Sikhism vs democracy

Likewise, a democratic stage of modern conception is unacceptable to Sikhism wherein the citizens are required to relinquish their rights by conferring them upon a ‘general will’ of a single and indivisible sovereign people. This ‘general will’, in practice, is only the will of the numerical majority. The omnipotence of the majority is the practical corollary of democracy, and respect for the rights of minorities loses all effectual sanction just because the individuals have forfeited all power to insist upon their rights, by conferring them bodily upon the state. The concentration of an immense power in the hands of an often fictitious and rigged majority is truly tyrannical. There is, therefore, justification to place democracy and despotism on the same plane, in many cases.
Again, where a state-community called, ‘the nation’, does not consist of citizens having a well-¬accepted uniform political destination and a common purpose, the Anglo-Saxon, ‘one head, one single non¬transferable vote’ is, verily, the devil’s device to degrade and liquidate a permanent minority by virtually annuling all genuine representation to such as the Sikhs are hardly one percent of the non-Sikh citizenery of India.The degradation and demoralisation which it entails for the Sikhs is worse than slavery and death.

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)

Sikhism vs communism -3

Communist society is basically a military society which accepts an unlimited military commitment that does not terminate till the end of “the class struggle,” a heritage from Marx himself. This commitment overrides all other merely “civilian” institutional safe-guards, and it rests on two fundamental beliefs, one, that communism embodies the will of the workers and it stands not for what they seem to want now, in the present, for what they ought to want eventually as conceived by their rulers, and, two, that nothing ‘fundamentally wrong could occur in the Soviet Union, or the “Socialist Bloc” because the party of the workers was in power there, guided by an incorruptible top leadership dedicated to the cause of the golden future.
This and Sikhism never shall meet.

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)

Sikhism vs communism -2

Socialism and Communism are not the same or even similar. For, though their slogans are similar or the same, they are separated by a moral abyss. The immoralism of communism is a basic postulate which stems out of its view of the ultimate Reality which the communists regard as the primacy of the matter over the mind. From the tautology that they do not differ entirely, no conclusion can be insinuated that they do not differ essentially. Dictatorship without popular support, without an independent legal system and without free criticism would seem to be a permanent feature and not a passing phase of the communist society. Communist society is basically a military society which accepts an unlimited military commitment that does not terminate till the end of “the class struggle,” a heritage from Marx himself. This commitment overrides all other merely “civilian” institutional safe-guards, and it rests on two fundamental beliefs, one, that communism embodies the will of the workers and it stands not for what they seem to want now, in the present, for what they ought to want eventually as conceived by their rulers, and, two, that nothing ‘funadmentaly wrong could occur in the Soviet Union, or the “Socialist Bloc” because the party of the workers was in power there, guided by an incorruptible top leadership dedicated to the cause of the golden future.
This and Sikhism never shall meet.

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)

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)

Social implications of Sikhism

Sikhism regards a co-operative society as the only truly religious society. 
How is this Sikh co-operative society distinguished from the modern models of a socialist society, a welfare society, and a communist society? 
The basic element which distinguishes a Sikh cooperative society from all these modern social models is grounded in the Sikh view of the worth and status of the individual as the very microcosm of God, and anindividual, therefore, must never be imposed upon, coerced, manipulated or engineered.
“If thou wouldst seek God, demolish and distort not the heart of any individual” 3 “I worship God to be freed from all adversatives hostile to the light of God within myself.” 4
Herein lies that which essentially distinguishes a religious cooperative society as conceived by Sikhism from the modern societies that are grounded in the doctrines of socialism, communism and welfarism.
A welfare state is based, primarily, on four precepts, Firstly, it accepts collective responsibility for providing all individuals with equality of opportunity. This implies, among other things, availabillity of adequate educational facilities, universally, Secondly, a welfare state assumes responsibility for the basic economic security of those, who are unable, to provide such security for themselves. This implies disabled youth and old age pensions, wage legislation and un-employment insurance. Thirdly, it assumes responsibility for reducing permanent disparity in distribution of wealth and bringing about a closer coincidence between the income of an individual and ¬his contribution to society. In a welfare society, the policy of taxation and budgetary trends are primarily determined by this consideration. Fourthly, a welfare society assumes responsibility for promoting full employment of the available manpower and the full utilisation of the national resources, whether in the form of man power, or in the form of the material wealth. It will be seen that all these four objectives on which the concept of a welfare state is based are interdependent and that when one objective is accepted, the others, logically or otherwise follow. It is implicit in a society which is organised as a welfare state that, the extent of obligation of the state to provide the individual with facilities, is also the extent of the power of the state over the freedom and autonomy of the individual as a social unit. Briefly, slavery is the necessary price for security, when security is given by an external authority and is not acquired and maintained, primarily by the individual himself. It is with this implication of the welfare state that Sikhism finds serious fault. Sikhism is not anti¬welfare. In fact, it insists that the welfare of an individual mainly consists in the welfare of his neighbours. What Sikhism opposes basically and uncompromisingly is, the creation of a class of men beset with the sins of bureaucracy and arrogance of meritocracy, who in the name of the state and in the name of the social welfare seize and retain such power which can be and is, more often than not used to coerce and impose upon the individual. Somebody has well quipped : ‘I would never fool with the government. By the time they get around to solving a problem, the guy has either solved it himself or has died.’ This is the bureaucratic sin of procrastination. The other sin of overweening tyranny is capsuled in the Punjabi folk-wisdom : ‘never walk to near the hind legs of a mule or within sight of a bureaucrat’. Again, welfarism is essentially a project for ‘levelling up’ and ‘levelling up’ is a mode of tyranny. Aristotle tells us that Periander of Corinth did not confme himself to lopping off the outstanding and the proud men, he destroyed the twin emotions of pride and confidence among the people, which process, as a side-effect, ostracises the honest and the men of integrity. Aristotle also names the three main aims of tyranny, to keep the subjects humble, to have them distrust each other and to render them powerless for political action. Thus, welfarism has a built-in tendency to bring about depravement and demoralisation of an entire people.
Sikhism, therefore, envisages a social organissation in which the welfare activities of the State are not a result of coercion and imposition from outside but instead result and follow from a transformation, possible through genuine religion only, of the basic attitudes of the individual, which transformation progressively destroys narrow selfishness in him such as is inconsistent with the welfare of the society as a whole. Sikhism does not view tolerantly any arrangement or organisation in which a desire for universal power can raise its head to demand that which is beyond its scope. Sikhism would support Pascal when he says : “These expressions are false and tyrannical, ‘I am fair, therefore, I must be feared’, ‘I am strong, therefore, I must be loved’, ‘I am indispensable, therefore, 1 must be retained’. It is for this reason that Sikhism would not countenance the creation of a welfare state through the coercive apparatus of the state.

- Sirdar Kapur Singh (Social implications of Sikhism)