HOW EUROPE IS INDEBTED TO THE SIKHS ? - Global Sikh Studies

Who Are the Sikhs?
Dr Harjinder Singh Dilgeer
National Professor of Sikh Studies
{ HYPERLINK "mailto:hsdilgeer@yahoo.com" }
A Sikh can be easily identified from amongst the crowds of hundreds
and thousands. A man with beard and turban can well be easily
recognised. Still some Sikhs wearing traditional dress give impression
of a respectable monarch. Throughout the world one can observe Sikh
men, women and children, dressed in fine clothes and colourful
turbans, going towards Gurdwaros. A congregation in a Gurdwara
makes one think of an assembly of heavenly people. The scared
kitchen of a Gurdwara looks like the scene of a family feast where
everyone seems to be trying to surpass each other to perform
voluntary, selfless service.
One observes people contributing a share of their honestly
earned money for Langar (scared kitchen) and trying to surpass others
in performing most menial service in Gurdwara kitchen cleaning
dishes, sweeping floors, washing toilets, serving guests, cleaning silt
of sarovars (tanks); and all this being done by them energetically,
voluntarily, devotionally, honestly, vigorously, lovingly, wholeheatedly
and sacredly; and asks, "Who are these turbaned and bearded
people?"
When people of the world came to know that the Sikhs were
the same persons whose Ninth Master had sacrificed his life in order to
ensure right to religious worship and faith to the Hindus (as well
others), they were struck with wonder. It was more surprising for them
to know that the Hindu rulers of India whose women folk had been
forcibly taken away by terrorist Afghan invader Ahmed Shah Durrani;
and the Sikhs, not bothering for their lives, had fought against a
mighty terrorist invader in order to save the Hindu girls from being
taken to Afghanistan for sale as sex-slaves. The world came to know
about the Sikhs who sacrificed several of their comrades to restore the
wife of a Hindu Brahmin who appeared at Akal Takht Sahib on April
10, 1763 and submitted a petition that his wife had forcibly been taken
away by the tyrant chief of Kasur. The world was shocked to see
inhuman, merciless, savage, so far unknown to history, torturous
massacre °f the Sikh men, women and children by terrorist Hindu
mobs at Delhi and