The Inner Journey II

jo bin paratheethee kapattee koorree koorree akhee meettadhae oun kaa outhar jaaeigaa jhoot(h) gumaan
Those who lack faith may close their eyes, hypocritically pretending and faking devotion, but their false pretenses shall soon wear off.
-Guru Ram Das Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 734

In an age where image is everything, more and more youth are beginning to define their spiritual connections, not by public display of devotion but by showcasing their alliances in the form of tattoos. While no religion specifically condones them, tattoos however, raise suspicious and sarcastic looks from those that find them undesirable, no matter how simple and clean they may seem. The Sikh youth are abandoning the Guru’s form (specifically the turban and unshorn hair) and replacing it with their own alternative – by expressing their pride through ways that find them acceptance with their peers who can longer bear the weight of conforming to their age-old tradition of wearing dastaar and unshorn hair. The turbans have swiftly lost their princely status and replaced with chic statements of tattooed arms, chests, backs and necks. Today’s generation is into the GenerationX thing – technology, luxury, image and peer-respect. It no longer matters what the Guru thinks is better – our educated youth know better and have given godly status to their outer displays of fashion statement. Tattoos have today joined the legions of body piercings, crew cuts and blings. It seems like God is in fashion these days, regardless of how aloof or ignorant we want be in trying to understand His Will, and attempting to win His attention with our artistically decorated bodies. Whether it is to show your religious alliance, to make a fashion statement or to try and interpret your version of spirituality, tattoos may not be condemned by religion, but they lead you no where.

The Sikh Gurus revealed to us what Akaal Purakh had envisioned for His peoples. Over 240 years, the Sikh of Guru Nanak was groomed into the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh Ji. Abandoned were all rituals and meaningless aspects of life, and replaced with those that would stand the test of time and be of purpose and lead us to our Creator Lord. One may argue that while tattoos are of outer display, then so are the turbans and beards. Valid arguement, but . . . the dastaar and kesh of were marks of our affiliation to the Guru, a form blessed to the adherents of the Sikh way of life. One may adorn the Sikh turban and even maintain his kesh, and yet still pierce his body and tattoo his skin, is far more close to manmat and foolishness than those that have forsaken the Sikh roop altogether. Tattoos are nothing less than body-modification which is a process of deciding who you are and what you want to be. Tattooing and its allied arts, in other words, are increasingly understood as substitutes for more traditional religious rites of passage. Body art may be considered as an individual expression but it will never find favour with religion, no matter how much one may claim to defend it as their way of spiritual expression.

Many who decorate their bodies with religious icons as tattoos claim to educate those that catch their curiosity. This is simply a sign of cultural starvation, resulting from rebelling against the norms and established way of a religious life. People claim to wear meaningful tattoos, but unless their life is dedicated to the inner self, the outer statements are as good as decorating a dead body. When we lose our intrinsic values, we attempt to guise that vacuum with alternative, self-defined ways. By ignoring the path of religious teachings and claiming to be wiser than the masters, we do nothing more than condemning ourselves into the darkness of meaningless existence.

The greatest show of religious affiliation and devotion is a silent and humble one. When one sees a turbaned Sikh with a full kesh, he says more than one who has discarded the form of his Guru. While one cannot completely condemn tattoos, they can never find acceptance either. Just because religion does not condone body piercings and tattoos doesn’t mean such body-works are accepted. What God wants to see is not your self-defined image, but the one that He commissioned, through teachings of faith. In the end, the outer is to rot away anyway, whether it is adorned by the dastaar or by tattoos, but what will matter in the Court of the True Lord is how much of our being we offered to the Guru and accepted as good what they instructed us to do, not what our fickle minds thought so otherwise. A life lived without contemplation on the Word of God is far worse that exhibiting our decorated bodies that insult our divine form.

naam binaa jaethaa biouhaar || jio mirathak mithhiaa seegaar
Without the Naam, all occupations are useless, like decorations on a dead body.
-Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 240

The land of our Sikh Gurus is no longer what it used be since the times of the Gurus, through the centuries and into the 21st Century. In the name of modernization,the Sikh Nation is losing both their cultural and religious heritage. Gone are the days when the Punjab was known as the land of plenty – close-knit community, chardikala Gursikhs, golden wheat fields, the glowing faces of the Punjabi peasants and their sugar sweet maboli, the sound of tractors filling the soft air, and the nights of bhangra and gidda on the onset of Vaisakhi, the harvest season. The good old days seem to have gone for good, forgotten in the dark corners of our memories. Today, Punjab can no longer be recognised – gone are the gullible Sikh folk, the colourful turbans, the flowing beards, the tractors driven by hefty and strong Sikhs . . . the youth are deserting the land of their Gurus for the land of Dollars and Pounds and giving away their identity in return. Families tend to find themselves ‘entrapped’ in the land of the Five Rivers and seek to forfeit their agricultural might for settling in the cities which offers more promise. In place of the lovely folk music, television stations have opened their bars to corrupt the innocence of the simple Sikh by transmitting images and sounds of vulgar versions of their own folk music while their own claim it as their new heritage.

The peoples of the Punjab have changed – amidst the few of those that still maintain their culture and religious values, the majority can hardly be recognised any longer. What was such a beautiful culture and religion has now been polluted with escalating apostasy, bipran ki reet (castes, fasting, astrology, following fake babas and gurus, inter-marriages, drug and alcohol abuse . . .) and apathy of its heritage and history. The Sikhs freed another faith from the clutches of slavery, now we have been made slaves of the very peoples our Gurus sacrificed their all to set free from tyrants. What a slow death of a beautiful and colourful heritage and the tragedy is that only a handful few care to do anything about it. With images like the one below, it’s sad to note that such aspects are getting confined to what was.

But the struggle to keep our heritage alive is being fought by the awakened, but the real difference will be made by you and I. We need to teach our children and our children’s children on what the heritage was and that it should live on because it was made nor for a single era, but for centuries more to come.

As for now, my heart bleeds for Punjab to see it shred from a beautiful coat of innocent folk dances, maboli, singing fields of wheat and sarson da saag, to a tattered one of apostasy, filthy television channels, vulgar music and filled with vermin that continue to nibble at the roots. O GuruJi . . .