SIKHISM

            I lived for 11 years in Fremont, California; an extremely diverse area. We have the largest Afghan population outside of Afghanistan. So much so that an area of Fremont is called “Little Kabul.” Fremont has more than just Afghan people; we were an area with religions from Islam to Judaism and ethnicities from Caucasian to Indian. This is why the diversity lecture today on Sikhism hit close to home; I have some very close friends who are Sikh. Professor Veidlinger of the religious studies department gave the bulk of the lecture- he was my professor when I took Buddhism. Upon grabbing some ethnic food and sitting down the lecture about Sikhism began, starting with the general overview of the meaning of the religion. Sikh means “disciple of the various gurus”, and there are approximately twenty five million Sikh’s worldwide. 1.5% of India’s population is Sikh, and this whole percentage essentially lives in the Punjab region.

            The Punjab region of India is in the northern tip and Punjab contains part of Pakistan as well as India. “Punj” means five and “ab” means river; therefore Punjab literally means five rivers. Sikhs are known fighters having assisted alongside the British warriors in World War One. There is a term in Sikhism, “Khalsa” that means pure- it is a group to uphold the religion and protect it. They each carry five objects to remind them of their closeness to their religion. The first is a Kara- a steel bracelet, a kangha- a comb, kes-uncut hair, a kirpan- a small dagger and finally a kaccha-short pants worn under clothes.

            After this everyone was able to partake in a little question and answer session with a student who was also a Sikh person. We found out about Yuba City having the largest Sikh population in America due to its almost identical climate to Sacramento Valley. After this a woman from our English class asked what he thought about Salman Rushdie to which he replied, “they don’t really read.” I found this quite amusing because as we all know, this was quite a joke.