[Released January 22, 2013]

The following speech was presented by OFMI Founding Director Bhajan Singh on January 22, 2013 on the occasion of “Justice Rising: A Rally for Universal Human Dignity” on the steps of the State Capitol building in Sacramento, CA, USA. Click here to read more about the rally.

In the 17th century, the tenth Sikh Guru — or teacher — was Gobind Singh. He taught: “All human beings are the reflection of one and the same Lord. Recognise ye the whole human race as one.” In this, we heard that human beings are made in the image of God. We are all equal. We have universal dignity.

Gobind Singh was the son of Guru Tegh Bahadur. India was then ruled by Muslims who had invaded 200 years earlier. Before the Muslims came, India was oppressed by the high-caste Brahmins. When the Muslims invaded, the Brahmins became the oppressed.

The Muslim Emperor decided to force the Brahmins to convert to Islam, hoping the rest of India would follow. Threatened with conversion or death, many Brahmins converted.

Guru Tegh Bahadur was the only leader in South Asia to stand up to this evil. He promised to help the Brahmins, saying they would only have to convert if the Emperor could convince Tegh Bahadur to become a Muslim. When the Emperor heard this, he ordered the Guru to be tortured until he converted to Islam.

Under extreme torture, Guru Tegh Bahadur refused to convert. Finally, he was beheaded. For opposing tyranny, for defending the religious liberty of others, he was called “The Shield of India.”

To attack it is to assault freedom of thought, freedom of association, and even private property.

To assault an individual’s religious liberty means, first of all, to attack his right to think, to reason, to arrive at conclusions. God created the mind free. Forcing a free mind to adopt a certain view produces only hypocrisy and hostility. It is against God because, by using force, we attempt to be gods ourselves.

We dare not suffer this, most of all in these United States of America. This country is a haven for freedom of thought. Soon after signing the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams said: “Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.”

Second, to attack religious liberty also attacks voluntary association. The right of every human to gather with others, by free choice, and to worship when, how, and with whom they choose is sacred. Whether they make the right choice or not is irrelevant to the need to protect their right to make that choice. If we deny the right to voluntary association, we have created a totalitarian society.

Third, undermining religious liberty assaults the right to private property. James Madison is known as the Father of the Constitution. He called conscience “the most sacred of all property.” He also wrote: “The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”

To violate a man’s conscience denies the right to private property — it is communistic. Thus Thomas Jefferson defended both religious liberty and private property when he said: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

We must consider these issues in our culture today. Is a man’s conscience entirely free if his taxes are used to propagate opinions he finds abhorrent? Is it protecting religious liberty to say when or where a man can pray or to tell him that? Is it religious liberty for the state to drive religion from the public square?

More than ever, our world needs the moral stability of true religion. We see the murder of Christians in Sudan, of Muslims in Myanmar, of Buddhists in Bangladesh, of Sikhs in Punjab, of Muslims in Gaza. Everywhere we see infringement of the right to believe and to speak about and practice that belief.

The reminder of Ronald Reagan is most appropriate. He said: “To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.”

In the 20th century, Sikhs were targeted for religious persecution by a tyrannical state. Hundreds of thousands fled India to seek refuge in the United States, knowing here we have protection in the First Amendment.

Like many, we found joy in America’s tradition of freedom. The words of George Washington were reassuring. He said: “Every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”

He said “every” man — this means that First Amendment freedoms do not stop at the borders of the USA. Our American constitution only protects Americans, but the truth of religious liberty is universal.

As we remember the 84th birth anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we should heed his wisdom. He said: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the CONSCIENCE of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

In conclusion, James Madison hinted at the role of religion as a conscience when he said: “In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.” We know that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, so we know the violation of civil liberty is an intolerable threat to religious liberty. If we lose one, we will lose the other. Then we will become the oppressed.

We must be like Jesus, like Guru Tegh Bahadur, like Dr. King — willing to give our lives to defend the oppressed. Let it be said of us all: “I have done judgment and justice: leave me not to mine oppressors.”

Thank you.