ACLU's Independence Day Poster
This
year a free lecture program was added in the morning. The morning session
was attended by forty to fifty people and was filled with presentations
by various professionals involved in Sikh heritage preservation. But
while the morning session was about the work of Sikh Heritage preservation,
the evening dinner was all about politics...
Jeevan Singh
Sikh Heritage Project coordinator, Smithsonian Institution, Fellow,
Cambridge University, England
All seventeenth century writings of Guru Gobind Singh show what the
Guru used as his personal invocation - the words Ik Onkar and on top
of it he drew what is probably a khanda and a round circle, which
may be a shield...
"Preserving
Buildings in the Punjab"
Gurmeet Kaur
Conservation architect and a managing trustee, Punjab Heritage Preservation
Trust
Gurmeet showed photographs of water tanks built by Guru Arjan Dev. They
reveal a lot about the involvement of the Guru in the community...
Amandeep Singh
Co-author, "Warrior Saints: Three
Centuries of the Sikh Military Tradition"
To recover those pictures it was necessary to track down the photo albums
from his family. When the authors did that, to their surprise, they
found a picture of Duleep Singh, the boy king, son of Sardar Ranjit
Singh (Bahadur)...
"Sikh
Philanthropist Dyal Singh And His Family: Their Contributions To The Punjab
And Beyond"
Bhagwant Singh
Sikh poet and historian
Although Bhagwant Singh's speech was partly about the great Desa Singh and Lena Singh (Majithia), generals in Sardar Ranjit Singh's army, the purpose was to tell the story of a few items donated to the Smithsonian by Dyal Singh, a man who adopted the religion of Brahma Samaj and then cut his hair...
While both Gurduaaras, Guru Nanak Foundation of America and Guru Gobind Singh Foundation of America, have censored the Sikh Sentinel by banning it's distribution, they have found it acceptable to engage in a smear campaign against the Jugmohan Singh Juthhaa and the Washington Sikh Center, another nearby Gurduaara...
U.S. Commission
on International Religious Freedom
Hearing on Gujarat, India
... while at the moment Prime Minister Vajpayee presents a more reassuring face for the current government, we have to recognize that Vajpayee's tenure in office is subject to the vagaries of domestic politics, ill health, and advancing years. The less benign face of the BJP represented by the official with whom I spoke could well be the predominant strand of the BJP, and of the Indian government, in the years ahead...
Separation of Religion and Government
...As a Sikh living in the United States, a country established on the principle of the separation of church and state (religion and government), it is bewildering to read that the Punjab Government will have a stake in the SGPC elections...
...Denial
is a dangerous position to take. If we Sikhs don't remember 1984 for what
it really was, then the whole world will forget it too. It is said that
those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
...Racial background, religion, heritage, views, should be respected by all in America. We as Americans have to believe this in order to survive the challenges to our way of life. I would venture to say Mr. Jeni, that those Americans you criticize for wearing turbans are braver than you in making sure this country is true to it's sprit and ideals.