Khushwant Singh to be Honored

Daas is very passionate about the following post. Daas asks you to please read this post very carefully. It has come to Daas’s attention that the Centennial Foundation is holding its annual Gala where they honor Sikhs for their work in the community on April 1, 2006. One of the honorees this year is Khushwant Singh.

This has shocked daas, and daas is deeply saddened that anyone in their right mind can honor someone as Khuswant Singh as a Sikh. Daas is aware that Centennial Foundation has been contacted and refuse to budge on their stance and continue to support Khushwant Singh. Daas feels this is a slap in the face to all Sikhs. Daas will give you some samples of what Khushwant Singh has written below, and you can decide for yourselves if honoring Khushwant Singh is deeply offensive to the Sikh Panth or not.

Centennial Foundation is honoring Khushwant Singh as a Sikh, but Khushwant Singh has himself admitted that he is not a Sikh and just keeps his hair and turban because of the social aspect of it. (http://www.sikhtimes.com/bios_021503a.html)

Khushwant Singh: When I was in England as a student, socialism was much talked about among us. We read and discussed Bertrand Russell and attended lectures by Harold J. Laski. I have not retained many socialistic ideas, but I am still an agnostic.

J.S.T.: You are a non-believer, yet you spent a night at Bangla Sahib gurdwara to seek the Guru's support during a difficult time in your personal life when your wife had threatened to leave you.

K.S.: This is one of those things - a contradiction. It was an emotional issue for me. I was born and raised in a Sikh family. I still keep my beard and turban and identify myself with the Sikh community.

To prove this point further and to see how much our precious Gurus meant to Khushwant Singh, lets see what he says,

"What would Gandhi have done under the circumstances? I didn't subscribe to his fads-prohibition, celibacy, no doctors-but generally he was always right. He meant more to me than any of my panth, my gurus."

Guru sahib has taught us that the Khalsa Panth is Nyaara distinct. Guru Sahib has openly denounced many Hindu practices. Even after all this Khushwant Singh still writes; (http://www.sikhtimes.com/bios_021503a.html)

J.S.T.: What about the statements that suggest that Sikhs are kes-dhari [sporting unshorn hair] Hindus? You yourself wrote in The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 12, 2001) that Sikhism is a branch of Hinduism.

K.S.: That is correct. Sikhs are kes-dhari Hindus. Their religious source is Hinduism. Sikhism is a tradition developed within Hinduism. Guru Granth Sahib reflects Vedantic philosophy and Japji Sahib is based on the Upanishads.

When asked about the Akal Takht, Khushwant Singh says;

J.S.T.: Those are loaded statements. You could be accused of blasphemy and summoned to the Akal Takht.

K.S.: They don't have the guts to summon me. They only go after the weak and the timid

Sikhs all across the world were hurt and are still hurt by the Human Rights violations being committed against Sikhs in India, and at how Sikhs are being discriminated in India. Yet Khushwant Singh writes,

J.S.T.: Some Sikhs say we are discriminated against in India. What do you think?

K.S.: No, not at all. They are making progress all over the country. They are in the mainstream of Indian life. They are now found in almost all political parties, even the R.S.S.

Even worse, look at what he writes about KPS Gill, the man who was behind the brutal torture of so many innocent people and the rape of so many innocent women. The man who was responsible for tearing apart so many families and killing thousands and thousands of innocent people. (http://www.sikhtimes.com/books_062003a.html)

"I supported K.P.S. Gill for resorting to extra-judicial methods to stamp out terrorism. The judiciary was in a state of collapse and magistrates too terrified to refuse applications for bail put by terrorists. The administration was paralysed and people gave in to extortion and violence perpetrated by gangs. If the police caught those with criminal records or those who admitted to murdering innocent people, instead of taking them to court, the police eliminated them. It was jungle justice but it had an element of justification behind it. But even in this savage war of attrition, we expected the police to discriminate between criminals and others who were proving a nuisance to them."

I wont even get into the lies he spews from his mouth about shaheeds and Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale.

Just from the few extracts above, is this a person who should be honored as a Sikh or by a Sikh organization? Well he is, hes being honored by the Centennial Foundation. How confused these people are. The man says himself that he’s not Sikh and speaks contrary to Sikh teachings, he justifies brutal torture on Sikhs, and he openly challenges Akal Takht. Centennial Foundation should be ashamed of themselves, they have been told about Khushwant Singh and they refuse to budge on their position and continue to support him.

May Waheguru do kirpa on his Sikhs and give us the common sense to know right from wrong, and to stick together for the betterment of the Panth.

Daas encourages you to get in touch with Centennial Foundation and continue to put pressure on them to reconsider their decision to support Khushwant Singh and honor him at their annual Gala.

http://www.centennialfoundation.org/2006gala.html

Contact Info:

Parminder Batra
phone: 416-671-7276

Nampreet Singh
phone: 647-668-1040

Email: centennialfoundation@gmail.com

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

*here is another extract to tell you a little bit of Khushwants character (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2002/02/24/stories/2002022400510200.htm):
WHEN you read a sentence in Khushwant Singh's recent autobiography which begins `the most fulfilling thing I have done in my life was ...', you expect it to conclude with the name of some beautiful woman he long desired and finally seduced. Alternatively, you expect to learn the name of some smooth single malt he savoured after a prolonged delay. But you'd be wrong. The second half of the sentence reads: `... working on Sikh religion and history'. This reminds us that there is much more to Khushwant Singh than Truth, Love, and a Little Malice. Sex and scotch may have provided the central juice to this sardar's roaring rhetoric and disguised the core of scholarship he possesses, but with sentences such as this, his autobiography frequently betrays the persona of a Drink-and-Desire-Bum, which he has cultivated. This is a sardar who knows that, metaphorically speaking, what has meant most to him is not carnal knowledge of a virgin but intellectual knowledge of Virgil. Alongside his ability to call a spade a spade when everyone else is calling it a pitchfork, this bedrock of learning is the basis of his self-respect. It underlies all the fluff he has churned out to please the millions and earn himself roughly the same. Without it he would have ended up as the male Shobha De.

posted by Otpreka Singh @ 9:00 AM Comments: 9