Mithar

some facial hair on a woman is not a beard. If singhs will start rejecting girls because of something so small, then why do Sikh men feel bad when they are rejected because they are not clean shaven?

This is a very positive step for a Muslim country. If Ataturk had not taken the initiative, Turkey would have been as backward as any other middle eastern country.

True, no use blaming SGPC for this. Those Hindus and Sikhs are literally living in the worst place in the world. It is sad because the Kabuli Sangat is a very old sangat, dating from the times of the 1st Guru. Instead of the Hindus and sikhs of Afghanistan moving to India, it would have been better for them to move to Pakistan. That way the Pakistani Sikh population would see an increase plus it would have been better for the Gurdwaras of Pakistan which do not enough local Sikh Sangat.

LOL, yes I meant Pawns.

The congress may have tried to use Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindiranwalay to their own advantage. But Sant jee saw through their game and tried his best in uniting all Sikhs on a common front rather then being used by political parties. Instead of opposing the Akalis, he tried to awaken their conscience/zameer to what was happening to the Sikhs. Sant Jee was not some simpleton. If you listen to his speeches from back then, he had a lot of up to date political knowledge and understood the forces that were trying to use Sikhs as ponds on a political chessboard.

LOL so true. When I was a kid I did not like things like Saag and Moongi di daal. But as soon as I turned into an adult, I started to like eating them. It is a strange phenomena indeed.

Good point. In a way, it is idol worshiping. They may not like to admit it, but how is it any different from what hindus do in front of their moortis?

surprisingly so many wrongly pronounce Kanwar. Most people actually pronounce the N in Kanwar not realizing that the N is suppose to be pronounced as nasal similar to how N is used in "Bhindranwala".

amar jkp, you will find youtube filled with Kala Afghanist revisionist propaganda like the one above.

I don't understand one thing about UK media is, they say Sikhs lay siege. But if Muslims do the same thing, then they term it as "Asian"? They should have said "Asians lay siege" if they want to be fair with everyone.

KDS, the problem with killing of baby girls is nothing new in Punjab. It is an ancient problem. If you look at census figures from the British era, Punjab was always disgraceful when it came to girls to boys ratio. Now North Indians have just gotten more high tech in how to deal with this. Instead of killing the baby girl after she is born, she is killed while still in the pregnant mother. Our Gurus tried to put a stop to this. Which is why one of the people that Sikhs were not to associate with were Kurimars(daughter killers). If we consider ourselves Hukmi Sikhs, then we cannot talk, associate with a person or family that has killed their baby/unborn daughter.

True, from what I have heard from my grand mother, back in the olden days, girl babies were buried alive after being born. Another way of killing baby girls and make it look "natural" was that if the girl was born in the winter, she was just left outside at night in the cold without warm clothing to protect from the winter cold, by sunrise the baby girl was usually dead. North Indian people(which includes our people) are really sick people. No wonder God had punished us with so many invasions from the north west, partition in 47, 84 holocaust, drug problems and so on.

Simran in groups should be done as one voice. Everyone chants together at the same tone. Not too fast. It's really fun, especially if it is done at Amritvela. The only bad thing is if one person decides to do simran in their own speed disregarding everyone else. That really disturbs the concentration of the group.

You have a point there. When the Palestinians were exiled, at about the same time, about the same amount of Sephardic Jews living in Arab nations across the middle east were also expelled. The European(Ashkenazi) Jewish dominated Israel allowed them to settle down and even absorbed them, even though the Ashkenazi and Shephardic Jews are very different culturally and linguistically. At the same point in time, the Palestinian Muslims were left as refugees, none of the Arab states absorbed them. Even to this day the Palestinians are living as refugees. Arabs have done little to support their fellow Arab (Palestinians) refugees even thought the Palestinians are culturally, linguistically, racially, religiously the same as other Arabs. When the Palestinian majority state of Jordan ruled west bank, they did not grant west bank freedom. That is not all, after the 1991 gulf war, Kuwait expelled 450,000 Palestinians from Kuwait because Arafat had supported Saddam during the invasion of Kuwait. The Palestinians are a good people, but useless leaders like Arafat have really put their movement decades behind.

IT's bad what happened to the Palestinians, and I hope one day the get to be free. But one thing I don't understand. That's their demand that Israel allow them to come back into Israel. Realistically Israel will never allow that no matter what. Jews are not that dumb to allow millions of Palestinian Muslims into Israel and become the majority. When Israel would allow that, then they would cease to be a Jewish state. So I hope Palestinians are blessed with leaders who can give them realistic dreams as a possible future.

while Sankritised and Persianised is true for Punjabi in East and West Punjab, but in the diaspora, Punjabi language is increasingly becoming Englishised.

Great post! and it's so true. Communist may be a great idea in theory, but in reality it fails really badly. If a person does not even have incentive to succeed then why would they work hard? sadly capitalism succeeds because it suits human nature very easily.

Can it be Padched into "ਗੁਰਿ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਮਨਾਈ ਕਾਲ ਕਾ ਖੰਡੇ ਕੀ ਵੇਲਾ॥" The meaning completely changes from Kalka's khanda into Kaal's Khanda.

That's true. Also his knowledge about Hinduism and it's various traditions was also very impressive. At one point he was also a Sanskrit professor.

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The reasons you have pointed out why Saraiki is now being considered as a separate language are true. Otherwise in reality Saraiki is a just a dialect of Punjabi like Majhi, Doabi, Malwai, Pahari(Spoken in Himachal), Dogri(spoken in Jammu), Pothohari etc. Whenever I have met a person speaking Saraiki I could understand him and he can understand me. If Pakistan will not give Punjabi language an official status, then I hope the Saraiki nationalists will be successful in creating their own province, atleast Punjabi in the indirect form of Saraiki dialect will survive and thrive which is a victory for the Punjabi language overall.

How did Bhai Vir Singh Jee do bad by promoting Punjabi? if the Muslims and Hindus have largely abandoned their mother tongue in favour of neighboring languages does not mean Sikhs should follow their foot steps. Punjabi Sikhs have proved time after time that they are the loyal sons of Punjab. Yes Guru Granth Sahib Jee jee is not really all in Punjabi, but Punjabi is heavily used in Gurbani especially the Bani of Baba Farid Jee, Bhai Gurdas Dhiyaan Varaan and even Dasam Granth Banis like Chandi Di Vaar. Sikhs also should study Braj, Sant Bhasha and Farsi because those language have also been heavily used in Sikh scriptures. But if a Sikh is Punjabi he should be loyal to his language. If Punjabi Sikhs decide to be disloyal to Punjabi language then who will be left to stand up for the Punjabi language? The Punjabi language is every Punjabi's responsibility whether he be Sikh, Hindu or Muslim but so far only Sikhs have largely taken up this responsibility on their shoulders. Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi do have official status in their respective provinces. They are taught in all the schools and even spoken in their state parliaments while Punjabi has no such status because Punjabi Muslims think of Punjabi as an uncultured language while Urdu is thought of as a language of class, status and national unity.

True. How sad that the only nation in the world which is a Punjabi majority and Punjabi dominated nation Pakistan, yet Punjabi boli has no official status. If anything it is looked down upon as a language of uneducated people by them. It would have been a great service to the Punjabi language if it had an official status in Pakistan like it gives to Pashto, Sindhi, Balochi. I don't know why the Pakistani establishment considers Urdu more Islamic than Punjabi considering that all the great Sufi Saints of Punjab for the last 1000 years have only written in Punjabi and not Urdu. But the way things are going in Pakistan, the future of that nation seems uncertain. I wouldn't be surprised of Pakistan will Balkanize within our lifetime. I wonder what the status of Urdu will be then. Even in our Punjab, it is not uncommon to see Punjabi Hindus speaking Hindi with each other and their children instead of Punjabi. That looks very strange every time you see that. Punjabis are probably the only people in the world who have disowned their own language in favour of neighboring languages. Bhai Vir Singh Jee deserves a lot of credit for making Punjabi into an acceptable literary language amongst the masses. His contemporary Iqbal was also a Punjabi from Sialkot but he only wrote in Farsi and Urdu. Imagine the contribution he could have made to Punjabi with the knowledge he had. In the Diaspora, Sikhs have also started to abandon Punjabi in favour of English. I have seen so many western born Sikhs who cannot even speak their language all thanks to their parents who only speak English with their western born kids.