In 1997, we became aware of a growing need in the Sikh religion. It had been staring at us for decades, but it seems none of us were looking. And so, year after year, it had gone un-noticed. This need was – ‘Change’.
The old traditional Sikhi was the domain of the Punjabis. That was changing. People of other nations were also reading about Sikhi. People were starting to visit the Golden Temple, enquiring about this ‘new’ faith.
But everyone was leaving, unable to connect with this ‘unusual combination’ of worshipping warriors. People loved the peace and hope offered by Sikhi, but could not handle the requirement to change one’s appearance and become warrior like. The truth was; the religion needed a new expression, a new meaning for a new world. Long gone was the era of warriors and horsemen riding around fighting the bad guys. Humanity was looking for inner peace, not outer battles.
Then also the teaching and emphasis of the parcharaks – it too was fast becoming irrelevant. We did not stop to consider where the planet had spun itself to in the last 300 years. Everything had changed since the Sikhi of the 17th century. But we all went about our Gurdwara in blissful ignorance.
The first reminder from the Guru that Sikhi was not just for the Punjabis but for the whole world came in the 1960’s, when Europeans under the guidance of Siri Singh Sahib Harbhajan Singh started to convert to Sikhi. Instead of welcoming them with opening arms, Sikhs all over the world rejected them…….because…. they are not Punjabis! The Europeans could not fit in because they were practicing Sikhi the way it was meant to be practised, whereas Punjabis were still practising the out-dated and out of place Sikhi our ancestors were practising centuries ago! There was nothing in common between the two faces of the same Sikhi. We were literally hemispheres apart.
Today, as demonstrated by the new-comers to Sikhi, the old Sikhi needs a massive change of image, purpose, direction and destination. In short, Sikhi needs a transformation, total and complete transformation.
The Sikhs of today have totally forgotten the vision and mission of our Holy Guru Nanak – to spread peace, and heal the world! We are totally fixated only on the tenth Holy Guru, Gobind Singh Ji and His setting up of the Khalsa army to fight the wicked mogul regime and seek freedom for the people of India, so much so that we have even gone to the extent of declaring people who do not take the Khalsa Amrit to be not Sikhs.
So, until today, we still hold on to the mindset that the Sikh is some kind of a warrior, fighting some imaginary war that does not exist! We have yet to wake up from our 300 year old sleep and come to the realisation that our civilian militia is no longer necessary because human civilisation has come a long way since the Guru’s Khalsa was created, and that today, it is the duty of the police and the army of each respective country to protect the public and the country. There are no more kingdoms, fiefdoms and empires where the down-trodden have to be saved by Khalsa knights. Even if the Khalsa wanted to perform that duty, we would not be allowed, not even in India!
But as a result of that mindset, even until today, we hear Sikhs describe themselves to others as: brave, courageous, strong, soldiers, warriors, saviours of the down-trodden, etc, etc, words that mean almost nothing to the person of another religion, because these words have got nothing to do with dharma or religion! In none of these words can I find any relevance today that will allow me to market the Sikh religion to the world. Nobody in the whole wide world, including the Sikhs themselves, is interested in any of that stuff, or even in our fantastic history of heroic resistance to the tyrannical rule of the mughals. It gave many of us kids our own heroes to worship, but nothing more than that.
So, that’s why we set up Sikhs With A Mission. Our mission is to take Sikhi to the world, and present humanity with a beautiful innovation in the world of dharma, making Sikhi relevant once again. It has to be framed as the most modern and finest tool available today, to achieve inner peace, inner harmony, and finally nirvana and salvation.
Our mission is to provide new altitude and latitude that will shape a new attitude. Our mission is to facilitate the greatest paradigm shift ever attempted by man; to change the world view of an entire religious community, and to bring it back on to its original track, after being de-railed by external and hostile forces. The mission is to return the Sikh to being a healer of the world, as was the Holy Guru Nanak.
The buzz words of the times are: meditation; mantra; yoga; consciousness; soul; happiness; prayer; peace; light; karma; guru; health; healing; hope; energy; humanity; and so on. In this Age of Aquarius, it is these things that are on people’s minds. It is these things people are hungering for. Did you notice that no-where in there were the words bravery, courage, warriors or weapons, which are about the only words left in the Sikh vocabulary today! We do not market or even emphasise any of our great Sikh attributes as given to us by our great Guru’s. They remain almost totally un-observed and unknown to the rest of the world.
Sikhs With A Mission are a growing group of people who have come together to start the process of transformation. The last time this kind of mission was undertaken, it took 230.0 years to complete (1469 AD, birth of Guru Nanak Ji – 1699, birth of the Khalsa). Aided by the information super-highway, we aim to achieve our goal sooner. We have moved the decimal point by one digit – from 230.0 to 23.0 years!
So the mission of Sikhs With A Mission is to re-trace, re-package, re-brand and re-market the product created and perfected by our ten Holy Gurus, to the world.
We have set this year, the 300th anniversary of the installation of the world’s only universal scripture, the Holy Granth, as our datum and starting point. Therefore, we must achieve this paradigm shift by the year 2031. The clock is ticking. The countdown has begun.
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