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Editorial
Sikh-ing from Obama
Caught in the multifarious crisis, the Sikh community should
be looking out for signs in the transition phase as well as the way
the Obama presidency will conduct itself. When the divides seem
unbridgeable, Barack Obama has shown how the message can be
simplified and people with a gulf of difference between themselves
can also be prevailed upon and inspired to come to a rough consensus
about big problems and work together effectively. One can keep an
ideological position and still be accommodative so that the larger
agenda of the community keeps advancing. Many times, people on both
sides of the fence have equally strong convictions, but there is no
need to ensure that they all remain fixed in their standard boxes.
The new president, the
Himalaya sized hope
of the world, Barack Obama reached across to talent and ideas across
the partisan divides in order to make decisions expeditiously. We
have a lot to learn from Obama's displayed talents of tapping into
the nation’s intellectual dialogue and then coming up with decisions
that were far better and enriched with the wisdom gained from the
exercise that preceded it.
Sikh community leaders are quick to either label themselves
or others rather too quickly. We need to learn many a lessons in
bipartisan style while we try to push expansion an agenda that we
largely agree on. Getting bogged down in details is as unnecessary
as knowing the detail is necessary. As NYT wrote recently, Obama
reaches "across old boundaries to build the foundation of an
administration that will be charged with hauling the country out of
crisis".
True that Obama will eventually end up choosing "between
competing advice and priorities, risking the disappointment or anger
of constituencies that for the moment can still see in him what they
hope to see" but then how does one get to that stage if partisan
agendas keep an entire community bogged down and its agendas get
dissipated?
We need to set out ideas for the Sikh community, and we need
to hear out all the details and the sub-debates as we go along the
way and accommodate them into the larger vision. For that it is
necessary that we stop looking at certain constituencies of the Sikh
community as "deadwood" and "luggage from the past". There are good
men and women in many factions, parties, community organisations,
outfits, preachers, NGOs, professional groups. They all have the
same or similar dream, they all want the community to reclaim its
rightful place on the world's horizon and they all want to rectify
the mistakes that many of our leaders have made in the past.
The trick lies in not getting bogged down in the past while
analyzing the wrongs and keep moving ahead, keep uniting many
strands and make it a wave. For that, the change has to start from
the Self and then be extrapolated on to Society. Each Sikh has to
engage with himself for the Sikh Nation to seek glories again.
Obama has taken a place in society that extends beyond
political leadership.
Peter Baker wrote in the NYT: "He is as much symbol as
substance, an icon for the young and a sign of deliverance for an
older generation that never believed a man with his skin color would
ascend those steps to vow to preserve, protect and defend a
Constitution that originally counted a black man as three-fifths of
a person."
And Baker goes on to quote John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of
Obama's transition team, to say that the new President "lives in a
grudge-free zone." That for many leaders should be a touchstone. We
need to mentally learn to live in a "grudge-free zone". Only that
will make us capable of taking on board a lot of information,
consider a lot many differing opinions, sort out prejudices from
information and make good decisions. Even in this we will be making
mistakes. But then we will know that we have made one and we will
rectify that and keep moving.
Yes, we know
that it is not so simple. But how many must have told Obama that it
was all not so simple, that he should simply give up. After all, it
was not difficult to see that Black is a shade darker than white. So
wonderful that he did not listen. One more lesson to learn: we will
all know what not to pay heed to.
21 January 2009
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