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Re: dharam versus religion
Posted by Jasdev S Rai Send Email to Author on Friday, 2/13/2004 4:44 PM MST

dear harsimran kaur
thank you

i have lived in uk for 30 years, sarcasm is second nature to me. moreover i trained in medicine from one of UK's most one liner areas, liverpool, the home of scousers. my best friends there were scousers. cant help it now. besides a serious question deserves a serious answer and not ones that bounce on their own kneecap and hope for pain free bliss, such as 'religion is dharam and dharam is religion'.anyway i am glad you have brought some insight.

this is the second time i have put a question in sikhnet, the first was on equality, to which i recieved a reply that sounded from a swivelling dervish on a high.

i stopped interacting after that.

anyway i am begining to see the appreciation of the two different concepts emerging in your response. clearly when you say that there are elements of religion in dharam, it becomes implicit in that sentence that religion as a category restricts or limits the scope of dharam, or that it is not an exact translation. which therefore begs the question, why are american sikhs getting excited by the word religion when it does not do justice to the concept of dharam. you may wish to explain to some of america's bible bashing sikhs.

it is my opinion, which i also gather from your response, if i have rightly understood your response, that dharam is a much wider concept. religion is a narrow concept. for a sikh to say that dharam is religion, immediately misrepresents the ideas, the teachings and the depth of the Gurus and indeed the Guru Granth Sahib.

what is also important is that to accept that semething is a religion, one also has to accept that the secular exists and is concurrently existent as a necessary domain.

religion and secular are two sides of a coin. each is described in relation to the other. their genesis is mutually evolved and they are coexistent.

the concept of secular does not exist in eastern philosophies or for that matter in the concept of dharam. since dharam means universal truth, all the different versions within it are either speculative or intuitive rather than proscriptive or dogmatic. religions on the other hand are dogmatic, proscriptive and as you have stated, tend to engage in active proselytising for whatever ends. they are derogative about competitors and usually have words for non believers.

within dharam ther can be paths, not dogmas. in religion there are dogmas not paths.

anyway you may wish to go a little deeper into research and find out when the word religion emerged, what philosophical discourse shaped its boundaries, definition and value?

i think you will find that it becomes even more stupendous for sikhs to go on the warpath for sikhi to be called a religion and the turban to be called a religious sign. it is classic orientalist inheritance, that Edward Said so usefully described for the Islamic world.

the sikh turban is a dharmic item yes, but not a religious sign. but then what aspect of a sikh's life is not dharmic?

jasdev singh


[Previous Main Document]

  dharam versus religion... (Jasdev S Rai - 10.Feb.04)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Param S Arora - 10.Feb.04)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jaspal Singh Sindhar - 12.Feb.04)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Gurufateh Singh - 19.Feb.04)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 11.Feb.04)
 . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Karan Deep Sagri - 12.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 12.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasbir K Villaschi - 13.Feb.04)
. . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 13.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasbir K Villaschi - 13.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Serjinder Singh - 14.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 14.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Karan Deep Sagri - 14.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 15.Feb.04)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Karan Deep Sagri - 13.Feb.04)
 . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Chober Singh Sandhu - 1.Mar.05)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Aneeta - 1.Mar.05)
 . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Indy S Dhillon - 1.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Aneeta - 2.Mar.05)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Manjit_Ss - 2.Mar.05)
 . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Chober Singh Sandhu - 3.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Indy S Dhillon - 3.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Aneeta - 4.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Indy S Dhillon - 4.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Aneeta - 5.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Indy S Dhillon - 5.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Aneeta - 7.Mar.05)
 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Jasdev S Rai - 11.Mar.05)
 . . Re: dharam versus religio... (Amarpalsinghxx - 6.Mar.05)


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