*an interesting observation on the recent uprising of Dalit Sikhs in Punjab.....*
Dear Friends Jaibheem My condolences on the unfortunate death of a Dalit-Sikh religious leader in Austria. The group represented by him is one of the main Dalit groups in Punjab and Haryana that is trying to fight the caste oppression and has been instrumental in mobilizing the Dalit Sikh across the globe. The group is known for adopting peaceful means for the rights of the dalit sikhs. This was waiting to happen and I fear that there is going to be lot more violence in the near future in Punjab and Haryana. Since last one decade there has been underlying tensions in Punjab especially the Doab area (areas surrounding jalandhar) where lots of Dalits have migrated to US and European countries and are earning well. Before the immigration thing the Dalits never used to assert themselves in Punjab within the Sikhism fold. There has been undercurrents , impact left of adi-dharmi movement but that was against Hinduism and caste system per se. They never challenged the Sikh clergies and the strong hold of jat and khatri sikhs on Punjab social, political and economic scene. However, with the remittance money coming they have now started to build their own gurudwaras almost in each village of that region. The assertion has come via NRI Dalits in this region. The Dalit NRIs started to build the ravidas temples since 60s onwards mainly in Canada, US, Germany and few other european countries and they also gave donations to local gurudwaras in their native villages. But they also demanded equal control of gurudwaras assets which the Sikh clergy dominated by jat sikhs everywhere refused to share the control. One of the prime example was talhan case that happened 2-3 years ago. the violence in talhan happened over control of the local gurudwara. Simultaneously Punjab also have history of deras (small sects) which have huge followings among the dalit Sikhs. But these deras never talk about caste oppression or caste inequality. They talk about equality in the sugar coated words and are less rigid then jat Sikh control mainstream Sikh gurudwaras. However their large following among the Dalits have made them the target of jat Sikhs and their party like SAD as they fear that these sects later might become the power centre for dalit assertions. therefore u wil see lots of violence and persecution of these dera heads in recent times by mainstream Sikhs on flimsy grounds ( for example last year persecution of guru ram raheem of dera saccha sauda which is headed by non-dalit but has large Dalit Sikh followings). Till now the Jat Sikhs (and SAD) never targeted the Dalit groups like Ravidas samaj because it will be overtly casteist and the rupture within the Sikh society will become open. So they targeted only these Deras and asked them to confirm to Sikh religion almost at the lines of Taliban. However, i feel we have reached to the flash point and I fear that there will be huge persecution of dalit Sikhs as the entire state apparatus is with the jat sikhs. The RSS also share a very strong relationship with SAD and fights election together with SAD in Delhi and Punjab since a decade now. I am confident that Congress doesn't have guts to take a stand in this issue as they are already targeted for being anti-Sikh. Being a secular party i don't think they will even want to take a stand on 'religious' issue. Lets see what happens in the future. I fear the same treatment for dalit Sikh that happened to Christians in kandhmal (all were Dalits) in orissa but things are little better as there is a large NRI Dalit Sikh population which will make their task of persecuting Dalits in punjab little difficult. -- "Rosa sat so Martin could walk; Martin walked so Obama could run, Obama ran so your children can fly" -- Ranjit --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to greenyouth@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
