I am not a subscriber of Dalit Voice but buy it at the local Central News Agency, Connaught Place. For the past three years only I have been regularly reading DV. It completely changed my mind-set. Life-style also. As a Dalit Sikh, DV gave me a new pride. Your Letters column reveal similar experiences of other readers.
As a Ramdasia (Dalit) and a Sikh, it was DV which taught me that my identity was Ramadasia. Earlier, I was a great supporter of the Akali movement of the upper caste Sikhs. Today, I am with Kanshi Ram’s BSP. DV made me aware that I am first a Ramadasia (my identity) and then a Sikh.
DV told me that Sikh was my dress and Ramadasia my “ethnic identity“.
DV also told me that a religion (Sikhism) would not unite a people and would not destroy the identity.
The Sikh society is today badly divided despite the Sikh religion. All this I did not know until I took to DV.
My request to other DV family members is not to treat DV as any other journal, DV is a guide to our thought and action. Please preserve every copy of DV and at the end of the year make it a bound volume to preserve it to posterity. DV is not a journal to be read by one single subscriber. The whole family should read it. If others can’t read English, the subscriber must translate it and explain it, particularly to the women members. Here in our university, at least eight fellow students share it. DV will be the journal of the future.
There is a big demand for back issues of DV. All our stocks of DV bound volumes are exhausted. So we have a request: Those not interested in preserving DV may mall it back to us neatly packed-EDITOR.
