We learnt the other day in the news that the World Sikh Organization in Canada has sued the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) for its "dishonest and highly offensive" documentary (aired in July, 2007) which, the lawsuit argues, "contained significant and numerous factual misrepresentations" about Sikhs.

We will leave it to the courts to sort this one out but, in contemporary times within a highly multiracial, multicultural country, the suit does raise an interesting, even vital question:

If a people hope to flourish as a minute minority within a greater multi-culture, what is their responsibility to get their message out, the information they want the masses to understand about them?

Even though I fully accept their right to thrive in this country, I don't know the first thing about Sikhs. But the mash-up of images I have of them isn't very flattering: headgear, daggers, airplanes, court rooms, violence, hatred, maleness ... well, you get the picture.

I'm not proud of this, but I don't think I have created this negative mash-up. I think the Sikhs are responsible for it by their total lack of interest in telling me and all their fellow countrymen who they are. Failing that, we rely only on newspaper headlines to learn their story and they haven't been pretty.

As it turns out, I had seen the CBC documentary referred to in the lawsuit. It included indelible images that have been made a part of my negative mash-up of the Sikh religion and culture.

But here's my point: when you aren't given any positive images of a culture, you naturally absorb the negative.

I have repeatedly used the term "negative mash-up" here because that's the way all these largely unfavourable images have been put together in my brain. But, in fact, I know enough about the religion, the Punjab and their fabulously colourful cultural expressions to suppose that Sikh-Canadians are a wonderful people, who will make Canada stronger and more interesting.

But I'm just supposing that, because they are doing nothing to draw me to that conclusion.

Sikhs, like every minority in Canada, have an obligation to explain to all their countrymen the religion and culture they are celebrating within society at large.

Once they make that effort, they will find a very attentive audience.

[Courtesy: Carson's Post]

[Photos: Top of this page  -  photo by Anthony Begovi. First from bottom  -  photo by Charles Meacham. Second from bottom  -  photo by Gurumustuk Singh (www.sikhphotos.com/).]