of man alternates between "sex" and "hunger". [5]
6. The Great-god, Mahadeva, of Hindu trinity, Siva, bears one of his ontological names as, Erect Phallus, Urdhavamedhar, and also, as Penis Holder, shulpani, indicative of auto-sexuality. This underlines the Hindu Vedic insight into the sex-dynamics being at the core, not only of the human psyche but also as the central element in the structure of God-head. Sigmund Freud may have revolutionized European understanding of the human nature in the 20th century by showing the ‘libido’ as relentlessly controlling the centrality of human psyche, and by making the ‘Oedipus complex’ and ‘penis envy’ as household words, but the ancient subtle Hindu mind has nothing to learn from this Vienna savant.
7. Whereas in centuries’ old pious Hindu sculpture and representation, god Siva, is depicted as holding his penis in hand or otherwise bearing an erect phallus, the heterodox and equally ancient and venerable, the non Vedic Jaina tradition, by taking due notice of the centrality of sex in the structure of the divine psyche, invariably depicts and portrays its divinised men, tirthankars, as ‘down-penis’, pralamb linga such as is shown in the gometeshvar, giant statue at Mysore. This is to proclaim the Jaina doctrine that subjugation and subdual of sex is a pre-requisite and high watermark of the spiritually evolved and evolving man. This shows that the ancient as well as the modern scientific thought unanimously concede to ‘sex’ a primary ontological status in the structure of human psyche, and there is apparent and clear consensus that the role it plays is central and significant.
8. There are two basic questions involved in the problem of sex:
(1) what is the status of ‘sex’, as an element in the basic structure of human psyche, and
(2)  whether structurally fundamental or an emergent element during the history and development of human psyche, what is its role in the personal and social life of man?
9. Generally, the sex is assigned a triple function in human life:
(1) sex as an intrinsic pleasure and an anodyne to psychological discomforts, disharmonies and complexes,
(2) sex as tool of procreation and subservient to continuity of life,
(3) sex in relation to man’s spiritual evolution and progress towards perfection.
Reference has already been made to certain recent developments in the West towards freeing sex from restrictions and inhibitions and the new outlook on the subject represented by D. H. Lawrence, Freud, and Marcuse culminating in the sexual revolution of the sixties in the western societies that upholds the primacy of the pleasure-principle. The primacy of its procreative function is accepted in the Rig Vedic exhortation to man, to achieve the only available immortality, that is, through progeny. The soteriological function of sex as per se bearer of the numinous experience or as a catalyst towards it, is clearly and forcefully taken up in the ancient Hindu tradition, that of Tantra, greatly developed in Shakta cults and Buddhist mystic cults of Vajarayana. Agam, in the Tantra, is the opposite number of Shruti, the revelation, in the Vedic tradition. An Agam verse declares that, "Sexual coitus is the highest watermark of Yoga leading to transmutation into the First Master of Yoga." [6]
In the ancient Hindu thought, deposited in Upanisadic texts, the highest consciousness, realization of the Absolute Reality, is referred to as constituted by three distinct characteristics, sat, cit, anand, ‘Being’, ‘Consciousness’ and ‘Bliss’. Chhandogya text tells us that while sat is independent of cit, the third element, anand is indissolubly tied to it, for, anand must be experienced, vijnani so that it is what it is. The modern British philosopher, F.H. Bradley (1846-1924) in his famous book, Appearance and Reality, holds the same view, by saying that,”the Perfect means the identity of idea and existence, accompanied by pleasure.” From the earliest times up to the modern Hindu savant, Aurobindo Ghosh, (d. 1950) there has been profound and persistent speculation in India, with regard to the true nature and content of anand.
Further on, it will be pointed out that in Sikhism these previous notions of anand have been rejected in favour of new connotation thereof, to show how this new connotation has a bearing on the status and significance of ‘sex’ in the Sikh scheme of things. In the Vajrayana, anand is equated with sukha, felicity, or mahasukha, the highest felicity. This mahasukh, according to the identical experience and consciousness that results at the moment of a successful sexual intercourse commenced after a hearty meal of meat and wine. [7]
A Tantra text is unambiguously clear on this point. “Good wine and well-cooked meat, and also a fish preparation for a hearty meal, and then sexual intercourse along with prescribed postures, verily, these are the five pre-requisites of the Mystic Technology of Tantra that constitute a sure guarantee of spiritual Liberation for man, here and now, in all ages and to the end of Time.” [8]
10. This curve of change, from prudery to free, uncensored sex in the western society during the twentieth century, is the result of certain scientific insights gained and popularized by two great modern psychologists: Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung. Freud tended to interpret all numinous and emotionally significant experience as derived from, or substitutes for, sex, physical and romantic sex, whereas Jung tended to interpret even sexuality itself as symbolic, numinous experience in that it represented an irrational union of opposites, and was thus a symbol of wholeness. Thus, sex in Freud is exclusively a biological function, while Jung views it as a vital force capable of being directed through creative channels through sublimation.
This latter strain of thought it is that is embedded in the Vajrayana of mystic Buddhism and the yab yum techniques of Tibetan Buddhism.
11. In Islam, Muhyiud-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240), the great Spaniard mystic, exegetises over the trilogical hadith of Mohammad, wherein the Prophet declares that “three things of the world have been made worthy of love for me” wherein he found ‘freshness of his eyes,’ that is, consolation. These "three things” thalathun, are ‘woman,’ ‘scent’ and ‘prayer,’ `aurat’, `itar’, `abadat’. Ibn ‘Arabi explains that “when man loves woman he desires union, that is to say, the most complete union that can be possible in love; and in the form composed of elements, there exists no union more intense than conjugal act.” [9] He explains further that “man’s contemplation of God in woman is the most perfect” and not so “purely interior contemplation.” “One would never be able to contemplate God directly, in absence of all support, for God, in his Absolute Essence, is independent of worlds.” [10] Man is “placed as an intermediary between the Essence, dhat (God) from which he emanates and woman who emanates from him, [11] and he who loves woman “only for voluptuousness remains unconscious of that which is really in question”, [12] the contemplation, mushahadah, of God in woman, of the numinous essence in the orgastic experience of the conjugal sex. This is the apex of anabasis of sexual mysticism of Islam in which is grounded its fundamental social structure, ash-shara, that strictly forbids celibacy, monasticism and sex-maceration, but the real efflorescence of Islamic mysticism, the phenomenon of ‘Sufism’, has achieved its true dimensions independent of and outside this frame-work of sexual mysticism of the triad of the Prophet Mohammed consisting of ‘woman, scents and prayer’.
12.  It is this substratum of sexual mysticism which is rejected and repudiated in Sikhism by stating that,the Numenon of holiness and the perception of the sacred is grounded in transcendental enlightenment and emotional equipoise and not in obfuscatory thrill; as ex hypothesi, the supreme experience is characterized, through and through, by the highest mystic principle, sattava, equipoise of the three mystic Principles, triaguna, that permeate and bind the structure of the cosmos, while the orgastic experience is admittedly a hybrid of the other two, and inferior gunas, rajas, and tamas,
“Nanak approves of that union of polarities only wherein one term of this union is the Sovereign Transcendent Enlightenment, [13] which is sattava in character.”
Likewise, Sikhism refutes and rejects another postulate of Tantric sexualism that upholds the technology of exhausting and destroying passions through passions. A verse in the prestigious Kularanavatantra states that, passions can be surmounted and contained through indulging in them exhaustively. [14]
Sikhism refutes and rejects this postulate as grossly misconceived and demonstrably false, by declaring that,
“No one has ever achieved passional calmness through unbridled indulgence in passions. Can a blazing fire ever be quenched and put off by adding more and more fuel to it? The abiding peace that knoweth no ending, is nearness to and communion with God.” [15]
As a general insight into the nature of all human somatic passions, the Sikh scripture declares that:
"All unregulated human passions, eventually are generative of sorrow and disease". [16]
And:
“Uncontrolled passions are the gateway to sorrow and disease, and the end product of servility to senses is invariably sickness and trouble. [17]
“Turning his back on God, man seeks fulfillment in sensuality and passions and reaps the harvest of distemper and disease. [18]
Did not the incomparable Bhartri Hari the Sanskrit literateur, the Hindu savant, the enlightened king, a sensitive aesthete and analyst of human emotions, and the master Yogi who defied death and instead entered into a deep seedless trance, so as to stage a physical resurrection at the appropriate moment in future, record in his: Vaira gyashat kam that after a life long controlled and regulated indulgence in pleasures of the senses, he had woefully realized that he was mistaken in believing that it was himself, who was enjoying sense pleasures, particularly the erotic, while in fact, these sense-pleasures were, all the time eating up and corroding into his own personality and mind? [19]
13.  This sex, about which such extreme and polarized opinions and attitudes, firm and fanatical, have been held by man in different cultural structures, societies and ages, must be something profound and mysterious, fundamental, compulsive and pervasive, to move and condition man in this manner.
14.  Ancient Greek wisdom, the Judaic mature thought and ripe understanding of man almost everywhere and in all societies have realized and agreed upon two things:
(1)     that life of man is too short, evanescent and fleeting to justify his conceiving and achieving any serious and enduring purpose or project, and
(2) all earthly achievements of man are perishable and vain:
 “It is alas, too true that human life is perishable and a passing show like the stuff of a dream. And man’s all earthly achievements are exposed to decay and death having no make substance than the shade of a cirrus cloud.” [20]
The human life as it appears, has no in-built aim and therefore, it cannot be explained by itself and as such, it has no meaning, no value, no point,it is too short, too unreal, too ephemeral, too illusory, and mayaic for anything to be demanded of it to be built upon it, to be created out of it. Its whole meaning lies outside it, elsewhere and on another plane. It is an exanthem of the point earlier made in this book (Sikhism For Modern Man) that, all that is visible is rooted in the invisible.
15. Our physical birth is intimately connected with ‘sex’, with the division of the sexes and with their attraction to one another with love and the artistic creativity which this love generates and sustains. This attraction of the sexes to one another constitutes one of the chief motive forces and its intensity and its formal proliferation determine all other qualities and characteristics in man. A serious thought on sex makes it clear and obvious that the first and foremost aim of sex is the continuation of life and the securing of this continuation. This orgastic thrill of sex is the most elemental and intense experience available to an ordinary man.
16. Here in lies the mystery and the secret of sex, the pitfalls and dangers of sex, the morphinism of its clash and clamour,its flash and sparkle, and confusion and nescience born out of its profusion and promenade. Its original aim, that of procreation and continuation of life, recedes and is lost and no understanding of its, possibly, other and higher aims arises. Man vainly seeks significance and meaning of sex in the orgastic experience itself and thus ends in endless degeneration and down-fall, self-destroying, sorrow and suffering, suicidal ennui and emptiness. It is towards this tragedy of man that the Guru Granth Sahib makes a poignant, picturesque reference:
“O, my foolish mind, have you ever carefully witnessed as to how they capture and enslave a free elephant in the forest. They manipulate the great mystery of sex created by God. A life-like paper-she-elephant is placed on a concealed pit from which there is no escape or exit. Thus it is enslaved for life, to obey and to labour for his master and to suffer cruel wounds of the iron goad. [21]
This mysterious and terrible hold of sex to lure the unsuspecting beast from all life forms has been manipulated, in our time for the purpose of gaining victory in the titanic current struggle for shaping the nature of man and programming and computerizing his destiny, through equating man with God. The struggle is for achieving mind-control, a Pavlovian mastery through planned conditioning. Sex and hypnosis is the single, most vital component of mind-control. Drugs and sex combined to remove conscious resistance as a prelude to hypno-programming is capable of making man into an unwitting robot thus making the question of sex almost irrelevant for the individual and rendering, whatever ultimate purpose God might have had in creating the Universe, as infructuous.
17. A rationalization of orgastic thrill in itself being a goal of nature, is, sometimes, made out in the immense surplus of sex energy created by nature, far in excess of that understandably required for procreation of species. It is argued that if procreation and maintenance of its levels through sex were the main and exclusive aim of nature the excessiveness of the surplus of individual’s sex energy would not have been so much out of proportion, as it is, to this main and exclusive aim. It is, therefore, obvious, this argument proceeds, that, the nature intends sex-indulgence as desirable in itself as a necessary element in and pre-condition of human physical and mental normalcy.
18. This is the basic argument out of which the current sex behaviours legitimatising free libido, unshackled and un-censored eroticism originate and take their cue.
19. That this argument is by no means conclusive and misses a point or two can be demonstrated.
20. The obvious excessive surplus endowment of sex-energy does not necessarily prove that the excess is for sheer enjoyment and for no other purpose. Other plausible purposes and acceptable aims can be seen and shown.
21. By considering how small a proportion of sex-energy is actually used for the continuation of life, we can understand the hidden principles of many aspects of nature. Nature creates an immense pressure, and immense tension to attain an aim so that although an infinitesimal fraction of the created energy is used for the actual attainment of the aim, and yet this original aim would not be attained without this immense upsurge of energy that can enslave and blind man to serve nature, without which surplus energy a conscious throttling and thwartment of the aim of nature can not be eliminated and frustrated. It is the immensity of this surplus energy that forces man to serve the aim of nature in the belief that he is serving himself, his own passions and his own desires. This is the point made out in the Guru Granth Sahib, when the maya is spoken of as “deceitful stratagem” [22] of nature that appears to be, what it is not and which approaches and achieves a fixed goal deviously, diplomatically, and not directly, so as to eliminate anticipatory opposition, through incapacitation, as a “boa constrictor immobilises its prey by compression in its coils.” [23]
22.  The dis-easement, mental tensions and psychological distortions that ensue from an unsatisfying unduly suppressed and blocked sex life, a perceptive investigation of which syndrome, during the early decades of this century in Europe, has created the pseudoscience of psycho-analysis and the voodoo of ‘psychiatry’, are, in fact, secondary developments, of mishandled sex and their resolvement and cure is not necessarily or mainly through unshackling the libidinous reservoir, as has been misunderstood by the modern western man.
23.  There is another way out merging into the highway leading to a high destiny for man that Sikhism points out and teaches.
(i) Nature has endowed man with excessively surplus reservoir of libidinous energy, enormously disproportionate to minimal requirements for purposes of procreation and maintenance of its proper levels.
(ii) Normally, a blockage or coercive control of this energy results in distortion and disfigurement of psychological harmony and easement of man.
(iii) But blasting off its embankments and dismantling of all reasonable barriers and censorious controls built to regulate its free flow, in the form of instinctual imperatives and abundant precautions, is even worse, as are the current diagnosis and cures conceived by some pseudo-sciences or plausible voodoos in the West, in particular, and accepted and approved by the modern man in general.
(iv) Sex-energy is central to human psyche and all other energies, intellect, with feelings and emotional efflorescence feed on the surplus of sex-energy and there is no other energy, endowed to man by nature, that can replace sex-energy.
(v) Sex desires and sex sensations, in themselves, are neither a necessary or basic ingredient in the purest and highest level of human consciousness, not do they provide an unerring cue to such a level of human consciousness. Nevertheless, there are, in the emotional experience connected with genuine love, even infatuation as it lasts, strange sensations inexplicable from an ordinary point of view, and such strange sensations are also integral to sex experience, or orgastic thrills, that carry a taste of melancholy and sadness, vividly hinted at and portrayed in almost all romantic poetry in all ages, akin to the sensations of farewell at parting and of an imminent journey towards a strange and foreign, unfamiliar land. [24] The fact of the matter is that, in all such experiences new levels of consciousness arise wherein new emotions that are born cause previous intense emotions of love and sex to fade and disappear. This is the mysterious junctional point of the sex-based emotions and the mystical experience, not yet the numinous experience. This junction is no proof of the identity or sameness of these two categories of experiences and that explains why a contact with this junctional point merely leaves an autumnal taste behind, [25] a taste of something that must cede its place to something else but provides no positive taste of this something else. But in the light of the genuine mystical experience this junctional experience of amorphous melancholy disappears [26] and when the effulgence of true numinous experience shines, the first experience completely disappears and the second is submerged and consumed by the numinous effulgence. [27]
(vi) Undoubtedly and demonstrably, there is some strange and elusive relationship between mystical experiences and experiences of sex; and of all ordinary human experiences only sex experience and sensations approach those which we call, the mystical and the numinous. This is the relationship and the fact apparently accorded public recognition in the external erotic representations on the Khajuraho and Konark temples and it is precisely this similitude that has lured and misguided the Tantric Hindu systems and Buddhist varieties of sexual mysticism. This explains why, in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Shaktic ways of life [28] are bracketed with the other two: (1) deviation from truth [29] and (2) non-authentic living [30] as the most dangerous pitfalls to be avoided by a man of religion.
(vii) ‘Normal’ sex-life, ‘natural’ sex-life ‘proper’ sex-life, or whatever the normative adjective applicable here might be, is neither, in exaggerated development of sex energy, through pathological, mental and physical preoccupation and indulgence, which is degenerative and “the straight road to hell,” [31] the only “exit out of which is transmigration, birth and death, again and again, endlessly,” nor, in complete abstinence from sex and asceticism, whether in the mistaken belief that, “sex-ejaculation is death and complete sex-continence is conquest over death,” [32] or in the erroneous postulate that “ascetic abstinence is the first pre-requisite of and step in a life or religion.” [33] Sikhism pertinently asks that “if complete sex abstinence is, in itself, a guarantee of summum bonum, then why do not all born eunuchoids go straight to heaven ?” [34]
(vii) Sikhism teaches that a normal and proper sex-life is a regulated and duly controlled life in which sex functions are coordinated to the entire psyche of man, his instinctual, emotional and intellectual functions, so that he lives and develops as nature has intended that he should and God has designed that he ought to. A man’s thoughts, emotions, instincts, aspirations and intuitions, nothing contradicts sex, nor does sex contradict any normal element in human psyche. Sex, therefore, is completely justified in the inwardness of man. Any contradiction arises only when such a harmony and coordination is not achieved. “Such is the marked distinction of Sikhism that it points out a high road to man for the achievement of summum bonum through a harmonious, well-disciplined worldly life in which the emotions, desires and hopes of man are in mutual coordination and harmony.” [35]
24. Within this frame-work of Sikh understanding of the status and significance of sex in human life, the Sikh Prophets teach mankind
(1) to accept and adopt a practically monogamous and permanent marriage-based family as the inerodible foundation of all social organisation [36] and
(2) to endeavor to employ this monogamous family, based on mutual love and purity of marital faithfulness [37] for transmutation of the excessive surplus of human libidinous human libidinous reservoir for his highest spiritual evolution, through the specific Sikh discipline of Namayoga. The Sikh marriage ceremony called, the Anandkaraj, meaning, “A blue-print for attainment of abiding Bliss,” is formed by ritual recitation of the Sikh scriptural text, the anandu, in which are detailed the four progressive steps designed to guide the married couple on to the discipline of orientation and coordination of the somatic marital relationship with the spiritual development and evolution of the couple, in unison, to reach the summum bonum.
25. Through acceptance and implementation of these two precepts, man will restore and regulate sex to its proper place in his psyche and life, he will avoid the dangerous pitfalls of pathological and degenerative sex, and he will be enabled to evolve, so as to realize his highest potentialities and thus to build up and sustain a sane, civilized, spiritually evolving society which is “the ultimate purpose of the Creation, epiphany of the Perfect Man.” [38]
The Sikh Review, October 1979
[1] Chhandogya, v 7.1, 8. 1.
[2] prajabhir agne amrt-tvam asyam. --Rigveda.
[3] na sese rambhate antra sakthya akaprit, sedise yasya romasam niseduso vijrimbhate. --Rigveda (10.86.16)
[4] Dissent, N.Y.1955.
[5] narahvai sashanodro ratah.
[6] maithunen mahayogi mamatulliyo na samshayah.
[7] Westernitz, History of Indian Literature. I.
[8] madyam masam cha meenam cha mudra maithunameva cta, ene panchamakarasa, moksadaya yuge yuge-
[9] Angela Culme-Seymour, Fasus al Hikam (English rendition), Beshara Publication, U.K.1975,p.119.
[10] Ibid., p.120.
[11] Beshara Publication, U.K.1975,p.120.
[12] lbid.,p.133.
[13] gian rau jab sejai avai tau nanak bhog(u) karehi.--Gauri M1, SGGS, p. 359.
[14] yair eva patnam dravyaith siddhis tir eva codita   --Kularnavatantra.
[15] bikhia(n) mai(n)h kin hi tript(i) na pai jio(n) pavak[u], I(n)dhan(i) nahi dhrapai, bin[u] har(i) kaha aghai. --Dhanasri, M5, GGS, p. 672.
[16] jete ras sarir ke tete lagah(i) dukh. --Malar, M1, GGS, 1287.
[17] bahu sadoh(n) dukh(u) prapat hovai, bhogahu rog su ant(i) vigovai. --Maru, M.1, SGGS, 1034.
[18] khasam(u) visar(i) kie ras(u) bhog, ta(n) tan(i) utth(i) khaloe rog. --Malar, M.1, SGGS, 1256.
[19] bhoga na bhukta vaymeva bhuktah.  --Veragyashatak Bhartri Hari.
[20]   (i) jhutha tan(u) sacha kar(i) manio jio(n) supna rainai
(ii) jo disai so sagal binasai, jio badar ki chhai. --Gauri, M9, SGGS, 219.
[21]  kalbut ki hastani,man baura re,chalit(u) rachio jagdis,kam suai gaj bas(i) para man baura re, ankas(u) sahio sis. --Gauri,Kabir, SGGS,335.
[22]  mai maya chhal(u).  --Todi, M5, GGS, 717.
[23] maya hoi nagani jagat(i) rahi liptai. --Gujari Var,Sloka M3,GGS,510.
[24] (a) ham kahin dur kahin dur chale jaenge --Sahir Ludhianavi
(b) rahie ab aisi jagah chal kar jahan koi na ho --Ghalib.
[25] man(u) pardesi je thie sabh(u) des(u) praia. -- Suhi, M1, GGS, 767.
[26] ohu ras(u) pia ihu ras(u) nahi bhava. -- Gauri Kabir, GGS, 342.
[27] kahai Nanak(u) hor(i) an ras sabh(i) visarai ja har(i) vasai man(i) ai. -- Ramkali, Anandu, M3, SGGS, p. 921.
[28]   birthi ki sakat arja. -- Gauri,Sukhmani, M5, SGGS, p. 269.
[29] eko dharam(u) dridhai sach(u) koi. --Basant, M1, SGGS, p. 1188.
[30]   jahi karmi tahi puri mat(i), karmi bajhon ghate ghat. -- Sri rag, M1, SGGS, p. 25.
[31]   he kamang narkam bisraman bahu joni bhar- mavanah. --Slok Sahaskriti M5, SGGS, p. 1358.
[32] marnam bindu paten dhaeanat bindu jivanam.
[33]   kanchan kanya paritajyami.
[34]   bind(u) rakh(i) jau tariai bhai,khusre kio(n) na param gat(i) pai.  --Gauri Kabirji, SGGS, p. 324.
[35]   sat(i)gur ki aisi vadyai, putra kalitra vichai gat(i) pai   --Dhanasari, M1, SGGS, p. 661.
[36]   sagal dharam main grihast pradhan hai  --Bhai Gurdas.
[37] (a) eko nari jati hoe par-nari dhi bhain vakhanai --Bhai Gurdas
(b) par-nari ki sej bhul supnehu na jaio --Guru Gobind Singh
(c) par-triya rup(u)na pekhai netar  --Gauri M5, SGGS, p. 274.
[38] Sant het(i) prabh(i) tribhavan dhare. -- Gauri M1, GGS, p. 224.

Sikhism vs communism

The basic objection Sikhism has to a Communist society, or to a socialist society is in principle the same. The ideals of socialism, as a theory are embodied in the ideas of equality, freedom and fellowship. A socialist state is a state which translates these moral ideas into the economic life of its citizens, to man, both, as a consumer and a producer. It is here that the basic disease arises. To translate these eminently desirable ends into action, coercive means of necessity have to be devised and the agency for it is the state. State is merely an abstract term, and not a supra-individual entity as Hegel thought and taught, which thought has become the corner-stone of the modern socialist and communist societies. It is when the apparatus of the state comes to fall into the hands of a class of citizens, who then tend to consolidate themselves into a permanent and self-perpetuating layer of the society, that those characteristics of modern socialist societies arise to which Sikhism is basically opposed. Most of the modern political theories, whether those of socialism or of welfarism tacitly assume the legitimacy of the concept of state as a supra-individual entity to which obedience of the individual is due and for which an individual may be sacrificed. This assumption is the root cause of the tyrannies which are anathema to Sikhism, for, those who suspect socialism as a bridge to totalitarianism are not altogether mistaken as the realities of con¬temporary world show. Socialists are impressive verbal champions of freedom, but their actions destroy freedom. With increasing state ownership and control over the economy, Trotsky’s warning will come true: “Formerly, the rule was that he who does not work shall not eat, but now the rule is, he who does not obey shall not eat.”

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)

Reminiscing Kapur Singh


Reminiscing Kapur Singh

Set up Sirdar Kapur Singh chair urges Khalsa Action Committee’
Zafar Zang Singh 

AMRITSAR: To commemorate the centennial birth anniversary of the Sikh stalwart, Bhai Sahib Sirdar Kapur Singh, the conglomeration of Panthic bodies, the Khalsa Action Comittee, sought the establishment of Sirdar Kapur Singh Chair in any of the Universities of Punjab at a seminar organised here by the Dal Khalsa at the auditorium of the Guru Harkrishan Public School. The Committee also sought the raising of a memorial in honour of Sant Jarnail Singh and other brave warriors who laid down their lives during the June 984 attack on Darbar Sahib. 
There would not have been a better occasion than this one, for the fledgling Khalsa Action Committee to initiate a series of programmes to commemorate the twenty five years of the storming of Darbar Sahib.  
Reminiscing the role and contribution of Sirdar Kapur Singh, various personalities including former minister and SGPC member Manjit Singh Calcutta, Dal Khalsa president Harcharnjit Singh Dhami, Shiromani Sikh Council head Narain Singh, Chief Khalsa Diwan secretary Bhag Singh Ankhi and Prof. Jagmohan Singh who touched upon various facets of the life and times of Sirdar Kapur Singh. 
Speaking on the occasion, Bhai Jasbir Singh Khalsa, Giani Baldev Singh, and the convenor of the Khalsa Action Committee, Bhai Mohkam Singh and Damdami Taksal head, Baba Harnam Singh deliberated upon the events leading to the Indian army attack on Darbar Sahib and its impact on the Sikh nation.  
The underlying theme of all discussions and deliberations at the seminar hovered around the contribution of Sirdar Kapur Singh towards evolving, enunciating and elucidating the concept of Sikh doctrinal sovereignty.  
Dwelling extensively on his life, former SGPC secretary, Manjit Singh Calcutta told the audience that he is the only ‘National Professor of Sikhism’ and that this title was bestowed on him by Akal Takht Sahib honouring his profound scholarship of Sikh religious thought and traditions and his clear espousal of the Sikh cause.  
Calcutta described him as an encyclopaedia of world knowledge, who had mastered ancient scripts and modern scientific scholarship and methodology. “He was not only a writer but a fighter too, who fought for the Sikh cause at all forums available to him”, said Calcutta and added that Sirdar Sahib was of the firm belief that it was Sikhs should be masters of their own destiny without fear or favour. Recalling the times spent with him, Manjit Singh Calcutta said that, “Sirdar Sahib will always remain an inspiration to those who want to see the Khalsa flag unfurl with full glory on this planet.”   
Prof Jagmohan Singh urged the Young Khalsa to read and re-read the writings of Sirdar Kapur Singh and to learn the idiom necessary for a better understanding and response to the challenges of modern political thought processes.   
Bhai Mohkam Singh said the Indian army attack on Darbar Sahib and Akal Takht was meant to terrorize the community and liquidate that Sikh leadership which was perceived to be representative of the spirit of a free, proud and independent Sikh community.  
Dal Khalsa secretary, Kanwarpal Singh stressed the need for pre-eminence of the Khalsa as enshrined in the Anandpur Resolution and Sikh Homeland resolution as drafted by Sirdar Kapur Singh. “The political sovereignty of the Sikhs cannot be compromised.” he further said.  
Paying tributes to the martyrs of 1984, Mr Dhami said the long tryst with brown imperialists can and should culminate in the regain of Sikh sovereignty by peaceful and legal means.  
A special issue of the Punjabi journal Awaaz-e-Khalsa, edited by Narain Singh of the Shiromani Sikh Council was released by Bibi Paramjit Kaur, wife of late Jaswant Singh Khalra and Waryam Singh, the former Secretary of the SGPC. 
Speaking on the occasion, Baba Harnam Singh Dhumma of the Damdami Taksal pointed out that the times have not changed since Kapur Singh. He told the audience that in the last twenty-four hours, Panthic-baiters, the followers of Ashutosh, had held a function in the holy land of Amritsarat the behest of BJP MLA and firebrand anti-Punjabi leader Laxmi Kanta Chawla, which was attended by member parliament and prospective candidate, Navjot Singh Sidhu as well. He appealed to all the Panthic bodies to join hands to counter all challenges faced by the Sikh nation.
The nostalgic memories of Gajinder Singh -founder member of Dal Khalsa, now in exile, and who had spent a good portion of his life with Kapur Singh, in Chandigarh was read out on the occasion.  He described Sirdar Kapur Singh as his mentor and a driving force behind the formation of the Dal Khalsa way back in 1978. He said he was proud to be associated with Kapur Singh and that it was befitting that we eulogize his character and temperament. 
In a message from the US, Dr. Amarjit Singh urged Sikhs to heed the warnings of Kapur Singh.
A large number of Sikh youth, including those from Sikh Youth of Punjab, who attended the Seminar, were visibly happy at the conclusions drawn at the meet as it provided them an opportunity to imbibe the vast knowledge of Sirdar Kapur Singh.
4 March 2009

Are Sikhs Stupid?


Are Sikhs Stupid?

The learned author presents a deep insight into the ways of the Sikh leadership over the last five centuries and the hope that “like all living things, Sikhs want to live, they do not want to die”.

Sirdar Kapur Singh

Bhai Sahib Sirdar Kapur Singh, (M.A. (Canterbury), Ex-ICS and National Professor of Sikhism, in his characteristic style, in this speech delivered in Vancouver, Canada on 7 October 1974, under the auspices of All Canada Sikh Federation, spells out the fundamentals of Sikhism for a non-Sikh audience.
The first publication of this speech bore the title, Stupid Sikhs, as given by the author himself, for he wanted to drive the point home that the too-trusting Sikhs are viewed in such a manner by the chicanery and deceitful Brahmin leadership of independent India.  
As a young concerned Sikh from Mumbai, I traveled to Chandigarh to obtain the learned philosopher’s permission to republish the same speech under the heading, Sikhs and Sikhism.  The permission was granted and we printed and circulated thousands of copies of the same.  This time around, I take the liberty to publish the same with a slightly changed heading. 
Readers are invited to read the full version on the website, whereas, here we publish and edited and abridged version for reasons of space. Believe me, it is best savoured in the full.  –Editor.

Ladies and Gentlemen: 
Sikhs are a religious community and a political nation, simultaneously, and thus they are a unique society of the world.  The Sikhs are distinguishable from the Hindu society, which is essentially a territorial culture-group.  In the ancient Sanskrit texts, Vishnu-purana, in particular, it is laid down that Hindus are those born in the geographical area called, Bharat and this geographical area is delineated as extending from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari, Cape Comrin of Europeans, and from the river Indus to seas that girdle the soil of India; that is, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.  Essentially, Hinduism is non-exportable and relocatable and its modern conversion and oecumenical activities are unsanctioned innovations.   
Islamic society is grounded in totalitarianism of religious formulae and social laws, enforceable by political sovereignty and overlordship over non-Muslim societies. Christendom and Christianity formed a political society of medieval ages and are an oecumenical, universal religion of Gentiles, without being a political society in the modern world. The Jewish society is basically and fiercely ethnical while Buddhism is fundamentally non-social and non-political. 
Sikhism is a social religion, non-ethnical, oecumenical, grounded in a political society, directed and committed to propagation and establishing of a plural world-society, tolerant, open, progressive and free in character. 
Thus, Sikhism and the Sikhs form a unique religion and a unique society, which and who can be clearly distinguished from the other religious and political societies of the world.
Arnold Toynbee, the world-famous historian and philosopher of History, in his magnum opus, "History", refers to Sikhism as the forerunner of the true elan of the Communist Party of Lenin.  Arnold Toynbee adds that Lenin was quite mistaken in claiming that his Communist Party was a unique party in the history of the world and had been formed for the first time.  Arnold Toynbee asserts that because of its elan and structure, the Khalsa of the Sikh society is a true fore-runner and prototype of the Communist Party of Lenin. 
Sikhism and its apotheosis, the Khalsa, have merely a structural affinity and kinship of elan with the Communist Party of Lenin insofar as it is essentially an organisation of committed elites for furthering the cause of social transformations, but in aims and content it is poles apart from communism as it is irrevocably committed to social pluralism and freedom of conscience, tolerance and recognition of the human individual as an end in himself, and not an expendable limb in the beehive society of communism.  This aspect of the matter, Arnold Toynbee has failed to appreciate and point out in his great book. 
Above all, Sikhism is irrevocably committed to the doctrine of the existence of God, the one almighty God, as the beginning and the end of all, that is and that shall be, alawawal walakhir, as the Koran puts it. 
Sikhs are an international community.  There is a quip, current in European as well as in Asiatic countries to the effect that wherever life exists and is sustainable on earth, the potato and the Sikh are bound to reach there sooner or later. 
Arnold Toynbee, in his latest, one of the latest books--not the latest, "East to West", has observed to the effect that if the human race survives its follies at all--he is doubtful that it will survive--but he says that if it survives its follies at all, Sikhs shall surely be there as vigorous, hardy and go-getting homosapiens on this planet. 
Sikhs are universally admitted as excelling most other races of mankind in the basic activities of man:  production of food, manipulation of tools and fighting.  As agriculturists, artisans and manual labourers they excel many other races and human groups and as soldiers they are inferior to no group in the history of the world, in bravery inspired by ethical considerations. 
This religion of Sikhism was founded, as we know, by Guru Nanak, who was born in the year 1451 AD. Guru, in Sikh terminology, means, a prophet and a world-teacher and Sikhism is a prophetic religion based on a definitive revelation, like semitic religions of the West, and it, therefore, can be clearly contra-distinguished from the eastern religions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism, which have anonymous mysticism as their source of validity.   
During his missionary journey to the inner Himalayas on the mountain of legendary Kailash near the celestial lake of Mansarowar, he explained the first priority principle on which the Sikh society was to be based.  Bhai Gurdas, a very learned man of Sikhism--sometimes he is described as the St. Paul of Sikhism--tells us that when the Yogins residing in these inaccessible regions asked Guru Nanak as to "how did the news go in the world of the mortals"--mat lok main kia vartara--the reply of the Guru was sharp and to the point:  "The society has become rotten to its core."  And here he raised an accusing finger at these Yogins, adding:  "And Sires, you are the guilty ones, for, society cannot be guided and sustained without men of high sensitivity and cultures, but you, who possess it, have become escapees."--Sach chandarma kud andhiara, siddh chhap baithe parbatin kaun jagat kau parutara. 
In this doctrine, he answers the question of questions, the question which has been, for thousands of years, worrying the sensitive and thinking man and which question still remains finally unanswered.  This question of questions is as to whether the carriers of the grace, the liberated men, the men who have achieved the highest apex of spiritual evolution, whether they should rise like lions or die like lambs; whether the spiritually elite should withdraw into wilderness to bear witness, or act as leaven to the lump.  Guru Nanak's answer is clear: it is that every fully liberated person must be socially and politically committed, and must return back to the society to serve and guide it, to elevate it, and to preserve its basic ethical and spiritual values. 
The next doctrine of Sikh society was demonstrated by Guru Nanak during his fourth sojourn when he traveled by sea to Mecca by sea, the holy sanctuary of Islam, along with the Muslim pilgrims of India.  Inside this holy sanctuary, when doubts arose on account of his behaviour as to whether he was Muslim or a Hindu, he was accosted with the question:  "Who are you, and what is the book that you carry under your arm for it is not the holy Koran?  Tell us, please, according to this book that you carry, whether the Muslim religion is true or the Hindu religion?"--Puchan khohl kitab nu hindu vada ki mussalmanoi. 
The reply of the Guru is not only clear but fearless, particularly when you keep in view the situation in which this reply was made.  The Guru said: "Oh, pilgrims, neither those who profess Islam nor those who profess Hinduism are superior, one to the other.  It is the practice and its moral quality that makes one individual superior to the other in the eyes of God, and not mere lip profession.--"Baba akhe hajio subh amlan bahjon dovain roi." 
Likewise, the third doctrine was demonstrated by his exclamations against the tyranny involved in the invasion ofIndia by Babar, the Mughal, in the year 1521.   The heart-rendering cry and audacious question of Guru Nanak put to God is the Babar-Bani, on witnessing the misery caused by Babar's brutalities to undefended and unarmed civilians of India, "just as a herd of meek cows is attacked by a bloodthirsty tiger", as Guru Nanak puts it: Sinh pave ja vagge.    This is the harsh cry and the question of Guru Nanak in relation to a situation of this kind, implicating that under such circumstances it becomes the duty of an enlightened and spiritually committed person to come forward and to organise with those who are similarly cultured, to resist evil--resist evil at all stages, resist in the hope and in the faith that God will grant success, but never to sit in the corner, or on the fence, feeling that it is none of my concern or saying that it is the concern of God alone, whose duty it is to send somebody to stop this evil.   
These doctrines which Guru Nanak had thus enunciated were, by the successor-Gurus, demonstrated in relation to individual and contingent situations.  They were applied to the practical task of setting up a new society, the Sikh society.   The last of the Sikh prophets, the tenth Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, ordained an Order of the Sikh elites, the Khalsa, who now represent and spearhead the tasks of Sikh religion, and are recognisable throughout the world as bearded and turbaned Sikhs.   
Then the perfected yogins in the Kailash mountains asked Guru Nanak specifically as to how does he propose to eradicate evil and to oppose the tyrant, as no individual has the power to eradicate evil, it being universal and inherent.  The Guru is recorded as having  said, " I want to use two levers:  human organisation of those seriously committed to the task of defending goodness and to the task of opposing evil and I want to use a second lever, of the authentic and true "idea" of religion which is revealed in the conscience of highly sensitive and cultured men.  The "organisation" and the "idea" which are both human, with these two levers I hope to be able not only to resist the evil, not only to halt the progress of evil in society, but to elevate and exalt society to heights yet undreamt of, jin manas te devate kie.  Through this society I hope to evolve, deified men on this earth, who will be God-like, God-united, and yet-human." 
Such are the basic social and spiritual principles of Sikhism as enunciated by its founder, as perfected by his nine successors, as apotheosized by the last Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, into the Order of the Khalsa, who now have the responsibility and the assignment of setting-out these directives of Guru Nanak into practice; and who now bear the heavy burden of this responsibility of establishing a world-society in which the growth and unchecked march of evil is stopped and evil is ultimately, if not eradicated, controlled and contained.  Such a high task it is that lies on the shoulders of those whom you sometimes see in various parts of the world wearing turbans and unshorn hair.  These turbans and unshorn hair are not symptomatic of some kind of lack of modern cultural view-point.  They are the exteriorisation of a psyche and of a sense of such high mission the like of which the history of the world does not know, that which has not ever been conceived or practised before.   
In 1711, they set-up a republic in the heartland of the Moghul Empire in India, wherein they gave land to the tillers in a feudal society, proclaimed equality of all men as citizens of a state, and declared that power emanated from and justly belonged to the people and not to a hereditary privilegentsia.  These remarkable and most modern principles, which were not only avowed but which were put into practice, although for a very short while, are historical phenomena with which not many people in the West or even the East are acquainted; but which, if properly understood and appreciated, would make men marvel as to how it was that in a conservative, tranquil, progressive-and-struggle-avoiding East, such revolutionary and remarkably dynamic ideas not only could spring-up but could be put into practice and could be applied to the actual polity of a state which was founded, but which, unfortunately, did not last.  This state of the Sikhs lasted only for six or seven years.   
There was yet another principle which the Sikhs, inspired as they were by the teachings of the Gurus, proclaimed and actually applied in this short-lived republic.  It was on the 10th of December, 1710 that an Imperial Ordinance was issued from Delhi by the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah, which runs to the effect that: nanak-prastan ra harkuja kih biyaband ba qatal rasanand---"Every Sikh, wherever he is found,wherever he is seen, should be put to death without any hesitation and without any further thought".  On 7th April, 1711, hardly three months and a few days afterwards, an Ordinance in reply was issued by the Sikh Republic under the seal of the state and sign manual of their chief executive, Banda Singh Bahadur, which proclaimed:  "We do not oppose Muslims or Islam, but only tyranny and usurpation of power."  The substance of this Ordinance of The Sikh Republic is recorded in contemporary documents, such as the Persian Ruquati--Aminul-davallah, Dastural--Insaha and the Imperial Daily Diaries, the day-to-day records made by authority of what passed in the royal court.  They are now available for everybody to see. 
After that, there comes a period of about half a century of relentless persecution and genocide pogroms against the Sikh people by two contending empires, the mightiest empires of Asia of those days:  the Mughal and the Pathan Empire.   
But the Sikhs withstood this terrible onslaught.  They neither submitted nor abandoned their harsh cry of "death or liberty", a sentiment foreign to and unknown in the Eastern societies, ancient or modern.  And then it slid into the form of the Sikh Empire, which was called the Sarkar Khalsa that is “the people’s Commonwealth” from the middle of the eighteenth-century to the middle of the nineteenth-century. 
It was in the middle of the nineteenth century that the British perfidiously attacked the Sikh Commonwealth, after corrupting and buying the Hindu Generals of the Sikh army and the Hindu-dominated civil government at Lahore; and during the fierce Anglo-Sikh wars and battles, as a historian says, "the Sikhs beat the British and their Hindu mercenaries to their knees every time!"  I am quoting.  But the Sikh country was, nevertheless, annexed to the British Empire through treachery at the diplomatic table. 
Before the First World War, when the ideas of freeing India from the foreign yoke started stirring the minds of the Indian people, Sikhs were the spearhead of this movement.    Such hardships and such terrible conditions of existence they bore, and not a case of a single Sikh is known who either wavered or apologized, though many opportunities were offered them to just say one word:  "We are sorry for what we have done"; and they could come back to their villages and to their lands and live a life of comfort and ease as their other compatriots were doing. 
Such was the society which the principles of Sikhism gave birth to, and such is the history and tribulations of this society which, though on the material plane may seem to have failed to make a conspicuous mark, but, which on the plane of principles and on the plane of essences has made such a remarkable imprint, as superior to which would be difficult to find in the histories of the societies of the world, from ancient times to the modern times. 
When in 1947, the British--in 1946 or even earlier, the British gave it out that they no longer wanted to hold India and it was known that they cannot hold India and it was also known that the British would now quit, and they wanted to hand over the sovereignty and the political power of India to the Indians themselves.  Then the question arose, how and to whom should this political power be transferred?  The broad outlines are that the British Parliament, who was penultimate authority in this matter of the transfer of power, declared unequivocally that after the British quit India, there are three peoples, distinct peoples, who are the legitimate heirs to the sovereignty of India. 
Definite concrete and pressing offers were made half a dozen times by the Muslim League, as well as by the British, to the Sikhs to carve out and to have an area for themselves in which they could also be a free people and not altogether unlike the Hindus and Muslims were going to be.  There is no doubt about it, because I am a personal witness to some of  these occasions, and there is such heavy and credible documentary evidence on the point, that it cannot be doubted or denied. Whenever the British made these offers, the Sikhs said, "No, we tie our destiny irrevocably to the destiny of India.   
The promises and commitments which the Hindu leaders made to the Sikhs were as follows: after the British quit India and the Sikhs have refused to accept the offers of separate, sovereign or semi-sovereign areas for themselves made by others--after that happens, the Hindu majority--the Indian Congress, the mouthpiece of the Hindus as they rightly regarded themselves--the Hindu majority community solemnly promises, first, that they will not promulgate any Constitution for the future government of India which does not have the free concurrence and assent of the Sikhs; two, that an area in the north of India, with an autonomous status shall be carved-out in which, in the flowery words of Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, "the Sikhs also might feel the glow of freedom,"--which means, "therein the Sikhs shall be able to act effectively at the decision-making levels of their state."  These promises were given-from the year 1930 onwards upto the year 1947.   
After August 1947 nothing was done to put these promises into effect, and they seemed to have been forgotten and slowly-but-slowly attempts were made to win-over and corrupt the individual integrity of Sikh leaders. In 1950 the Constitution of India was framed.  Nothing was included therein which may have even the remotest semblance to fulfillment of these two solemn commitments which were made to the Sikhs.  Thus, the Sikhs had been tricked to give up their right of sovereignty, their right of being legitimate heirs to the power and sovereignty of India.   
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, the constitutionality of these political tricks and manoeuvres might be debatable, but their gross unethicality and cynicality, their low perfidious character, is all too obvious.   
And ever-since 1947, persistent, calculated, well-planned and regular attempts have been made on the cultural, on the political and on the economic levels, not only to disintegrate the Khalsa--the collectivity of the Sikh people-- once and for all, but to weaken the Sikh citizens in all ways.  
I conclude and sum-up in a few propositions what I have been trying to convey here: 
1. Sikhism is not a Hindu sect but a prophetic religion and a unique political society, guided and led by an Order of the elite Sikhs, the Khalsa, whose unshorn hair and turbans are merely an exteriorisation of their religious psyche, natural, spontaneous, evolutionary and authentic.  This is the first proposition which I have tried to elucidate before you.           
2. The second proposition which I have tried to make out before you is that Sikhism enjoins a religion grounded in truth alone, a growing truth in the enlightened conscience of man and sternly translated into day-to-day living of individuals.           
3. The third proposition which I have tried to put before you, to demonstrate before you, is that the Sikhs are committed to help the establishment of a world-society which is plural, non-coercive, expansive and forward-looking, motivated God-wards, in which there is maximum toleration, ever-growing affluence and minimum of mutually destructive ambition.   And on the basis of this, I want to observe in the form of the fourth proposition that:           
4. The mosaic pattern of Canadian society comes nearest to the Sikh ideal of a world-society, though the Canadian society is not, in every respect and in essence, its replica or prototype.           
5. And the last proposition which I now formulate in precise words is that, while, as Canadian citizens, the Sikhs may look forward to a hopeful and bright future, in India, their historical homeland, they now face the basic problem of their identity and existence, since the control of their own history has been snatched out of their hands and their historical potential has been submerged and throttled.           
6. And I add that the Sikhs want to live, as all living things do; they do not want to die.
Thank you (Applause).
4 March 2009