religious studies in secondary schools

This 49-minute video is a quite acceptable introduction to the "youngest of the world’s major religions," especially for secondary school classes that do not have extensive time to spend on the Sikhs.

After a short look at the life of a successful Sikh businessman—the owner and operator of the largest truck stop in the United States—the video turns to Amritsar the Punjab city considered to be "the spiritual home of the Sikhs." The viewer is introduced, perhaps a little too briefly for my tastes, to the historical and philosophical foundations of the religion. Guru Nanak is compared to Jesus in his "rebellion" against the established religion; he turned his back on the caste system, and stressed the equality of every man and every woman. The Sikh message of sharing, cooperation, and mutual respect is stressed; as is Sikh monotheism.

Additional details about the religion (worship, principles, the "Five K’s") are interspersed through later vignettes, like the one that shows a Sikh family getting ready to go to the gurdwara. This particular segment does a wonderful job explaining the role that the Sikh "house of worship" also plays in community life. It is not just a place to pray to God; it also serves as a place to commune with neighbors, a location where "politics and old-fashioned Sunday gossip" also have their place.
Although "World Sikhism Today" makes an attempt to introduce the viewer to Sikhs on different parts of the globe (including Germany, Canada, and the United States), and to show the ways being a Sikh both works, and doesn’t work completely smoothly, vis-à-vis the community at large, I would have preferred a little less time on some of these segments, and a little more on something else: like the beautiful scenes of, and introduction to, the Sikh scriptures.

That being said, however, for classes where religion is intertwined with world history, there is a riveting, brief overview of Sikhism in the 20th century. Sikh valor in fighting for the allied forces in two world wars was legendary, and lauded. But the 1980’s were difficult times in India, with the government’s "Operation Blue Star" attack on Khalistan, the killing of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, the subsequent assassination of Indira Gandhi, and the difficult tensions before, during, and after those events. One caveat for some classes: there are a couple of quite graphic descriptions of torture inflicted upon Sikhs during the 80s. Corollary to the violence surrounding recent Sikh history, however, it should be noted that this video does a commendable job of showing how violence and disruption affect the individual lives of common people.

On the whole, "World Sikhism Today" is a video worth purchase for schools that want a video segment to augment some academic study of this religion with close to twenty million adherents.