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Balkaar

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  1. ​Jio, when you speak of missionaries/reformists, are you alluding to those sampardas or Jathas which took their bearings from puritan Sikh movements and the Tat Khalsa Singh Sabha (as the AKJ did for instance), or the heresies of Kala Afghana and Professor Darshan Singh? The formerly mentioned groups derived their views on everything from very strict and inflexible interpretations of Gurbani, whereas the latter, as you pointed out, are almost entirely animated by a sort of germinal atheism and an abhorrence of everything they perceive to be Hindu.
  2. I agree entirely. I find it somewhat disconcerting that religious dogma exerts such a retrograde influence over the mind as to be capable of blinding people to their own innate nature. It's like something out of Orwell.
  3. In my personal experience, I have found the reformists to be the more vitriolic of the two parties. Puraatan Sikhi is inherently more comfortable with those that offer divergent views or practice Sikhi in a different way - the disparity of the various samparadas that constituted the Old Sikh world is testament to this. None of them, in spite of their vast differences, dabbled in the business of who was a Sikh and who wasn't. Only the Indian faiths are so paradoxical. This accommodating nature was lost when Sikhi started to take on accretions from Anglicanism after the Tat Khalsa Singh Sabha gathered momentum. Even notions about Waheguru changed. He was no longer considered to be a numinous, ethereal force, but acquired anthropomorphic properties like the God of the Bible, issuing commandments and very specific sets of rules which could not be infringed upon. Sikhi became more totalitarian as a result, and the infighting between sampardas and jathas is the result. The missionaries place the very highest emphasis on Gurbani, they even whitewash or modify Sikh Itihas to make it compatible, as they see it, with their very specific interpretations of Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, The traditionalists, as their name suggests, respect Gurbani but place exceptional value upon history and heritage which they consider to be as immutable as the Bani itself. On the one hand, being propelled onward by the momentum of a developing world is an excellent and necessary thing, but on the other hand, if any one of our traditions can be discarded in order to better suit the times in which we live, then who is to say a time will not come in the future when it is thought that they all ought to be? Similarly, respect for tradition is instrumental in preserving a distinct Sikh identity. But when some of these traditions are of unknown or questionable origin and appear to be wholly antithetical to our Guru's Bani, keeping them in spite of these very great misgivings is tantamount to a corruption of Sikhi. I think the solution lies vaguely in the middle of the Sikh religious spectrum, though I can't say where.
  4. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh The character Smerdyakov from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov believed that 'if God is dead, everything is permissible', the implication being that without religious dogma to tell us which actions are permissible and which aren't, human beings would possess no moral compass and would do as they pleased. I'm not so sure of this. When even Nastiks can comprehend good and evil, can religion really be the arbiter of virtue? Even Darwinian evolution by natural selection, considered by many to be the antithesis of the world of the spiritual and the numinous, can account for basic human morality. If Homo sapiens were amoral, then left to their own devices they would surely have obliterated one another long ago. They would have been too selfish to consider the proliferation of their species, animated by their egoism alone. Thus human beings had to be moral or selfless to a degree if they ever stood a chance of evolving physically, intellectually and culturally, to the point where they currently are. The Ten Commandments of the Jewish Pentateuch are cited as the originators of moral law by the Abrahamic faiths. But are we really expected to believe that the ancient Israelites, prior to receiving the Commandments which told them what wasn't allowed, wandered about the Sinai desert under the apprehension that murder, theft or deception were permissible? Everyone recognizes those basic norms of morality, one doesn't need to be told killing is wrong as if they don't already know it. If anything certain religions made matters much worse [I believe Sikhi is an exemption ] by attempting to arbitrate what was right and what was wrong. For instance, nobody ever considered mutilating the genitalia of their children before some prophet informed them that this was a mandate of God. No human sacrifice has ever been committed except to appease some blood-soaked deity. Nor was an animal needlessly bled to death with a prayer mumbled over its thrashing body before somebody claimed that this was what God demanded. I would be interested to hear any divergent points of view, or any which corroborate what I have said. Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh
  5. I understand that we are enjoined to transcend the limitations of emotion and attachment, but I don't see that there's anything wrong with simply loving Sikhi for its own sake. We've an Itihaas that is second to none, a religious tradition that, in my view, blows the others out of the water on every account, every time. What's more, it sits comfortably with reason. A Christian or a Muslim, even a liberal one, will always have to contend in their own heads with the barbarism and senselessness contained within their Holy Books, and struggle to reconcile it with everything they know about human morality. I've never felt conflicted in this way, I'm not entirely sure any Sikh has. I hate to resort to the banal after all this profundity, but my motivation for my adherence to Sikhi is simply unremarkable by comparison - it makes me happy.
  6. Bhai Sahib, ​I recall having read these things in Patwant Singh's Empire of the Sikhs and the books published by Kashi House. "... if any crime was committed, he would see that due punishment was exacted by the removal of a nose, ear or limb according to the seriousness of the crime." (Empire of the Sikhs, page 103) The account of the assault upon the Maharaja's person was written by Ranjit Singh's European personal physician Johan Martin Honigberger in his book Thirty Five Years in the East. As for Nihang Singhs imposing their own justice on smokers, there is an amusing story cited in Warrior Saints: Four Centuries of Sikh Military Tradition, on page 119, which pertains to the subject. The Hungarian artist August Theodor Schoefft absent-mindedly placed his pencil in his mouth while finishing off a sketch, and was given a thorough beating by Akali Nihangs who mistook it for a cigarette. He eventually liberated himself from his aggressors and sought out sanctuary in the home of a theologian. Later on in Delhi, as a way of exacting vengeance, he produced a painting of a Nihang Singh about to be strangled by hookah-smoking thugees. The Mahapurakh in my avatar is Sant Baba Ghanaya Singh Ji Pathlawa, he is little known outside of the pind in Nawanshahr that is his namesake.
  7. ​Neither rape nor murder carried the death penalty under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Amputation of a limb was the retribution of the killer of the debaucher. Attempting violence against the Emperor himself wasn't even punishable by death, only by the removal of part of the nose, as an unfortunate Nihang high on Degh discovered after barging into the royal tent. Intriguingly, the only offence for which one would be put to death by the state was the slaughter of cows. I wonder whether this was out of deference to the Hindu subjects of the realm, but this raises the question of why the Maharaja did not extend a similar courtesy to his Muslim subjects, who were far more numerous, by outlawing the slaughter and consumption of pigs. Generally, the judiciary of the Sarkaar-e-Khalsa was quite relaxed. I don't know that most common misdemeanors were punished in any official capacity. Things were wonderfully liberal. Certain Akali Nihangs considered themselves religious enforcers, and acted as an unofficial and impromptu rehat police, reacting violently at the sight of tobacco smokers for instance.
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