Books
Looking Within ... and Around :
I J Singh's Latest Book of Essays
A Book Review by ROOPINDER SINGH
SIKHS TODAY: IDEAS & OPINIONS, by I.J. Singh, Ethnic Island, USA, pp xii + 211. ISBN: 978-0-9859016-0-8. $16.00.
It was in 1911 that the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society established the first gurdwara in the United States in Stockton, California. However, it was in the 1970s and 1980s that the Sikhs started migrating to the US in significant numbers.
Preceding them, however, were some doctors and academics who had migrated to America in the earlier decades, made it their home and made a name for themselves in their chosen fields.
Prof I J Singh is one such person. After a long and distinguished academic career, he is now Professor Emeritus of Anatomical Sciences in New York University and is considered a significant voice of the Sikh-American disapora.
The latest book is his fifth collection of essays on various aspects of the Sikh Faith.
The chapter "Finding, losing and having fun," starts with some swipes at a generation that got lost while finding itself in the 1960s, before getting serious and saying: "To find meaning in your life, you have to look beyond your own needs and wants, and distinguish between the two, that is, how one finds meaning in life. When it happens, you have found a purpose to your life that is bigger than the self and that you can claim all that you can give, and more, of yourself than when you have found yourself."
I J Singh speaks out against a Punjab-centric view of Sikhism. He points out to how the Gurus reached out to the distant corners of the world, of how Guru Amar Das established 22 diocesan centres (manjis) to spread the message of Sikhism far and wide, and how eight of the manji-holders were women. Guru Granth Sahib has in it many verses from non-Sikh saints and mystics who lived in different parts of the subcontinent. The Gurus themselves were multi-lingual.
"Sikhi, to me, is a message that is unique, universal, timeless and a thinking person’s way of live, but today we seem to have reduced it to Sikhi by inheritance and limited to Punjabi culture, cuisine, music and ambience," says the author, a sentiment that finds a widespread resonance in the concerns of today’s Sikh diaspora.
In a later chapter, he recalls the time when an "excellent well-respected president of a gurdwara was barred from re-election because of constitutionally mandated term limits. He wanted the laws overlooked or changed to accommodate him since he was so ‘good'. He was seriously offended at my suggestion that he become a vice-president or secretary. That, he said, would be a demotion and a slap on his face."
In his typical fashion, I J Singh then gives some examples from US history to prove his point -- President Howard Taft became Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court after he left the White House and former Vice-President Richard Nixon ran for office of Governor of California in 1962 (he lost).
It is this effortless transition between the subcontinent and the wider world beyond it that marks I J Singh’s writing. It explains why he draws in a large number of readers from the younger generations.
A growing number of diaspora Sikhs were born in a variety of lands around the globe and owe allegiance to a long list of nations, have seldom visited Punjab or India and are more comfortable with the culture of their adopted lands than the one that was the cradle of their religion. They are deeply conscious of their religious identity and seek to know more about their religion, its teachings and practices.
I J Singh’s latest collection of 30 essays will certainly find a ready audience not only in the diaspora Sikhs, but also in Punjab and India where discerning readers will enjoy the lucid take on the Sikhs and the issues they face worldwide today.
[Courtesy: Tribune. Edited for sikhchic.com]
April 1, 2013