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T.T.S. Chaggar: On Sikhism - Interfaith Youth Forum in London
Written by Turren Tarun Singh Chaggar
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Your excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. My dearest Brothers and Sisters. We are both deeply honored and humbled to share our thoughts with you at this session on human rights and dignity. These discussions are of paramount importance against an immoral backdrop of forced labor, human trafficking, persecution, oppressive regimes, terrorism, and warfare. In response to this we have seen an awakening of humanity at large, as manifested by the Millennium Development Goals and more recently by the Geneva Declaration on Interreligious Cooperation in society to bring faith into discussions about shared responsibility and commitment towards a common, benevolent future.
This ultimate sacrifice was demonstrated by the martyrdom of the fifth and ninth Sikh Gurus. The fifth Guru sacrificed his life to protect the basic human right to practice one's religion. Later, the ninth gave his life to protect the rights of religions other than his own. I also choose to mention the ultimate compassion exercised by one Sikh, Bhai Khania ji, who selflessly administered medicines to the “enemy.”
The teachings of the Gurus are enshrined in the holy Sikh scriptures. The Gurus declared that SGGSJ is the direct revelation from God to all of humanity, and that this message has never been changed or modified and will always remain as such. As such, it is a truly multifaith scripture which contains the hymns of 36 composers indiscriminate of caste, race, and religion, and is written in 22 languages employing a phonetically perfected Gurmukhi script.
Your own mind has the capability for kindness and compassion, but also for hate, greed, condemnation, and selfishness. So, good and evil coexist within you. This is necessary because then, we have choice; a God-given human right. Good and evil exist outside and inside you, and this is something that is necessary. Without these opposites, you would not be able to make a choice. Whether you want to tread the path of evil or good is important. So, the spiritual mind is preconditioned to self-evaluation in order to constantly refine one's actions.
Education is necessary to understand and act on human rights; however, it is the righteousness of our actions which ultimately determines how well we achieve these rights.
Every right has its corresponding duty. We must uphold our own human rights but we also have a duty to uphold the human rights of others.
Throughout history, dignity has been given to the downtrodden members of society by spiritually enlightened people. The highest honor one human being can give to another is respect and dignity.
However, fundamental to appreciating this is humility. Egotistical pride and arrogance are like the cancer of spirituality, because they hit us strongest when we have made a particular effort towards spirituality in one way or another. This can only be solved by doing both selfless service and meditation in equal measure, thus eradicating our ego, and moving closer to God.
This level of compassion and humbleness can and should be enshrined in every moment of our daily lives, as demonstrated in the Sikh tradition by Guru Ka Langar or “free food for all from the Guru’s kitchen.” It provides not just free food but an uplifting and spiritual experience on a large scale. This embodies the sacred values of community generosity, love, selflessness and, most of all, equality of all humankind. Furthermore, in a world where religion causes such controversy, the values affirmed in Guru Ka Langar have the potential to create a more peaceful and harmonic multicultural society.
This was successfully demonstrated at the Council for a Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona in 2004, where Guru Ka Langar was served to 7,000 people each day. Sitting together on the same level immediately broke down all of the social barriers and opened the floodgates for honest collective communication. With an undeniable atmosphere of harmony, this demonstrated that interfaith is no longer a "talk fest" but a project of action.
Reflecting on such transformative acts makes us realize that for interfaith dialogue to be successful, we need to start with self-analysis and on a grassroots level outwardly.
The miracle of Guru Ka Langar is going to be brought to London this Thursday, and I hereby invite all of you to attend. We feel that this is a fantastic opportunity for forging relationships between London’s communities at an academic level. This is essential in order to create a more generous and integrated secular nation in the future.
We feel every individual has a global responsibility. Interfaith cooperation cannot afford to set vague, utopian ideals. A top-down approach is necessary to achieve change. However, this must be preceded by continued and intensified work at the community level to change the mindset of humanity.
Our faith tradition informs us that we are not here to change others; we are here to change ourselves, and thus lead by example.
Our recommendations are as follows:
- First, education policy needs to change. In order to create a more peaceful future, our children need to gain a greater depth of knowledge about spiritual and humanistic values, and gain a deeper moral understanding that is built throughout their time in education.
- Second, an attitude of selfless service and humility needs to be incorporated into policy making from the very outset. Policy makers need to assess how best to serve the world, rather than how best to serve their own interests. Interfaith dialogue needs to be integrated at every level of policy making in the world from education to finance to environmental policy to health care and even defense policy -- everything must have a multifaith peace dimension. Only with a spiritual dimension which encourages humility, compassion, and love for divine creation can we bring about concrete and significant change.
- Successful interfaith cooperation with the UN requires religious members/leaders of the highest spiritual and moral caliber. However in order to create such a forum, we all have to do our soul searching. We all need to recognize and aim to correct our own flaws/shortcomings/imperfections before we can work together to correct the flaws/shortcomings/imperfections of the world.
- The biggest barrier to achieving an international multifaith body in the UN is not UN policy, but rather our faith communities themselves. Members of our communities must have mutual respect based on this new-found planetary consciousness. Once this is achieved, the establishment of a cohesive UN multifaith organization will not be an arduous process, but rather a natural progression.
Our final recommendation is this.
- Every single person in this room has a duty to bring about this new mindset, this new consciousness, this new aspect on interfaith communication in their own lives. Only then and with a great deal of humility, compassion, and divine courage can we work positively towards a better future.
Thank you.
Turren Tarun Singh Chaggar is from East London, where he has lived since birth. He is currently in his third year reading Medicine at University College London and was the interfaith representative of the Sikh Society at UCL last year. He attended the Council for the Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona in 2004.