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It has to be Sarbat da Bhala all
the way
Inder Preet Singh from Fremont writes back, endorsing the point made
by WSN in its front page editorial last week
 I read with
immense interest the WSN editor's intervention in the Barack Obama
and Sikhs debate. I totally agree that making the larger agenda
egalitarian and a return to the core Sikh values is the one big
lesson that we must draw from Obama's unprecedentedvictory.
It is important,
in this cynical world, that hope should stay alive, if not always
float on the wings of soaring rhetoric, such as Obama's. I think the
Sikhs must now start thinking of how to produce their own Obama.
And such an Obama has to be someone who is wedded to the core Sikh
value of Sarbat Da Bhala.
It is important
to fight against Indian brahamanical system but at the same time it
is important to fight for India's poor, India's dalits just asit is
important to fight against the atrocities being committed on some
of the struggling people in the name of Naxalism or in India's
North East. The Sikhs must speak up for wrongs of the brahmanical
forces everywhere, and must learn to make the essential distinction
between Brahman and brahaminism.
I also find the near comical
comparisons between Obama and Mayawati somewhat funny. They are
similar, Obama and Mayawati, in that both bear the identity of the
subaltern, of the oppressed, in their respective societies. And
Mayawati also has a reasonable chance of becoming India's prime
minister, even if only for a truncated term. But there the
similarity ends.
Mayawati started from humble origins, struggled to
rise in life, to become the chief minister of India's largest state,
where social development remains stunted and caste prejudice does
not have to clothe itself in thick layers of hypocrisy but is free
to strut around, bristling with naked aggression.
Obama, by
contrast, had a life of privilege, going to elite schools and
receiving the finest education possible. In this contrast,
Mayawati's rise is the more striking.
However, Obama's
electoral victory inspires hope in a way Mayawati's rise does not.
And this is because of the promise of change and redemption that
Obama stands for, a promise that most Americans have bought into, as
have the majority of Europeans, too, it would appear. Mayawati does
not hold out any such promise. Hers is the grudged victory of
realpolitik in a fractured polity.
Americans have
chosen Obama in an act of positive endorsement; Maywati's rise to
office rests on assorted groups' negative preference for the lesser
evil and opportunistic coalition building in the pursuit of power
and pelf.
It is here that
the Sikhs must learn whom to emulate: should we push ahead the Sikh
agenda along the lines of identity politics or should Sikhs in any
party and with any level of engagement with society must push the
larger agenda of the subaltern and keep underlining incessantly the
core Sikh values.
It is here that the WSN
editor's wonderful note
struck deep in my heart, and my congratulations for coming out with
such a piece at a time when most writers have stopped short of
appealing to our higher value system.
19 November
2008
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