5th-Issue/mainpage

Sat Sri Akaal Greetings Shalom Namskar Salaam Alikum

Punjabi Manch 5th Issue

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Acknowledgement: Paramjit Singh Raju helped in typing several poems in this issue. He surely deserves my heartfelt thanks..............Editor

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Editorial

Punjabi Manch has completed one year of existence and has become one of the top two Punjabi Websites in such a short period of time as far as traffic, freshness and speed is concerned. I have one of the most respected software monitoring tools called ALEXA to substantiate this claim despite some competitors making inflated claims with no substantiation. This gives me the encouragement to continue this effort. In this issue, we have added Punjabi Poets of Australia to recognize the literary efforts of Punjabi writers living outside of North America. People are encouraged to send in their creations regardless of their social, religious or political affiliations. They will be accommodated on our website even though I may post a rebuttal whenever I find it necessary and they should be willing to live with it.

Unlike some Punjabi Newspaper and Radio personalities in North America, I have made my political preferences known without pretending to be neutral during the current General Elections in the United States. However, I must point out that everybody who gets published on this website should not be labeled as or viewed as subscribing to my own socio-political philosophy nor do I intend to create such an impression.

I think that I have made it clear enough at the bottom of our homepage that I am not being financed either by individuals or by an institution. I must say at the risk of sounding arrogant that I am an institution by myself and always have been an institution in my own right despite having very meager financial resources.

I have always tried to support like minded entities by using my own limited financial means. In order to avoid any undue influence, I do not ask for financial support nor should you expect any monetary compensation from me for sending in your literary works or offering a helping hand in completing the publishing tasks for any issue. The only thing you will get from me is my admiration and heartfelt thanks and all I am asking from you is your moral support and cooperation. This is the way things are at this point in time even though the situation may improve as we move forward into the future.

During the last several months, I have been under constant pressure and persuasion from various quarters within my own community to stop posting the political links on this website. It has been tried from inside as well as from outside the country through various channels using various pretenses, excuses and reasoning. I was even told bluntly by certain quarters that I would lose their friendship if I do not remove certain links from this website. This gave me a tremendous amount of encouragement to be even more firm. This simply indicates that Punjabi Manch has made its presence known and some quarters are hurting because they feel that their monopoly on Punjabi Media has been penetrated by a real competitor having a brain of his own whose strings can not be pulled from New Delhi. They also understand that I am not going to be mislead by the false and hollow slogans of Clinton-Gore gang and their cohorts like Washington state Governor Garry Locke who think that minorities are incompetent and can not achieve anything without getting a handout from the Government. They also understand that I will not be mislead by the rosy slogans and deceitful sermons of the Democrat Party that it is the party of the poor and Republicans are the party of the rich.

I must say to those of you who think that I might change my viewpoint or might start doing things your way if you put enough pressure on me are only having a wishful thinking as it is not going to happen. However, I can assure you that you will always be accommodated on my website if you want to present an opposing viewpoint even though at times you may have to live with a rebuttal or two.

In the end, I must thank all of you who have cooperated with us to make our first year a successful one. At the advice of our participants and well wishers, we have decided to combine all four issues of the first year of Punjabi Manch on a CD-ROM. This CD-ROM is not going to be mass produced but it will be made available to those of you who want it for a nominal price to cover our cost before we delete those issues from the server to make room for the new ones.

With our sincere thanks to all of our participants, readers and well wishers.

Yours Truly,

Amrik S. Kang, Editor

Kent, WA, U.S.A. October 31, 2000