A Sikh Dis'Honour' Killing

I seem to recall reading somewhere that among Sikhs both caste and the killing of the daughter are forbidden. Where could that be? Oh, I remember now, The Sikh Rehat Maryada! (Check out Chapter Ten, Part 16 (a) and (l), and Chapter 11, Section 18 (a).)

OK, the article never actually says they were Sikhs...


From the Times of India.

Girl In Love Killed, Cremated Secretly


HOSHIARPUR: Ravinder Kaur, just 18 and in love with Amritpal, hardly got any chance to be with the man she wanted to marry. On Wednesday, when her family left home to attend a neighbour's wedding, she sneaked out and went to meet her 25-year-old lover.

But someone spotted her with Amritpal and the word spread like wildfire in Darga Haeri village, 35 km away from Hoshiarpur. Soon, seething at seeing their Saini girl with a scheduled caste man, Ravinder was dragged home by her relatives and beaten unconscious.

The next day, police sources said, she was "consigned to flames", yet another casualty in Punjab's bloody history of honour killings.

SSP, Hoshiarpur, Sukhchain Singh Gill told the Times of India on Friday that "the body of the deceased had been cremated before the matter came to the notice of the police".

He added, "There were only ashes from the pyre."

A case has been registered under sections 302 (murder), 201 and 120B of IPC at the Tanda police station and police said they were verifying if Ravinder was beaten to death or forced to commit suicide.

The girl's parents, Baljit Kaur and Manohar Singh, are behind bars.

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And please check out Aasra Magazine, here or in the new link on the right. It is a local product from here near Seattle. It is bilingual, in both Punjabi and English.

--WHY TRY TO FIT IN?
YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

Some Thoughts On Easter

Today is Easter Sunday, a day that would probably pass unnoticed for this Sikh if she were not married to a Christian. I had not thought to write about it here until I came across this piece that someone posted in IHRO. I found it thought-provoking. I considered doing some judicious editing, taking out some pro-Christian, slightly revisionist statements, but decided against that. That seems a bit dishonest and this blog is nothing if not honest!

So please read. And weep. Or something.

A FUNNY KIND OF CHRISTIAN

His thirst for scapegoats shows how poorly George Bush understands the meaning of Easter.

This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday March 22 2008 on p41 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:03 on March 22 2008.

A FUNNY KIND OF CHRISTIAN

Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.

Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ's passion. For ever since the cross became a piece of jewellery, it has been drained of its power to sicken. Even before this the Romans had taken their hated instrument of torture and turned it into the logo of a new religion. Few makeovers can have been so historically significant. The very secular cross was transformed into a sort of club badge for Christians, something to be proud of.

Two weeks ago, the most powerful Christian in the world vetoed a bill that would have made it illegal for the CIA to use waterboarding on detainees. "We need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists," said George Bush in a passable impersonation of Pontius Pilate. "This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe."

Throughout his time in office, the president has frequently been photographed in front of the cross. Yet as his support for torture demonstrates, he has understood little of its meaning. For the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is supremely a moral story about God's identification with victims.

The French anthropologist René Girard is the modern voice that has done most to explain the nature of this moral change. Human societies, he argues, are often held together by scapegoating. From the playground to the boardroom, we pick on the weak, the weird or the different as a way of securing communal solidarity. At times of tension or division, there is nothing quite as uniting as the "discovery" of someone to blame - often someone perfectly innocent. For generations of Europeans, the Jews were cast in the role; in the same way women have been accused of being witches, homosexuals derided as unnatural, and Muslims dismissed as terrorists.

The crucifixion turns this world on its head. For it is the story of a God who deliberately takes the place of the despised and rejected so as to expose the moral degeneracy of a society that purchases its own togetherness at the cost of innocent suffering. The new society he called forth - something he dubbed the kingdom of God - was to be a society without scapegoating, without the blood of the victim. The task of all Christians is to further this kingdom, "on earth as it is in heaven".

Yet, for all his years in office, it is hard to think that President Bush has done anything much to make this kingdom more of a reality. Instead he has given us rendition, so-called specialised interrogation procedures, and the blood of many thousand innocent Iraqis. Given all this, what can it possibly mean for George Bush to call himself a Christian?

Easter is not all about going to heaven. Still less some nasty evangelical death cult where a blood sacrifice must be paid to appease an angry God. The crucifixion reveals human death-dealing at its worst. In contrast, the resurrection offers a new start, the foundation of a very different sort of community that refuses the logic of scapegoating. The kingdom is a place of shocking, almost amoral, inclusion. All are welcome, especially the rejected. At least, that's the theory. Unfortunately, very few of us Christians are any good at it.

Giles Fraser is the vicar of Putney giles.fraser

--
WHY TRY TO FIT IN?
YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!

International Women's Day 2008

There is a lovely little nursery rhyme that every child in the UK and Canada knows. I am not so sure about the children of India, so I reproduce it here:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!




As long as I have been expressing myself publicly (about 2 years), I
have said that the most dangerous enemy we Sikhs have is not the
Indian government, the Deras or even the Hindus. It is no force from
outside our own community. It is ourselves. We are fast destroying
ourselves through one particular practice. I have here a little poem
I wrote about that. It unites IWD and our self-destructive
tendencies.



Tinkle, tinkle, little boy,
Bring your parents so much joy.
You're their diamond, you're their pearl,
They're so glad you aren't a girl.



Punjab practice straight from hell.
Very soon its evil tell.




You are looking for a wife,
Someone who will share your life.
Not a woman to be found,
Rotting foetus in the ground.


Guru's teaching has been taught,
But its meaning never sought.
Daughter is a gift from God,
Not a dead, decaying clod.


Without woman, there's no life,
No more children, no more wife.
Guru's teachings die off now,
Go and worship sacred cow.



Tinkle, tinkle, little boy,
Bring your parents so much joy.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY, 2008!!!




WHY TRY TO FIT IN?
YOU WERE BORN TO STAND OUT!