My parents lived in Chandigarh during the time of the riots, and my mother emotionally tells of the time our Sikh milkman risked coming out during curfew to deliver the milk so that 'baby' (i.e., me) wouldn't be hungry. She also tells me that the daily chanting of the Mul Mantra that she woke up to was the most soothing sound in the world, and she often reminded me growing up that the Guru Granth Sahib says that while some may call Him Ram, and some call Him Allah, God is only One. I have always been bowled over by organized religions that actually bother to preach a message of tolerance.
Re: the relations between Hindus and Sikhs: I am not familiar enough with the Hindu Marriage Act, and will take your word for it that Sikhs may be classified as a sect of hinduism for the purposes of that specific law only. In all other matters, Sikhism is considered one of India's major religions, completely separate from Hinduism. Laws that were drawn up during the formation of an independent country will often be archaic and incomplete- recently a distant relative married a Muslim, an event that caused us to discover among other things, that a Hindu and a Muslim cannot just walk into a court and get married, but must have their intentions registered for a certain period beforehand. This was pretty surprising news to me.
I can empathize with the struggle of being a minority. As an Indian hindu, I am a minority in the US, where I currently live. All things considered, I believe the signatories of the original Indian constitution had good intentions, however flawed in its execution it has ended up. I am indeed ashamed that the riots of '84 occurred, in which hateful generalizations led to the targeting of innocent people in the desire for revenge against a few misguided folks. I was encouraged that we as a society have moved past that to some degree, seeing as how the recent attacks in Mumbai did not cause any widespread targetting of innocent Muslims.
I believe collective memory is important, but it is just as necessary to consider that the rehashing of past outrages (human beings are nowhere near as civilized as we consider ourselves to be, alas!) just perpetuates the pain for future generations who have been fortunate enough not to have been directly affected by those tragic events. In some cases, it is best, for one's own sake, to forgive, and even more importantly, forget.
5 comments:
Hey I've heard that too, regarding the Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains being clumped together with Hinduism.
Yes, definitely for the purposes of law it makes sense, since they are similar enough in wedding rituals, and a country as diverse as India cannot possibly have a separate marriage law for every distinct minority. I believe some are confusing the law with some sort of quashing of distinct identity. If that were true, we would have been taught in school to think of Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism as subsects of Hinduism, which I clearly remember as not being the case. Sometimes laws that seem discriminatory were passed solely for the protection of minorities and to prevent undue discrimination. It seems like a futile exercise in aggrievement to wallow in self-pity on account of an imperfectly executed noble intention.
Possibly. I have no idea about the history of the law so I can't really comment on that much.
Well I believe there is already separate family law for each of hindus, muslims and christians in India. I think they were just trying to avoid having eight different sets of laws, and since sikhism, buddhism and jainism are most closely related to hinduism of the big three, they were subject to hindu law as a convenience more than anything else.
If you observe a really happy man you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden. He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that has rolled under the radiator.Yours is a nice blog.
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