It’s always great when people I grew up with become newsmakers. In this case, Amitinder Singh, someone I’ve known since childhood, is quoted in the New York Times! Congrats Amit!

Among Young Sikhs, Expressions of Faith Mixing Two Worlds

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Published: August 21, 2009

Mandeep Singh was having dinner with a friend in Queens several years ago when the subject turned to their common religion, Sikhism. Mr. Singh had grown up in India unquestioningly embracing the faith of his parents. As a college student in Delhi, he attended a gurdwara, or temple, with a congregation well into the hundreds and a paid staff of a dozen, leaving him feeling devout yet somehow peripheral.

By this time, working as a technology consultant in New York, Mr. Singh had a different sensation, not exactly unsettled but acutely curious. So when his friend mentioned that a local Sikh association had a page on Facebook, not exactly the place Mr. Singh was expecting to find religious direction, he eagerly clicked to it.

The information there, posted by the Manhattan Sikh Association, included one particular phrase that piqued Mr. Singh’s interest: “youth gurdwara.” It led him, on a Thursday night in late 2007, to the rented multipurpose room of a luxury condominium building in Battery Park City.

There, in a setting usually deployed for residents’ meetings and children’s birthday parties, white cloths covered the carpet and white sheeting obscured the mirrors. At the far end of the room sat the hooded wooden platform, or palki, that held the Sikh holy book, the Adi Granth.

What most caught Mr. Singh’s eye, though, were the other members of the congregation, or sangat. They were, like him, young professionals, the BlackBerry crowd, and as the worship service, or diwan, proceeded over the next several hours, these amateur clerics took turns leading the chanting of sacred poetry and the singing of devotional hymns.

Ever since that first visit, Mr. Singh has been a regular participant in the Manhattan Sikh Association’s diwan, which is held the third Thursday of each month. In so doing, he forms one part of the Sikh version of what religion scholars call the emergent movement, a growing trend toward small, nimble, bottom-up, laity-led congregations that especially attract young adults.

In evangelical Christian circles, the movement includes the scores of microcongregations of the Journey. The Jewish version, known as minyanim, or prayer groups, turns up in Brooklyn’s Altshul and Washington’s Tikkun Leil Shabbat, among other places. And for about 300 of the estimated 500,000 Sikhs in the United States, the diwan in Battery Park City is not your chacha’s — in Punjabi, your uncle’s — gurdwara.

“The one thing you feel here is a lot of young blood,” Mr. Singh, now 28 and working as a contracts analyst for Bloomberg LLP, said after last Thursday’s diwan. “Since everyone is your age, you can ask the naïve questions, and by asking, you can learn the underlying principles. It encourages you, because it is being done by your peers.”

Amit S. Guleria offered a similar view. At the age of 26, commuting into Manhattan daily from central New Jersey, working long hours as a construction engineer, Mr. Guleria had sought a religious experience that fit both his generation and his lifestyle.

“When you’re living the life of someone in your 20s, it gives you a different energy,” Mr. Guleria said. “When you go to a traditional gurdwara, you feel more like an observer than a participant. Here, the onus is on us. And that’s a responsibility we want to have.”

The route to such responsibility began in a Greenwich Village apartment in early 2007. The apartment belonged to Pritpal Singh Kochhar, who headed a foundation for Sikh culture and also led international trips for the Sierra Club. The population of Sikhs in the United States was steadily rising, but the American community’s spiritual leader, Yogi Bhajan, had died in 2004. In the vacuum, Mr. Kochhar believed, it was vital for Sikhs to build new congregations.

Using e-mail, social networking and old-fashioned word-of-mouth, Mr. Kochhar put together the initial 15 members of the Manhattan Sikh Association. In October 2007, it held the first diwan in Battery Park City, drawing about 50 people.

“We were wondering, Who are these people? Where are they coming from?” recalled Simi Singh, 43, a product manager at JPMorgan Chase.

The answer to Ms. Singh’s rhetorical question is that they were coming, and still are coming, from the ranks of the young, well-educated and upwardly mobile. The diwan includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, computer consultants, graduate students and at least one chef. Perhaps half are the American-born children of immigrants, half are immigrants themselves, and either way they have a foot apiece in tradition and dynamism.

For while news media coverage of Sikhs in the United States has tended to focus on controversy — bias crimes against Sikh men, who are mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans, or civil rights suits by Sikhs to allow men to wear turbans and keep beards in various workplaces — the more prevalent, day-in-day-out experience is of finessing the balance between accomplishment and assimilation.

The monthly diwan deftly navigates between heritage and modernity. When worshipers enter with bare feet and covered head, when they bow before the holy book, they are fulfilling centuries-old obligations. The service follows the time-honored sequence of readings, hymns, a discourse called katha, the distribution of the sweet sacramental food karah parshad and finally the sharing of a communal meal known as langar.

But the words of the liturgy are projected from a laptop, both translated into English and transliterated phonetically for the many members who cannot read Gurmukhi, the script of the Sikh religious texts. One set of projections carries the logo “Sikh to the Max.”

The worship leaders, while literate in Gurmukhi and fluent in spoken Punjabi, are not professionals trained in one of India’s Sikh religious colleges. A shifting array of volunteers play the tabla and harmonium and sing the hymns, tasks given over in more institutional gurdwaras to specialists or paid professionals. And while a typical diwan in a conventional gurdwara might last four or five hours, this one held to its announced itinerary, finishing in two.

Its effect was no less for the punctuality. “You get peace of mind here,” said Mandeep Singh. “Even after a day of work, you get the meditative effect.”

I saw this near the top of Yahoo News Most Popular — so Sikhs and non-Sikhs found this story interesting. There are a couple Sikh soldiers that currently guard the queen. Sikhs have a long and storied history in the British armed forces, as you know. Back in the day, British Sikh soldiers were REQUIRED to be Amritdhari. Bet you didn’t know that. It’s true.

Meet the Sikh Soldiers that Guard the Queen

This may be one of the oddest things I’ve ever posted. Rajdeep Singh pointed out an interesting video of Robert F. Kennedy’s last campaign event — he was fatally wounded at this event by an assassin. Anyway, at 9:50 in the video, you can clearly see a Sikh man. That’s why this is relevant to Sikh Swim. Kudos to Rajdeep for his keen eye while watching historical footage on YouTube — it shows that Sikhs have long been part of public life in America. Anyone know who this is?

RFK last campaign event

Check out the following links to photos of Darbar Sahib and the solar eclipse:

(4th image): http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/kateday/100001664/stunning-pictures-of-the-solar-eclipse/

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0722/p06s04-woap.html

(5th image: pic of the day): http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/pictures-29/?scp=1&sq=photos%20of%20the%20day&st=cse

Thanks MissMandeep!

The Sikh Coalition has posted a photo essay that intermingles pictures of the gala venue with the honorees. It looks like they’re pulling out all the stops for a mega-scale event. Tickets start at $250. I’m looking forward to the day I can make a ‘founder’ level donation ($15k), as it includes “[seating with] high level political, government, and business luminaries of your choice.” It’s just a few weeks away!

Go Ravi! New Jersey’s first Sikh elected official.

A few reputable Sikh news outlets have written positive reviews of a recent book about 1984, by friend of Sikh Swim Gunisha Kaur. Take a look here. I haven’t read the book myself but I do have a copy of the first edition.
SikhPulse: Remembering the Sikh genocide of 1984

SikhChic: The Truth, The Whole Truth, & Nothing But The Truth:
Gunisha Kaur’s ‘Lost in History’

Visions of Earth, go to 3rd photo

Click to view full size:

Mandeep Kaur forwarded this.

(Fremont, CA, June 5, 2009) Operation “Blue Star” marked the beginning of the Government of India’s systematic policy in Punjab of destroying fundamental human rights in the name of “national security,” and launched a new era of impunity and the erosions of the rule of law in India.

View our photo essay on Blue Star, containing images from the assault and eyewitness accounts. For a detailed account, read Chapter 1 of Ensaaf’s report Twenty Years of Impunity.

Twenty-five years ago, on June 2, 1984, the Indian government declared Punjab a “restricted area,” banning travel to Punjab and the Indian Army assumed police functions. On June 3, the government imposed a statewide shoot-on-sight curfew, forbade news coverage of the attack, and cut phone lines across Punjab. Eyewitnesses reported that over 10,000 pilgrims and 1,300 workers had gathered inside the Harminder Sahib complex (popularly known as the Golden Temple) by June 3 to join a civil disobedience campaign or to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of the fifth Sikh Guru. The Harmandir Sahib complex—the center of Sikh religious and political life—is located in Amritsar city.

Beginning on June 4, the Indian army launched a full-scale military assault upon on the complex and attacked 41 other gurdwaras (Sikh house of worship) on the pretext of removing armed militants quartered in these gurdwaras. During the three-day assault, the military employed cannons, tanks, helicopters, and special forces to target those trapped inside the gurdwara complex. Inside the complex, the Akal Takht suffered destruction of its first floor; bullets punctured the Harmandir Sahib; and the Army looted and burned down the Sikh Reference Library, housing rare manuscripts and Sikh artifacts.

After the initial military operations ended, military personnel detained and executed civilians and non-combatants captured alive in the gurdwara complex, including women and children. One eyewitness reported military personnel executing 150 Sikhs at point blank range, after tying their hands behind their backs with their turbans.

The Army never released a list of the dead. To destroy the evidence of its crimes, the military secretly cremated en mass the bodies of its victims. Security forces would continue to use secret mass cremations for more than a decade after Operation Blue Star to destroy the bodies of victims of its “disappearances” and extrajudicial executions, extensively discussed in Ensaaf’s recent reports.

Twenty-five years later, the government continues to refuse to hold accountable senior military officials, civilian leaders, or lower level military personnel responsible for targeting civilians and the excessive use of force during the military operation. International humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of war, requires the military to make a distinction at all times between military targets and civilian life and property, and strictly prohibits military from targeting civilians. Targeting civilians during a conflict constitutes a grave breach of IHL. International humanitarian law further requires the use of force to be proportionate to an actual threat. Given the large number of civilians killed and the extent of damage caused to the Harmandir Sahib complex during the operation, the Indian army’s use of force was excessive and violates the principal of proportionality.

Without a true accounting of the abuses perpetrated by the government, as well as justice and reparations for victims and survivors, impunity will continue to prevail in India. Ensaaf’s joint report with Human Rights Watch suggests a comprehensive framework to address the institutionalized impunity that has prevented accountability in Punjab from 1984 to 1995. The detailed recommendations include establishing a commission of inquiry, a special prosecutor’s office, and an extensive reparations program.

Reprinted from an Ensaaf Press Release

The folks over Gursikh Speedmeeting are at it again. Here are the details of their next event, a Gursikh Cruise:

GSSM: A Golden Opportunity for Gursikh Singles to Mingle!
June 27th, 2009 in New York City

What is GSSM?
Good relationships are built on understanding, communication and trust. We all know that only happens face-to-face. GurSikhSpeedMeetings provide a way for individuals to meet with other GurSikhs one-on-one to see if there is that “CLICK”.

How Does it Work?
GSSM assembles a manageable group of Gursikh men and women at a stylish venue. Typically, 15 Sardarnis and an equal number of Sardars participate in the event. The meeting begins with about 30 minutes of casual mingling and ice-breakers to take into account for IST. After that, the speedmeet begins. The women take their chosen seats and the men take their assigned seats. After 10 minutes, the men are rotated (yes, they favor the ladies!), so that in approximately 2 hours, each registrant spends 10 minutes with every person of the opposite gender. During all communications, the organizers stress the GSSM rules and only after a mutual “CLICK” is established will any contact information be shared.

What to expect from GSSM?
Meet other Gursikhs in an opportunity that is not offered anywhere else.
Make new friends and contacts.
Realize that this event is not just for matrimonial purposes.
Be assured that your contact details will remain private till a “CLICK” is agreed.
Expect an awkward and anxiety filled evening, but be pleasantly surprised when you end up having fun!

Select Testimonials from Past Events
“I loved it! I think the time allotted for each person was perfect. Nice venue. Good food. This was truly a lovely event .
“It was a great experience!!! Very well organised. Never thought these many girls were looking for Gursikh boys.”
“Met some great prospects. A lot of good eligible bachelors who were educated and well-rounded.”
“I was reluctant at first, but I did enjoy myself. It was nice! You should hold another one in a few months!”
“It was really fun, you did a great effort, please organise it again. As you stated repeatedly, marriage should not be the sole motive as I made some great friends tonight.”
“I had fun…met great guys. Thanks for conducting this and hope you will organize more meetings.”
“Great job! Keep running these events. You guys rock! Thanks a lot!”

What’s new?
We have added an optional NYC cruise before the evening GSSM event on the 27th of June. This is based on feedback from previous participants, who expressed a desire for such an event in order to allow more time for informal mingling.

NYC Cruise Details
Experience the grandeur of New York’s skyline on this two-hour highlights cruise. Sit back and relax while you cruise past New York’s major sights, and enjoy a close encounter of the best kind with the Statue of Liberty. Your cruise takes you sailing down the Hudson, around Battery Park, up the East River, past the South Street Seaport and under the Brooklyn Bridge. Part entertainer, part historian, your knowledgeable tour guide brings New York’s breathtaking sights and fascinating history to life.

Additional Service of “VIRTUAL CLICKS”
Each event is unique in that it is solely dependant on the participants, but potential “CLICKS” could occur with individuals from past events.
Behind the scenes, time is spent on connecting people outside the normal GSSM events to see if potential matches can be made with previous participants.
Criteria is met and the ice is broken as there is a common denominator of having attended at least 1 GSSM event.
First step is to mutually approve of individual descriptions (restricted access on site is under development).
Pictures are then provided, if mutually approved again, only then is contact info exchanged resulting in a “VIRTUAL CLICK”!

How to Register
There are a limited number of seats, so reserve your seat today! From experience, the GSSM events get registered for quickly and many Singhs and Singhnis have been turned away well before the registration deadline!

To request further information, please send an email to gursikhspeedmeeting@khalsa.com

To register, please visit www.gursikhspeedmeeting.com