Ghost of Christmas '84

Gurpreet and Harjot took me to the Gurudwara of Ottawa for Langar (it is the traditional feast organized by the authorities of Gurudwaras everywhere. Volunteers, day and night, cook chappathis and dhal for visitors, travellers and devotees. In India, it is organized everyday. For obvious reasons, it is conducted only on sundays in Ottawa). After the usual 5 min prayer, we went into the dining hall (the reason we were there!). I was eating on the floor right under a huge banner which was screaming in large bold font- "LONG LIVE KHALISTAN OUR HOMELAND".

I look around and see really old folk limping around helping with the serving and cleaning of food. Most of them have been here since the darkest days of their life. After I was done, I went around to see the photos and paintings on the walls there. I could see a couple of life size portraits of Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale- the military and the spiritual leader of the Khalistan Liberation Army way back in the 70's. There were the photos of the other prominent members of the Liberation Army with the same quote inscribed under each one of them - "XXX attained martyrdom at the hands of the Tyrant Indian Army in 1984". At the end of the long row photos was one of a woman shown to be visibly assaulted and a newspaper clipping dating to some time in November 1984. Something was written in Punjabi which I asked Harjot to translate for me- "This woman, XXX was raped and murdered by the Hindu Government Police and her whole family was wiped out. These are but a few of the atrocities committed by the Government of India".

Most of the people who were present in the Hall with me at that time were directly or indirectly the victims of the anti-Sikh pogroms administered by the Nehru-Gandhi family loyalists in Delhi. They had been there, seen it. It sends a chill into my spine to even consider being a a victim of government organized violence- I mean, how on earth could anyone escape the carnage if both the police and the goons are on the same side? And may, for a moment, even make the hatred for "Hindus" among these folk seem justified. But is it?

Canada has done its part well in this world of eternal conflict. Sticking to its policy of multicultural coexistence, it has served home for many a flock of refugees- Sri Lankan Tamils, Palestines and Lebanese, Sikhs and the list goes on. But it has gone too far on its commitment toward tolerance to allow extremist propaganda rule its soil. I'm not saying this because I'm a practising Hindu. I would say the same about most of the Hindu temples in Toronto which serve pamphlets of Prabhakaran's speeches to the visitors. Providing refuge to troubled folk is one thing, harbouring extremism is another. No wonder many banned terrorist groups around the world have built a strong financial base in here. The silver lining is that the incumbent conservative government in the Parliament led by Prime Minister Stefen Harper has cracked down on many active operating terrorist cells and confiscated their resources (okay... for once I agree conservatives are right even if they have more notorious reasons like racism inspiring them to to this!). And not surprisingly, most of my Tamil friends hate this government.

This kind of propaganda, which I'm more or less used to seeing now a days, made me ponder into an even more fundamental question- about relevance of religion itself. Canadians (in general, the westerners) are known to be the most intolerant people. In spite of all the nice greetings and pleasant talk like "Hi"s, "Bye"s, "Good Afternoon"s and "Thank you"s, these people love their cats and dogs more than they love their siblings. Parents even after 80 are on their own. Silly things like one person's stuff getting into another person's desk in an office creates the most ugly arguments. The average time a graduate student spends working on his PhD thesis is TWICE the average life of a marriage (no wonder advisor-compatibility is more crucial than spouse-compatibility here!). How on earth, then, are they able to exist peacefully with so much diversity (in terms of religion, culture, ethnicity, language etc) around them? May be because their intolerance is "well directed". Meaning whenever they get angry, they get angry at individuals and not at the religion that those individuals represent (of course, all that has changed since 9/11).

The situation is quite the opposite in India. People go great distances to save marriages, I wouldn't mind my friends borrowing my stuff even without asking me and we respect people more than animals. Yet, we are being hypocrites when we claim that we have "unity in diversity". No community in India can boast of being clean of blood stain.

Religion was the reason behind 1984. Religion was the reason behind the Gujarat riots. Religion instigated the perpetrators of 9/11. Religion is guilty of 1993 Mumbai blasts and what followed it. Religion is stopping the schools in America from teaching Evolution. Religion is standing in way of life saving stem cell research. Religion tore a nation apart and a Religious fanatic assassinated a great soul in 1948. All this for what? A super human sitting above in the skies whom no one has ever seen or heard? Or are we completely out of our minds? When some one, say a Muslim, assaults my family and, if I'm an average Indian Hindu, I would go looking for ANY other muslim family (preferably women and children as they are the easier targets) to assault them back. In a more saner and rational world, I would have looked for the PERPETRATOR and try to bring him to justice, or in case where law fails, I would probably administer the punishment myself on HIM depending on the level of my maturity. It is amazing to see how easily we associate a whole religion with the actions of an individual. How easily the Gurudwara here associates "Hindu" with all the crimes committed against them.

May be religion made some sense say 10000 years back when it brought the cave man out of the forests and made him profess civil life, in fear some supreme authority above him. But today, religion is driving us toward the same madness it once shunned. It is driving us back into the caves. It is high time when we stopped acting as spoilt children claiming to act according to the directions of a "Holy Father" and started behaving as responsible adults. Its time we kept religion in its place- inside our houses.

Probably instead of teaching our kids how Jesus died for the Jews or how Lord Rama killed Ravana, if we teach them how great men like Issac Newton and Charles Darwin sacrificed their lives to give some meaning to our own existence, this world would have been a much safer and better place to live.