Sikh Leadership: Establised Ideals and Diasporic Reality

As established in the Sikh scriptural canon, ideal leaders internalize qualities of self-sovereignty, intentional servitude, integrative creativity, authentic compassion, and perhaps most significant of all, Divine inspiration. Models of communal decision-making can also be derived from the lives of the Gur -Prophets (1469–1708 C.E.) and the institutions they established. Though the faith recognizes no clergy class, graduates of historical seminaries often emerge as significant leaders for the Sikh nation. The community outside of the homeland, however, has experienced a lesser effort in the cultivation of leadership. With a primary focus on education, religious centers, youth camps, and retreats have played a critical role in imparting Sikh culture to the masses. While ideals are clearly articulated within the Sikh tradition, it is the application of the ideals that is necessary – Sikh leadership continually works towards these ends, and will ever seek to progress as individuals as well as a community. No man or society that has risen from the dead into the life of the spirit can tolerate political subjugation or social slavery to unjust laws or rules. Politics, in the sense of fighting against all social injustice, all tyranny, all wrong taxation of the poor, all subjugation of man to man were the “politics” of the Gur . Without freedom no true religion or art can flourish anywhere. Human love, too, degenerates if freedom fails. Liberty is the breath of true culture. The Sikhs raised by the Gur fought for freedom. They were defeated, they might be defeated again; all attempts at liberty generally end in defeat. But their very fighting for liberty is the mark of new soul-consciousness that the Gur had