By T Sher Singh | Opinion |
Here are some names in no particular order. Do you recognize any of them?
Nikita Gill. Ravinder Bhogal. Raj Kaur Khaira. Jaspreet Singh. Anita Rani. Sunjeev Sahota. Rupi Kaur. Sarbpreet Singh. Balli Kaur Jaswal. Humble The Poet. Jasmin Kaur. Aminder Dhaliwal. Shauna Singh Baldwin. Jagmeet Singh. Inni Kaur. Sonya Lalli. Sathnam Sanghera. Gurmehar Kaur. Ranbir Singh Sidhu. Gurmeet Kaur. Raman Mundair. Daljit Nagra. Priscila Uppal. Navtej Singh Sarna. Sarbjit Kaur Athwal.
I have scores more of names like these. Do you recognize any or many of them? I suspect you don’t. They are all published Sikh writers in English, some are on bestseller lists, others are accomplished authors, and others are making their way up.
Juxtapose the fact that many of us Sikhs don’t even recognize most of them, against our constant complaint that our stories are not being told adequately to the world! The refrain I hear almost every day is – when will we tell people across the globe about 1947 or 1984? Or about the historical Farmer’s Movement that ended only a few weeks ago with reverberating results.
Well, we don’t have any dearth of talented and skilled story-tellers amidst us, trust me. Fiction. Non-fiction. Essayists. Poets. Short story writers. Biographies and Autobiographies. History. Memoirists. Plays. Children’s literature.
But I am sad to say that we have failed to support them. If their books don’t sell, publishers will not publish their books again. And our stories will then only be heard from those who do not know them well enough or have no interest in telling them honestly and accurately.
So, here’s my first New Year’s resolution this January. I have promised myself that I will buy at least one book by a Sikh author every month. That doesn’t mean that I won’t buy or read books by other authors or those in the Punjabi language, for example. The more the merrier, but no matter what, I’ll add at least one Sikh author to my home library each month.
A caveat: I don’t have to like or agree with the content of these books. It is the collection of points-of-view, especially from diverse and divergent perspectives, that’ll help present the Sikh world-view with integrity and all its complexities.
Imagine. If all the readers alone of this column will join me in this project, it’ll bring a sea-change to our stories out there that so urgently need to be told … in quantity and quality. It requires so little from us. We don’t have to look for best-sellers. Simply: if it is a new or unknown or emerging Sikh writer, let’s support them. Go home and read them. And share them with your friends and family. Better still, buy more copies of the ones you like and gift them.
A Happy, Safe & Healthy New Year to you and your loved ones.
T. Sher Singh is a writer, editor and publisher at sikhchic.com. The Sikh media portal, now undergoing a major overhaul to bring it up-to-date with the latest gadgets, aims to be up by Spring. This article first appeared at his LinkedIn page
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