Monday
10 December 2001. The Attlee suite in Portcullis House (the new extention
to the Houses of Parliament) was the setting of the launch of the Network of Sikh Organisations (NSO) and Department for
International Development (DIFD) booklet on Target 2015. This booklet has
been produced to raise awareness among the UK’s Sikh community of the
Governments targets to reduce world poverty by 50% by the year 2015. The
event was jointly hosted by the Secretary of State for International
Development, Rt Hon Clare Short MP.
Address
by Indarjit Singh OBE, Director of the Network of Sikh Organisations
Secretary
of State, friends,
It
was Guru Nanak’s birthday last week, and, as Sikhs like to stretch their
festivals, we are still celebrating. As you know, today is also Human
Rights Day, and there could be no better time to launch this Sikh booklet
on combating poverty, than on the birth anniversary of on of the most
perceptive teachers the world has ever known , who, 500 years ago, taught,
that the way to true peace lay in respect for others and concern for the
deprived..
If
I were asked to sum up Sikh teachings in a single sentence, it would be
Perhaps
the most important of these rights, is the need for tolerance and respect
for other ways of life. Guru Nanak, who lived at a time of bitter conflict
between Hindus an Muslims on the Indian subcontinent and similar excesses
in Europe, referred to this in his very first sermon when he said Na koi
Hindu, na koi Mussalman---that is , in God’s eyes there is neither Hindu
nor Muslim, and by today’s extension, neither Christian Sikh nor Jew.
That God isn’t the least bit interested in our different labels, but in
how we conduct ourselves. All religions were attempts to understand the
ultimate reality and all should be respected.
This
Sikh respect for other faiths, led to the 5th Guru including
verses from Hindu and Muslim saints in the Sikh holy Book , the Guru
Granth Sahib, and his asking a Muslim saint, Mia Mir to lay the foundation
stone for the Golden Temple. It saw its ultimate expression in the 9th
Guru , Guru Teg Bahadhur giving his life protecting the right of members
of the Hindu faith to worship in the manner of their choice against Mughal
attempts at forced conversion.
Today,
500 years later, we still find ourselves confronted by barriers of bigotry
of belief, between different religions and, rather than removing these
through dialogue and understanding, we’ve spent the best part of the
20th century putting up new ones of political ideology, misplaced
nationalism and economic greed.
Guru
Nanak’s teachings emphasised the importance of removing all false
barriers that divide our one human family, leading to endless wars and
suffering, and the sort of misplaced fanaticism that led to the outrages
of September 11, and the continuing conflict in the middle east.
Another
important teaching of Guru Nanak, was the need for true accountability, of
those in authority, to those they represent. It’s here, amid all the
doom and gloom of recent months, that I would like to publicly applaud the
openness of the present government on issues of debt relief, and their
ground breaking initiatives to reduce 3rd world poverty in an
increasingly interdependent world.
For
the last 5 years or so, I’ve been privileged to be a member of an
informal group of representatives of voluntary organisations such as
Oxfam, Christian Aid, Save the Children Fund, and representatives of
different religions, that attends breakfast briefing meetings at No 11,
hosted by Clare Short, Minister for International Development and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. The meetings are quite different
to any others that I’ve attended, in that they invite detailed and
searching questions on what the government is doing to combat world
poverty.
I
must confess that I, and others, went to the first meeting cynically
convinced that the policy of all developed countries was to try to skew
the terms of trade in a way that enhanced their affluence at the expense
of poorer parts of the world. At the same time I felt that any aid given
would end up in the pockets of corrupt rulers, considered friendly by
donor nations.
Right
from the first meeting however, I, and others, were surprised by the
openness and candour of the Chancellor and the Secretary of State, and
their sense of real commitment to genuine sustainable development in the
poorer regions of the world.
I
know I’ve got this thing about barriers between people, but in these
meetings, I’ve grown to realise that, in a sincere commitment to assist
the world’s poor, government, world faiths and voluntary agencies, are
all on the same side.
The
meetings have demonstrated how the UK , through the Chancellor and the
Secretary of State, is leading the world community in a real assault on
poverty and, it’s a measure of real success, that Gordon Brown and Clare
Short seem to press ganged the leaders of the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund, to work on a poverty reduction programme, that moves from
short term sticking plaster aid, to real sustainable development.
The
booklet being launched today is the Sikh community’s endorsement and
commitment to a planned halving of global poverty by 2015, better
education with equal access to education for girls by 2005 –so close to
gender equality of Sikh teachings, as is the target to cut by 2015, the
proportion of women dying from childbirth by 75%. And there is much more
in these targets that merits the support of every Sikh in the country.
Today,
we still talk about globalisation as if we have some choice. We don’t.
It is a fact of life. As the Chancellor put in his recent New York speech,
badly managed it can make the rich richer, and the poor poorer; properly
managed we have the ability, for the first time in human history to banish
unacceptable poverty from the face of the earth.
The
need for urgent action now to improve the lot of the poor and deprived,
has become even more evident following the events of September 11. Today,
there is a growing realisation that, in our smaller, interdependent world,
that, as the Chancellor, put it ,’what happens to the poorest
citizen in the poorest country, can affect the richest citizen in the
richest country’. We are all only too aware that poverty and deprivation
are the breeding ground for fanatics who have little or no regard for
human life.
Sikh
teachings emphasise again and again that we should look to the needs of
the less fortunate, not as ritual giving , but to assist people to the
dignity of providing for themselves and their children. This is the thrust
of the 2015 targets. There is no better way of celebrating Guru Nanak’s
birthday, than to do what he taught us to do, and give these targets, our
full financial and moral support. Thank you.
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