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UK IS MULICULURAL Our organisation recently invited several members from different faith traditions to join us at Our Edges Personality of the Year Awards. We intend to explore areas of work with them in our new project for India. |
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SIKHISM Jogindar Singh shares his journey.  I
belong to the Sikh Community and I have been here since 1984. I have been
involved with inter-faith groups for the last ten years and for the last five
years I have been involved with the inter-faith group in Blackburn. We have set up an inter-faith forum for Lancashire County Council. This is so that we can get our inter-faith relations running on a smooth basis, understanding others rather than imposing ourselves. That is part of the work I have been doing over the last five years since I have retired. Before coming here I was in Birmingham for twenty years and I was involved with their inter-faith council for a good twelve years, being their Chairman for five of those years. That’s how I became involved in community affairs, in the broader sense of having inter-faith relations right across all the religions and all the communities, so that we understand and help each other to overcome our problems. Basically, I mean when you have problems of rejection, problems of alcoholism, problems of racism and the problems of not understanding other people’s religion. The inter-faith council can offer the understanding of other people’s faith and co-operation between communities. It enables us to explore the spiritual and human aspects of life. Once you get into the spiritual side of life you can understand the shortcomings and try to overcome all shortcomings. That helps to really tackle the problems of things like rejection and to help the members of society who have been excluded and bring them back into the mainstream. The understanding of religious aspects is quite important because religion is based around humanity. The Sikh Community came in large numbers to Britain in the Fifties as workers and afterwards the families came, with their religious organisations and social organisations. Now we have a fairly comprehensive set-up in Birmingham, London and we have a good set-up in Blackburn as well. We have a Sikh temple in Blackburn and we have a Sikh temple in Preston, along with a Sikh Association in Manchester. So, in Lancashire on the whole we have a very good set-up. We have had a temple in Blackburn since 1977. There were problems in the Eighties in relation to the alienation of the Sikh Communities within the migrated communities but since the mid-Nineties relations have been better and they are improving all the time since the formation of the interfaith council. As we all have representatives there we can tackle the problems. Alienation for us was a problem and to a degree still is a problem or we would have solved everything, but things are much better. At the moment in the Sikh Community we are encouraging the young people to become involved in their faith. In Blackburn we have had a lot of problems because there is little encouragement, and their peer groups are very different as well. We have had some success within families. But at the moment it is one of our big problems, to encourage youngsters to follow our religions. We do promote our religion and anybody can join the Sikh Community as long as you observe the faith. We do not exclude anybody. It is good to be able to speak to Edges Magazine. |
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