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Summary of Question:	Caste System And King
Category:	General Sikhism
Date Posted:	Wednesday, 7/17/2002 4:23 PM MDT

Rev.Martin Luther King was born in 1929 to a middle-class Georgia family and was active for two generations in the civil rights cause. He was the second child and first son in his family and was named after his father Martin Luther King. As an adult,he used to recall the curtains that were used on the dining cars of trains to separate white from black.

"I was very young when I had my first experience in sitting behind the curtain," he says. "I just felt as if a curtain had come down across my whole life. The insult of it I will never forget."
- from the autobigraphy of Martin Luther King.
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Beloved friends, brothers and members of the Khalsa nation!

To be one with each other is always a conflict because the mind deceives us with spiritual ego. We had our father of the Khalsa Nation, Guru Gobind Singh ji, who was the the true "King". He spent his life spreading a message for people to become one. God is one, therefore your caste won't work and neither will your ego.

Now we have different religious organizations among our Sikh youth and each organization is consciously or unconsciously in conflict with each other: who has better activities, who is more spiritual, etc. We have become no different the than elder committe members that we used to despise, so now blaming them has become lame. Let's look into ourselves and see under that blood and flesh of different colours, we are one.

One. Ek Onkar Satnam Siri Whaheguru. Ek Ong Kar, the words of Guru Nanak, are understood better by the animals than the humans. Because if you look into the animal kingdom where sometimes Guruji relates to in Siri Guru Granth Sahib ji, they live this wisdom better.

Martin Luther King voiced out strongly against the racism against blacks and was killed by a white racist. He lived his wisdom, was a beautiful man and his words were strong and inspiring, and today I sometimes remember his speech in my mind, that touched thousands of people in the heart of America.

"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed ...that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day even in the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.I will have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.I have a dream today. And if America is to be a great nation,this must become true. So let freedom ring."

- Martin Luther King Jr., Washington, 1963

You know how stupid we sound when we one caste of the sikhs feel they can't marry into the other. On Sundays,we bow to Siri Guru Granth Sahib which starts with Ek Ong Kar and in Ardass we sing so loudly but maybe we need to clean our blocked hearts so our soul can listen to it. We sing the words of Raj Karega Khalsa so let us live it. If we practice caste in the consciousness of being a Sikh than we are truly lost. We have been doing Akand Paths in Gurdwaras for ages but we have not changed.

I am aware that people don't like it when I share this, but neither does my Father Guru Gobind Singh Ji like what we do. He and his family sacrificed so that we can see the light, but when people feel more superior or inferior because of caste on all days of the week other than Sunday then Gurdwara is just a show.

The gurdwaras here in Singapore started with a similar kind of thought that one kind of people go to a certain gurdwara, so that now in one small island we have 7 gurdwaras and countless youth organizations, and tommorrow they will multiply: what a tragedy.

Things like that hurt me and I hope and pray that one day we see that dream that Guru Gobind Singh lived and died for. Luther King Jr. was killed for his dream just because he felt that blacks should not be seen as an inferior race. Today there are more than 50 black people in the U.S.A. who live in the joy of being one in Sikhism and they live their lives beautifully with sadhana at amrit wela and in bana, and with bani, simran and seva.

I am not writing this to instigate anything but really let's contemplate our actions and see if we are living the way we should.
Satnam, satnam and sada Satnam.

Truth prevails or eventually ego eats the body and gives disease or tommorrow our children carry it and pass it down.

Satnam ji.
Humbly yours,
Rajveer Singh Khalsa