The way we are - 5

Do Gurleen Kaur’s plucked eyebrows decide if she is not a “true Sikh”?

Endorsing a hardline stand by the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC), who barred a young Sikh girl admission in a minority institution on grounds that she violated a fundamental tenet of the religion by plucking her eyebrows, the Punjab and Haryana high court ruled the SGPC was fully justified in doing so.

I know one should jump in to defend the student. I won’t. She was seeking to get admitted to an institution that had specific “requisite of maintaining Sikh swarup (Sikh appearance) was a permissible precondition for admitting students under the Sikh minority community quota”. No one is dilly-dallying here.

Posh clubs have their rules, so why do we get so agitated when religious organisations lay down their terms? If she wants to get into a college, she can use a non-communal one. The problem is that many people want to belong to a ghetto with their superficial cosmopolitanism.

I think these arguments are a waste of time. The bench came out with a 152-page report! What can she challenge? There are Sikhs who do shave off their beards because of several reasons; most women, especially in the glamour world, would not be seen without plucked eyebrows. I am sure if they tried to join any religious committee, they would be debarred.

If we question any one institute, then we must ask whether what is written down in the scriptures or wherever should be evaluated again.

Of course, no one has any business to make a blanket judgment of whether a person is a true Sikh or not. There are many parameters to measure these and each will choose theirs. No point splitting hairs over this.

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Shiv Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray wants Kasab hanged.

“It is a shame that we are spending crores from public funds to provide security to Ajmal Kasab, who had mercilessly murdered so many police officers and citizens. Why is he being kept alive for so long.”

To provide evidence, since we don’t seem to know how to find it.

Criticising the clean shit given by Ram Pradhan committee to city police and the state government on 26/11, Thackeray called the panel’s report a “farce’’. “We are trying to run away from the truth. Everybody knows who is responsible for the deaths of officers like Hemant Karkare, Ashok Kamthe, Vijay Salaskar and several other cops,” said Thackeray.

Who is everybody? As a responsible citizen, you must come forward and say it aloud. Yes, the report is a farce. But what does it have to do with Kasab? And what about the enquiry into the Malegaon blasts? Because the question is not only about them being killed but why.

Hanging Kasab is a technicality. Getting to the root of the reason is more important. Are you ready for what will come out of it?