On 9 October was the Prakash dihara of Guru Ram Das ji. We (my family ) went to Harimandir Sahib early in the morning. It is the day of the founder of Amritsar City and I felt the city was not celebrating. When Guruji dug the sarovar, he also invited people of 52 different professions to come and settle down near the Amrit sarovar and build a new township. Till today we have old, narrow bazaars with names like Mochi bazaar, chawal mandi, loonh mandi, kathian wala bazaar, atta mandi, dal mandi, etc. These business communities also had a tradition of bringing up the firstborn son in the family as a Sikh while the rest of the family had utmost respect and believed in Guru Granth Sahib but did not follow the rehat. In my younger days I remember Hindu shopkeepers coming to pay obeisance in Darbar Sahib before opening their shops. It is no longer the same.
Why and how have we alienated these people whose ancestors were invited by Guruji himself to inhabit Chak Ram Das (the original name of the city of Amritsar) ? Why don’t they join in celebrating the Gurpurab ? Or have we closed all communication channels with our ‘kattar’ views ? We no longer invite them as part of Guru Ram Das’ family. We really need to introspect about this.
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