The Sikh Practice of Langar, a Free Meal Where Everyone Is Equal
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Was only later that I realized that at its onset Christian theology was novel among ancient religious systems in that it is not content with getting you to do deeds and rituals and be part of a religious community .. that's not enough. It requires complete psychological conversion ("ye must be born again") and subservience to the belief system, and also to get other people to do the same. And the "here's some food but what you really need is Jesus" thing goes along with that and really rubs me the wrong way.
TLDR I respect faith communities that serve only for the sake of serving. I never saw that in mine.
I've about gotten to the point where I feel I can suggest that I will attend services with my family if I can get them agree that there will be no readings from any of Paul's Letters. That's a hard request to make sometimes because my family isn't evangelical but Roman Catholic, and Paul is hugely respected still by the Roman Catholic church (for the obvious reasons that it is the church that Paul most directly built). But it is slowly giving me a framework of being able to say here's where I have problems with your faith and here's what I like about the faith: the gospels minus the miracles, and the actual teachings of Jesus. (Unsurprisingly one of my favorite versions of the Bible is the Jefferson Bible. It's pamphlet sized. It might be so much better for the world if it replaced all the Gideon's Bibles. Also, I can recommend A Gospel for Liberals by Todd Eklof as another great view of the gospels.)
[1] Very literally, so. Most of the "to" groups were conquests of the Roman Empire either threatening to leave or already left.
In my (admittedly limited) view, the actual lessons of the Christian faith as outlined place huge limitations on your own behavior, but demand generosity and gracefulness to others. Christians are commanded to adhere to the precepts, but it is not for Christians to judge anyone else, including other Christians. Instead their role is to serve others as commanded. To cloth the naked, heal the sick and feed the hungry… without any expectation from those you are serving. If you expect specific duties or actions, you are no longer serving, you’re selling.
"Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. "
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%205:24&ver...
https://lawandcrime.com/police/nypd-cops-allowed-20-get-out-...
I contrast Corinthians 11:5, which I have never seen followed even among missionaries, with Acts 15:10-29, we're in the disciples get together and decide what's really important about being Christian. Spoiler: it's not putting women in their place.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians...
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%2015&versi...
Thing is, effectively Christianity as defined by the earliest Church councils really is "Paulism". That plus the Nicene creed and its definition of the trinity. Which all ends up being really about purging the Judaism from Christianity.
A pre-Constantine and even more extremely, pre-Paul, "Christianity" could be interesting -- though really could be considered a kind of Messianic Jewish cult, and perhaps also influenced by Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, and Roman/Hellenistic paganism.
But I mean, I don't need any of it. But in a way I'm glad I studied the scriptures as a child, and then again as an atheist from a "wtf did they tell me .. that's not actually in there lol..." POV
(You don't have to entirely imagine what that version of the church might have looked like, it is sort of what UU is for and where it came from, especially because of the U [Unitarianism] that was kicked out by the Nicene creed [for trinitarianism]. I do irregularly appreciate a good UU service.)
What we've ended up with is this interesting historical situation where Christianity is the "European" monotheism and Islam is seen as "foreign" and "other" likely on account of its association with the historical Orient. And yet it is that region where Christianity had its origins and was strongest for the first 500 years.
I find the whole thing fascinating. But also, I believe in none of it.
In any case, just like Christianity, Islam has a spectrum of approaches of reading such morality passages.
One of the mind blowing things about this is the sheer amount of people some of the Gurdwaras end up feeding (1000s) and how non-trivial the whole process is from kitchen to serving. All volunteers generally.
The revolutionary part isn't sitting with strangers. It's sitting with strangers across classes. The equivalent to a langar in the West would be everyone in a community dining at the soup kitchen.
If you’re ever near one and want to serve they usually are very welcoming of any help and I find the process to be quite meditative, personally.
Now meditate on this till you realize your resume or ego or sense of who you are is just a miscalculated compute cache you hold on to keep your mind away from this truth.
e.g. Someone can think everyone worships the flying spagetti monster or UFOs or whatever. And I’ll merrily go on life not knowing or caring.
The human population on average becoming slightly more discriminatory of skin color?
On reddit I keep reading about them doing great things, volunteering, silently providing what is needed to people in emergencies, for example the current wildfires in the US. (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/1i0kavt - currently prominently featured on the front page) And now there is even some on Hacker News.
I am not disparaging anyone here, I am honestly curious about this pattern I have recognised.
(There may have also been awareness in the American and Canadian Sikh communities that they need to educate their fellow countrymen about who they are and why they’re the subject of what looks like a new form of state-sponsored terrorism.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/what-is-known-about-m...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2023/12/01/1216647148/after-foiled-assas...
You didn't grow up in the UK then. Made me laugh to think of not knowing Sikhs exist.
I didn’t, but I do have Indian heritage. I knew Sikhs existed and the basics of their customs, but I was unaware of e.g. Operation Blue Star [1] or the Khalistan independence/separatist movement [2].
Plenty of Americans and Canadians (and, I’d posit, Brits) meanwhile could probably recognise the headdress and little more.
Probably not even that. In the early noughties, as the US reached Peak Neuroticism, people attempting to hate-crime Muslims sometimes accidentally murdered Sikhs, instead, due to confusion about turbans: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/15/us/sikh-hate-crime-victims/in...
I learned about this in a mainline world history class in public high school. In Indiana.
Can’t speak for Canada. But my American curriculum didn’t cover the Sikhs. The exposure came from family and at community cultural festivals—it was superficial. Most Americans wouldn’t have even that.
In my (Catholic) school we got as far as visiting a mosque, which was an interesting experience
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/ive-had-guys-we-are-ar...
Sikhs and Gurkhas would be reasonably well known and have a pretty sterling reputation in Ireland/UK - but that cultural consciousness would sharply decline the further you get into Western Europe due to historical colonisation being African rather than Indian focused.
Government assassinations of exilants... that's sadly not new at all. Back when Yugoslavia was governed by Tito, the regime sent out killer squads across the world for about half a century [1] - mostly Germany was targeted (because most Yugoslavs ended up there as Germany was rich and happily accepted emigrants fron Yugoslavia), but Croats got also targetted in places as far away as Canada, South Africa, Argentinia or Australia.
It's a dark part of history many people to this day aren't aware of, it only made the news again for a short time after the attacks on Litvinenko, Skripal and Khangoshvili respectively.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Attentaten_auf_Exilk...
They are the real deal.
As a Sikh, I was raised with the Gurus’ teachings that all paths in life are unique and equal, given the person is genuinely trying to make a positive impact on the world, and that good deeds should be recognized and emulated.
I agree with you that Sikh politics in Punjab are often very performative and a hindrance to the progression of the state, but the rest of your comments (like equating langar to prasad in what almost seems like an attempt to erase the uniqueness of Sikhi) comes across as slightly offensive, not to mention inaccurate.
At the end of a Sikh ardas (prayer), we pray for “sarbat di bhala”, or the well-being of everyone. To me, this is also a reminder that at the end of the day, we are all the same on some fundamental human level that transcends religious belief and difference, and as a result, I like to find positives in communities and try to apply them to my own life, so I ultimately disagree with the suggestion not to appreciate the positives of one culture/religion because it may “disparage” another that doesn’t have those same practices.
All humans suffer from it.
But so what? That's an observation of no relevance. That particular "tribe", fantasy and all, still put me to shame for being good people. Including specifically in the more intellecual impersonal justice/fairness ways that I generally like to think I have down.
The observation about the harms of religion, in this case without an actual example of how it applies in this case, ends up only looking defensive. What are you threatened by that you feel the need to try to attack the simple assertion that some people are nice?
What did you think you were proving or disproving? And why did you feel the need to in the first place in response to something so benign? What about the original assertion is so threatening?
horseshit
"A former Indian intelligence officer" [1] is charged with directing the attempted killing of "a dual citizen of the United States and Canada" [2] on American soil. (They succeeded in Canada [3].)
It was an incredibly provocative and stupid move, on par with MBS's Khasshogi assasination, but if Riyadh had taken its bone saws to Pennsylvania. (A fair comparison would be America conducting a Bin Laden raid on an Indian national in India.)
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-charges-ex-indian-intellige...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurpatwant_Singh_Pannun#cite_n...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar#Death,_su...
The video on Reddit is on some level a good example, as the title directly contradicts it's content. In the video you see precisely one person identifiable as a Sikh and many other people, who are clearly not Sikh, performing the same task. Most definitely it isn't "the Sikh community" doing anything. It isn't even clear who provided the resources here.
Reddit especially is full of things like that, small snippets of an event presented as if it were the whole story. It is a very effective propaganda tactic and groups obviously benefit from portraying themselves a certain way and using these tactics to frame an issue a certain way.
By the way, these responses are exactly what OP was talking about.
Of course your reaction is quite telling and really says something about your ethnic narcissism, nobody said anything negative about Indians like you and somehow you feel like you are being attacked. Needing to talk about the race of (your?) wife also seems extremely weird.
To be sure you have clarified OPs question quite a bit.
If you think my post had anything to do with Kasha Aid (No idea and don't care what it is) or Sikhs, then I am afraid you did not read it properly.
> In the video you see precisely one person identifiable as a Sikh and many other people, who are clearly not Sikh, performing the same task. Most definitely it isn't "the Sikh community" doing anything. It isn't even clear who provided the resources here.
... and the video is labelled as volunteers for Khalsa Aid, a Sikh-funded and operated charity. Your very basic assumptions are based on your being underinformed by choice or mistake.
"If you think my post had anything to do with Kasha Aid (No idea and don't care what it is) or Sikhs, then I am afraid you did not read it properly."
Not everything is an attack on your people. But I always found it a bit strange how Indian people, Muslim Hindu or Sikh, get so defensive the moment anything remotely negative is said about them. Just to be clear: "If you think my post had anything to do with Kasha Aid (No idea and don't care what it is) or Sikhs, then I am afraid you did not read it properly."
> Not everything is an attack on your people.
And
> But I always found it a bit strange how Indian people, Muslim Hindu or Sikh, get so defensive the moment anything remotely negative is said about them.
Which one is true? Are you saying negative things, or is it not an attack? Feel free to answer, but as with the original reddit video, we are all free to decide ourselves.
My post was explicitly about how you can not trust reddit headlines with 30 second videos, which show nothing about the claimed events. But now that you have pointed out that the headline actually says something it has to be true, thank you so much for your attention to detail. I don't know how I could have missed this tiny detail which my entire post was about.
The Kurds are surrounded / occupied by Turks, Arabs, and Iranians - all who have a long history of trying to exterminate the Kurdish people / culture.
Sikhs aren't any better off with their native lands being ruled by either Hindus or Muslims, two groups who have a long history of trying to exterminate the Sikhs.
That's why both groups - quite frankly - suck up to the West so hard and are often picture perfect immigrants because they really don't want to be sent back. Because whatever "racism" you might think exists in the West, it is nothing compared to the religious hatred coming from Muslims and (to a lesser extend) Hindus.
- Kurds have at least a millennium-old history [1], while Sikhism is much more recent in comparison. The latter do not share the same level of regional complexities as besides the diaspora migrating in the past century, their presence is shared between two countries split up during their independence.
- In recent history we have seen armed conflicts with Kurd factions, especially in Syria, but this has not been the case for the past decades for the latter. The insurgent movements [2] for the latter were much like the IRA movement, in the past but not forgotten for some.
From my eyes, it seems that a vocal small section of the expat population wants to promote the separatist ideals, for the land they have long left not out of fear of prosecution solely for their identity.
The original article is a reflection of the act of servitude to others, but it is must be viewed separately from the conflicts a part of the group following the faith might have elsewhere.
[1] http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kurdish-language-i
From my one experience at a Langar event, it really was as advertised - very welcoming, zero pitch or expectation and quite refreshing.
Many years ago I worked on a project in Amritsar, which had me regularly engaged with the Golden Temple (the most sacred place in the Sikh religion) authorities. I have to say that all the Sikhs I interacted with were fantastic: honest, generous, hard-working, fun-loving, good-hearted people. I do think a lot of this was grounded in Sikh religious principles, which promote a kind of radical moderation that's actually pretty unique among religions. (the story goes that the founding guru of the Sikhs had two sons, one of whom destroyed his life with gambling and alcohol, and the other of whom destroyed his life with asceticism and abstinence. The guru repudiated both of them, saying that the latter was as much of a vice as the former. Instead, he preached that the point of life was to be happy, and to make other people happy: have a family and take good care of it, take care of other people, don't be an asshole, and have a good time. Balance these imperatives well, and you're doing God's work. As far as organised religions go, it's really pretty great.
And langar at the Golden Temple is a truly amazing experience. Men and women from every strata of society, from every religion, sitting down together to eat good food in silence. No preaching or any other bullshit -- the shared togetherness and humanity is enough. Honestly, it's profound. One of my dreams for later in life, when I have the time, is to go back there for a few weeks and volunteer to cook in their kitchen.
That said: Sikhs aren't all cuddles and sunshine. Early in their history they were strictly pacifistic, and also heavily persecuted. After a while, one of the head Gurus decided that if the way to do God's work was to live a good life, and there were oppressors who were committed to preventing you from doing so, then a necessary part of God's work would require, er, helping those oppressors to reincarnate as quickly as possible. Ever since then, they haven't been keen on turning the other cheek, and have had a very strong martial/military culture. There's still a very strong ethic that you shouldn't use violence unless there's absolutely no alternative -- but if you do have to use violence, then you might as well be bloody good at it. But of course the more that one participates in violence, the greyer the morality becomes. So I wouldn't dare wade into the India vs. Khalistan conflict: I'm sure that many of the beefs on both sides are well-founded at this point. But if you can separate the culture and the religion from the politics -- then yeah, it's a really great thing they've got going on there, and I think it's great for the world to have more exposure to it.
That is a viewpoint that I believe was ... either missed, ignored or deemed to collide too much with back-then views on national sovereignty after the world wars. Humanity decided to give itself at least a basic set of rules of civilized behavior - think of stuff like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 or the Hague and Geneva accords on waging war.
But what good are these rules, when there was and is barely any enforcement of them, especially against large/hegemonial powers? The utter majority of war crime tribunals were against African warlords and a couple of the worst actors in Yugoslavia during the 90s collapse/independence wars. Meanwhile, all of the permanent UNSC member countries (especially the US, Russia and China, but also France and the UK) have faced a host of credible war crime or general human rights violation accusations, and so did and do many of their protege countries - in the Western sphere, Turkey is accused of a genocide against the Kurds, Israel with the Palestinians, and on the other side we got accusations of a physical and cultural genocide of Russia against Ukraine, of China against Tibetans and Uyghurs, or Syria's falln regime against everyone but Alawites.
I want to post this video[1] because I think the HN crew will appreciate this.
When you feed people for free, more people show up. So instead of turning them away, what do you do? You use machines and efficiency to feed MORE people.
It is absolutely amazing.
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWWe2U41N8
When I think about how our schools (in America) mostly feed kids processed frozen sad looking food, I think about videos like this.
Where there's a will, there's a way... to feed kids and others fresh food with real ingredients with the help of automation.
While there have been some instances of tension between the two communities, things are not as bad as media might suggest.
Also, no, it doesn't predate. Or at least, there is no such record of it. What are your sources?
https://news.tirumala.org/nitya-annadam-free-meals-for-all-2...
more stats here
https://www.tirumala.org/SRIVENKATESWARAANNAPRASADAMTRUST.as...
Anna prasadam is pretty common thing in Hinduism. Read about Akshayapatra foundation which provides free mid day meals to 1000’s of children every single day!
Steve Jobs would walk 7 miles every Sunday to have lunch at Hare Krishna Temple
There's free food, and then there's langar. The scale, quality and motives are just so different.
And it's usually the result of you having attended a prayer, rather than "we'll feed anyone a full meal"
The closest thing Hindus do is the Hare Krishna templates globally that also feed anyone who shows up.
Also temples are extremely diverse and probably less than the 1% of temples offer wholesome meal Prasada similar to Langar while a Gurudwara most certainly will offer Langar.
I’ve personally been converted 4 times. All times without my consent to be converted but it was so forceful I learned the 2nd time to just go along with it.
By the 4th I learned to lie.
All I wanted to do was help or just do my own thing.