State Of Technological Development In Relation To The Panjabi Language

[dalsingh101]

Well worth a watch. Was scary to hear the idea that Panjabi could be a dead language in a few decades.

Everyone do their bit to make sure this isn't the case guys.

Edited January 6, 2011 by dalsingh101

[amardeep]

In Cynthia Mahmoods book on sikh militancy she has a chapter on how a non-practising Sikh academic joined the Khalistani movement due to his fearing of the panjabi language being dead in a few decades.

[kdsingh80]

Well Punjabi singers have already propagated Punjabi songs.There are plenty of Hindi movies which have very famous Punjabi songs .It is better if sikhs care about sikhism Rather than Punjabi because I see much more threat to sikhism than Punjabi language.

[dalsingh101]

I see much more threat to sikhism than Punjabi language.

I honestly believe they are symbiotically linked right now. My ability to understand Panjabi helps immeasurably in reading prayers. Had I had to learn from scratch I probably would have given up?

They say to destroy a people first destroy their language. Unless we go down the route of doing some authoritative King James style translation of SGGS ji - which I hope not.

Is the reality that we will end up like almost every other faith with a whole spectrum of people under the banner ranging from the hardcore orthodox, lax moderates, cultural Sikhs etc. - heck, what am I talking about, we're already there!

Yes, we will have lots of non Panjabi/Gurmukhi speaking reading Sikhs in future. Wonder how this will effect the panth? Will these guys eventually drift off into some other quom in a few generations?

[HSD1]

The truth is that since the anglo sikh wars, punjabi culture has either stood still or retarded itself. For those of you who say so what, let me tell you that all communities and nations need some form of culture. If you dont have one then you adopt the first one that comes along. In our case it has either been hindustani or anglo culture. Now if you like what is going on in england and india, then I guess you have no problem with this. But if you have anything in common with our ancestors who were true sikh punjabis then our culture, history, language, customs and self respect need to be maintained at any cost.

[dalsingh101]

But if you have anything in common with our ancestors who were true sikh punjabis then our culture, history, language, customs and self respect need to be maintained at any cost.

That's not really true is it.

How many of the panj piaray were non Panjabis? How many of the others that formed the original Khalsa came from outside Panjab? What about Banda Singh?

Many of our customs are complete shite that we need to flush down the loo. Foremost is jaat paat buckwas, then we have stupid dowry system, questionably outdated marriage practices, materialism, a rurality that frequently makes us into provincial clowns obsessed with all things 'farm'. A mentality that even the biggest dickhead in the village is some born 'sardar'. Self respect that means you kill your daughter for marrying another Sikh without your approval. Drug excesses, alcohol excesses, idolising sons who too often turn out to be spoilt brat dickwads....killing unborn girls, no value for education for anything outside of wealth generation.....and that's just off the top of my head.

We need big structured and organised change to take place, not more pendu conservatism.

The truth is that since the anglo sikh wars, punjabi culture has either stood still or retarded itself.

It has developed linguistically but militarily we are clowns now. Culturally we are the 'exuberant' 'colourful' dhol people.....

Edited January 6, 2011 by dalsingh101

[kdsingh80]

I honestly believe they are symbiotically linked right now. My ability to understand Panjabi helps immeasurably in reading prayers. Had I had to learn from scratch I probably would have given up?

Agree with it for reading and understand sikh scriptures Punjabi is neccesary but How speaking is necessary I don't understand.Bangladeshi's were asked to disown bengali before 1947 but later on they all reverted back to Bengali.

Pakistani Punjabi's already speak Punjabi and if tommorow a Punjabistan is carved out from pakistan with Punjabi as national language then ,is there going to be any benefit to sikhism?

Sorry no offence to that Punjabi professor but if some student will ask him you are talking about preserving Punjabi yet you are clean shaven and don't even look like a sardar,what about preserving Sikhism?

[HSD1]

Whoa whoa, read the part about how our culture was stopped in its tracks after the anglo sikh wars. No nation that is invaded and annexed can maintain its culture. Look at how american culture has spread in the same areas that were beaten down by the americans. We need to think about how our culture would have evolved if we hadnt lost the anglo sikh wars and been able to maintain our culture and bring it forward. Japan/Germany/Russia/China/Italy etc were not the same 150 years ago as they are now. They have overcome major cultural issues and built nation states. We need to do the same. That does not mean jatt bullshit (which I believe would have dissapeared in a fully industrialised Punjab), outdated marriage system (which many sikhs have spoken against ever since sikhs went to France in WW1), materialism (an anglo concept introduced to reduce demand for independance and khalsa militarism amongst our ancestors). As for pride in farming, do you know what the allies wanted to do to germany and japan at the end of WW2? Turn them into agricultural states. If it wasnt for the cold war, the world's 3rd and 4th largest economies today would just be agricultural states. We werent lucky enough to lose to america, we lost to britannia. They wasted no time in destroying our industries and retarded us into nothing more than violent farmers. As for "Self respect that means you kill your daughter for marrying another Sikh without your approval. Drug excesses, alcohol excesses, idolising sons who too often turn out to be spoilt brat dickwads....killing unborn girls.....and that's just off the top of my head." well all I can say is that these problems are things that effect the bottom half of society. In a country where the govt, elite etc (the top of society) are wrong it results in a revolution by the bottom half of society. History shows this. When problems exist in the bottom half of society it requires effort from the top half of society (government/intellectuals/educational institutions/religious centres/cultural stories or plays, books etc). When you have people like badal or the federal indian govt who actually prefer these problems persist in our community it turns into an impossible task to eradicate what you came up with of the top of your head. The only way around it is to try and reform a new top half of society that can instruct the public on how to change.

As for the panj pyaray, you've confused ethnicity/blood with cultural belief. The anglophilic coconuts in the uk are brown, punjabi and sikh but they are as pro-britis as the whites. Sikhi has drawn people to punjab, which i think is the way forward. I dont care where their from but where they want to go.

Edited January 6, 2011 by HSD 2

[dalsingh101]

Pakistani Punjabi's already speak Punjabi and if tommorow a Punjabistan is carved out from pakistan with Punjabi as national language then ,is there going to be any benefit to sikhism?

Look when I say Panjabi I guess I generally mean Gurmukhi plus the spoken language. You should learn about the Turks, apparently the Romanised script that Ataturk used to replace the original Arab style one means that now even the most patriotic Turks are incapable of reading their older literature and people are quickly losing understandings of the grammatical structure of their old literature. They are in fact alienated from their itihaas. But maybe I overestimate how important this is? I mean I doubt many of the 'proud' English Defence League tuttay have any desire or ability to read Chaucer or any of their older classical literature?

Sorry no offence to that Punjabi professor but if some student will ask him you are talking about preserving Punjabi yet you are clean shaven and don't even look like a sardar,what about preserving Sikhism?

Have you now gone and imagined that we will have a Sikh world where everyone or even the majority are keshdhari or amritdhari or something? Face it, we aren't going to be much different from any other faith with diversity in this respect, plus that guy is more useful than a million poorly educated kesh having Sikhs sitting in pinds dreaming of coming over here to work as a labourer on a building site - in my opinion. Sikhi will be preserved by people practising it and facilitating its practice. Even a friendly nonSikh (with no hidden agenda) who has a healthy interest in Panjabi/Gurmukhi linguistics/literature can be inspiring and useful. Here you condemn a man who is clearly passionate and highly competent in the modern field of applying technology to linguistic issues. There aint no pleasing some people.

Edited January 7, 2011 by dalsingh101

[dalsingh101]

Whoa whoa, read the part about how our culture was stopped in its tracks after the anglo sikh wars. No nation that is invaded and annexed can maintain its culture. Look at how american culture has spread in the same areas that were beaten down by the americans. We need to think about how our culture would have evolved if we hadnt lost the anglo sikh wars and been able to maintain our culture and bring it forward.

I have been doing a lot of research into this lately and it is a big topic that it's too late to get into now.

Central to this is exactly what you think 'our culture' was pre-invasion. We are going to have to get to the bottom of that controversial matter conclusively before we can even think of moving forward with this matter.

We'll pick this up tomorrow or something..

Edited January 6, 2011 by dalsingh101

[HSD1]

Central to this is exactly what you think 'our culture' was pre-invasion. We are going to have to get to the bottom of that controversial matter conclusively before we can even think of moving forward with this matter.

The truth is that it doesnt matter how advanced or not our culture was at that point in time. Culture is not a set in stone movement but one that is ever changing. If your culture does not help to advance society then you end up being destroyed. In the case of the sikh empire our lack of a proper parliament, bizarre land laws, monarchy who did not help industrialisation and non-sikh majority undermined any advances we tried. The british on the other hand had a better thought out system which relied on intelligence and market capitalism just like any of those other countries I mentioned in post 8. It was just the case that in the 1840s one of our problems became big enough to allow our enemies to invite themselves in (monarchy and non-sikh majority). It had dawned on the Khalsa that things needed to be changed, hence many europeans referring to the Punjabi Army as the 'Republican Army'. Unfortunately the soldiers didnt go the whole way and remove the monarchy, mainly because they could not think of a better system. Unable to build a better govt, the writing was on the wall after Maharaja Ranjit Singh died. If we had built a stable govt we would have been organised enough to through the british out. We would have continued to develop. Give me any issue and I will elaborate with examples of other countries of how they evolved to overcome these similar problems. Our country back then wasnt much different to others, seeing as humans are all the same. Those countries that couldnt overcome their problems suffer and eventually collapse, as we can see today. Pakistan is a very interesting example. But this definitely is a subject that requires more discussion.

Edited January 7, 2011 by HSD 2

[dalsingh101]

You're touching on so many issues in the last few posts that we have to break them down in order to have any chance of exploring them properly. Let's start with the issue of culture, because it is the most contentious issue right now and one that has the potential to seriously split the quom yet again. Some of these ideas about to be discussed may be uncomfortable and unpalatable for certain people, but we must discuss openly nonetheless:

You spoke of 'our culture' and how it had been subverted by the Brits and whilst I fully agree with this - the statement also opens up a potentially headache creating pandora's box in my opinion. I've always thought culture meant something that has precedent and widespread acceptance with the group of people associated with it. So, at the point prior of white intrusion into our nation can we really clearly define what 'our culture' was?

Now comes the uncomfortable findings of recent research, I know that some of the criticisms leveled at the Singh Sabha lehar in terms of developing Hinduphobia (through British encouragement), look to be true. I do strongly believe Sikhs are a distinct quom, but that being said, pretending we have no links to Indic culture which preceded Sikhi is over doing it to the max. Now that I've become familiar with some of our nitnem prayers, there is no way anyone can deny the references to Indic mythological figures in our own scripture. Plus we know from the preBrit literature than our ancestors didn't have the strong antiHindu feelings that characterise some of us today. The Dasam Granth is the biggest testimony of this. Plus we have a lot of other references in literature such as Panth Prakash, Suraj Prakash. Other evidence such as motifs on flags and puratan imagery paint a very different picture to what is pushed today.

So what is Sikh culture exactly? I mean as in uniquely Sikh. To my mind this starts with our bani, from Japji Sahib onwards. With regards to other stuff like kirtan, simran etc. we also share this with bhakti movement. Our political independent political stance and republican nature too was uniquely Sikh, as was our inclusiveness. If you read that new book by Sidhu I referred you to in another thread, you'll see that the republican nature appears to have turned into open hostility and belligerence towards the ruling elite in the run up to the wasp wars. The book makes the point that really it was only antiKhalsa sentiment and opportunism by the leadership (which truly is the grossest of understatements in this case), that delivered the kingdom to whitey. Whether this haughtiness was the cause for the traitorous leadership or whether this was because the Khalsa could smell a rat even back then is anyone's guess. But the blind way in which the Khalsa followed the traitors to the end, suggests that they either didn't have a clue about it or knew and accepted their leadership anyway, which is one weirdarse thing to comprehend.....

Anyway I digress, personally I feel we have some way to go before we are anywhere near having a general consensus in the community of exactly what our culture is. The discovery of possible overzealousness on part of the SS lehar has the potential to shake things up (again) in the community with uncertainty.

My point is before we make any moves, the first job is to reset our community and historical narrative in light of the tsunami of new understanding we are gaining today, and jettison the older, useless narratives (like the "British sepoy" one being resurrected in certain British Singh Sabha Gurdwaras right now). The first thing that needs to be fought for and captured is apnay's minds and hearts. No one can even contemplate anything before that?

Edited January 21, 2011 by dalsingh101

[HSD1]

You spoke of 'our culture' and how it had been subverted by the Brits and whilst I fully agree with this - the statement also opens up a potentially headache creating pandora's box in my opinion. I've always thought culture meant something that has precedent and widespread acceptance with the group of people associated with it. So, at the point prior of white intrusion into our nation can we really clearly define what 'our culture' was?

Well it depends how you look at it. To us China, Russia, Japan etc have homogenous cultures but when you study or travel there you will see that there is great variation. In a country with three major religions (religion and its role in society feeds into culture) you can see that there was great variation but also many things unique to Punjab that would not be found anywhere else in the world. Once we were invaded we became just another part of British India. We ended up in the same bowl as everyone so to speak.

The other thing that goes with culture is cultural development. If you are a country with weak neighbours then you can grow at your own pace. Looking at the history of many modern countries in europe, the USA or Japan you can see the trends. Sikh Punjab would have developed in the same way other countries did - with new technology but retaining its cultural heritage.

Now comes the uncomfortable findings of recent research, I know that some of the criticisms leveled at the Singh Sabha lehar in terms of developing Hinduphobia (through British encouragement), look to be true. I do strongly believe Sikhs are a distinct quom, but that being said, pretending we have no links to Indic culture which preceded Sikhi is over doing it to the max. Now that I've become familiar with some of our nitnem prayers, there is no way anyone can deny the references to Indic mythological figures in our own scripture. Plus we know from the preBrit literature than our ancestors didn't have the strong antiHindu feelings that characterise some of us today. The Dasam Granth is the biggest testimony of this. Plus we have a lot of other references in literature such as Panth Prakash, Suraj Prakash. Other evidence such as motifs on flags and puratan imagery paint a very different picture to what is pushed today.

It is clear that the British forced us to change. Like we have said before a conqueror's culture is often accepted as being better than the local one, due to human nature. This explains the almost protestant nature of many sikh groups. But we didnt just lose to the British did we? We lost to British India. Indians formed up to 70-90% of the EIC army. This resulted in many sikhs being quite happy to do them in during the mutiny. But as we were part of the same country we were to face our culture being blended. As for sikh-hindu relations we need to factor in that abrahamic religions had a different view to us. Where as we didnt get on too well with the muslims, those muslims who were more punjabi found living under sikh rule quite comfortable. Many hindu punjabis were fine with sikh rule. But the Dogras (hindu kashmiris) werent. We need to see sikh rule in the punjab not merely through the eyes of religion but also of nationality. Punjab was a nationality back then. Many HPs probably felt more in touch with sikh punjabis than they did with kashmiri hindus or hindus from other parts of india. Even today many of them talk about being punjabi over hindu or indian. Mention gujis and you will see what they feel towards other indians or hindus. That's not to say that many of them are indian or hindu above all else as that has become more widespread due to their upbringing. As the Punjab was conquered we also faced the onslaught of mass hindustani hindu culture. It was a vicious two pronged assault on Sikh Punjabi society that was to create great splits.

As to the use of motifs, I'll say it again, we are just like other humans. The british named many of their prestigous battleships after Roman gods. Was this because they were roman pagans? Of course not. It was just part of their heritage, just like Hindu Punjabism is part of our heritage. That does not make us any less sikhs. In WW2 the germans used the names of german pagan gods as codewords for secret weapon programmes. They didnt use roman gods because it was not part of their heritage. But did they pray to these nordic gods? No. They accepted the heritage as part of their ancestors past, but saw that they had evolved. We Sikhs used Hanuman and Chandi in the same way. In the 'First Anglo-Sikh War' by Amarpal Singh Sidhu there is the story of Hanuman Singh - a Sikh who killed a hindu dogra who had gloated at the Khalsa's defeat at Sobroan. We cant read too much into superficial uses of names or logos. We both know that we need comprehensive, thorough and enlightened research. Superficial research is the realm of the hindustanis or that women who used to post on this site ( I wont say the name for fear of spam posts).

So what is Sikh culture exactly? I mean as in uniquely Sikh. To my mind this starts with our bani, from Japji Sahib onwards. With regards to other stuff like kirtan, simran etc. we also share this with bhakti movement. Our political independent political stance and republican nature too was uniquely Sikh, as was our inclusiveness. If you read that new book by Sidhu I referred you to in another thread, you'll see that the republican nature appears to have turned into open hostility and belligerence towards the ruling elite in the run up to the wasp wars. The book makes the point that really it was only antiKhalsa sentiment and opportunism by the leadership (which truly is the grossest of understatements in this case), that delivered the kingdom to whitey. Whether this haughtiness and the cause for the traitorous leadership or whether this was because the Khalsa could smell a rat even back then is anyone's guess. But the blind way in which the Khalsa followed the traitors to the end, suggests that they either didn't have a clue about it or knew and accepted their leadership anyway, which is one weirdarse thing to comprehend.....

I think the attitude of the Khalsa may have made the upper classes very annoyed. As to why they followed them, lets face it if the common soldier came up with a better system then they would have used it to replace the monarchy. Did sikhs then know of democracies and parliaments etc? Who knows. They didnt think of a better system so they followed the traitors. The traitors must have pretended to be patriots is the way I look at it and used promises of money to keep the soldiers in line. The level of treachery must also have been hard for a common soldier to fathom. It's hard enough to get my head round it today - the traitors must really have hated what the Khalsa stood for.

My point is before we make any moves, the first job is to reset our community and historical narrative in light of the tsunami of new understanding we are gaining today, and jettison the older, useless narratives (like the "British sepoy" one being resurrected in certain British Singh Sabha Gurdwaras right now). The first thing that needs to be fought for and captured is apnay's minds and hearts. No one can even contemplate anything before that?

I think that if we push in one direction we will lose ground in others. It's time to take the safeties off and just hit our problems from every angle we can think of. Sikhs have always had the problem of not bringing everything to bare at once.

Edited January 13, 2011 by HSD 2