Editor, the Gauntlet,
As a Punjabi, it was uplifting to hear the Bhangra music blaring from MacEwan Student Centre during "Sikhism and Punjabi Awareness Week." While this week was dedicated to promoting awareness of Sikhism and the Punjabi culture, a few key details were unfortunately overlooked. Being a Pakistani Punjabi, I was disappointed to see the misrepresentation of Punjab.
Firstly, the pamphlet entitled "Sikhism: A Philosophy and Way of Life," was inaccurate, reflecting ignorance on the part of the Sikh Students Association who organized the week-long event.
In describing Punjab, it only focused on Indian Punjab and disregarded any existence of a Pakistani Punjab.
To set the record straight, the current day Punjab is divided into two separate regions: East Punjab (situated in India) currently occupies 20 per cent of the total Punjab area and West Punjab (in Pakistan) which currently occupies 80 per cent of the total Punjab area.
Approximately 80.44 million people reside in West Punjab, and 24.76 million reside in East Punjab. It can be seen statistically that Pakistani Punjab not only exists, but in fact makes up half of Punjabi people.
But Punjab was not only falsified on a statistical basis. It is known that two scripts of the Punjabi language exist: Shahmukhi, which is written in Pakistani Punjab, and Gurmukhi, written in Indian Punjab. The dialects of the Punjabi language are themselves variant, as they tend to be mixed with Urdu in the West and Hindi in the East. Linguistic variances will of course exist when speaking of two different countries, but in essence, the Punjabi culture is similar in both places.
Is it fair then that a week dedicated to the promotion and awareness of Punjabi culture not accurately depict the facts? A future event should be amended to include and represent every aspect of Punjab, for in this day and age, ignorance is not exusable nor acceptable.
Shaheen Chaudhary and Mumtaz Macci
Comments
With due respect, you missed my point in the article. The event celebrated at U of C every year is not only a celebration of sikhism but also of Punjabi culture as the title of the event suggests. However, not all but a few of the sikh students do not know that being a Punjabi does not necessarily mean that you are a sikh too. "An event which celebrates Punjabi culture should not only represent East Punjab. It should represent PUNJAB". Majority of Punjabis by far are muslims in this world. 80% of Punjab's land is in Pakistan and the "Punj" rivers flow through Pakistan. Do you know the names of the punj rivers? And "Diwaali" is not a Punjabi tradition as majority of the Punjabis do not celebrate this event and do not even know what it is. This is a religious event for our Punjabi sikh brothers and sisters. Diwaali is part of the Punjabi culuture but so is Eid. The pamhplet described the geography of Punjab under the heading of PUNJAB not "Khalistan". Consult any Geography prof or Poli Sci prof and they would agree that the pamphlet is misleading. And yes if PSS does an event on Punjab, it will definitely include all the sikh, hindu and muslim aspects of PUNJABI culture. All three are part of the Punjabi culture not just the sikhs! Again, the title of the event is not Sikhism awareness week but Sikhism and Punjabi awareness week. And yes there is a difference between religion and culture even though one is subset of the other. Please feel free to give me your feedback!
The leaflet was aimed (I assume from the title, not having seen the actual material) at spreading awareness of the Sikh faith, so I think its acceptable and normal for them to focus on the part of Punjab that most directly relates to Sikhs. Maybe they could have incorporated more about our Pakistani part of Punjab in other events, but I dont believe this was neccesarry withina leaflet about Sikhism, and yet this leaflet is the main focus of this rather weak article.