SHIKHISM

Yesterday Mannu (Manpreet is my neighbor, here in Jackson,MI) told me that she has a speech for Sunday. Mannu is of 13 years, so when she mentioned about this I thought she has a school debate or function and I said I want to attend your speech. Then I forgot about it today until Harmeet (Her younger brother, 10) came up and reminded me of going there. It was almost 2.09 PM and I was not ready. Knowing that we had to be at the site at 2.30 PM, I asked for 10 minutes and got quickly ready to go.

When I came down, I was greeted by her maternal uncle and grand father. We drove to Spring Arbor University at Downtown, Jackson, MI. By now, I knew that it was her grand father who is really giving a speech on Shikhism and she is talking briefly about few things related to Shikhism. Curious enough, I reached to the University and walked upstairs to enter into a room packed with people aged between 50-70 (roughly).

They greeted and asked us to take seat in the front side of the square shaped area created by assembling tables. Mannu's grand father started to talk about Shikhism in no time and people were listening with pin drop silence. There were many thoughts crossing my mind in the mean time; how come these people got interested in Shikhism, what these attendees really do in their real life and what motivates them to come here and listen to Shikhism. To give you a little background, Jackson is a small town and has the very less Asian population. Most of the Asians are here because of the project that I am involved in.

Anyway, as the speech progressed, I was clear that some one of the group met Mannu's Grand Father and invited him to talk about Shikhism. Mannu's Grand Father started to talk about Shikhism right from its evolution to today's state. He taked about the major values of Shikhs and principles that guide a Shikh in his life. He talked about, how to recognize a Shikh and what are the five different things they always need to keep with them.

It was interesting for me as well because even though I am married to a Punjabi and being Indian I am aware of many things related to Shikhism, few things were not in my knowledge database, such as; Shikhs also talk about 10th Chakra (Agnja Chakra) situated in between the eye brows, as the source of spiritual power and emancipation. I thought, how is it different from Hinduism? These thoughts were not foreign to me at all. The answer really came from him as he was talking about why Shikhism was formed as a new faith. He talked about the 10th Guru, Sri Guru Govind Singh who had to save his man from oppression of Muslims and their torture and force to convert Hindus into Muslims. Consequently, Guru formed a God's Army who were ready to fight and die for the sake of self respect and dignity. Gurujee, created a command called Khalsa and the followers of this command were called Shikhs who always carried a sword as a tool of self defense.

Mannu also joined her Grand Father and listed various festivals amongst Shikhs and talked about their importance and meaning. Once the speech was over, people started to ask question in tons and Mannu's Grand Father answer them one after another. He was also joined by his son in answering some of those questions. There were many interesting question and I will try to list few of them here

What is the meaning of the Title Singh, why Shikhs have Singh as their Title: They answered, the literal meaning of the word "Singh" is Lion and Shikhs are considered fearless people and have the attitude of a King, just like Lion is the king of Jungle. This in fact is true at the source of genesis of the word - It was Gurujee who once declared that he needs few heads to be chopped for the sake of Shikh. There were more than ten thousand participants in the meeting where he had declared this and only five man came up to him. As each man came up to him, Gurujee took him inside and came out with a bloody (apparently) sword in his hand, suggesting that the man was killed. However, at the end of this test, he declared that these five man were the most important man for him as they were not fearful of sacrificing their life for the sake of a faith. Such as the Shikhs, and hence the Title Singh.

There was a sequel question to that; why are Title of women is "Kaur". Literally Kaur means crown of prince and yes it has a male connotation and there is a reason behind it. Actually, in the eyes of Shikhism, man and women are equal and that is why you would notice many Shikh names are used for both male and female. One such name is; Harpreet.

There was another question about how where did the culture of Meditation in Shikhism came from? The word Meditation has been used in almost every Hindu scriptures and Hindu Rishis were knows to do Meditation to please the gods. In the recent times, Buddhism had a major emphasis on Meditation and yet later Shikhism had this as one of their main values of life.

The discussion went about 2 hours in total after which people did their mini discussions before they departed. I found out that these group of people are all retired (almost retired) and are interested to spend their time little more meaningfully and as a part of this quest, they have formed a group to discuss various religion/practice and also atheism on a regular basis. They enjoy doing this and in my opinion this is great effort as this creates vibration of tolerance and understanding among people and countries.

Good job!