This piece really hits the nail on the head. If you attend Gurdwara and understand Ardas (the prayer spoken when everyone stands up), you’ll find many specific examples of Sikhs who would rather give up their lives than cut their hair and surrender their identity — Rajdeep brings that spirit into today’s context.

Washington Post Letter to the Editor, published Sunday, April 5, 2009; Page A18.

A March 29 article on the destruction of the Sikh religious identity ["A Ritual Slowly Unravels in India; Alarm Grows as More Sikh Youths Give Up Turbans"] mischaracterized the nature and significance of the Sikh turban.

For observant Sikhs, tying a turban is neither a ritual nor a sign of extremism; it is a declaration of Sikh identity and signifies commitment to the Sikh principles of justice and universal equality. The turban distinguishes a Sikh as an ambassador of his or her faith and is a source of strength and pride for millions.

Throughout history, oppressors have persecuted Sikhs by targeting their identity; during the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in India, when thousands of Sikhs were massacred, their turbans were stripped from their heads and their unshorn hair was forcibly cut before they were murdered. If the Sikh articles of faith truly had no value, our oppressors would not have subjected them to systematic destruction.

As a Sikh, I reject the notion that wearing a turban or maintaining uncut hair is prohibitively wearisome or any more tedious than, say, shaving a beard or waxing one’s legs. The case for what the article called “daily tedium” is often a smoke screen for loss of faith, lack of pride, susceptibility to peer pressure or all of the above. Young Sikhs are merely accelerating the work that their oppressors could not finish.

RAJDEEP SINGH JOLLY
Arlington

After reciting the Oath of Allegiance, 144 people became American citizens during a special naturalization ceremony in Washington. The opening sentence of the oath reads: “I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen.”

Sikh in Picture Of The Day

Thanks Mandeep Kaur for the pointer!

Macleans, a prominent Canadian publication features Baljit Singh, a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. Check it out. Besides being featured in the lead paragraph of the story, there’s a profile of Baljit, which we have included here:

Baljit Singh, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

How committed is Singh to his students? For the past eight years, he and his family have lived with them. He’s the first prof to participate in a University of Saskatchewan program designed to bolster academic advising by asking a professor to make his home inside an undergraduate student residence.

Approachability and empathy are the hallmarks of his teaching. “If you were frustrated, you could talk to him,” says Sharmila Makhan, a former student who now practises emergency veterinary medicine in Vancouver. “That’s not something you could do with a lot of the professors.” Indeed, Singh, who prides himself on recruiting Aboriginal students to his research lab, is most passionate when recalling the students who have stuck with university due to his counsel. “These are the people who were just one step away from leaving,” he says. “Some of them have done their master’s degrees now, a couple are in Ph.D. programs, a couple have finished their M.D. programs.”

That student-centred philosophy stems from his own early academic difficulties. Singh, a former president of the American Association of Veterinary Anatomists, flunked anatomy at Punjab Agricultural University because “I did not like it—I did not like the subject, I did not like the way it was being taught.” India’s universities were “very regimented,” he says. “I was the most happy when I was learning on my own by doing things.” Such experiences convinced him that students learn most and best when they are actively engaged in the learning process. “Students have to become equal partners in designing a learning program,” he argues.

It’s a conviction he’s demonstrated works in practice. A few years ago, Singh identified an ongoing complaint among his first-year students: they learn the basics of animal anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, but until third year, they are frequently denied access to the kinds of hands-on learning that would help them make sense of the book learning. Singh’s response? He created a clinical role-playing game not unlike an episode of TV’s House. Students receive a case history detailing the health travails of an animal. Working in a group, the students dissect the data until they arrive at a conclusion as to what new information they require to reach a diagnosis—an MRI scan or blood report, say. The process continues, with more and more information doled out to the team according to the students’ decisions. “This clinical scenario helps them to integrate the information and also relate it to a very specific example of a clinical abnormality,” says Singh.

Almost more impressive than the teaching method is the persistence with which Singh pursued its implementation. The course was not part of the curriculum when he began recruiting students and profs—all on a voluntary basis: no pay for the profs, no credit for the kids. It ran for five years before becoming a recognized course in 2007.

But Singh is unfailingly modest. “I wish I had these types of opportunities,” he says. “I’m sure I would have learned much more and become an even better student—and, later on, teacher.” None of his teaching awards are displayed on his office walls. “I’ve done reasonably well in my life,” he says. “But it’s simply because I had outstanding teachers.”

Here’s a link to a PDF copy of the print article: baljit-singh-macleans. Special thanks to our scout in Canada, Agent PKF, for providing this tip!

Speedily jumping in to the 21st century, the Sikh Coalition has launched a blog. Sweet! Hopefully they will post all of their alerts and press releases here, so there’s one place to go to find them, neatly ordered by release date, complete with comments from readers.

If you really want to to be on the cutting edge, I recommend the following steps for every organization:

1) create a ’sikh coalition’ twitter account
2) use “posterous” to create the blog — just email post@posterous.com and emails get posted. It’s the best kind of blog.
3) Set up Posterous to automatically post to twitter
4) Set up Twitter to automatically post to Facebook

There you go, that’s all you need to do. Here’s my twitter account and posterous, if you’re interested: posterous twitter

While hanging out at a veerji’s house the other day, I was flipping through the 2009 Sikh Foundation Calendar, featuring Sikh athletes and others. It’s pretty sweet, though I couldn’t find a link to buy the calendar from the website.

You’ll agree that this is an amazing image:

The caption reads:

Avneet Sidhu won the gold medal at the Commonwealth Games 2006 in the 10m Air Rifle (pairs). She is also part of the Indian contingent for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She is the third Indian to shoot a perfect score. She honed her skills as a student of Dashmesh Girls Colleege, Badal (Muktsar) and now lives in Bhatinda, Punjab.

From the Sikh Spirit Foundation:

Help us assist the Sikh Community. Tell us how you would spend $25,000 to improve Sikh Education or your local Gurduara for a chance to win an iPod!

Submit two written paragraphs explaining what you would do and how it would help the Sikh Community.

Project ideas should be submitted to ideas@sikhspiritfoundation.org by March 25, 2009.

Winners will be announced by April 10, 2009.

Grand Prize - iPod Nano.

First Five submissions will receive a t-shirt of choice from PunjabMall.com.

The Sikh Spirit Foundation intends to pursue the winning idea this summer by inviting the global community to submit proposals for the project. The Foundation will select and fund the best proposal among the submissions.

Click for the full size flier:

This story is from 2006, but cool nonetheless. Mandeep Kaur Writes:

So, i was watching the food network the other day and I saw an episode where a Sikh gentleman, Daljeet Singh from Florida, participated in a “Build A Better Burger” challenge using his own recipe. I was impressed to see Mr. Singh because it goes to show that Sikhs are paving paths in all parts of society- even All-American Food Competitions!

Mr. Singh was Chardi Kala donning a red turban that matched his food network challenge apron…nice touch! He also demonstrated great sportsmanship informing a fellow competitor, while he himself was pressed for time, about a trouble that occurred to their preparations. In the end, Mr. Singh didn’t win but was all smiles and still managed to impress the judges with his unique burger (his burger inspired iron chef, Cat Cora, to do a bellydance!)
I know you like hearing about Sikh American achievements, so I thought I’d share the news. Here is Mr. Daljeet Singh’s recipe and a link to show timings:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-challenge/masala-burgers-with-tangy-tamarind-sauce-and-red-onion-mint-relish-recipe/index.html

If you click on the “Episode: Build a better Burger III” link, you can find future show timings.

Image of a Sikh on the CNN.com front page, just below the news about Slumdog Millionaire. Cool!

Challenges, rewards for those who wear faith on their sleeve

Yay! Some national exposure for the Sikh identity. Thank you Ajitpal Singh Raina and Ameek Singh Sodhi! Great work guys!

Hopefully people will realize that:

1) Sikhism is a distinct religion.

2) Sikhs do not make an exclusive claim on the Divine.

3) In Sikhism, women are given 100% equality in everything.

4) Sikhs support science at a way to explain the creation — there is no ‘creation story’.

5) Sikhism is a way of life.

6) There is no future time or event that Sikhs look forward to. What’s important is the here and now.

7) The most sacred shrine in the world, for a Sikh, is her own mind.

I can think of a few more. But these are the key points.

-s

NHL Play by Play in Punjabi Scores Big Time