Stupid comment!!

Sikhs may have internal diversity but the faction which has political control of the Sikh faith is the casteist Jatt one. It has long distanced itself completely from Hinduism and has a permanent victimhood complex wrt India and Hindus.

And no, North Indian culture is not reflexively conservative and fearful of change. Hindus have been drastically reforming their religion ever since the British conquest of Bengal. Rather than being fearful of change Hindus have been at the forefront of ensuring that our faith keeps up with the times. The cultural, communitarian lives our grandfathers lived is markedly different from ours and its not just due to urbanization and economic growth. I wouldn’t even say that North Indian Hindus have been unique in doing this. This is what any living culture would do. A good example of this would be how easily Hindus have accepted Dalits and women priests, women doing antyeshti rights for parents etc.

Among all Hindus, its Kashmiri Pandits who perhaps do have a fossilized culture. Maybe thats why they were chased out of Kashmir so easily with ZERO pushback from them. Hilariously, now we find some of them in the Leaftis/Islamist activist circuit, railing against “Hindu fascist” control of Kashmir in the US Congress.

The modern Sikh faith itself is not conservative. Historically, it was much closer to Hinduism. Even Gobind Singh himself while not proclaiming a “Teesar Panth” (third way as different from Hinduism and Islam), was prone to writing verse praising Hindu Devtas and took a lot of the martial elements of the Khalsa from Shakti parampara etc. All the philosophical elements of Sikhism are straight lift from Advaita Vedanta. This has been systematically brushed under the carpet by Sikhs who insist only on the outer differences.

Being conservative and resistance to change would have meant holding on to the historical interpretations of their religion and cultural traits. Instead the way Sikhs tie themselves into knots every year trying to justify giving up celebrating Hindu festivals like Diwali, Rakhi etc is something to behold.

That said almost every aspect of N Indian culture / communitarian life is marked by a certain level of reflexive conservatism and deep fear of change. And Sikhism isn’t immune from it. Besides Sikhism as a religion flowered under siege, and its conservative tradition remains deeply suspicious of external political interference.

Hindus/Hindutva types have learnt the lesson of 47, and that is to not show any weakness, and to give back as they get. This was further reinforced by 1980s Punjab and how a minority of Sikhs went berserk against Hindus (we can debate who started it, and there is blame to go around on both sides) and there was a real fear of secession. Gandhi’s Ahmisa days were gone, and they were buried after the 1980s. It is no coincidence that you saw right wing Hindu politics gain steam after Punjab and Kashmir blew up in succession in the 80s.

Finally coming to the Sikhs and Sikhism, there are many things to admire about the faith AND how it is practised. But both the Sikhs themselves and some of their admirers overestimate the moral delta between Sikh communities and others..Some of the “moralness” is performative, and some have argued the exaggerated highly public acts of charity conducted by the Sikhs are part their genuine fath (or faith driven) and part performance boosted again by their ongoin separation from the Dharmic spiritual core (I am not sure about this part, but the “performance” argument does ring true). Finally, to your point about secularism Sikhs have had a great opportunity to demonstrate secualrism, anticasteism etc in Punjab and have failed miserably. There is no social indicator on which Punjab stands out in a good way compared to many other Indian states..What leg do they have to stand on to lecture others? Also, Punjab is 40% Hindu, 45% non Sikh and nobody can name one prominent Hindu politician from the state, forget about one with a good chance to be CM.

I should have thought of a lot of this, since I am actually someone who does mention these aspects of Sikhism (blasphemy, heresy, sects). Good comment :), but i do disagree with the last line..

This criticism of Hindutva politics by Sikh religious leaders is simply opportunistic trolling.

Perhaps, Omar hasn’t heard of the whole stupid brouhaha over “beadbi” which keeps happening in Punjab every few years whenever some loose leafs of the Sikh holy book are found burnt or in trash heaps. Mostly its radical (Khalistani) Sikhs who do this in order to create disturbances in the state and create a wedge issue between Hindus and Sikhs.

Also there have been a bunch of killings of Hindu leaders in the last several years by Sikh radicals.

India is secular and will remain secular ONLY and ONLY because a large percentage of Hindus want it so. Otherwise left to themselves Sikhs may have formed an extremely authoritarian, land-locked country of Punjab. I shudder to think of what would have happened if Khalistani Jathebandis were to come to power in an independent country of Punjab. A stupider, more bloodthirsty group cannot even be found in Congo.

The real problem confronting the Punjabi state is that they have reached their zenith as an agricultural power. Returns are diminishing. Now they have to prove themselves in some other field and quench the creative energies.

The Punjabi elites are themselves heavily invested into the Indian power structures (armed forces, bureaucracy and the intelligentsia). They are also highly self aware – they know geopolitical reality, without access to the seaboard, a Punjabi ethnostate will be a paper tiger.

But there is disquiet. An uneasy calm lies over the land. A new undertaking should consume their fires into a creative force. And that direction lies to the West. The rapidity with which Modi, Amit Shah and Doval (MAD) accepted the Kartarpur proposal left even the Pakistanis surprised. It is awakening a lot of young people to the loss of their ancestral lands. There lies a quest.

But identity politics has its own inescapable logic and the more Indian Hindu identity crystallizes, the more it differentiates from other groups. As Hindus become more Hindu, Sikhs may feel some pressure to become more Sikh. As they do so, they will become even stronger supporters of equality before the law, separation of religion and state, and secularism in general.
Wrt the podcast with Tony-TheLiberal – The only point he made where he made sense was Congress/BJP wrt 1984/2002;
Despite Bluestar, Congress supported pogroms, Insurgency which was put down mostly under Congress governments the Sikhs continue to see Congress as acceptable viz BJP. BJP has not been able to make any inroads in Sikh Punjab and had to depend on Akalis for decades. Even in the 2019 wave, Punjab stood out ;
Contrast that with BJP wrt other minorities – even Christians – there continues to be major distrust of BJP though actually BJP hasn’t been particularly anti Christian.

If one takes an non-essentialist position viz Dharmic v Abrahamic it can be well argued that this is the drawback of Hindutva identity & Hindi politics . Human beings will act like human beings and cling on to identities and focus on what’s different vs the commonalities of Sikhism v Hinduism. They will not act according to the so called expectations from their “tolerant” faiths.
One of the first causes of friction in Punjab was Hindus in Punjab identifying with Hindi/vs Punjabi.