By Samuel Rubenfeld
The University announced a new distinguished chair in the department of religion during its second annual Vaisakhi dinner celebrating the Sikh New Year in the main cafeteria area of the Student Center.
Prior to the dinner, which is a celebration of the establishment of the Khalsa, a collective body of Sikh saint-soldiers established by the tenth Sikh Guru in 1699, there was native dancing and a speech by a member of the Indian Parliament. The celebration also marks the upcoming harvest season in the Punjab region of India,
Two students, Priti Malik and Rajmandeep Cheema, participated in a native dance called the Bhangra, which was a folk dance performed by farmers in the rural areas of the Punjab region to mark the beginning of the new harvest. “It became more mainstream,” admitted Nandini Banerjee, a junior at Hunter College in Brooklyn, who also danced the Bhangra.
The University has been making a major effort in the advancement of religious study, establishing the department of religion and creating chairs for Sikh, Christian and Jewish study, and creating the Guru Nanak Interfaith Prize for interfaith dialogue. The first ever recipient of the award is the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso.
The Dalai Lama accepted the prize and a University delegation is delivering it to him in his exiled residence of India in November, to which the Dalai Lama has said he will visit the University in 2009.
“We want to become the most important location for secular study of religion in the United States,” University President Stuart Rabinowitz said during the event’s opening ceremony.
Hakam Singh will hold the Sardarni Harbans Kaur Chair in Sikh Musicology beginning in Fall 2008, and he will be joining the Sardarni Kuljit Kaur Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies, Balbinder Singh Bhogal.
Tarlochan Singh, a member of the Indian Parliament, praised the University’s efforts in studying Sikhism. He said that compared with the rest of America, “you [the University] have gone a step further…. We must praise you all. This is a real opening and we must carry it on.”
Singh emphasized what he said was the tolerant nature of Sikhs. “We don’t say we are the best, but we say everyone is best,” he said. “We say Christian is best, we say Muslim is best and we say Jewish is best.”
Observers saw a performance of a native Indian dance, Bhangra, at the Vaisakhi dinner honoring the Sikh studies program.