Sikhs, As True Gems, Are Welcomed Neighbors in Massachusetts, USA

 saini

I am not the only one who strongly admires and respects the Sikhs. My Governor Charlie Baker, the most popular one in the USA for all fifty states, does so, too. He will always support them on account since they are wonderful in many regards.

Why? In part, it is because that he supports ethnic and religious diversity. He also knows, as does everyone with half-sanity, many communities are happy to accept others when you see that their groups are trying their best in provision of humanitarian aid to others, forgiveness of grave travesties and always involvement in many acts to be generous, such as always providing free food and other sorts of aid to non-Sikhs, as well as care for the world in whole.

Who could ask for more than this sort of orientation? What other types of people would one want to be integral to life going forward in the area in which one lives?

baker

Charlie Baker, Governor of MA, being accepted and included in Sikh community.

Some of us have not lost our values to mob violence through persuasion relative to our being members of some EXCLUSIONARY cultural or religious group, indifference to the plight of other people or other ways to forget the best ways to be as humans out of the best ways that we can be in ourselves. Charlie shows this understanding and so do others representing my MA state like my Congressional Representative, Jim McGovern, who also attended this Sikh ceremony.

Charlie, like me, has no problem following the customs of a wide diversity of groups. He happily embraces a totality of humans when they serve our individual or collective betterment, and tough luck to certain Brahmans, certain and not all Jews in Israel, certain right-wing Christians or others who think that they represent the only way forward.

Such narrow thinking only leads to divisiveness. It only leads to more hatred and violence. Charlie, others and I adamantly reject this way forward:

Sikhs baker kripan e1508843123972

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker Inaugurates Westborough …

My thought to them, the haters, is that they need to get over their exclusivity and embrace the world harder and better. Certainly we have plenty of examples for ways to do so. Here is but one of many:

Sikh Police Officer Who Saved Muslim Man From Mob Is … – NDTV.com

Don’t anyone dare for a short moment think that it is easy to lay your own life on the line for another. It is not, but you do it out of duty, morals and the whole sense of self that you have for yourself. You do it because IT IS RIGHT!

I know this is so exactly, and I mean exactly. I know six people who put their lives on the line (and maybe more, but we don’t discuss everything — the others and I), and I am a proud member of the bunch. It is because you follow your values, morals and your love as much as you can. You protect life as much as you can.

You want to serve life’s furtherance. So I looked at the Sikh officer in the video and I smiled because I am always uplifted when I see one of mine — one of my people — one of my kind. (In my personal world, kind is not based on skin color, culture, religion, ethnic background or other variables that can serve as discriminatory markers.)

I smiled for example when I first learned that my friend, Mary, flung her body on top of another human so that he would not get beaten. She literally used her own body to get struck instead if police would do so. (He was a stranger to her — the one that she shielded by covering him.)

Here, see her choice and the repercussions that she faced for yourself if interested:

Mary, Protector Of The Harmed – Countercurrents

https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/18/mary-protector-of-the-harmed/

Yes, a bunch of us stand (or lie down as did Mary) firmly since the aim is to protect and serve life at all costs. Yet let’s get back to the Sikhs.

The first time that I started to a bit understand them was when some ignoramus others kicked and beat one to death one day after 9/11 in California. (They thought that he was an Arab because of his turban. How misinformed since Arabs don’t wear them unless Sikhs!)

No Sikhs retaliated for that action just as they didn’t when this other event happened with Wade Page:

7 shot dead at Sikh temple near Milwaukee – Chicago Tribune

www.chicagotribune.com/…/chi-shootings-at-sikh-temple-near-milwaukee-20120805-...

Another white supremacist has apologized for his wrongful acts to a Sikh temple and is now a part of their community. He is deeply and genuinely sorry, and has realized his wrongful initial ways. Indeed, he now feels oneness with the Sikhs’ viewpoints. Indeed, he almost cries when he considers about the degree that they have forgiven him and accept him as a valuable human.

The effort to make corrections for wrongs is endless as did the Sikhs with this man and he in return. Yet we also have to pass the goodness forward when it happens. We need to forgive, help and support others, and especially so when others create grave damage.

So I intend to volunteer at my local Sikh community since their members know this message as part of their faith — as part of deep understandings about the ways to be human. I am not a Sikh, but I know ways to serve and intend to do so. … It is the only way  to spread the message of rightness and goodness forward. I personally choose to reinforce it and to pay back for all that they, the Sikhs, provide in my region of the USA.

We need people like these ones, the Sikhs. They help with all of us, including the people who slip through the cracks due to poverty, hatred and violence, mental health issues or other problems that seem insurmountable to those experiencing them. They uplift and show a pathway forward. Thus, they improve our individual lives and societies as a whole.

 

Sally Dugman is a writer in MA, USA

 

 

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