user2969

I have had similar experience at sikhphilosophy.net. Most of the regulars over there are not worried about bhagti at all. They are not concerned with the spiritual world at all. In fact as you said most of them are atheist. They seek to interpret Sikhism according to their own modern ways and dismiss everything that is deep or mystical. They have different interpretations about what Sikhi is and none of it includes naam jaap or even baani jaap. For them baani is just meant to be understood. If you point out that bani incessantly tells us recite naam and baani they don't care. Most of the time they make jokes of these things.

I can bet you were brought up in India. Most of us from there have the Ghulam Pravirti. We talk a lot and try to sound intelligent but in our hearts we hold 'Angrez' in a very high esteem. If an Angrez says a word condescending praise our chest fills up with pride. And in our heart we actually do not hold grudge that it were the Angrez who connivingly usurped the Sikh State. All we remember about the British is that they gave us the governance, the trains and the roads. And since they offered us a choice for our homeland in the end their every doing of the past automatically becomes okay.

I have had similar experience at sikhphilosophy.net. Most of the regulars over there are not worried about bhagti at all. They are not concerned with the spiritual world at all. In fact as you said most of them are atheist. They seek to interpret Sikhism according to their own modern ways and dismiss everything that is deep or mystical. They have different interpretations about what Sikhi is and none of it includes naam jaap or even baani jaap. For them baani is just meant to be understood. If you point out that bani incessantly tells us recite naam and baani they don't care. Most of the time they make jokes of these things.

@Sher How long have you lived in Punjab? How many villages have you stayed in and for how many days? All you are doing it quote online news reports. That is not the correct way to judge how a particular society is working. I have lived in Punjab and moved around in many villages all my life. Caste observations are there but I am restricting myself to Gurdwarey issue. Its nowhere like you are portraying. 
I have been dragged into endless arguments online where people like you keep on coming up with online links and talk out of no practical ground knowledge. I remember a hindu guy from England who had seemingly endless online and he would quote chapters and chapters trying to prove that Hinduism was the best religion and the vedantic spirituality was the highest point in world spirituality and so on and so forth. He himself had never even once visited India! And I tried to counter him saying that Hindu society was very oppresive towards lower castes and that they had trampled over the lower castes for thousands of years. But he would refute my arguments and come up with online links and chapters and chapters of books. I used to wonder how much time and energy he had to do such online research. I gave up. And you know what happened? He had been talking for a while about trying to find a Guru for himself in India. He made a journey and stayed with his relatives in Delhi. He visited some teerth asthaans. He kept up his journalling on the forums. And what turned out? All his illusion about the India society and its glorious vedic ideals turned out to be false. He then started condemning common Indian Hindus and called them as unread and uneducated and this and that. He still would not accept that his utopian ideas based solely on his online reading and offline books were wrong in the first place. He just took to blame Indian Hindu masses for their Intelligence and understanding.
 
I am feeling that this present conversation is going to take a similar direction. I hardly ever post on these forums because in this present times of Kaljug version 2.0 (reloaded) even a smallest spark can start a wildfire; everyone is ready to argue and fight. I shall drop the topic here. I have said that as far as visiting gurdwarey is concerned and partaking in langar, the situation is nowhere as is being presented by you. I say this based on real life experience of 40 years in Panjab. I do not need to study any report online to make a judgement. Yes the caste observations are there but I commented on Gurdwarey situation.

@Sher How long have you lived in Punjab? How many villages have you stayed in and for how many days? All you are doing it quote online news reports. That is not the correct way to judge how a particular society is working. I have lived in Punjab and moved around in many villages all my life. Caste observations are there but I am restricting myself to Gurdwarey issue. Its nowhere like you are portraying. 
I have been dragged into endless arguments online where people like you keep on coming up with online links and talk out of no practical ground knowledge. I remember a hindu guy from England who had seemingly endless online and he would quote chapters and chapters trying to prove that Hinduism was the best religion and the vedantic spirituality was the highest point in world spirituality and so on and so forth. He himself had never even once visited India! And I tried to counter him saying that Hindu society was very oppresive towards lower castes and that they had trampled over the lower castes for thousands of years. But he would refute my arguments and come up with online links and chapters and chapters of books. I used to wonder how much time and energy he had to do such online research. I gave up. And you know what happened? He had been talking for a while about trying to find a Guru for himself in India. He made a journey and stayed with his relatives in Delhi. He visited some teerth asthaans. He kept up his journalling on the forums. And what turned out? All his illusion about the India society and its glorious vedic ideals turned out to be false. He then started condemning common Indian Hindus and called them as unread and uneducated and this and that. He still would not accept that his utopian ideas based solely on his online reading and offline books were wrong in the first place. He just took to blame Indian Hindu masses for their Intelligence and understanding.
 
I am feeling that this present conversation is going to take a similar direction. I hardly ever post on these forums because in this present times of Kaljug version 2.0 (reloaded) even a smallest spark can start a wildfire; everyone is ready to argue and fight. I shall drop the topic here. I have said that as far as visiting gurdwarey is concerned and partaking in langar, the situation is nowhere as is being presented by you. I say this based on real life experience of 40 years in Panjab. I do not need to study any report online to make a judgement. Yes the caste observations are there but I commented on Gurdwarey situation.

@Sher How long have you lived in Punjab? How many villages have you stayed in and for how many days? All you are doing it quote online news reports. That is not the correct way to judge how a particular society is working. I have lived in Punjab and moved around in many villages all my life. Caste observations are there but I am restricting myself to Gurdwarey issue. Its nowhere like you are portraying. 
I have been dragged into endless arguments online where people like you keep on coming up with online links and talk out of no practical ground knowledge. I remember a hindu guy from England who had seemingly endless online and he would quote chapters and chapters trying to prove that Hinduism was the best religion and the vedantic spirituality was the highest point in world spirituality and so on and so forth. He himself had never even once visited India! And I tried to counter him saying that Hindu society was very oppresive towards lower castes and that they had trampled over the lower castes for thousands of years. But he would refute my arguments and come up with online links and chapters and chapters of books. I used to wonder how much time and energy he had to do such online research. I gave up. And you know what happened? He had been talking for a while about trying to find a Guru for himself in India. He made a journey and stayed with his relatives in Delhi. He visited some teerth asthaans. He kept up his journalling on the forums. And what turned out? All his illusion about the India society and its glorious vedic ideals turned out to be false. He then started condemning common Indian Hindus and called them as unread and uneducated and this and that. He still would not accept that his utopian ideas based solely on his online reading and offline books were wrong in the first place. He just took to blame Indian Hindu masses for their Intelligence and understanding.
 
I am feeling that this present conversation is going to take a similar direction. I hardly ever post on these forums because in this present times of Kaljug version 2.0 (reloaded) even a smallest spark can start a wildfire; everyone is ready to argue and fight. I shall drop the topic here. I have said that as far as visiting gurdwarey is concerned and partaking in langar, the situation is nowhere as is being presented by you. I say this based on real life experience of 40 years in Panjab. I do not need to study any report online to make a judgement. Yes the caste observations are there but I commented on Gurdwarey situation.

@Sher How long have you lived in Punjab? How many villages have you stayed in and for how many days? All you are doing it quote online news reports. That is not the correct way to judge how a particular society is working. I have lived in Punjab and moved around in many villages all my life. Caste observations are there but I am restricting myself to Gurdwarey issue. Its nowhere like you are portraying. 
I have been dragged into endless arguments online where people like you keep on coming up with online links and talk out of no practical ground knowledge. I remember a hindu guy from England who had seemingly endless online and he would quote chapters and chapters trying to prove that Hinduism was the best religion and the vedantic spirituality was the highest point in world spirituality and so on and so forth. He himself had never even once visited India! And I tried to counter him saying that Hindu society was very oppresive towards lower castes and that they had trampled over the lower castes for thousands of years. But he would refute my arguments and come up with online links and chapters and chapters of books. I used to wonder how much time and energy he had to do such online research. I gave up. And you know what happened? He had been talking for a while about trying to find a Guru for himself in India. He made a journey and stayed with his relatives in Delhi. He visited some teerth asthaans. He kept up his journalling on the forums. And what turned out? All his illusion about the India society and its glorious vedic ideals turned out to be false. He then started condemning common Indian Hindus and called them as unread and uneducated and this and that. He still would not accept that his utopian ideas based solely on his online reading and offline books were wrong in the first place. He just took to blame Indian Hindu masses for their Intelligence and understanding.
 
I am feeling that this present conversation is going to take a similar direction. I hardly ever post on these forums because in this present times of Kaljug version 2.0 (reloaded) even a smallest spark can start a wildfire; everyone is ready to argue and fight. I shall drop the topic here. I have said that as far as visiting gurdwarey is concerned and partaking in langar, the situation is nowhere as is being presented by you. I say this based on real life experience of 40 years in Panjab. I do not need to study any report online to make a judgement. Yes the caste observations are there but I commented on Gurdwarey situation.

Listen brothers, I know what you are trying to say but try and get the point I am trying to convey. Casteism does exist in Sikh community, of course. And the fact that in many places there are gurdwarey such as Mazabhi, ramgarhiya, ravidassia gurdwarey. But nobody stops anyone from visiting any gurdwara. A mazhabhi does matha-tek in other gurdwarey and nobody objects. Same with langar. The individual cases of dispute are about control at the village and dispute is never truly religious in nature unlike Hindu community where the dispute is truly religious in nature.
The issue in the video you posted is a dispute about labour wages. In the second video it talks about discrimination, which I agree does exist. But the discrimination is about control and management. Its not about rules of who can visit which place. not a officially socially accepted norm. It has always been a deviation from the norm. That is why I said till now I have never seen a case of any dispute in my personal life. My rishteydarian are spread out all over southern Panjab with my own village in Haryana near Kaithal, my relatives in Patiala, Sangrur, Nabha. My Nanke in Faridkot district, my massian in Bathinda region, my Bhuaa jis in Fatehgarh Sahib region, my other relatives in Ludhiana etc. The individual cases are mostly rooted in other reasons such as control and caste domination and not truly religious issue. Yes caste observations is a social fact in all punjabi communities. But you can travel all over Punjab and see that even though people follow caste practices, there are no norms such as low caste being openly banned from visiting a Gurdwara. Its a complex issue to explain and all I can say is, do not form a final opinion based upon one or two news report which are often politically manipulated. 

I have had similar experience at sikhphilosophy.net. Most of the regulars over there are not worried about bhagti at all. They are not concerned with the spiritual world at all. In fact as you said most of them are atheist. They seek to interpret Sikhism according to their own modern ways and dismiss everything that is deep or mystical. They have different interpretations about what Sikhi is and none of it includes naam jaap or even baani jaap. For them baani is just meant to be understood. If you point out that bani incessantly tells us recite naam and baani they don't care. Most of the time they make jokes of these things.

The point to going and attending somewhere is whether you shall be able to conduct yourself with a respect and dignity that becomes a gursikh. If you shall be able to conduct yourself like a Gursikh you can go to a prom or anywhere else. At a prom probably there might be flirtations with opposite sex, there will be liberties taken, there might be alcohol or some drug or something like that. Ask yourself what kind of environment would there be? Would there be focus on looking sexy and attractive and impressing others and looking cool? All these values are not in line with being a gursikh.

I have had similar experience at sikhphilosophy.net. Most of the regulars over there are not worried about bhagti at all. They are not concerned with the spiritual world at all. In fact as you said most of them are atheist. They seek to interpret Sikhism according to their own modern ways and dismiss everything that is deep or mystical. They have different interpretations about what Sikhi is and none of it includes naam jaap or even baani jaap. For them baani is just meant to be understood. If you point out that bani incessantly tells us recite naam and baani they don't care. Most of the time they make jokes of these things.