Jasreen Mayal Khanna - Seva: Sikh Secrets on How to Be Good in the Real World

Seva

Seva

Sikh Secrets on How to Be Good in the Real World

Jasreen Mayal Khanna

For my parents, Shaji and Simmy

Thank you for giving me wings

Table of Contents

Think of any scene of disaster in India and youll find a common thread: Sikh volunteers rallying to the site, feeding migrant workers, giving assistance to riot victims, and cleaning up after earthquakes. In the past year, full of so much difficult news, this 25-million-strong community stood out yet again for their extraordinary acts of kindness.

In 2021 alone, the media has reported some incredible stories on this very subject.

The Hemkunt foundation, started by Harteerath Singh and his family, set up oxygen langars in various cities like New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata to help Covid-19 patients when India was facing an oxygen shortage.

Gurdwara Rakab Ganj Sahib in New Delhi launched the Guru Tegh Bahadur Covid Care Centre to make up for the shortage of hospital beds in the city during the pandemic.

Bangla Sahib gurdwara in New Delhi launched Indias biggest free-of-charge dialysis centre this year. The Guru Harkishan Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Kidney Dialysis Hospital, situated in the gurdwara complex, can offer dialysis facility to 101 patients simultaneously and cater to a total of 500 patients every day.

In Dubai, a gurdwara trust worked with a healthcare organization to provide 5000 Covid-19 vaccines to people of all ages and backgrounds.

Gurdwara Takht Shri Huzoor Sahib in Nanded, Maharashtra, decided to use all the gold it had collected over the past fifty years to construct hospitals and medical colleges. Currently, residents of Nanded travel to Hyderabad or Mumbai for medical treatment.

All through the 2020 pandemic, Sikhs reached new heights of doing seva:

Since religious gatherings were prohibited, Sikhs distributed langar (the free meal served by gurdwaras to anyone who wishes to partake of it) and groceries via food delivery trucks and drive-through set-ups all over the world.

Baba Karnail Singh Khaira, the 81-year-old head of the Dera Kar Seva Gurdwara Langar Sahib, fed over 2 million migrants on Maharashtras highway in three months following the nationwide lockdown.

In June 2020, the New York Times piece titled How to Feed Crowds in a Protest or a Pandemic? The Sikhs Know highlight ed seva done by American Sikhs in Queens, New York, during the pandemic and in Los Angeles during the Black Lives Matter protests.

In Detroit, Shalinder Singh and his family distributed hundreds of pizza pies to front line workers like police officers, hospital staff and firefighters.

The Dashmesh Culture Centre in Calgary built a vegetable garden in an attempt to bring people together in a safe, Covid-friendly outdoor space. The food grown is used in langar but can also be taken home by individuals for their own kitchens.

The Tribune , Chandigarh, published a story about a Sikh vegetable vendor, Baljinder
Singh, who has been doing seva at Khairuddin mosque in Amritsar for the past forty years. Every Friday he wraps up work in the morning and spends his afternoons looking after the footwear of the devotees praying inside the mosque.

What makes Sikhs do so much good, these acts of seva as they call it? Is there something in their values that makes them more generous, more giving? And how can the rest of us learn from them? This was the question I started this book with.

My understanding of Sikhi the word we use to describe our religion stems from what I saw in my home. My father was my first living, embodied experience of the philosophy. Growing up, I described him as Santa Claus with a black beard because he managed to put a smile on my face every day. He is a quintessentially jovial, hard-working and sometimes scary sardarji, who taught me to always do the right thing. It is his personality and philosophy that have kept me close to my Sikh roots, no matter where Ive drifted in life.

My mother spent her evenings kneading dough at our local gurdwara and encouraged me and my brother to distribute parshadas (rotis) during langar. Her motivation for seva came from the joy she experienced listening to kirtans devotional songs which quenched her spiritual thirst.

My nani (maternal grandmother) told my brother and me stories of Partition, and we listened with wide-eyed fascination. We also learned that our papa had to stay home and not go to the office to be safe during the 1984 massacre in Delhi. But these tales werent retold to incite hatred or seek revenge. On the contrary, our legacy of being protectors was emphasized. Kind has been cool among Sikhs way before it became a Brooklyn hipster motto.

Writing this book became an opportunity to look back and even investigate my upbringing. When youre from within the community, doing seva feels like second nature and you dont expect even a pat on the back for your contribution. So to begin with, I had to take a step back and break down all the elements of my upbringing that I had taken for granted. I delved into Sikh history and our rich storytelling tradition of narrating sakhis, parables about the lives of our ten gurus, looked at some of the cutting-edge research in science, psychology and behavioural studies, and conducted numerous interviews with Sikhs around the world.

I found that you can distil Sikhi into eight simple, everyday behaviours or attitudes that can be transformative for anyone. The first is the one we all associate with Sikhism the idea of seva. Seva means selfless service, and in Sikhism it is not just an exhortation and a guide but a daily practice, just the same as cleaning the house or cooking. It is through their extraordinary acts of seva that Sikhs have gained the reputation of being the worlds Good Samaritans, as you can see from the examples I listed earlier.

Going out into the world to help other people is entwined with various other values that Sikhi asks its followers to imbibe. Guru Nanak told Sikhs seva is as important as prayer, but he also told them to work hard and be mindful, to live lightly and smile even in the face of hardship to step out of their comfort zones and be brave.

Doing good is not an isolated attribute. Living a meaningful, joyful life is what fires the emotion of doing seva. That is why Sikhs lovingly feed langar to the very cops they are up against at farmer protest sites across North India. Ultimately what makes Sikhi and the way Sikhs approach doing good stand apart is the optimism, joy and resilience with which their actions are done. This positivity what the Sikhs call chardi kala is what makes it possible for Sikhs to give so much. I argue in this book that Sikhi shows us how doing good can be a celebration and not a duty. This is the Sikh secret to doing good. Its possible for all of us to make this shift in ourselves.

Now every religion teaches us to do good and be good, so why is it that such a high proportion of Sikhs do good? One central reason is the way Guru Nanak designed the religion. During his spiritual journey, Guru Nanak spent time with hermits living in mountain caves. Eventually, he rejected the idea of asceticism and, instead, encouraged the householders role and told people to live honourably in and with the world. Sikhism is thus created for our daily lives. It gives us guidance on how to live as parents, children, friends, employees, neighbours, colleagues and ultimately as fellow human beings. Nanak taught people how to incorporate kindness, equality and hard work into daily life while simultaneously making place for relationships, jobs, weekends, celebrations and sorrows. He used a basic, natural simile to explain this to his followers. Live in the world but remain untouched by it, just like a lotus flower which grows in muddy waters but rises beautifully above them.