Kirpan: Panthic Accountability & Developing Inner Grace

Welcome to SickCast, brought to you by Sick Research Institute, illuminating every path. In this episode of the SickCast, we share a timely conversation hosted by Jasleen Kor, featuring Harinder Singh and Santbir Singh. Together they explore the meaning of the Kirpan, Banthik accountability, and the cultivation of inner grace, reflecting on how Gormat guides sick individuals and institutions in responding to the moments of crisis with wisdom, responsibility, and compassion. Waigurjika Khalsa, Waigurjiki Fateh. Thank you for joining us for another Current Events podcast. I'm joined today by Harinder Singh, who's a senior fellow at the Sick Research Institute, and Santbir Singh, who's a research associate here at SickCree. So today we're going to talk about the Vikram Digwa case in the UK. But we're also going to take that conversation and expand it into the larger implications that this case is reminding us of, the larger reflections that we ought to be having as a community and as individuals. So for those who don't know, for some context, Vikram Digwa was convicted of murder in the UK early in June, late in May, in what became a nationally talked about case and then globally talked about. I'm just going to give a little bit of detail on the case to try and help us understand why it's reverberated so widely across the UK and broader sick diaspora and even sicks in India. But in this case, on December 3rd, 2025, then 22-year-old Digwa stabbed 18-year-old Henry Noeck four times with a 21-centimeter long knife, first in the chest, then in the legs, groin, and face. Noeck was alone and unarmed. And the important thing here, which came out in the court proceedings in the transcript, is that Digwa is an Amrithadi sick, described by the judge as a member of the Order of the Nahungz, and was carrying a kripaan under his clothes in addition to the beige gubs he used to stab Noeck. I'm not going to get into the details of the case, they're harrowing. I think what's important to know is that Digwa did deny the murder, claimed self-defense, and there were sort of multiple lies that were told over the course of the night that are all documented in the judge's statement. What's important here is that Digwa's actions have put the whole sick community in the UK and in the globe in danger. The judge pointed this out, there's been more cases of racial tension and hate crimes happening in the UK where I am now. And so I think for all three of us today, we'd like to push ourselves to think more widely about what this could mean. We have a board member from the UK who said that as a British sick, the atmosphere has been somewhat hostile to him personally and in his small community, and I've definitely seen just general trepidation and fear around going out, being alone, among six, especially elderly six, or vulnerable six in the UK. So since the sentencing, I think there's a few things that we felt have been missing from the conversation. So we'd like to cover today how we understand the Kraban, how we understand accountability, so what is our responsibility to one another in our smaller sun-guts and sort of as a month at large, and how does this case connect to right-wing geopolitical realities? Because we have seen right-wing figures like Elon Musk and JD Vance tweeting about this case to foment white supremacist ideas of replacement in the West. So I know all of that is a lot, but hopefully now we're all kind of caught up. Her and their saying, I'd like to start with you. Can we just start with this first big question of trying our best to understand the principles behind the Kraban? So if you could spend some time on that, that would be a helpful framing. Sure. Vairujika Kalsa, Vairujiki Fateh. Now when we invoke anything in Sikhi, we got to start with Bani because there is no disagreement on what is in Guru Granth Sahib. And when we look at how Guru Nanak Sahib is presented in Guru Granth Sahib, it says Guru Nanak started a Raj. Nanak Raj Chalaya, such votes of Bani need them. He started a particular way of rule or governance and in that very stanza, the word Khadak is used. So we start there. He says in that line, he says, What it's saying is that generally what we end up calling is a more Punjabi phrase we use to describe this line, that it was actually sword was passed over, sword of word, sharpened intellect, sharpened thinking. So thinking, wisdom is directly correlated with sword in Guru Granth Sahib. Are the two different things absolutely physically, there are two different things. One is internal, one is external, but externalization is what is internal. This is what Guru Nanak had. This is what Guru Nanak gave to Guru Angar. So that's the first point. Second point I want to make is, I've heard this even in the last two weeks, the word Kirpan is not in Guru Granth Sahib. How can we say this? Well, it is in Guru Granth Sahib. We just don't present it rightly. Kirpan word literally comes twice in Guru Granth Sahib. And there it only means grace. Kirpan word literally means grace. The way Guru Vani uses this word is in the sense of grace. In Sikh nation building, would we sometimes say community development or in the words of Guru Granth Sahib when the ummat was developed. Ummat is the nation. The development and the responsibility when it is coming together. When Dasvay Parshah, the 10th Guru Guru Man Singh Maharaj on Vasakhi day, used the word Kirpan even for what the world at the time called by multiple different names, which in English we call sword. So Kirpan actually just means grace. When we are explaining it today because how it was used 1699 on the world, specifically by the Sikhs before their Gurus also used it, Sikhs also used it. But now we have institutionalized that this is a graceful act. So now we want to say something which is used gracefully to protect somebody's honor. But in Guru Granth Sahib, it just means grace. Third thing I will say is that even within Guru Guru Man Singh Maharaj's period, there are many words because every word as you know, or the connotation on the as we say, you know, there is a secondary text which uses multiple words as Kirpan, Khandu, Kadag, Dupak, Tabar or Pir, Saaf, Sarohi, Saafi, Yahya ha maareh Pir. Pir otherwise is something someone in the Islamic Sufi tradition who magically does things. And in the secondary text of the six, they're saying when we import these weapons, including the one which is mentioned as Kirpan's, they are actually the one which produced magic in this world. So, and this thing about is it an offensive or defensive way? This is coming from our complexes. Guru doesn't put any adjective in front. We know it is about the rule. It is about grace. It is about these are your spiritual allies. And if I can just finish this comment, third parliament of this, I would say is when Guru Gobind Singh Maharaj does use it, and which six like to really mention this line many a time out of context, but many a time in context, you know, this phrase in Farsi from Zafar Nama, it's a word you're going to hear. Halal literally is what is permissible. And the larger context of that, if you read 20th share, 21st share and the 22nd, which is the line I recited, for the full context, if we have tried many things, we have, we are looking in front and your soldiers, meaning imperial army soldiers or your adversaries, they're wearing swords and arrows and guns. And now we are starting going to use this because for us in their vocabulary, it is being explained. And this is the point I want to make. And our vocabulary is important for us. But when we are facing an adversary in the field, we must use their vocabulary. He says, now this is Halal for me to use because you are doing this with many more weapons. And I have used every other strategy and exhausted the means. This forms from conception to how in the field, as a just toward theory, even if I, if you want to use that Western phrase, how the Kripaan got incorporated over 240 years in the Sikh tradition, this forms an ethos. Yeah, that's really, that's really helpful. And I think it sort of dovetails nicely into the next question, which Santhir Singh, I'd like to hear from you on, which is, so we have this, yeah, this long history, this foundation of the Kripaan. And we also know that the Kripaan doesn't exist in isolation, that it's one of the Bansh Kikars, that it's a gift from the Guru that we accept with deep devotion and commitment. So I think it would be helpful for all of us if we dwelled a bit on that, if we tried to understand the Bansh Kikars as a complete framework. So if you could spend a little bit of time on that and on what taking Amrith is actually meant to mean to the person receiving it. I know that when I was kind of looking into, to this, related to this case and also related to other Sikri work, one of the things that I kept seeing was this sense of like, restraint and discipline and also like tenderness and how, in how commitment to accepting the Bansh Kikars sort of gets framed. So if you could spend a little bit of time on that, offering us a larger context to the Kripaan, I think that would be really helpful too. Yeah, for sure. So the Kripaan is of course one of the Bansh Kikars that Sikrs are mandated to wear upon their bodies when they receive Amrith from the Bansh Pyare. And the Amrith Sanchar ceremony or the Kandeki Paul ceremony is a really multifaceted one that has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different folks. For some people it's much more of a spiritual journey. It's about receiving Nam from the Guru. For others it's more of an initiation into the, into a wider family or community. And for others it's like a swearing an oath almost in a military sense of becoming part of this order of the Khalsa. And I think all three of those things are true and should demonstrate the depth of meaning and incredible resources that Guru Gobind Singh Ji built upon when he created the ceremony and developed it in 1699 and afterwards. Now the Bansh Kikar, as you said so beautifully, they are considered gifts and that's how most Sikhs understand them, that these are gifts from the Guru. And the obligation of wearing them is not an obligation that comes out of fear or comes out of a sense that if we don't do this it will be punished by the Guru or that there will be something bad that will happen to us. Or on the other hand that if we do this something good will happen to us or that we will be rewarded in some way. Instead it's much more this idea that the Guru has blessed us with these things and we wear them with pride because they are gifts from our beloved, from the one that we love. You know, Professor Borin Singh writes about this quite often about how these are gifts that we receive with such care and devotion just like a bride receives gifts from her husband, you know, on her wedding day, for example. In the larger context of what we're talking about today, the Gurbana obviously out of all the Kikars really stands out compared to many of the other things that we wear on our person. It's the thing that gets the most attention, especially in the diaspora. It's something that makes a lot of folks uncomfortable because it is a sword, that's what it is, what it comes down to, that's what the Gurbana is. And we sometimes use other words for it but Siddharth Gurbana Singh is very careful in his language. He says we should always use the word sword when translating it to English because the sword has a lot of connotations with it, whereas something like a dagger or something has other connotations with it that aren't as noble or just. And so the Gurbana is this very visible and I want to be careful here in the word that we use because of course some people say it's a symbol but we have to be very careful not to reduce the Gagars to symbols because if we reduce them to symbols then they can be interchanged with other things very easily. Then you can say why not just wear a medallion around your neck, what's the need for wearing a Gurbana on your person, you know. And you can very quickly get into semantics and start to play with these sort of logic games to get through loopholes of how to be a Dhamratthi person. Instead these are articles of faith I think is a term that a lot of Sikhs like to use because they demonstrate that these are things that demonstrate the faith of a Sikh to a wider tradition to the to the kalsa and that they represent a commitment by the Sikh to something greater than themselves. And that's the part that we really want to talk about here today which is this idea of responsibility and accountability within the community. You know when the Bhant was very small when we were living in the jungles in the 1700s it was very easy to keep a Sikh accountable to the rest of the Bhant. If somebody did something that was contrary to Gurbana they would be called to attention right in front of the Sangat right away and people would you know suffer the consequences of their actions right away. Now in a global Bhant with so many different Sampardhas and Jatibandis and different groups all around the world with different levels of adherence and different levels of responsibility and different levels of strictness when it comes to the kakars especially. We have a situation where it's very difficult to imagine that we are accountable to each other and accountable to the Bhant as body as a whole and that's what we need to get back to. This idea of bhantik accountability that when someone receives Amrit that it is a great gift but it is also a burden in a lot of ways. It's a burden in the sense that it is something that we must live up to and if we look at what the level of being a Bhantbhata is what an Amrit Thaddi is you know this is something that Guru Gobind Singh Sahib himself bowed down to in 1699. So that's the level that we want to reach that's the ultimate level we want to reach that we can be the one who administers an Amrit to the Guru. That would be the ideal of course. If we want to reach that level we have to have a sense of responsibility in terms of all of these articles of faith and how we treat them how we use them how we wear them upon our person and how we act within the world. In this case the person who was wearing the garbhan fell really short of what the principles of the garbhan are as we all know that's quite obvious but there needs to be a larger discussion that needs to be had how can we be accountable to each other how can we hold other six to account because if we're not holding other six to account then the state will step in and do we really want the state to start determining what a sick is or what a sick isn't what a garbhan is or what a garbhan isn't or how to wear a garbhan or how it should not be worn. If we don't want the state to be involved in those discussions then we need to instigate those conversations amongst ourselves and start to have those conversations about what it looks like to be an Amrit Thaddee and what responsibilities that comes with and how we can behave and how we should behave in a certain way when we have something as noble as a garbhan which carries with it so much responsibility. Yeah thanks and I think we'll come back to that to that question of responsibility and accountability. I wanted to actually dwell a little bit on what you said it's it was interesting the Kapoor Singh sort of rough quote that you had of like why use the terminology of sword it heard this thing I'd like to take this to a question I've been thinking about a lot of like what constitutes the garbhan. There is like some debate that I've seen over whether what was used to stab Noah is ought to be classified as a garbhan or if it's something else at least in the UK there's been a video recirculating of young boys in some kind of altercation they're you know they're all young sick boys and one of them's holding up a like double sided serrated hunting knife to the other boy's neck and sort of yeah threatening him so I've been thinking a lot about like what is the garbhan which maybe sounds like a silly question but I know we have written in the past like in our in our state of the month media media report about the garbhan originally being a larger blade and colonial laws bringing that length down to a more like quote unquote acceptable size in the context of those legal systems but something that we the three of us have actually talked about is that like there there isn't a banthik codification about what constitutes a garbhan so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and whether whether it's ever been tackled by our institutions or like the attempt has been made yeah let me try to want to attempt to answer that question in connection with where something we were taking it sure I have actually been part of conversations on this in personal capacities and what I'm doing with myself in the organizations I have played either passive or active role in last 35 years and panthekali to some extent with some jathib on these or even at the service council format I you know I can say this is not about conversations anymore it has we have had a lot of conversations on these actually we are missing our own governing model and this is not that we want state to come in or not state has already come in and multiple cases including in the west and not just in the cases where individual is at fault in cases where multiple individuals within gurdwara are at fault also so let's admit to that why it has happened because it's missing that now coming to this question when we lost our governance these questions came up what length because somebody has to make it permissible guru govind Singh made it permissible for us I just read that's our normal life now we are seeing if it's an issue in Canada we've been fighting you know including in supreme courts what is the length well if we you know sued on top or not so person cannot take it out if it's in high school to a conversation on then the 40 each hey enki so these are the words used in Punjabi is it going to be three feet long one foot long six inch long and multiple variations of this look we actually don't know what is permissible anymore because that is largely being based on where we are fighting for our civil or human rights okay that's first point permissible is what we're going to think said so it is between you and the one who receives it we are not defining this length this has come to us as a question when we want to walk into Indian parliament well they allow up to one foot and six inches some cases even on airlines but in parliament it became a debate when it happened I remember personally also uh Sanzbir when I in mid 90s when I would be flying from Vancouver to Kansas City I would have my almost a foot long coupon in airplane and they would allow you to go through securities I also remember buying different crepans some which look like traditional coupon some don't 99 or 1999 there's a susarami kripal jyot Singh Khalsa is making his own decorative croissants some resemble traditional circular semi circular look some don't but actually only kripal one of you this is what I'm going after the length doesn't make it a kripal the offer of acceptance in grace makes it a kripal and then using it as a last stratagem make set a kripal also allow a baki sarak which is debatable and that debate will continue so really yes even in India even in SGPC even in other markets they have given for this purposes any karlok because you know six have been pragmatic let's be honest since we have been under non-sick rule in our 18th century gorilla warfare to British you know annexation of post-punjab to other states we have been living in and now the modern sense we have been pragmatic we have worked with the state we don't like to violate the law of the land if they are being reasonable with us the problem is there is unreasonable in