dalsingh101

These people make and lose millions in a day just with stock fluctuations. So no, these kinds of amounts probably mean nothing to him as he would be used to losing and gaining money in a relatively unpredictable manner anyway.

Anyone else feel the belly dancer might just feel a tad uncomfortable with the randy old sod all in her face like that? lol Or maybe she's loving it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTliYIS0oMA&feature=related

Sarbat, you've lost the plot. Out of interest. Do you, or have you ever thought about converting?

Thing with climate change is we can never really be too certain which areas may become unstable. Areas that are considered safe today might become centres of disaster in the next few decades?

Fair point. But as you allude, how many soldiers do you think the authorities would send against such a small contingent? So we have one surviving order for 700 men. We can assume that there would be 'hanger ons' or wannabe soldiers accompanying some of the official ones, so lets bump it up to a thousand. 40 against a 1000 is still no walk in the park is it. Let's say they represented half of the soldiers, so we get to 2000 against 40. Wasn't Auranga also engaged in serious conflicts down south during this period? If so, I'm sure some of the imperial soldiers must have been busy there? All in all though, Chamkaur wasn't like I've heard some brothers describe it i.e. hundreds of thousands against 40. One even went as far as saying a million...... But alas we digress. Back to Mohammad.

Cool! Nice one.

Look in Habib & Grewal's Persian sources. It's not surprising given that we are a minority and that we don't really have strong social cohesion amongst each other. See post 13 for some description of what this can lead to. Someone once made this point to William Darymple who is one of the chief white Moghul historians. He has been accused of writing his accounts on Moghuls in quite a romanticised, exoticised manner, looking top down. A Sikh once commented on the fact that Sikh itihaas gives us a contemporary bottom up perspective of how a certain group actually experienced Moghul rule. But Sikhs often get it wrong too. When they just generalise all Moghuls to be the same oppressors. That is just being mentally/intellectually lazy. Sikhs do the same with Hindus too. It is a blunt pendu mentality that doesn't help to uncover truth and is usually used to rouse people's emotions rather than discovery. Plus people don't really realise just how cosy Arab and western relations are in reality. I worked in a big corporate law firm once and a big part of their business was drawing up contracts with various Arabic government agencies. They had whites who were completely fluent in Arabic doing this. This is big money. Instead Panjabis being pendus only seem to perceive sullay as Paks, whom they have a lot of contact with. They very rarely have contact with powerful sullay who aren't Paks. This has them totally misunderstanding what is going on in the global context. So just dissing Islam for being oppresive etc. isn't going to do anything with people who have such a dependency on them. EDL type tuttay need to realise this. Plus Panjabis need to wake up to just how much real influence they have on the global platform and even how much they would have in comparison to oil rich nations in the event of gaining an independent homeland. But they seem to dumb and pussy to do this as we don't come out looking too strong.

This one says it all.The guy can't even deny it but instead resorts to denigrating what Americans are doing in Guatanamo as a defense.

I don't agree. It appears as if often the references to older Indic mythological characters is more in the context of Guru describing the world known to the people he was preaching to and subordinating all things natural and mythological to the Akal of Sikhi's idea. Plus individuals of any background reaching the highest states doesn't necessarily validate the orthodox form of their faith but rather, is probably down to their own individual actions and devotion? Don't rule out the possibility that it might actually be relatively straight forward. Then a part of your journey must also involve analysing yourself in this capacity. Because if you are romanticising things, your research will only take you further away from the truth. This is smething we all need to do periodically by the way, myself included. There are apparently a number of variants of Zafarnama (if Sarna is anything to go by). So which one are you using? In any case, Guru ji's communication with Aurangzeb, was a very sensitive diplomatic communication. Why take it all literally. In the end what we have is an admonishment of Aurengzab's dishonesty and brutality in poetic terms, with especial reference to Aurang's broken oath on the Koran. An example of the dangers of interpreting poetic license as literal can be see with the often quoted references to the battle of Chamkaur were Zafarnama uses hyperbole relating to the numerical strength of the hordes that attacked them. We know from the imperial order of this incident (that is extant) that 700 soldiers were sent.

More specifically I'd say some of what you mention is more the result of post enlightenment influence in terms of the obsession Europeans had with categorisation, which they took to extreme levels as demonstrated with their enormous collections of butterflies and beetles and the like! This seems to be a central underpinning of their knowledge acquisition. It directly led to the development of databases. I don't think the Sabhias were fully conscious of how they were affected with their British education at the time. I don't think they were consciously simplifying but rather scaffolding their religio-cultural inheritance in the types of frameworks/paradigms they had learned from whites. That made the faith easier to understand in terms of that worldview which depends on systemisation. Whilst doing this they were also demarcating more solid boundaries of the faith (in relation to things Hindu) which were quite porous by then. A large measure of this was politically motivated.

Thanks for sharing. Interesting to see Baba ji refer to Torah lore. I think it's a really interesting social/psychological phenomena myself. One which we Sikhs need to understand in depth for a variety of reasons. I think sometimes people's social interactions really influence what they wish to perceive to be truth. So certain Sikhs may have some very positive interactions with Muslims and as a consequence some mechanism kicks in when looking at the Muslim's scriptures which struggles to conciliate the discrepancy between their own positive personal experience and the picture emerging from the texts. Then you get all these 'mental acrobatics' to try and bring equilibrium to the divergent sources of info. Like 'they must have been corrupted.' based on nothing but personal emotion. Not making this personal, but from my experiences people who do this are very susceptible to outside influence. You see this a lot with gentle minded Sikhs and low IQ apneean. They sometimes convert due to this. Now I'm not saying every last sullah is some evil person, but truth be told, from what I understand of Mohammad's itihaas I respect him as a military commander and leader of men (his success in these fields is undeniable). But in terms of morals and ethics......no can do. We should also mention the polar opposite of the above phenomena, where negative experiences has one seeing nothing but bad. Even where none exists. All this aptly shines light on just how susceptible a human mind can be. It as scary as it is fascinating.

Maybe not? Perhaps you are struggling to reconcile what you see from that source as it exists and what you wish to be true of the faith? Guru Gobind Singh seems to suggest that Mohammad had done astray in his own lifetime? I too have pondered over that tuk from Japji Sahib. Maybe it is a reference to some now obscure (to Sikhs) Indo-Semetic cosmology conceptualization? Maybe Guru ji is speaking of common folk religion as opposed to a hard textual conception of the faith? The use of the plural 'ਕਤੇਬਾ' suggests they are talking about the whole range of semitic scriptures, not just the Koran in any case. Anyone know anything about these 'ਸਹਸ ਅਠਾਰਹ'?? RE: Mohammad. The stories of his treatment of women are supported by Haddiths and whatever else you may say about them, Muslims did develop a system to try and keep the provenance of these well established. PS - Are you suggesting that what we find morally and ethically questionable in Mohammad's history has been made up by later Muslims and he didn't do these things?

According to Sikhi he also lost the way in his own lifetime. Unless I'm mistaken? Plus lets be frank, his moral behaviour towards nonMuslims and the women of his enemies isn't exactly what Sikhs would consider to be those of a Godly man. Unless taking and shagging women prisoners is okay in your books?

I would agree bar the 5 kakkars, I think they were tre mudra, or three symbols originally. That isn't to say Singhs didn't wear the 5 kakkar from day one, but the name in that form seems to come later.

Sarbat Your posts over the last few months seem mostly concerned with Islam. I'm all for Sikhs learning about other faiths (in conjunction to their own!) but sometimes it appears as if you are going over board? Do you make this much effort in trying to samaj your own faith? What's the deal brother? How comes you appear so mesmerised? No offense intended.

Further than this. Sikhs need to do parchaar to the rest of India too, even if it is sehaj-dhari. In fact this would probably be a good idea. I think poor people would lap it up. But it will take investment in terms of time and resources of more affluent Sikhs. But truth be told, we simply don't seem over bothered about converts or even keeping those we already have solid in the community. Anyway, sorry for the digression. Back to immigration in the UK. Personally I feel a situation has now developed where whites, who have long silently smoldered against immigration but bit their lip in fear of being called racist, will now become increasingly open with this. Immigration does seem to be the number one issue in the country right now and personally I feel that a part of this is the anger felt at having to temper 'international policy' in Muslim lands because of violent retaliations from people here in response to perceived aggression. The other thing that bothers many whites seems to be seeing a lot of nonwhites around them. But as KDS demonstrated, our own people seem to be doing the same with Biharis?

With no intended offense to anyone, it is a tad bit ironic that the simran techniques followed by the followers of Bhai Randhir Singh utilises an instrument that was introduced to us by firenghees. Plus that was a good point about people using different techniques to mark themselves from other groups of Sikhs with a different practice. Can someone go over the saas giraas techniques again please?

Blaming immigrants for all this is a red herring. The really issues are ones a bit more complex than 'they're coming here and taking over!"

Hardworking immigrants are also the first scapegoats when times get economically hard or when ruthless politicians want to distract the general populace through appealing to their base, xenophobic nature. I've heard our own lot complain about Biharis one day, only to later complain they can't get enough of them, when seasonal labour requires them. Cameron however is being a complete tosser - and purposefully too.

I think a significant aspect of simran is to be singularly focused, if so, the 'aggressive' loud style can help achieve a feeling of being lost in the moment quite well. I do however notice that people seem to have different levels of what I will call 'neurological sensitivity'. So the people whose neural networks are very delicate and who can become relatively 'over-stimulated' quite easily would find the AKJ style over overwhelming and distracting. Other people with more desensitised neural networks would probably find that approach quite helpful to achieving that focused frame of mind. ???

I'm not sure about defining ourselves in relation to 'others' in this way. I think it almost invariably takes us someplace unhealthy. Going around reinforcing the message that "we aren't Abduls!" is short sighted. Plus truth be told, ruling class (or even working class) whites wouldn't think much to sell us down the river should it be considered in advantageous to them in the expedient manner that they always do. We should be more like Jews who seem to do what they do without crass self promotion (that end up looking like a manifestation of insecurity anyway). These pricks don't want to listen to that. I double checked the definition of 'narcissistic', I must commend you on your choice of words. It really does a good job in describing a lot of the indigenous folk: