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Summary of Question:	Re - Videos With Sardars As The Butt Of Jokes
Category:	General Sikhism
Date Posted:	Tuesday, 12/13/2005 11:39 AM MST

Dear Sikhnet Moderators, I am taking the liberty of answering this question by a fellow sikh because I too am working for a leading software company and have faced this ordeal. If possible please try to post this reply -

Dear Brother,

I can understand what you must be going through everyday because Ive gone through all this for a long time until I spoke up. In a software company your project team members become close friends because with them we spend 12-15 hrs a day on an average. This friendship crosses the line when they start taking liberties of commenting/joking on your very very personal matter - religion. This menace of jokes has spread so much because of us, the sikhs because we always allowed people to cross this line, because of our big hearts. I guess if each of self respecting sikhs say NO to such things, we can make a difference. We might be called narrow minded and untolerant but thats OK than being insulted. Now we can do a some of these practical things to stop this. Ive tried it and it works.

1. When you receive such jokes, reply all saying that you dont appreciate such jokes and if again such jokes are sent across, you would escalate this issue to the higher-ups. But be sure you dont read any gujju, south indian etc jokes too..If it still happens, forward the email to a top boss stating your concerns. This would stop people from mailing such jokes to you but wont stop the circulation of such material in your company.

2. Speak with like minded sikh girls and boys in your company, contact them without any delay because evn they too might be feeling the same way you do, any self respecting individual would feel the same. Let these mails come to you and all of them everyday, you'll get together and collect the data for over a month along with the size of the emails from each of your teams. After a month you would have enough data to speak with one of the top bosses of your company(not PMs or Delivery Managers) but someone in the cadre of GM or VP. All of you get together with this data and arrange ameeting with him and one top HR Manager. Explain your situation with this data and clearly mention this affecting your morale and self confidence. Be sure to meet these people with all the Sikh girls and boys because this meance can be stopped only from the top. Also calculate time to read each such email and multiply it with number of people receiving this email everyday. Add all the figures and show the management abt loss of productive time for the organization and also the network traffic.

I am sure such step would result in some action from the top management. I understand this would amount to taking a lot of initiative and spending your precious time but my friend the results can be very satisfactory. Someone needs to act instead of just sitting and getting insulted. Your religion is yours and no one has a right to laugh at it.

I hope this helps.

Thanks
Amardeep Singh Bhatia

---reply

Thank you for your reply. This goes perfectly with what I just replied to a similar topic about Sikh jokes. Blessings. GTKK