Neeraj Vedwan (Mar 04, 2004 07:40 p.m.):
For those who are confused about whether it's the Jat or the Sikh part of Jatt Sikh identity, which dominates: Jatt is simply the modifier, so they are primarily Sikhs. Just as African-Americans is the commonly used term to denote people of African descent, but defines them predominantly by the fact of their being Americans.
In the sense of expanding our identity, I like the idea of including Sikhs and others, but at the same time we should not downplay the very real and significant differences that exist because of different religious affiliations. A lot of people come to this website for a certain sense of informal intimacy--a home away from home-- which can only result from close cultural similarities. They don't visit for fulfilling a certain political agenda (global domination?!!) and "strategic" vision. It makes sense then that people complaan about the potential of diluting the common identity, which forms the basis for this, rather intense and sometimes abrasive, interaction. The difference is that as an intellectual, romantic experiment, in testing the uncertain waters of identity, this is a fine idea, but at the gut level, it may not sit very well with a lot of people.
The potential for conflict and contradiction will also grow tremendously, and should not be glossed over. Just to give one example, Jatt Sikhs have a very uneasy (to put it mildly) relationship with Arya Samaj, which they see as a Hindu device for domination and reabsorption of other communities. (By the way this is no stereotype, there is huge literature on this and how it was the Arya Samaj aggressiveness that led to millitancy in Punjab). For Jats, Arya Samaj has been a basis for their identity for well over hundred years now. Where's the meeting point here?
I could also see a similar contradictions on the issue of vegetarianism, which Sikhs in general decry as ghaas-phoos khana.
In sum, there is nothing absolutely unbridgeable that seperates us from Muslim and Sikh Jats, but let's do a realistic appraisal of the potential for conflict. If we fail to do this, the resulting problems may very well spell the end of this website.
PS: As someone else pointed out Jatt Sikhs have a tendency to see Haryanvi Jats as being backward and crude. This is also borne out by my personal experiences. I am describing my experience of studying in DAV College Chandigarh, where Jats and Jatts were like oil and water--absolutely no sense of shared identity. But then I can't claim that I was interacting with a representative sample!
