Sikhs With A Mission

Sikhs in the west always talk about their children caught between two cultures, the Indian, and the western. When they go to work and school, they are expected to conform to the western culture. When they come home, they have to suddenly switch to Indian culture. We hear of many instances where the children eventually run out of stamina, living this ‘double life’. They collapse from the immense stress, and fall out, discarding their Indian-ness. Also, a tiny minority flip on to the other side. They reject the western instead, and join ethnic or religious fundamentalist groups or organizations. Then, they attack those who have taken a modern view, declaring them to be traitors, apostates, ‘fallen’, etc

The day you re-discover your innocence, is the day you will have found God. For God, is in our innocence. God is our purity. And you were radiating God as a baby, then as a child. So…….become a child again. Not childish, but childlike. Listen ye travelers on the Path of the Light. Give up your intelligence. Give up calculating and give up your schemes and strategies. Re-discover your innonence, and you would have unlocked the secret of Baba Nanak’s first riddle – “…kivv sachearaa hoee-eh, kivv kooreh tuttheh paal”. 

To become ‘sachiaraa’ simply means – to have re-discovered your innocence. 

Satnam

In the last few years, a ‘new’ Sikh festival has suddenly appeared. It is called ‘Bandhi Cchor’. It literally translates as ‘the release from detention’ and is celebrated as ‘Bandhi Cchor Divas’. It is the day when the Holy Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji was released from Gwalior prison by the emperor Jehangir. The day is significant in that Guru Sahib Ji insisted that for Him to agree to this release from imprisonment, the emperor must also release 52 rajas that had been held prisoner by the bigoted Jehangir. The Guru wanted every prisoner in the Gwalior Jail freed.

Why was this ‘festival’ unheard of in the past? Because it didn’t exist! Even today, not many Sikhs have heard of it yet. It is only gradually coming into people’s vocabulary. After all, it really is just another event in Sikh history and cannot, even with the wildest stretching of the imagination, be raised to the status and stature of many other very significant events in our history that are NOT BEING CELEBRATED or given the due importance by us. So why single this day out for celebration?

This is a fairy tale. Children are unable to grasp adult concepts of the world we live in. So wise people of old would spin their wisdoms into fairy stories. We all grew up loving them. And much was learned from them. Red Riding Hood taught us not to talk to strangers. Three Little Pigs taught us the importance of ‘delayed gratification’. And so on. 

Whereas Indian art and culture is full of mythology, the Sikhs, being very practical people perhaps are almost devoid of it. Our children have to borrow the world of witches and wizards, demons and dragons from others. Yet as discussed above, fairy stories are the substance of childhood.