Columnists

Spectator Sport

by I.J. SINGH

As a moderately devoted fan, each season I spend many a fruitless hour in front of the TV watching American Football.  It is not a game I play, or one I understand all that well.  I have been viewing it for better than four decades, but have made no attempt to learn its intricacies.  Even the fundamentals remain a mystery to me.

Then, why do I watch it so incessantly?

The television culture promotes spectator sports.  Get your bag of popcorn or potato chips, a six-pack of beer or soda and, with the remote-control in hand, plop yourself in a comfortable chair in front of the tube, and let your fingers do the walking.

It doesn't have to be an addiction to football. Other pastimes that I can pursue with a modicum of skill, such as tennis or squash, would do just as well.  I can then enjoy any thing or any activity  -  from the debacle in Iraq to "American Idol" -  without moving a major muscle or possessing any measurable skill.  Wouldn't it be reasonable then, to label life largely "a spectator sport?"

What higher duty defines a citizen than to participate in the political electoral process of his or her neighborhood, city, state and country?  But, news reports tell us, citizen participation continues to dwindle, while the numbers of so-called experts on television increase exponentially. 

In a nation of believers, what clearer calling can there be than to participate in matters of one's faith?  But, statistics tell us, church attendance keeps falling, while those who profess a belief in their religion are on the rise. 

So, our religious and civic lives may be on an irreversible path of becoming not much more than spectator sports.

I am embarrassed to admit that my "aha" moment, that life was being inexorably reduced to a spectator sport, happened not because of some talking heads on television, but while sitting in a gurdwara listening to a pretty good sermon.

I can see how the administrative hierarchy of religions evolved and that its purpose is to assist the followers in their voyage of self-discovery. But hasn't the existence and role of "professionals" in religions also reduced the flocks to being mere passive followers - nay, spectators, of their own faith?

Let me draw my evidence largely from my own creed  -  Sikhi  -  though I believe that most of the older, established religions are not much different.

Most people visit their favorite places of worship, sit through the sermon and liturgy, pay the requisite donation, and come home feeling smug that, once again, they have been absolved of their sins.  The visit next week will wash away whatever new grime they accumulate over the interim.

When Christian friends of mine argue that the return of the Latin Mass would be good, I wonder what they mean, because they understand not a word of Latin.  When they insist that only an ordained priest can consecrate the bread or say the Mass, I wonder if it further diminishes the ordinary follower.

In these matters, Sikhs are no different.  But it was not always thus.

Not too long ago, a Sikh religious service at the home of someone I know, was put on hold for several hours because the granthi had been inordinately delayed, and a pastoral alternative was not easily available.  I suggested that we could function very well without one, and that there was nothing that a lay person could not do.  But people looked at me as if I had committed blasphemy, or a grave social faux pas.

I remember that not so many years ago, in small community gurdwaras, particularly outside India, the entire diwan was conducted by lay people; there were no professional granthis.  Now, I see that speakers and raagis (liturgical singers) at gurdwaras are, more often than not, professionals.  They do their job and the congregation simply sits through another day of services. 

I wonder if many in the audience (I hesitate to label them a congregation) remember a hymn that was sung, or the theme of the sermon!  Sometimes, I am tempted to poll the outgoing crowd at the end of the service and ask them exactly that question.  But my friends wisely dissuade me from such foolishness. 

Also, I wonder how I would answer, if the question were asked of me.  The gurdwara thus becomes the domain of the granthi and no longer a place of the people.

Sikhism tells me that the gurdwara comes into existence when Sikhs of the Guru collect to have a conversation with Him.  It is, and remains, an inner dialogue of the mind and heart, but one that surely changes the Sikh's persona.  Guru Granth provides the treasure trove and the direction, while the kirtan (liturgical music) and kathaa (discourse) provide the technology. 

But I look around in a modern gurdwara and many in the congregation sit silently.  Often, they may not understand what is being sung or said; perhaps they do not join in the words, for they know not what they are or what they mean.  Predictably then, the mind wanders elsewhere.

How then can there be dialogue and engagement with the Guru? 

The only aspect of the Sikh religious service that has not yet gone the way of a spectator sport is the community meal (langar) served at the end of it, which is still largely prepared by volunteers.  But these people are few  -  far less than the total number of attendees  -  and in many affluent gurdwaras, I see a growing trend towards catered meals.

In the 1960s, there was great turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church.  Prior to that period, the Mass was always in Latin.  Clearly then, for the average believer, there was more magic and mystery than understanding, to the Roman Catholic rites.  The result was the emergence of the Mass in the vernacular.  That was the doing of Pope John XXIII.

Now, it is the time of Benedict XVI, and he prefers the majesty of Latin. 

Are we Sikhs going to wage similar battles, between the immigrant-Punjabi Sikh who viscerally rejects the use of any language but Punjabi in the gurdwara, and those who have grown up outside Punjab or are from varied ethnic backgrounds?  This might seem shocking, but it is true.  I have been at the receiving end of such edicts at many gurdwaras in North America: they brusquely commanded that only Punjabi be spoken within the premises during services.

Come to think of it, ordinary Sikhs in the modern gurdwara have very little left to do.  Most Sikhs never learn the names of the Gurus in sequence, nor do they know how to recite the basics of our liturgy and service. 

The reason is simple:  every meaningful activity is performed by the clergy and the average Sikh just sits as a silent spectator, never a participant.  And all this is happening in a faith which has no formal requirements, or need of an ordained clergy  - indeed, a religion of lay people.

A building does not a gurdwara make; it is people who transform the building into a gurdwara.

Since any religion is, in the final analysis, a way of life, it is self-evident that it has to be a "Do-It-Yourself" model of activity. The onus, thus, is on the follower.  Whence all the ministers, priests, rabbis, mullahs, granthis and pandits  -  shamans all?

Though born a Hindu, Guru Nanak was equally tolerant of Hinduism and Islam, and just as equally dismissive of the foibles of both.  

A widely-told parable from his life speaks of a time when Nanak was challenged by a Muslim qazi to prove his open-mindedness by participating in prayer at the local mosque.  Nanak agreed, but at the stipulated time during prayer, declined to go through the prescribed sequence of motions, in concert with the local satrap and the qazi. 

When asked to explain, Nanak's response blew them away.  He reminded them that, while they did go through the rituals, their minds were not on God  -  one was rehashing a business deal for the purchase of some Arabian horses, the other was preoccupied with the fate of a newborn calf at his farm, worrying whether it had wandered off near an unguarded well.  

To them, like to many, religion had become a ritual and a spectator sport.

Watching someone else run a marathon is not going to endow anyone with the skill or the fortitude to complete the event.

How, then, is ordinary human clay to become a Sikh in our modern gurdwaras?

Now, for a bit of tautology:  Religions define a way of life.  When we reduce religion to a spectator sport, what then does life become? 

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