Selected Editorials - The Sikh Bulletin

SIKHS ARE A NATION
Whole World Is Our Stage
[From The Sikh Bulletin April 2002]
God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham was willing. But at the critical moment God
spared the child and accepted the sacrifice of a lamb instead. Not for us these myths. Our history is real.
Two of our Gurus and four Sahibzadas really gave their lives. Thus has the Panth of our Gurus been
nurtured. It is eternal. It is upto us to keep it in ‘charhdikala’. But first we have to bury our differences
and selfishness. So long as we are divided we will have no friends. Once we are united we will have no
enemies. So long as we put self and ‘bhaichara’ ahead of Panthic interst everybody suffers. In Panthic
‘bhala’ is ‘sarbat da bhala’.
As we celebrate 533 rd anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak this Vaisakhi day let us resolve to forge a
Sikh Nation without geographical boundaries. The following article had appeared in The Sikh Bulletin
Vol. 1 No. 1. Thirty issues later it is time to update it and solicit readers’ input.
The Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines nation as:
1. A body of people associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek
or to possess a government peculiarly its own.
2. The territory or country itself.
3. A member tribe of an Indian Confederation (Canada and USA).
4. An aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate
languages.
All of the above support the Sikhs' claim to be considered a nation. In addition we have many other
attributes of a nation that even many member nations of the United Nations do not possess:
1. Sikh kingdom during the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
2. Independent Sikh states, not part of British India, until they were absorbed into India after partition in
1947.
3. Our own territory, Punjab, severely truncated even though it is.
4. Our own religion, very different from other religions in India,
with its own body of Scriptures.
5. Our own language complete with a script designed
for and used only by the Sikhs.
6. Our own marriage ceremony, different from any
other.
7. Our own flag.
8. Our own calendar - Nanakshahi - adopted by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 1998.
9. Our own Red Cross, ‘ Sikh Sewa Dal’
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