tonyhp32

Why are you supporting India at all?

Don't you know how many Sikhs India has killed?

Chatanga is right. The Muslims were the main winners of the partition. They managed to gain 24% of the land area of India whilst they only had 25% of the population in 1941. With only 70% of the Muslims population of united India they got land equivalent to what 100% of the Muslim population should have got. They have ethnically cleansed the non-Muslims out of Pakistan and Bangladesh whilst living as equal citizens in India. They have about 13% of the Indian population so at any stage they could become a third column in the event of war.

Either you are trying to be very PC or you have no idea of what your religion teaches about non-Muslims. There is no such teaching as equality between Muslims and non-Muslims.

For the life pf me I can't fathom why someone would want to convert into a religion where the so-called prophet allowed his followers to RAPE captive women prisoners. Married a child of 9 years of age and ordered the murder of old women poets who had criticised him.

I wouldn't think a tradition which as many would have us believe had deep roots in Sikhi could easily be thrown out of the Panth. Although some would have us believe that the Singh Sabha had strong support from the British whereas the Sanatanists were on their own. The opposite is true in many ways. The Sanatanists had the Bedis descended from Guru Nanak on their side. They also had the support of most of the Maharajas and the landed class. Yet they lost the battle. The survive the battle and emerge victorious, all the Sanatanists had to do was to show that their lifestyle was in accord with the Guru Granth Sahib. Udasis could not do so because they had idols installed with the Guru Granth Sahib. Since most Sikhs believed in the Sehajdhari to Amritdhari route then it would be difficult to accept Sadhs with shaven heads as a part of the Panth. Especially when the stories of Sikh Shaheeds accepting martyrdom rather than losing their Kesh were current in the Punjab.

To accept the Niddar/Shastarvidya.com version of history we have to accept that between 1870 to 1920 a vast majority of Sikhs actively accepted a false version of Sikhism and rejected the true version of Sikhism. That's the reason for my constant reference to sanatanist 'history' as fairy stories. You have to be a believer in such stories to accept the sanatanist line.

In fact if you look at it logically it would have been easier for the traditional sampardhas to throw the Singh Sabha out the Panth given that they could claim an ancient origin whereas (as dodgy websites also now claim) the Singh Sabha could be shown to be a novelty and British inspired. But what the Singh Sabha did was to test the lifestyle and beliefs of these sampardas against Gurbani and hence showed them to be Hindu in belief and not ideal Sikhs according to the rehat.

It's a moot point whether they themselves took the active step to leave the Panth or whether the Singh Sabha threw them out. As the Singh Sabha was a parchar organisation then their aim would have been to 'Sikhify' them. There were a few Nirmalas who actively supported the Singh Sabha so they didn't all become Hindus or hide in their Deras.

As for SGPC and Akali Dal, I believe the rot is temporary caused by Badal. Pre-Badal the SGPC was a great organisation and very forward thinking. In the 1940's they even passed a resolution in support of a Sikh state. No doubt either in the forthcoming or any future elections an anti-Badal front will take control of the SGPC. Whereas the Singh Sabha successor organisation can be reformed, the so-called traditional samaprdhas are unfortunately beyond hope.

There isn't really much they can do to be fair. The Nirmalas missed their chance to be an active missionary wing of Sikhism and using their Sanskrit and Braj skills to bring Sikhi to the Hindus outside of Punjab. If not being missionaries they could still have acted as a force inculating a respect for Sikhism anongst the Hindus. But they failed miserably. The fact that they are called 'Nirmala' which is Sanskrit for 'pure' same as Khalsa is Persian for 'pure' should not be lost on us. Their tradition claims that they were given Amrit by Guru Gobind Singh yet not many keep the Rehat or have the 5 Ks. Rather than do parchar of Sikhism they have virtually become Hindus having knowledge of Guru Granth Sahib. Compare this with the Sewapanthis who were originally Sehajdhari and yet are nowadays practically all Keshdhari. The Nirmalas went the opposite direction. I am sure the Nirmalas must be surprised that after being defeated by the Singh Sabha some kids in the UK seem to think that they were the best thing since sliced bread!

The same is the case of the Nihangs. They have also failed in their duties assigned to them according to their tradition. Whilst they call themselves Guru Ki ladli fauj, or Dal Panth and such 96 Crore etc they have failed miserably since 1984.

Udasis have always been outside the Panth. It's a recent thing that some dodgy websites have tried to hoodwink Sikhs that Udasis were accepted by the Gurus. In Ludhiana district the Udasis had quite a few large deras and most of them degenerated when the Mahant in charge would get married and seperate some of the Dera into his family quarters and then his sons would then fight over the inheritance as if it was their family Dera.

Neo,

I don't think anyone has ever advocated that Monas whether Sikh or non-Sikh not be allowed to do sewa whether it is in the langar, gatka or playing the tabla. The dispute has been over whether monas should be allowed to do Kirtan from a Gurdwara stage. Doing Kirtan is a form of Parchar whereby the Kirtaniya is urging the Sangat to follow the words of the Gurus. How can someone do this yet not himself follow the Guru's words?

Citing a few people who may, in the case of Dullah Bhatti may not even have existed does not prove the existence of a resistance movement against the foreign rules of the Muslims. Prior to Guru Hargobind Sahib where was the active resistance? There is no William Wallace type figure in the history of Punjab before Sikhism. Where is the Hindu Jat warriors outside of the Khalsa who created their own rule in Punjab especially given the turmoil that existed in Punjab in the 18th century. The Hindus in the hills still maintained their independence from the Muslims yet why was there no reconquesta of the Punjab plains such as that happened in Spain?

Sant Jarnail Singh was Brar Jat but then so was the traitor who took Gandhi's order to attack the Golden Temple. There's good and bad in all. It wasn't just some Jats of Malwa that were bad, there was quite a few Jat Chaudhris of Majha from the time of Mir Mannu who had made common cause with him and used to hunt for Sikhs in their areas and send them to Lahore for execution.

The BBC report seems more likely an attempt to convince Indians how 'prosperous' they are and how therefore they should be buying more western goods and services. Also it is aimed at solidifying the myth that both India and China due to their strong economic growth will be able to pull the global economy out of recession. They use this myth to help maintain the confidence of the investors in the western stock markets. If only the sap investors in the west knew what a bubble both India and China are.

The BBC report conceals more that it reveals. It claims that Bullar's orange orchards 'fetch him $300,000 a year'. An economist would ask the question, is that $ 300K profit or income? If it's income then whether he is making a good living or not would depend on what his expenditure has been on growing his crop. If he expends $299K then his oranges don't make him shyte! Everyone knows that inflation in India is going sky high. The cost of farm inputs have also going up and farming in the traditional sense is dying out in Punjab. It is interesting that his claim to have made his wife's life easier consist of giving her a microwave and a washing machine! I've seen microwaves in even modest homes in rural Punjab!

The majority of farmers in Punjab are small scale farmers who in the green revolution days and after were able to make a good living farming the land. As land holdings became more fragmented over the years then these farmers were able to take land on mamla or theka from the absentee landholders who were migrating to the West from the 70s onwards. But now that land prices have gone up so much, the absentee landowners from the West are either selling their land or demanding more and more money from mamla. Recently I was in Punjab and the mamla rates in our area were astronomical. A kila now goes for around Rs 35,000 per year. The rate used to be about a tenth of that about a decade and half ago. The greed of the absentee landowners is galling. On the one hand they go around how the Sikhs in the West should be helping Sikhs in Punjab yet at the same time they demand top rates for the land for mamla. In our family we give our land on mamla to members from our patti in the village at a reduced rate so at least the farmer can make some profit. Our land is given out at Rs 25,000 a kila. Unfortunately the worst offenders for demanding top rates for mamla are those idiots that have migrated recently out of Punjab. They still work like bhaiyas picking berries in fields in Canada and the USA and yet when they are back in Punjab they show off how much money they have made abroad!!

The small farmer is pretty much shafted in Punjab. The labour rates demanded by chamars and bhaiyas is around Rs 250 per day and on top of that they have to be fed countless rotis and given nasha as well. The chamars who used to work for a share of the produce don't do that any more and even after taking a wage for their work their womenfolk will steal vegetables from the farmer's fields.

Some in our patti have already decided to give up farming for good. Rather than pay Rs 35,000 per acre they decide to just keep one kila of theirs to grow patthay for the majhan and give any others out on mamla. At least these farmers won't need to break their backs feeding the greedy mouths of absentee landowners. They will use their tractors and trolleys for day rate transport work.

The problem is that even though the sons and daughters of non-dalit Sikhs might study hard and get good degrees, there is no hope of getting a government job which is really to only way that a family can get a decent income and survive. The dalits having reservation are able to get the jobs in the police, schools and the govt departments. You can understand in some sense why there is no incentive for these kids to study hard when they know that there is virtual no value to what grades they get as the dalits will get the jobs. This has led to the double whammy whereby the non-dalit students don't bother as they have no hope of getting a job and the dalit students don't need to bother getting good grades as they will automatically get the jobs! So we can now understand why every sector of Punjab is on a downtrend. Reservation has led to useless candidates getting jobs as teachers, revenue officials and policemen. The education system in Punjab is pretty much derided as the worst in the country, we can understand why when the teachers who have been employed by the government through reservation are failures and probable drop outs themselves.

We can sit in the west and criticise the people who try every means to get out of Punjab and move to the west but this is probably their only way out of the spiral which will lead them into poverty. The only asset that these farmers have is their land and due to the land price they can sell an acre or two and either pay agents to get their son out of the country or pay a dowry and get their daughter married off in the west all in the hope that afterwards the whole family will follow them out.

Thanks for the info. I think that the reason for the low take up could be that most passengers get met by their relatives who bring along a car or van so they would tend to go to Durbar Sahib using these means. Having said that, there's no reason why people not being met by relatives shouldn't be using this service.

Here is an account of the Sikhs of Qazi Noor Mohammed who accompanied Abdali on one of his invasions.



Is there anything similar from the Afghans regarding the prowess of the Punjabi Hindus or the Marathas?

Multan is a district of Punjab and Sindh is a province although they are contagious. The author is writing about the Lahore district and the Multan road he is describing is the road to Multan that traverses the Lahore district. It is not surprising that the Lahore district has such a strong historical Sikh imprint even 70 years after the Sikhs were driven out. The Sikhs owned over 60% of all the land in the district prior to 1947. The Gurdwara they visited is called Chhota Nankiana and is associated with both Guru Nanak and Guru Hargobind. 
 

Ok so what exactly is the difference between say the EDL smashing up some Paki shops in Bradford and the SP going to Chalvey and re-enacting the 'Road to Basra' with smashed up Toyotas and Nissans? How should goray act to the Musla threat? What actions by goray would you consider legitimate in this issue rather than a manifestation of their Anglo ways? Are Goray inherently racist so any anti-Musla action by them should be seen as gradually being converted into an anti-Sikh action when the time is right? Lots of questions but what I am getting at is that do you see all resistence to Musla influence by the goray as basically driven by racism rather than by a desire to also protect their own and their culture? The EDL may be racist but they are a manifestation of the gora desire to preserve their culture. The politicians have failed the goras and they now jump into whatever organisation they think is working to save their culture.

I hope you haven't cast me as one of the puppos. I've lived through the late 70s in this country and I was in Southall when the NF came to visit in '79. The received wisdom amongst apnay was that 99% of all goray were racists. the 1% were the Socialist Workers types who would stand with the Asians in fighting against the racist goray. All Asians were equal and stood be united. Now jump a decade on and it was the Muslims that brought their religion into the picture. They were the first to break away from the Asian label and ironically cling to it when some their is something negative in their community and they want to disguise it by taking the asian label.

What I believe is that not all goray are racists. Not even the majority but all Muslims are anti-Kafirs. Now you might think that Arabs aren't as bad as Pakis or Turks have no issue with Sikhs but if there were sizable minorities of Sikhs in these areas then there would be an issue. No all Arabs are extremists as are not all Turks but there is a latent hatred of Non-Muslims which will ignite at any time against Kafirs.

The answer to all this is to see the situation that is developing and make sure that Sikhs are ready in case of a flare up. This is why Gurdwaras should be setting up martial arts classes for the Sikh youth. You made a snide remark about the way my ancestors loyally served the British but by serving the British they were able to maintain their own martial traditions as well as gain knowledge of modern weaponry and tactics. How would the Sikhs have fared in responding to the Muslay in 1947 had there not been lakhs of Sikhs trained in the British Indian army and not having had battle experience in the second world war? It was due to these demobilised soldiers that Sikhs were able to clear East Punjab of Muslims and create space for the refugees from West Punjab. This is why the Sikh regiment in the British Army was such a good idea. No doubt you would gave scoffed at Singhs going fight the 'white man's wars' but the training of these Singhs would have kept us in good stead in any future flare up.

Stop lionising rioters and thugs. The courts handed out sentences and some were later reduced by the court of appeal. What do you expect when thugs take the opportunity of a Paki getting stabbed outside a club and then use that to commit their usual mayhem by burning down legitimate businesses like car showrooms? What do you think of these thugs parking burning cars outside the exits of the working men's club and then setting it on fire? Isn't that arson at best or attempted murder at worst? What would you have had the judiciary do? Hand out community service order? I for one am glad the judiciary decided to pass sentences appropriate to the crimes. I suggest you stop reading the Guardian or the Socialist Worker and educate yourself that these rioters weren't innocent victims but criminals.

I don't say every Muslim should be in Gitmo, I agreed with that EDL guy who was referring to a baying mob of Muslims.

I think some people need a reality check here. If the whole Panth became Nihang tomorrow what would that achieve. What have the Buddha Dal achieved lately living the lifestyle that they do. If they had joined the movement en masse then possibly the idolising of them here would make some sense but because they didn't and because their achievements in the last few decades amount to zilch then praising and attempting to make their lifestyle an aspiration for the Panth is just a pipe dream.

The Kharkoos were the true heirs of the Dal Khalsa and the Misls and not the Buddha Dal. None can deny that the mass of the Kharkoos died the death of martyrs in the same way that our ancestors achieved martyrdom during the struggle against the Mughals and Afghans. The Kharkoos might not have been as colourful as the Nihangs are and they may not have been able to display oversized domalas or claim to have been given farlas but they did what the Panth asked of them which was to the fight the enemies of the Panth. This is something that the Nihangs never did and to try and posit their lifestyle as some sort of ideal Khalsa lifestyle is sheer lunacy.

I would much rather place reliance on the writings of Bhai Vir Singh than on Santa Singh and his views. The Devi worship episode is discussed in this paper and Bhai Vir Singh's analysis of how the story came about.

http://www.globalsikhstudies.net/pdf/Funda...SikhStudies.pdf

scroll down to page 170

Singh2 please no rants about this being from a anti-dasam granth site. Either read the paper or not.

Be honest. It teaches that women and children are not to be killed unless they fight back against the Muslims when attacked. So if they do not resist then they can be enslaved rather than be killed for fighting back. For the children it is slavery and for the women it is sex slavery. Hardly the best moral philosophy in the world is it?
Mohammed himself had sex slaves captured through war and allowed his followers to rape captured women. ISIS are probably the only Muslims who are following the teachings of Mohammed to the letter. 
As for a right of return. Nehru and Liaqat Khan agreed that none of the refugees had a right to return. The only ones who did return were some Meos who migrated to Pakistan but came back when they saw that they weren't going to get much for what they left behind in India. No non-Muslim would want to live in a state like Pakistan or Bangladesh where they have no equality and are treated worst than cattle. 

I saw the  first programme. The Muslim guy whose father was a member of the Muslim league in Ambala and who went with his son to see his old house showed how the well off Muslims who were the main drivers in the creation of Pakistan were able to leave safely but left the poorer Muslims to fend for themselves. There was quite a few obvious mistakes in the programme. It referred to present day Ambala as being in Punjab and it also called someone called Parkash Chand as a Sikh when he was clearly a Hindu. The Bhaiya Muslim scholar in Ambala tried to present the Muslims as the victims of partition an the massacres he referred to were the ones after the partition line had been drawn and Sikhs realised that half their population was to become dhimmis in an Islamic state. 

Basics of Sikhi is a very good place to learn about Sikhi but you can also get make a start here
at www.sikhbookclub.com. There are lots of great books to read for free there.
 
As a newcomer to learning about Sikh this book is a good starter. It's quite simple and by reading this you will know if you want to read more and deeper into this subject.
http://sikhbookclub.com/Book/Stories-From-Sikh-History-Book-1
 
 
 
You will find that with Sikhi as with many things in life, there are differing interpretations. Some are outright perverse, and sikhphilosophy forum counts as perverse in my opinion. Their motive is to water down Sikhi to fit in with their own beliefs and base it on scientific boundaries. it is not a good place to go to, to learn about Sikhi.
 

Yeah and Obama is your massarh and you are Modi's sala. Give it a rest man, you're becoming a joke. 

For someone who complains about Sikhs not knowing their history, you have a very low grasp of Sikh history yourself. The Jats didn't dominate Sikhi just after the Singh Sabha, they had become a majority in Sikhism by the time of Guru Hargobind. A majority of the Misl leaders were Jats, the ones in Sialkot and Gujranwala fought and beat both the Muslim Jats and Rajput to take over these areas. The ones in Doaba beat Muslim Rajputs and Afghans to control Doaba and the ones in Malwa beat Muslim Rajputs in Sirsa-Hissar area. The Hindu Rajput of Doaba was sitting on his backside changing one master for another. 
As for the battles between the Brars and Sikhs, the Sikhs would have been for the most part Jats from Majha. 

It;s not about expending men in a war for the chance of possessing a few guns. It is about having men who can both fight back as well as have experience in military tactics. You glossed over the fact that a lot of the Sikh convoys from West Punjab were more organised and travelled in formation with armed guards compared to the Muslim convoys which were disorganised and open to attack. The only ones which were organised would have been ones which contained former soldiers from Punjabi Muslim regiments recruited from East Punjab. I did not say that the Yazidis would have been able to defeat ISIS but between the option of fighting back and taking some of your oppressors with you or meekly submitting to having your women raped and become sex slaves.. which option is the better one? The Kurds have been able to take on IS because they have a military tradition outside of the Iraqi army namely as a rebel force which has a history of having rebelled against the governments of the three states that they reside in. There is no record of any offer of a Sikh state either from Churchill or any other British statesman. It;s fanciful to make such claims and the only offer of any substance which might have given the Sikh some autonomy was the one by Jinnah of an East Punjab as a unit in Pakistan equal to other units such as West Punjab and Sindh with the Sikhs having a role in the Pakistan army. There is no doubt that the Sikh leadership was outplayed by both the Hindu and Muslim politicians. The Sikh leadership should have had only one demand and that was a Sikh state. The nucleus of a Sikh state already existed in the from of Sikh states like Patiala. The Sikh leadership should have convinced the Sikh Maharajas to agree to a merger of their states by giving them some power or honorary status in the new Sikh state. Patiala Maharaja could have been made President etc. With this nucleus already in existence then the only matter left was to decide which districts of Punjab would be merged into the Sikh state. In the end the only option the British gave was for the Maharajas to agree to cede their states to either India or Pakistan. But if the Sikh Maharajas had argued that hey wanted to unite then there would not have been anything that the British could have done. Nehru had to struggle and threaten the Maharajas across India to give up on their scheme for becoming Independent rather than joining either India or Pakistan. The Sikh state union might even have led to a much more balkanised India with separate states made up of the former kingdoms.
Where did you get the idea that the Sikh leadership had agreed to the bombing of Jathas by the British? Some reference would be helpful. 
With regard to the Jews, their situation was a lot better than the Sikhs. They had just been allocated over 50% of the land of Palestine with just 30% of the population and with Jews just owning about 10% of the land. Contrary to what you stated the Jews had made full use of the British army by having their own Jewish legion during the first world war and a Jewish Brigade in world war 2. I read that 35 members of the Jewish brigade became generals in the Israeli army. The Jews were members of the Palestine police as well. 
You state state the non-Sikh Indian army would not have achieved as much because of the non-participation of Sikhs. Let's be honest here, do you think that 200,000 Sikhs in an army of millions would not have been able to get replacements for these Sikhs. Jinnah was an avid supporter of the British war effort and he could easily have got even double the amount of Muslims recruited to replace the Sikhs. My contention is not that the Sikhs saved the British empire in both world wars but that the contribution by Sikhs at least made them more ready to face the Muslim onslaught as well as being made one of the three parties consulted on partition. If the leadership was unable to use this effectively doesn't make the contribution any less significant. How exactly would you have seen the partition play out had there been no Sikh participation in world war 2? 

The Yazidis may not have the same military history as the Sikhs but they would have been in a much better position to fight had they had military training. Your contention that they would have been cannon fodder may or may not have come about. Saddam was a tribalist and a sectarian. He was against any individual or group who he believed were capable of overthrowing him. 
The rank and file in the Jathas may have held the belief that they were fighting the Muslims in East Punjab to secure their rear in case of a Muslim attack from West Punjab but the leadership was aware that the intent was to create a compact Sikh area. The general belief especially among the Sikhs was that Pakistan would collapse very quickly and with or without Indian government assistance the Sikhs would be able to take back the lands  lost to Pakistan. At every forum where the Sikh leadership had put forward their claim to an independent Sikh state, they were universally answered with the simple question..demarcate the area of Punjab where the Sikhs are in a majority. The Sikh leadership learnt their lesson from these incidents. They knew that without a clear majority in a compact area a Sikh state would never be conceded. This is not to say that they did not think of fighting like the Jews were to do a year later in Palestine but at some stage they decided that securing a Sikh majority area was a better option. Even after the loss of Nankana Sahib and the canal colonies became apparent, they stayed focussed on the plan to evict the Muslims from East Punjab. The loss of these just added to the fury with which the plan was carried out. I doubt that had Lahore, Nankana Sahib and the canal colonies been given to East Punjab that they original plan would have changed. The Muslims would just have been evicted from these areas as well. The lack of a Sikh majority area was the biggest frustration of the Sikh leadership and something which in their view led to them not being able to take advantage of the British departure. The only two options that would he  resulted in the East Punjab Muslims being allowed to stay put would have been of an undivided Punjab in united India or an East Punjab with special status in Pakistan. 
Your opinion on what the Sikhs should have done in 1849 is unrealistic. How tens of thousands of Sikhs whose military pay from the Lahore Durbar used to pay the land revenue demands for their villages find a livelihood? 
Such an option may make sense when faced with enemies like the Mughals and Afghans where local rivalries and jealousies among the enemy can be taken advantage off but do you really that was possible against the British? If the Sikhs were to remain aloof from the British army who do you think would have taken the place of the Sikhs? Punjabi Muslims including the Pathans who incidentally took the same advantage between 1919-1930 when the British limited Sikh recruitment due to the Akali movement. The Punjabi Muslim went from 17.4 % of the British Indian army to  29% in 1930 while the Sikh percentage reduced from 17.4% to 13.6%. Without the Sikhs in the army the Punjabi Muslims would have been in a better position to browbeat the non-Muslims onto accepting the whole Punjab as a part of Pakistan. 
 

Look at what's happening to the Yazidis in Iraq. An exact replica of what the Muslims did to the Sikhs and Hindus in West Punjab. Maybe if the Yazidis had been recruited into Saddam's army maybe their villages would have had ex-military people to defend themselves when IS attacked.