A son questions his father, and the father responds

[Mehtab Singh]

I got this in an email just a while ago. It is pretty long, but definitely worth the read.

A son questions his father, and the father responds

Jaskirat was from a fairly affluent family of Panjab and had been

residing in a hostel for eleven years. His friends did not consider

him to be 'hip' (westernized) enough, and this was certainly a

drawback. Being 'hip' provided the key to the all-night parties and

was a measure of the upward social mobility among the student

community. Jaskirat's flowing beard and his refusal to join his

friends in drinking bouts and smoking joints of marijuana earned him

the nickname of "Sant Maharaj Ji." "Don't you smoke?" was the usual

query. "Come on, you must be smoking in your room, all Sikhs do. Go

ahead, we are not going to write to your old man."

When Jaskirat told his friends that he did not smoke, they were not

pleased with him and were not ready to take his word. They called him

a hypocrite behind his back. But his ostracism on campus did not end

there; the pressures were increasing every day. Amrita Kaur, a popular

classmate and good friend of Jaskirat, was unwilling to accept his

invitation to a party because he insisted on carrying a Kirpan with

him. For her it was a sign of cultural shallowness and crudeness of

the mind. Such behavior was certainly an obstacle in her endeavor to

be one with the 'in-crowd'. She was in no mood for a compromise this

time and was determined to put him on the spot. In her intellectual

anger, she tersely told him, "You claim to be progressive in your

views, but you still carry a sword like a feudal hero. If it is for

self defense and honor, which you are so fond of claiming, then a

machine gun would be more efficient to do the job. Live in the

present, do not be a priest of the past." She slipped a note in

Jaskirat's room in the hostel, offering him a job as a "moral science

teacher in a convent school."

Unable to carry on with the ever-increasing pressure of his tightrope

walking, Jaskirat decided to write to his father, who was keen to see

his son as a Guru ka Sikh. He was fortunate to have as his father a

famous poet - who had been a guest lecturer at Cambridge, Harvard, and

Michigan, and had spoken before various international associations and

institutions.

Letter of the Son

My dear Dad,

Sat Sri Akal.

1. It is with extreme pain, conflict, and misery that I resolved to

write to you about my inability to accept the 5 K's. I have no

question about the efficacy of these symbols three centuries ago. They

were essential in times of war to maintain the identity of Sikhs and

give them a common denominator of unity. It was a good strategy for

fighting against an enemy bent on destroying the very seeds of

Sikhism. But for the present, these symbols have no justification, no

meaning or any convincing explanation. Sardar Partap Singh wrote a

five-page article on the utility of the 5 K's, but when I met him at

the club last month, he was definitely not carrying a Kirpan. He is no

exception in these double standards.

It is not me alone who has felt this lacuna, but most Sikh boys in my

college are also unable to accept these symbols and their validity for

everyday life.

They can establish no coherent connection between a Kirpan and the

human effort for the communion with God. In no way can I convince them

that these symbols make me more of a Sikh than them. They are

recognized as much Sikh as I am. In fact more so because they are seen

in tune with the modern times, I as an idiot who sees in a set of 5

symbols a stepping stone for my liberation in the future. The belief

in God, the harm in smoking, the ill effects of drinking, the daily

reading of the Japji - all these I have no objections to accept; but

the 5 symbols do not fit into any logical framework. A happy life and

the 5 symbols seems to me to be an absurd and illogical equation.

2. As beliefs shape experience, these symbols become an inescapable

reality. Once the mind has experienced the pleasure, which

identification through these symbols brings, the mind is firmly

entrenched in this deceptive pleasure and nothing can shake it. The

end result is that we are slaves of this false identification. We do

not want to question them because that would not be honorable. And the

older generation does not want us to inquire; they do not have the

courage to face our questions. The acceptance of these symbols with

them has become the means for gaining status in society. But Dad,

there must be freedom to grasp our own instincts and act accordingly.

Why can't I free myself from this structure of imitation? It is

constantly building up fear in me and this fear is further

strengthening this structure. To be my own self, I must break these

imposed symbols.

3. My belief in God is not bound to my hair. These symbols are not

religion, they are only the result of being forced to conform to war

conditions. Is not religion something, much purer, and much deeper

than these symbols? We must learn to live without these symbols and

face reality. These signs have to be discarded and life has to be seen

as it is.

We are told that cultural, military, psychological, social, political,

economic, spiritual, physical, and sexual factors were the main

considerations, which made Guru Gobind Singh endow the Sikhs with the

5 K's. If I accept one set of these explanations, the next set

contradicts the former. The explanations for the 5 K's are a paradise

of pick and choose. One may choose the one, which fancies an

individual the most, very much like a nice trouser in a show window.

It is not strange if some think that the choice is still not wide

enough to appeal to their senses. So they come out with the choice of

discarding these symbols.

If I take the view that the Kirpan is for self-defense, can I discard

it if I have twenty bodyguards with all the latest equipment for my

protection? Similarly, I can question the necessity of the other K's.

Daddy, I am utterly incapable of understanding the value, the

justification and the imposition of these symbols. I am prepared to

take the challenge and I give you my word that in case you can show me

the way and the significance of these symbols, I will enjoy living the

life of an Amritdhari Sikh.

Your loving son,

Jaskirat

Reply from the Father

Dearest Jaskirat,

Sat Sri Akal. It is a pleasure to hear it all, so plainly stated. I

understand your feelings and I hope to be able to calm your mental

anguish.

1. When you leave the university and face the world it seems to me

that what is crucial in life is not to succumb to various pressures,

but to understand and feel them as they are. You may questions what is

given to you or what many of your age assert, is being forced upon you

- but this also means that you must question yourself. It is only with

such an integrated total approach, that you will understand not only

the Kakaars, but also appreciate the agonies, the joys, the pain, the

pleasure, the vanities and the hope of living.

Over and over again, you want to know the significance of the 5 K's?

In our efforts to be practical individuals, we want to imbibe only

what is of utility and significance, the rest we want to discard. The

search for significance in everything is a curse of the present

century. It is a form of self-killing and therefore it breeds the fear

of living. The whole world, all your friends, your relations, everyone

is struggling for significant and useful things. But what might be

significant for you, might not be so for your friends.

If you go to a man who has ill health, he will undoubtedly say, what

is significant is good health. If you go to a mother, she will say the

significant thing is to have a son. This is the reason you find an

intricate web of explanations, for the significance of the 5 K's.

2. The first step in your questioning of the 5 K's should be to get

free of this yoke of significance. It is this illusionary search for

significance, which has made many youth and their seniors to discard

their articles of faith. They see no value in them. A Briton was

asked, "Why do you wear a turban? Is it not enough for you to practice

the philosophy of Guru Gobind Singh in your social and personal life?"

He replied, "The people accept me as the son of Guru Gobind Singh. Is

it not enough reason to wear the turban?" This can be understood when

we see many people, particularly the youth, having clothes and shoes

bearing brand names. The Sikhs are similarly proud to wear the brand

name of Guru Gobind Singh. It is a pity that we want to reduce Sahib

Guru Gobind Singh Ji, to our own mundane level of thinking and view

all his actions in light of practical utility. If he was in search of

merely objects of practical utility, he could have made a truce with

Aurangzeb, when the latter made the offer. If the Guru wanted the 5

K's to be reflections of practical use values, he could have very well

added not only more weapons, but instead of a sword, he could have

given us a gun, as guns did exist at that time. But he was not

inspired out of a hunt for weapons of self-defense or practical value,

as we would make it out, reflecting our own thinking backwards in

history. The sword, anyway, in the battlefield would have been useless

without a shield.

The Kanga, the Kesh, the Kara, the Kirpan, the Kachha, were all

delicate gifts of love and beauty to the Khalsa from a man who desired

nothing for himself, but everything for the Khalsa. These gifts were

from a Guru who totally surrendered everything for the cause and

unique love of the Khalsa. "If thou art zealous of playing the game of

love, then enter upon my path with thy head on thy palm." It was out

of such love that these gifts were presented to the Khalsa and not out

of any attempts to carve out soldiers.

When there is total love, there is action, there is sacrifice, is

there not? The love of the Guru for the Khalsa was not the result of

mental vibrations. In his life, there was no gap between love and

action, as there is between our thinking and action. It is only we who

want to be one-sided in our love and make claims of loving the Guru in

our ideals. Consequently we reason out that we don't have to express

our love for Him in action, in the Kesh. But can there be love without

total commitment and action? No. The total love of the Guru for the

Khalsa becomes apparent in the book titled the Sarbloh, where, He

becomes one with the Khalsa and portrays the Khalsa as his highest

love:

Khalsa is the breath of my body,

Khalsa is the very soul of my life.

...

Khalsa gives me intellect and wisdom,

Khalsa is my object of meditation.

The mind that lives the Sikh way of life can know what is the beauty

of the gifts the Guru gave to us. The 5 ornaments that we wear are the

gifts, from the Guru whose whole family was sacrificed for the total

love of the Khalsa. Could such a Guru be looking for practical

utilities of an animal existence? He was not the person to endow us

with gifts of mere practical value, but gifts of love, which knew no

questioning, no bartering, no deals, and no betraying. His was a total

sacrifice and a total love, in both thought and action, for the

happiness of the Khalsa. These gifts had their pangs of birth in a sea

of human blood. It was not out of any practical benefit that the evil

genius of the Mughal government announced awards for the hair of the

Sikhs. It was because they knew that, the Khalsa, deprived of these

gifts (the Guru's love), would disintegrate.

3. The Kirpan is a gift from Guru Gobind Singh Ji to the Khalsa. It is

not to be judged and measured as a weapon of war or peace, it is a

gift activated by the love of the Guru. Even a whole army of

bodyguards or the best police state in the world cannot make it

redundant. It shall always remain attached to me. The sword is the

love wherein the Guru resides.

You say it is inconvenient, frustrating, and impractical to grow our

hair long. But more frustrating is an existence of no inspiration and

no effort. Our superficial hollow life is no way less discouraging.

The day to day fragmentary living, the everyday struggle for food, the

daily pain, suffering, distress, torments, and headaches are in no way

less discomforting. But in spite of all this, do we cease to exist?

4. The Kara has to be received by us as a present with the message,

"Guru loves me. He made me His own." You want to question the utility

of the iron bangle of the Guru, but not of the gold bangle which is so

much in vogue at Sikh engagement ceremonies today. You are ready to

discard the Guru's bangle for the yellow metal. Kara comes to us as a

manifestation of His love and benediction. From the day we put it on

our wrists, the Kara was forever ours; no one could separate it from a

Sikh. And we still want to find reasons for wearing it.

Jaskirat, do not make our presents into dead symbols, they are the

gorgeous ornaments of the living. We are the 'wedded devotees' of God.

They are the wedding gifts from our Bridegroom. He gave all of them to

us and they are God-sent, imperishable, indispensable, and

indestructible. You may object and say all this is irrational,

unacceptable, superstitious, and fatalistic. But the waves of pure

love always have their own logic, irrationality and fatalism. I love

the Guru's irrationality - if you want to call it so. "To serve them

pleases me." I don't have the courage to reject such devotion.

Does a would-be-wife question the intrinsic value of the engagement

ring she is gifted by her husband? No, never, even if it is made of

copper or a shell. Today, you want to discard these gifts, because

gold has more value. The choice is yours, the consequences are yours.

The bliss of love is yours, the solitude of separation is yours. These

gifts are not to be stored in the darkness of cellars; drink deep into

them, if you want to live in spiritual grandeur.

5. The head of a Sikh, (the Kesh of a Singh) having been once offered

to and accepted by the Guru, is in unceasing trust with Him. It is,

therefore, imperative for a Sikh to carry his head high and not to bow

it before a mortal barber. It shall only bend and bow before the Guru.

Every day we recite in our prayer, "Nanak das sada kurbani." "Nanak

thy servant is ever a sacrifice to Thee." But instead we sacrifice our

5 K's. Shocking is our spirit of sacrifice. Are we the worthy

inheritors of this heritage? After drawing on his blood, now by

discarding our 5 K's, we want to stab him in the back!

Jaskirat, one kilometer from the Lahore railway station stands a

gurdwara, sacred to the Sikhs in the loving memory of Bhai Taru Singh

Ji. It bears the name of Shaheed Ganj, the Abode of Martyrs. The

governor said to him, "Somehow my heart does not permit me to have you

killed, but you must cut and present me your tress-knot."

Taru Singh replied, "The Sikh and his hair are one. I will be pleased

to give you more than you ask me, my head with my tress-knot. These

hairs are the eternal gift of love, they cannot be separated from a

Singh's head without separating his head." Hearing the offer of a high

office and an estate for his tress-knot, the Singh continued, "Neither

my life, nor my hair are for bargaining in your court which views

beauty, life, and religion in weights of gold. The value and beauty of

our hair cannot be measured in terms of luxuries and jagirs."

Thakur Rabindranth Tagore, a great mystic-poet of Bengal and a Nobel

laureate, has beautifully sung of this episode: "More than asked for."

Jaskirat, if Bhai Taru Singh had looked for practical utility,

significance and relevance, wouldn't he have exchanged his hair for a

jagir, for beautiful women, and the power he was offered? But all

these he regarded as worthless when he weighed them with his way of

life. If the hair were mere symbols for him, would he have staked his

life for them? We find not only Bhai Taru Singh, but a whole galaxy of

martyrs in our history, all playing with their lives, which appears to

us so irrational and fatalistic.

6. Knowledge is like a kerosene lamp; on a dark night, it can

illuminate only so long as it has fuel. Life is much vaster and

deeper, it cannot be lived with the aid of an extinguishable lamp.

Knowledge is essential to everyday existence, as money is to buy your

food, but it cannot grasp the reality of love, of God, of living. Love

is not to be hooked in the net of intelligence; if you use knowledge

to grasp love, it will die as a fish does out of water. After the

victory of the battle of Bhangani, Guru Gobind Singh Ji blessed Pir

Budhu Shah with no treasures and no elephants for his services, as was

the custom of that time. However, the Guru gave him the gift of a

Kirpan and a comb with some broken hair of his. This very 'jewelry',

he presented to all of us, in spite of the fact that our lives were

not wrought in the furnace of sacrifice; a jewelry which no craftsman,

no intellectual, no jeweler is capable of imitating.

Jaskirat, ask not from me, the significance and the value of our

tress-knots, for I am incapable of describing it. In our mystical

tress-knots, insipid mankind is inspired. People build monuments for

the dead, you want to uproot the living monument the Guru gave to you.

If you want it to disintegrate you may, but you shall forever be

buried under it. The beauty and the love can never be dissected and

summed up. What would the cuckoo's song mean to you, if you want to

take down its notations and analyze them? What would your mother's

love be for you if you want to know her by analysis?

In the end, let me conclude that the Kesh, the Kachha, the Kara, the

Kanga, the Kirpan, are the gifts, chiseled out for the Khalsa by the

Divine Artist. These are the gifts endowed to us forever, by the

Divine Bridegroom, on the day of our 'marriage' to Him on Baisakhi in

1699. We will carry His gifts of love, in honor, purity, and splendor.

Our love will blossom in all climes, in all times and in all

continents.

Your loving father,

Harcharan Singh

Later, Jaskirat Singh served with the Indian Diplomatic Corps in

Germany. He sponsored several study circles on the Sikh way of life in

London, Geneva, Berlin, and Delhi. With his inspiration, twenty-five

Sikh boys in Germany, who had under environmental pressures cut their

hair, very lovingly took the Amrit.

[ComeGetSome]

Excellent reply by his father, you can understand why he is a famous poet from reading this. Has anyone a link to "More than asked for." by Thakur Rabindranth Tagore. I would love to read this.

[Amrikingh]

:D:D