Thursday, November 10, 2005

Seeking Justice

While many (like those who took part in the "Sikhs in the Square" vigil) are doing their bit to raise awareness of the plight of the sikhs who suffered in the killings of November 1984, there also some who argue that it is time to move on.

This article in the Panthic Weekly by Gurmukh Singh puts forward some compelling reasons for not simply forgetting the horrific events of 1984. Two snippets:

How do we move on, when not a single person has been prosecuted for the rape, murder or carnage in Delhi November 1984?

Let us all recognise our humanity, and realise that we cannot accept governments and the police anywhere in the world getting away with torture, persecution and genocide in the twenty-first century.


Do give it a read.

3 comments:

msingh said...

copied over from ik singh's blog by me:
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gurinder said...

msingh ji I was unable to post my comment on your blog for some reason, so I am going to post on IKsinghji's blog. please forgive me.

Comment regarding 1984

“How do we move on”

When growing up, I always thought that subject (course) history taught in schools and colleges was waste of time. I used to impose this question to my father and he would give very good examples why it is important to learn history, however, at that age nothing would to make sense to me because lack of life experience at a young age. But I kept those words with me and I knew that those explanations will begin to make sense sometime in the future.

During growing up years as child it is very important to what kind of external stimulus is being provided by the parents and the enivronment. Even at very young age (infants) will develop trust or mistrust from their care givers. If the child has ben neglected by the care giver than that child will begin to mistrust that caregiver. It is very important how and what kind of enivronment we are exposed at very young age and throughout because these experinences will develop our individual personalities. That’s why everyone is different in their thinking. Those years of our individual history if negelected it would bring out different outcomes in our future life.

History, gives us a strong message that we can sit and do critical analysis of it and come up with positive and constructive decisions that will guide us to make better human beings as well as reshape our future so that those mistakes are not repeated.

If a human being does not learn from their past mistakes and continues to make past mistakes it just because he or she has neglected to analyze their past (history). If we tend to forget what happened in the past then the history will repeat itself over and over again.

The reason we remember history is that we could learn from it and so same mistakes are not made by us or other people who just wants to take advantage of other people.

If a person fall on his elbows and only this person will experience the pain of falling down, whereas other people who have seen this person falling down would do two things:

1) Laugh at the whole scene and walk away

2) Make statement nothing happened forget the fall.

The person has suffered injury is the ONLY person can feel the pain NOT the spectators. Therefore, it is easy to say forget about it by other people because they have not endured that pain at all.

Ask those families whose parents were killed, whose bothers will killed and whose sisters were raped and then killed and small children who were killed by inflicting wounds to their heads.

If we want to move on then the ENTIRE HISTORY of the world should be ignored, starting from biblical times to the present. If those people are willing to forget the entire history then we might move on.

Otherwise another attack is around the corner if we do not learn from the past!

(http://www.blogger.com/profile/11985202)
1:34 PM

msingh said...

gurinder I agree. I would add that we should also look at how we fight against discrimination and violence we may have suffered. Is it acceptable to go as far as say the methods used by some of the groups in Iraq?

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msingh said...

Gurinder Ji thanks for your post; you have raised some very searching observations / issues.

“...these people would lecture at the Gurdwara and ask for financial help and I have seen women taking off their gold chains and kara’s donating... ...Where this money went?”

“We are fooled when we go to Gurdwara every Sunday and see hundreds of people in congregation…”

The problem we have is that the many gurudwaras, a central focus for Sikhs, have been hijacked by people who either do not have the vision, or have motives other than service of the community. For example, it seems to me that projects like the Sikh Aid people are undertaking should be a core activity of gurudwras. We need to reclaim the gurudwaras – it would be interesting to look at the Esopanalo Sikh community gurudwara model in this context.

“...Khalsa had JOSH but they lost their HOSH. HOSH...”
Sadly this is partly due to the hijacking of the gurudwaras – sadly those running the gurudwaras will not entertain people with hosh.

“...uniting under the umbrella of Guruji...”

This is a difficult one, perhaps a real leader is what we need....

“Once we begin to follow SGGS then there will be unification of Sikhs across the world.”
Reciting gurbani and trying to understand the message would be a good start. The real culprits, kam, krod, lobh, moh, ahankar are not so easy to control.

“We need to balance our life so that we could have enriched life style but also focusing on our children.”

Too true

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