The Sikh Sovereignty

This is one article I read in the Times of India once, and I stumbled upon it while going though my scrapbook. Have to share it with you all. My comments - at the end of the article.

MARCH OF BALLE BALLE (by Arvind Kala):

"Sikhs number less than 3 per cent of India' s population. They are outnumbered three to one by Bengalis and two to one by people who speak Telugu, Marathi or Tamil. In terms of population, Sikhs are also fewer than Gujaratis, Keralites or Oriyas. Yet Punjabi impact on popular culture goes way beyond numbers.

Take music for instance. Outside of Hindi music, Punjabi pop is the only music that electrifies audiences across India and livens up parties from Bangalore to Kolkota. Punjabi music far outsells other regional music and its popularity is rising. Explaining why Punjabi singers are good is as hard as explaining other stereotypes. Why are south Indians good in maths? Why are Marwaris or Gujaratis good at making money? Why does Kerela produce India's top women athletes?

Different communities excel at different things for a variety of reasons. But the vitality of Punjabi pop comes from a zest for life nurtured in a frontier people whose lives were ravaged by centuries of invasions. Facing danger peps up a culture by infusing energy into it. It's this Punjabi energy that India connects with when singers Daler Mehndi or Sukhbir or others take the mike.

Music and dance go together. The popularity of Punjabi pop has been accompanied by an even greater popularity of Bhangra, which has become a national dance. The irony is that people dancing at weddings or at parties all over India don't know they are doing the Bhangra. But they are, because typical of undemanding Punjabi spontaneity, the Bhangra as a dance form has no grammar. It just requires you to flail your arms, hence even restrained Indians summon the courage to do it.

Weddings in India have become truly Punjabi-'ised'. A ladies' sangeet at the bride's home was a typical Punjabi pre-wedding party with a dressed-up bride and her female friends and relatives dancing and singing songs. Today, a ladies' sangeet has become a must for any wedding celebration in India. When Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding hit the screen, it reflected the growing appeal of Punjabi boisterousness that is infecting non-Punjabi weddings. Even traditional Bengali and south Indian homes have been influenced. Their rich Kenjeevaram and Benaras silk sarees at weddings are giving way to Punjabi lehengas.

Colourful weddings apart, even rural Punjab astonishes. It's the only place in India where you might see a tall, strapping Sikh farmer in a shocking pink Afghan suit whose colour matches that of his wife's. The Punjabi salwaar-suit defeated the saree two or three decades ago. That's probably due to the salwaar suit's practicality. A woman these days doesn't have the patience or time to wear a saree. The salwaar-suit's widespread acceptance as women's preferred attire testifies to Punjabi culture's disproportionate impact. The impact is also visible from the spreading popularity of Punjabi festival. Karva Chauth, that's marked by wives fasting for the long life of their husbands. The festival has caught on because an innate Punjabi zest has turned this festival into a day of celebration with women dressing at their best.

Popular culture in India is best represented by Hindi movies. Here again, Punjabi dominance is huge. The names tell the story: Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand, Sunil Dutt, Dharmendra, Kareena Kapoor, Hrithik Roshan. Dharmendra apart, all of them are Punjabi Khatris, as are top film producers and directors like B R Chopra and Karan Johar. Why should Punjabis dominate Bollywood when its talents should have emerged from the Hindi speaking states?

The reason is that success in Bollywood requires mental toughness, freshness, innovativeness and adaptability. A cruel history has given these qualities to the Punjabis. First, they faced invasions, and then came the 1947 Partition which tore their lives apart. Having gone through fire, Punjabi culture has acquired a dynamism and can-do spirit that shapes popular culture."

A few more influences and facts I'd like to add:

All of my friends want a 'Kadaa' (the metal bracelet Sikhs are supposed to wear on their right hands). All of my friends are crazy after Punjabi food. The event of stealing the bride-groom's shoes by the bride's sisters and friends during the wedding and asking for money in exchange is an event that originated in Punjabi weddings. Most of the Bollywood tracks can't do without Punjabi words such as 'kudi', 'mundya', 'soneya', etc. One or two Punjabi lines ought to be a part of most of the tracks. Bhangra or Punjabi Pop has been the very first Indian style of music to be classified internationally and has been given a genre in International Music.

The representation of a quintessential Indian outside India is done by a figure of a Sikh. People recognize Sikhs immediately as Indians. They don't do so with other communities. All the new people I meet say that Punjabi is a very sweet language and ask me to teach them a bit of Punjabi as they would love to converse in that dialect. You'll never find a Sikh beggar anywhere. The Sikhs shall live with respect, even if they earn a meagre income. And last but not the least, Sikh community has been the only one to have lost the maximum number of lives of it's own people, not in order to save it's own existence, but that of other religion's (The Hindu religion, that is).

In spite of such a huge influence of Punjabi culture in the lives of majority of people of the nation, many of them tend to form an opinion that Sikhs are brainless. Or that they are the dumbest creatures alive on earth. Who created this image? It was the jokes that started all of it. The jokes, whose origination took place when the Sikhs set out for a noble cause to help others again. It came into existence when the Sikhs used to raid the Mughal forts at midnight to save the women-folk of the Hindu families who were abducted and forcefully taken away to be used as slaves for physical pleasure of the king as well their soldiers. There started the talks by Mughals that the Sikhs go crazy at night, and they loose it completely. And from there, it took the form of jokes. It's the warmth of the lion-hearted Sikhs who enjoyed laughing on themselves and hence didn't mind the jokes. Even I don't, and I tend to laugh on these jokes. But only till they are taken lightly as jokes. If people tend to cross some limits, you have to stand up for yourself and speak out. There's a limit to insulting anyone's integrity and I've seen many people doing that off late. Heights were when Sikhs were depicted as dogs in a poster at at Reliance Web World outlets. Opinions have been formed that Sikhs are actually what the jokes convey. And when someone tends to treat me that way, I loose it.

This community has proved to be one of the bravest and strongest. Lets not forget that it was a mere 110 Sikhs who fought against a Pakistani army of thousands, loaded with tanks, and still emerged victorious and helped end the 1971 war then and there itself. This just goes to show the amount of self confidence and never-die attitude possessed by people of this ethnic group. I'm proud to be an integral part of the only community in the world who can laugh on themselves. But there's a limit of decency one needs to maintain. Until the Sikhs are taking it lightly, everything's fine. But that doesn't mean it gives others the liberty to degrade their status as much as they want to. If aggravated, the Sikhs can create a revolution in the entire nation, and nothing shall be able to stop them.

Anyways, even if this entire ethnic group is really as dumb as they are portrayed to be, it's the others who are adopting the culture, the lifestyle and the traditions of Punjabis. The facts speak for themselves. I'm sure even you must have been influenced by this culture in some way or the other. Then who's more dumb I ask you? A person who's tagged dumb or the ones who give him that status but still copy him in almost every aspect of life and adopt all possible traits of his life in theirs ?? Think about it. It's your call.