Being Sikh - Female Foeticide

I posted this a few days ago in the Gurbani Learning Zone, a Yahoo! group. The subject was female foeticide, in other words, the murder of our daughters, our little girls while still in the womb:

I humbly ask you to consider the following:

Forgive me for being simplistic, but does our Guru not teach gender
equality?

Does our Guru not condemn the killing of girls, in fact any unnecessary
killing, but specifically, in the strongest terms, the killing of our daughters?

And also, is dowry not forbidden?

As I see it, all we have to do is follow the teachings of our own religion,
i.e., stop being hypocritical, and the problem will solve itself.

How long will the killing of the unborn daughter go on? Until we obey what
our Gurus teach.

Please forgive me for being so blunt and simplistic. And I'm sorry if any
Sikh finds this offensive, more sorry than words can express.

Harinder Kaur, Seattle (They insist on whole name and location)

To date, no one has answered. I cannot preach or hold myself above other people. Anyone who reads this blog or my sometimes - 2 blog knows that I am well-aware of at least some of my faults and I have not led an exemplary life as a Sikh or simply as a human being.

But this issue seems so clear and basic and unequivocal: it is wrong to kill innocent human beings. How can we hold ourselves up as spiritual, moral people when we murder our own children without blinking an eye - just because they are girls. Need we be reminded that without the baby girl there will be no woman, and without woman...we all know this passage written by Guru Nanak Dev.

This scourge is not only immoral, it is suicidal to us as a nation. If we keep this up, the Indian government, the RSS and our other enemies won't need any genocidal actions or libelous campaigns against us. We'll just disappear. And the deaths of all our shaheeds will have been in vain!

Think about it.

No Comment Necessary

Khalistan Is The Only Solution

Remember 1984 March

3 June 2007

Photo Courtesy of David Storey

FINAL THOUGHTS on BLUE STAR

Our commemoration of Blue Star in our blog is now at an end. As a sign of this, we are posting pictures of our beautiful Harimandir Sahib and the restored Akal Takht. But we resume our normal lives with a renewed dedication to up hold 'who we are, what we are and what we're about.'

Mai speaks:

When all the bullets stopped and relative quiet reigned in Amritsar, we joined many others in gaping at Akal Takht, or rather what was left of it. It is even possible the three of us are in some picture from those days, although I haven't seen us. We would be two men of about the same height with saffron turbans accompanied by a woman with a saffron chunni, all in white clothing. If anyone comes across such a picture, PLEASE e-mail it me; I'd love to have it.

The most vivid memory of this time to me is the overwhelming putrid smell of the sacred pool of nectar. I have not read anyone else's comment on this; I wonder why.

Twice in my life I have seen Mani cry: once when he was first presented with Sandeep and on this occasion. After a while, though, he picked up the end of my chunni, dried off his face and said, quite loudly, 'We are Sikhs. We have never been defeated and this won't be the first time. This isn't over. Khalistan Zindabad!' Eyebrows were raised and I observed a few hard smiles around us. I thought he was acting in an insane manner. Who knows? But no cops molested us.

A few days later we escaped from Punjab and made our way to Mani's cousins' home in the safety of Delhi...

**********************************************

Note from Mai: I am OK; Suni is just a bit overprotective of my health. I do thank her for taking over for me yesterday.

WE REMEMBER 1984 - MASSACRE BLUESTAR - THE THIRD GHALUGHARA - WE CARRY ON

There is a vigil in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on June 9

And a youth rally in Surrey the next afternoon

This is Suni. I will be writing this post. I am preparing for my wedding later this month, but this is important enough to be to take the time for this post on our blog.

Mai, as you may know, is very ill and we are quite protective of her. Right now she is both physically and emotionally exhausted and I have ordered her Kaurs to see to it she gets some rest. She had planned today to post pictures of the various marches around the world along with the last verse of The Chimes of Freedom. I'm afraid I lack her skill and style, but I'll do what I can. If I have done anything wrong here, please contact me and I will try to correct it at once.

Here is one link she asked me to put in. It is the story of a family who willingly sacrificed their lives at Harimandir Sahib during Massacre Blue Star.




CHIMES OF FREEDOM

by Bob Dylan

Verse 6

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught

Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended

As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look

Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended

Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed

For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse


An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

WE REMEMBER 1984 - MASSACRE BLUESTAR - THE THIRD GHALUGHARA - THE AFTERMATH.

THE AFTERMATH...

OPERATION WOODROSE

If the Indian government has ever acknowledged that Operation Woodrose was a reality, I haven't heard of it. It was, for those who may not know, an attempt to exterminate all the young Amritdhari Sikhs (the Rose) in the Punjab (the Wood). This was brutally carried out. Young men wearing turbans, mostly between the ages of 15 and 30, and also some young women were rounded up and tortured and shot or they simply disappeared. It is estimated that approximately 150,000 of our best young men and women were murdered by the Indian government at this time.

The pictures of this genocide are particularly gruesome, as indeed, genocide tends to be. I reproduce only one here, from the Sikh Lionz website; we believe it will suffice.

We are astonished at the lack of information about Operation Woodrose.

We are not trying here to be unbiased. How can we possibly be when we see our brothers and our sisters, our sons and our daughters, our friends whom we love so dearly reduced to bloody corpses to satisfy the hunger of prejudice and injustice. May their blood truly water and provide nourishment for this beautiful flower we call the Khalsa.

Let us think of them when we hear the words from our beloved Guru Gobind Singh Ji: 'O lord grant me the boon that I may never be deterred from doing good deeds and with a firm resolve should I achieve victory. And when time comes for me to rest, may I die fighting in the battlefield fighting evil while upholding good and noble.' And let us remember what he further said: 'Without sovereignty no faith can prosper and without faith none can have a sense of identity.'

Of course, there was much more aftermath that we are not covering here, culminating in the event of October 31, 1984 (Halloween in the West)

Which cut short [that woman]'s ultimate plan, her 'Final Solution' to the Sikhs of India, Operation Shanti by two more of our shaheeds.

Followed by the savagery in Delhi and elsewhere. We will talk about that in October and November, as it happened.

Vini, Suni and Mai

Painting of Mrs. Gandhi's execution

courtesy of Confused Khalsa

WE REMEMBER 1984- MASSACRE BLUE STAR - 7 JUNE 1984

"We went inside with humility in our hearts and prayers on our lips." General K. Sundarji

I have just been reading a fascinating account of Massacre Blue Star from the enemy perspective from a website of the Bharat Rakshak Team. Reading what the enemy has to say about himself is most interesting to me. They start out by saying that their purpose is not to be anti-Sikh, but just an account of 'India's Army's Action at the Golden Temple against heavy odds.' I would like to quote a couple of passages, but I have enough problems in my life without them hounding me for copyright infringement.

What more than anything else drew my attention was the massive amount of arms and manpower that were sent in against us. And how bravely and well our Sikh brothers and sisters fought against this formidable power. I am sure the shaheeds and our father, Guru Gobind Singh himself, were there beside them. I don't want to get poetic here; this was a dirty, filthy, grimy battle, as battles always are. But I do need to express my admiration and appreciation of our warriors, our valiant Khalsa who fought against all odds during these days and died perfect deaths, as Khalsa are taught to dream of dying.

One last point about this account: the statistics given were the only humourous part of this article. Make sure you're sitting down! Army: 43 dead, 248 wounded. 'Terrorists and others': 492 dead, 86 wounded, about 1500 captured, Pakistanis among them. Need I comment on any of that?

There are many good pictures at Search Sikhism.


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