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Talk at Redditch Sikh Gurudwara 

Pyari  Sangat, Sat Siri Kal 

Wahe   Guruji   Ki    Khalsa, 
Wahe   Guruji   Ki    Fateh 

Meena and myself are humbled and privileged to have had the opportunity to be invited to be part of this Sikh Community.

I have to say that every since I was a boy I have had a proud association with the Sikh Community. I grew up in Kericho or Kricho, the same town where Sant Puran Singh came from, and my father used to often visit him. 

So the bonding is extremely personal. In Redditch it was through Cooks Chana’s father who represented a perfect soul.

The central teaching of this beautiful faith of the Oneness of God or Eik  Omkar is a uniting factor for all of us. 

Guru Nanak Dev Ji said that there is only one God and He is the enemy of no one.

He established langar or Communal Kitchen to remind all the need to share and have equality between all people. 

The Sikh belief of all traditions to be equally valid and capable of enlightening all is in effect of an inclusive faith, a belief that I share with that of Sanatan Dharma in Hindu thought.  

The Upanisad tells us: Know the soul that is your own. In other words realise the unique principle of the whole , or God, that is in all men. 

If all of us have that inner self or atman or soul then we are all children of one God. There is no exclusion, and hence I feel perfectly at home here and try to feel the same with every faith. 

Yesterday Myjinder and myself attended The Holocaust Memorial Day, in memory of the millions of people killed by the Nazis. There was a Holocaust survivor, Ivy Knill, who is now 91. She had been though a living hell, and spoke how she survived Autswich concentration camp where so many Jewish people were gassed including members of her own family.

She said that if there is one message she would say to all of us is to learn that ‘under the skin we are all the same’.

Kabir, a contemporary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji said, 

”In your veins , and in mine, there is only one blood, the same life that animated us all! 

Since one unique mother begat us all, where did we learn to divide ourselves? ”

This resonates with how Sikhs have not only practiced this  but have always spoken and defended the innocent and weak. 

For Redditch and Bromsgrove this Community, a lot to offer, and be an vital and integral pillar of Society at large.

My aspiration is that the Community has a Gurudwara and that all faiths all get together to support this including of course Hindus.

I want to thank Mohan Singh Ji for first telling me about this and of course Myjinder  and Surinder Braich and Cooks Ji and Neena Chana for their support, friendship and being such wonderful souls.  

And all of you for your kindness and making us feel part of you. 


Namaste and Dhanyavad

 ‘What is the one thing you can give away to become even more better off?’, a question  once asked  to Yuthistir, the eldest  of the Pandava brothers in the Indian epic Mahabharata.

In Hindu thought , the atman is different from the physical body, and is part of that divine force that keeps us all going and is permanent. We generally aspire to tend to our bodies, but do we nourish out internal self? The word thaka in Gujrati means tiredness. Reverse it and it becomes katha! Or nourishment of the aatman.

So how what about debt? We tend to think in terms of a money transaction, and this is exchanged for something to fulfil a desire. These ‘cash’ transactions have evolved over possibly since the first millennium. What happened prior to that? I suppose it was bartering, a form of exchange where, for example, chicken may be exchanged for something else, which was specific to the exchange. This way a relationship may develop, and that could lead to say a boy getting married to a girl from a family where the exchange transactions occurred. In effect an IOU relationship would be between the families on continual basis. 

Today this happens between friends, and with every body else it’s is purely monetary, and the debt that has to be honoured. This in effect is a narrow vision of a relationship based on money, and less on give and take relationships as in bygone days.

In Hindu thought debt has a much larger context. It is seen in terms of the 

1) Devas so that whatever we eat we offer it to the Devas in reverence and thankfulness for our being.

2) Ancesters, or parents without whom we would not be here. The finiteness of life would mean that we would procreate to extend this indebtedness

3) The aspects of life we take for granted, eg earth, air, fire…let’s call these ‘the givens’.

4) The wildlife world around us, from insects to birds, that create a balanced ecosystem

5) And humanity, what it has achieved for us, and what our close relationships.

So the extent of all this is wide and debt does not have a narrow monetary focus. Debt in this context may mean that we recognise all that has been given to us for this span within our life. And it is not seen as bad, but a gratitude. 

One other way of looking all this on a personal level would be to ask oneself ‘if you were about to die what would you do different’ ? How would you write your epitaph if you are indeed dead? You might see that it was not the accumulation of what you had that mattered, but what you gave away wilfully that  benefits society.

Going back to Yuthistir, his answer to what would make him better off by giving one thing away was desire. Mahatma Gandhi realised this when he said that there is enough in this world to feed everybody’s need, but not enough to feed one mans greed. 

Our happiness has to be constantly fed with fulfilling the next desire, and in material terms leads one to permanent transactional approach that we can never be satisfied. Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says, that when this is not satisfied, one despairs, can get frustrated,angry, and cannot rationalise. This is a vicious cycle for everybody to meet their desires.

When Hindus get married, they do the feras or the symbolic ritual of walking around the fire. each to these are ascribed a meaning of life conduct towards the next life. They are dharma, kama, aartha, and Moksha. 

Dharma has many meanings and interpretations,and one great one that I like is the well-being of all. Think about this in terms of debt. In India, hundreds of farmers have committed suicide because they cannot pay their monetary debt. Would this happen if dharma was followed by all?

Kama, means desire, and this has to in the spirit of sustainability.

Aartha, or the accumulation of wealth. This is therefore encouraged ( remember Laxmi?) but only in the context of dharma.

Moksh, is the ultimate ambition of a true Hindu and it takes different meanings according to the the sect or sampradhaya that is followed. For example, in devotional Hinduism ( for example Mirabai, and the Hare Krishna movement, and there are from the Ramanuja traditions) moksha means to be in permanent reverence of God above all else. Others may see it as the merger of the aatman or soul to the supersoul ( god) mech like a drop of water into the sea. This is more common in traditions that follow shankaracharya.

So be be mindful everyday for where you come from, how you are supported by family, environment, and humanity.