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Whither GM? Whither Sikhs?
by I.J. SINGH
Not so long ago, the saying was: "As goes GM, so goes the nation!"
Also: "What is good for GM is good for the nation!"
Not anymore.
General Motors declared bankruptcy on Monday, June 1, 2009.
Not a total surprise, I'm afraid. Like a patient in chronic care, GM had been in steady decline for the past 30 years and somewhat in coma for a year.
However, it was the fourth largest corporation in North America.
I am not going to spend my energy eulogizing it or lamenting its fall. Corporations come and go. They can and often do rise anew, a la phoenix, from their ashes. Let's hope so does GM, and they find a productive reincarnation.
Instead, my thoughts go to the many institutions that sustain us - not all of them money-making outfits.
There are some themes that are common to all institutions, no matter how venerable or grand their history. In our measure of time, our existence follows a path that is largely cyclical or spiral, never linear.
So the institutions that define us, that we live by, circle around in a spiral and approach their starting point with regular, but not always predictable periodicity. And then they must be reborn - they must begin anew - or die.
I know we usually talk only in terms of "Born Again Christians," but the application of the phrase is indeed more universal.
Any curriculum, any teaching program, in any halfway decent school or university, is always under a microscope. It is constantly being re-examined, re-explored, probed, prodded and pumped, or pruned and reshaped. It is always being reinvented and reinterpreted.
Why?
Certainly because old students go away to be replaced by a new crop, a new generation, new minds. Often, newer knowledge is also on the table. At times, the old information is unchanged, but the packaging and its presentation are new, as are the consumers. It is indeed old wine (or remixed old and new), but in new bottles.
And that reminds me that we revere our religious values because they are surely eternal and timeless. They span generations. But our reverence needs the newness of old wine in new bottles, or else it often appears to turn into vinegar for the new consumer.
But beyond this tasteless analogy, it is true that companies, businesses, educational institutions and corporations need to remain relevant. How do they do it?
To remain relevant is to continue to connect to our needs. This means canvassing, surveying and listening to the end-users of the product, to innovate, to reform and to reinterpret, and yet to remain tethered to the basic mission of the product and the corporation. Oversight and reform that go hand in hand are continuing essentials to even the best of products.
Can we now draw a lesson and transfer this mini-sermon to Sikhi - a message that I never tire of labeling unique, universal, eternal (timeless), engaged by reason but not exclusively, and most powerfully expressed through its five articles of faith.
And that makes it a pretty complex product. (Mind you, I said complex, not complicated. I leave the distinction between the two to another time.)
Now, how to keep the practice connected to its fundamentals, how to keep the meaning and message unadulterated, but how to make sure it retains the freshness of innovation and reinterpretation that are so necessary to its continuing relevance.
Since religion - a way of life - is not a shop, business, piece of land or even a bank account, not a tangible asset that can be willed to the next generation, a relative, friend or lover, what then to do.
It seems that every generation must reinvent and reinterpret for itself what the age-old truths, models and methods mean to them today. This is what we need to see and this is what GM failed to learn.
Navigate your way deftly through the complexities that life offers; there is many an iceberg in those troubled waters. GM seems to have hit more than one in its march.
Know the past, no matter what it was. But GM cannot live on its past glory. Hummers are not the vehicles for today.
Nor can Sikhs rest on their laurels. A culture of caste or denial and debasement of women, for example, were never Sikh doctrine and will have to be ousted from our behaviour.
Then, in the words of Robert Browning, "The best is yet to be."
The product must stay connected to life today and fill a void in it. Only then will it have everlasting life, or else you will surely find it on the ash heap of history. This is what the saga of GM tells me.
To stay eternal does not mean remaining stubbornly and unmovingly fixed in time and place.
June 2, 2009
Conversation about this article
1: Chintan Singh (San Jose, California, U.S.A.), June 02, 2009, 5:40 PM.
I'd like to connect this piece's essence to that of another piece. Two other articles currently on sikhchic.com (the book review and the one on the note Sardar Gurcharan Singh Tohra wrote to Mrs. Gandhi) suggest that the conflict of '84 might not be over yet. Both the articles also mentioned that the Sikh community has always come back more stronger than before when a blow like '84 has hit it. My question is: firstly, can the '84 events be compared to the fall of GM. If not, then what is the difference? Secondly, if they are comparable, then what lessons have we not learnt from our history, just as GM did not learn that Hummers are not the cars of today. What must we do to rectify '84 and not let it happen again? How must we be reborn?
2: Nash (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), June 03, 2009, 12:42 PM.
Thank you for your attempt to arouse thoughts about the future of our great religion. I, sir, however do not agree with you in any way that Sikhism and GM are both in jeopardy. Sikhism will never die even though many rulers and oppressors of the subcontinent have tried. The planned carnage that happened in 1984 was an example of how organized the forces of anti-Sikhism are. However, the more we are attacked, the more we will rise in defiance and protection of Truth. Sir, GM may perish, but Sikhi will flourish!
3: Gurjender Singh (Maryland, U.S.A.), June 03, 2009, 3:02 PM.
In the global world, until and unless Sikh leadership is well qualified and aware of all the Sikh issues of young and old generation, we will continue to face challenges. Without opening and reading the Guru Granth, understanding it, living it and spreading its message, we cannot make progress in Sikhism. (1) One simple example is: due to back or knee pain, sitting on a chair in a gurdwara is frowned upon by many. (2) Some of the young Sikhs are away from Sikhi because they do not understand any of the goings-on in the gurdwara due to lack of understanding of the Punjabi language. And, (3) Most of the teachings (if any) stay within the four wall of the gurdwaras. These are only a few examples where Sikhs need to learn and not merely rely on past good deeds for their future ... like GM.
4: Harinder (Bangalore, India), June 04, 2009, 4:04 AM.
In the grand scheme of the cosmos, all things "living" (humans, plants, animals) and everything connected to the "living", (like instituions, philosophy, knowledge, factories, schools, etc.) go through the standard three-step model of life: birth, growth and death. Sikhs, by the grace of Waheguru, however, have been made an exception to this model of life by the Akal. Sikhs are Akalis (nothing to do with the politicos of the same name), that is, the "Time-less" people who have always existed, even before the creation of the universe, and shall exist forever, even after the death of the universe. Time as applied to Sikhs has a very deep theolgical meaning only known to the "Brahmgyanis".
5: Gurjender Singh (Maryland, U.S.A.), June 05, 2009, 8:32 AM.
Harinder ji spelled out a very description of a brahmgyani. Please note that only relying on the past or merely being born to a Sikh family does not make a person a brahmgyani. One has to earn that stage. Look at Guru Gobind Singh ji, a perfect example of a brahmgyani. But he did not sit back idle and rely on the past; as a result, he created the Panth.