- Sep 24, 2004
- 139
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Guru Nanak’s perspective on humanity is larger than life; expansive and timeless.. In a lifespan of about 70 years, Nanak married, sired two sons, traveled widely across much of the known world of his times. Today, a worldwide ever-growing circle of more than 25 million Sikhs and non-Sikhs swear by his message.
I offer today not a paean of praise to Guru Nanak, the man and the prophet, but an exploration of the transformative agenda he gifted us – its meaning and purpose.
Ground realities in Punjab and India when Nanak was born?
Religions alone cannot always hold a nation together. Bangladesh was created out of Pakistan. Both are Muslim nations but their 24 years old union collapsed in 1971. Sunni and Shia Muslims remain at logger heads. Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews not too fond of each other. Christian history is instructive on internal frictions and travails of the many sects.
India is somewhat like Europe. It never was a single unified nation except under the British and the Mughals. Ergo, invaders could dominate India with only limited manpower. India was then a mélange of independent or quasi-independent nation states, each with a distinct culture, language, cuisine, music and ethos. Since 1947 it is a politically unified nation as it was under colonial masters, but the fragmentation persists.
When Guru Nanak appeared 550 years ago India was ruled ruthlessly by Muslim invaders bent on converting natives at the point of a sword, if necessary. Hindu society, despite its noble antecedents, was hamstrung by a decadent divisive religious culture, reprehensible caste system that exists even today, and shamefully degraded place of women. A divided society had lost its moral compass, often willing to sell out to invaders. This is what the young Nanak saw.
What do a People Need?
How do a people reclaim their own humanity and dignity? The hope that tomorrow will be better has prerequisites: Freedom of speech and action, participatory self-governance with transparent accountability, security, economic progress, infrastructure and an ethical code for a productive life.
Easier said than done! Two choices surface: evolution or revolution. Revolutions are bloody. They change rulers but not as easily the mindset of a people which is a product of long-standing inter-generational and culturally ingrained habits of the heart, traditions that define the self; in other words, the paradigm or the default position of the mind. Lasting paradigm shifts demand time that transcends generations
A transformative paradigm shift is exactly what Guru Nanak launched, and it took a good ten generations – almost 240 years -- to mature and bear fruit in its modern form. The path was mine-laden. Muslim with connivance of some Hindu rulers went on the warpath to defend their politico-religious dominance. Hindus saw Sikhi as undermining their hold on the people with a challenging new ideology that rejected their timeless but backward teachings on caste, place of women, idol worship -- practices that divided and weakened the people.
The first step in the endeavor was the creation of community of the dispossessed people. Nanak started a kitchen (langar) where people of all castes would come together, prepare and serve food to all irrespective of caste, creed, color or gender. Enjoy a meal, listen to uplifting poetry and teachings with music (keertan), and relate to each other as equals. In the traditional Indian society high and low castes would never mingle or break bread together. Nanak rejected such notions and taboos. People had to learn to live with each other -- not caring if they were sharing time with a king or pauper, a Brahmin or an untouchable. In India of that time, this was revolutionary.
Guru Nanak’s teaching begins with a revolutionary alphanumeric of his own making – Ik Oankaar. Ik stands for the number One; Oankaar, rooted in Sanskrit, speaks of the Creator. If one can see the Oneness of the Creator, there is then no room left for a sectarian separate Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Brand X, or any other form of the Creator. That would be a lesser god, not worthy of worship. Guru Nanak’s Creator has no physical form and transcends all physical descriptions. This infinite reality by definition can never be captured by our human finite mind and vocabulary.
This profound message framed the fundamentals of a productive meaningful life in the language of the people -- norma loquendi – as poetry to be musically rendered. Why? Because, at best, the spoken message settles in the head, music takes the message to the heart. And what exactly is the mind or the soul but both the heart and the head put together. Poetry is roomful of allegories, analogies and devices to hold the mind. The compositions used the classical timeless Raga system of Indian musicology. Music and poetry are thus internalized and interpreted, not literally rendered.
Guru Nanak, accompanied by a Muslim musician, Mardana, took his message across the known world of that time well beyond Punjab and India.
Did Nanak start a new faith system?
I believe he did. Guru Nanak traveled through India, modern Pakistan and beyond -- south to Sri Lanka, north to Tibet, east beyond Assam and west to Afghanistan, Mecca, Turkey and neighboring areas; perhaps even China. He held dialogues with scholars of many faiths. After four odysseys, he returned to Punjab and founded Kartarpur, now in Pakistan, as the Sikh model of Utopia where he nurtured the first Sikh community. Kartarpur became a bustling presence with businesses and traders. The community prospered. Guru Nanak lived there with his wife and two sons, preached the Sikh way of life and tilled his farm.
Kartarpur, was a defining step forward towards development of economically viable infrastructure for a people. Note that it was not near any Hindu or Muslim religious center. Guru Nanak never ever recommend that Sikhs go to a Hindu or Muslim place of worship. The gurduara (Dharamsal) in Kartarpur was the community’s hub and place of worship.
Passing the Torch
Think a moment: If a business, or shop closes its doors at the death of the founder it is a failed venture. An enterprise must continue past the generations to earn the sobriquet of an institution or movement.
How do you rebuild a nation and its people diminished by centuries of invasions and destruction? A massive transformative task is not accomplished in hours, days, months or even years. There are dots to connect; life models, habits of the heart or paradigms need to be re-explored, tweaked, modified, even jettisoned and replaced. A paradigm shift is called for. Habits of the heart are never easy to reform or displace.
Guru Nanak’s message continued and was further developed by his nine successors. Helived centuries ago. Times change; newer questions surface. Sikh institutional development continued. As Guru Angad, Lehna succeeded Nanak. Significantly all ten Gurus; wrote under the name and authority of Nanak.
Guru Angad moved his activities to a new settlement – Khadur Sahib. Now there were two urban centers flourishing in Punjab. He also systematized the rules of Gurmukhi, the script of the Punjabi language.
Amardas, the third Guru, chose Goindwal as his base. His presence attracted businesses, creating a third Sikh community without diminishing the luster of Kartarpur and Khadur Sahib. In order to upend the injustice to women, he appointed them to leadership positions in spreading Sikhi’s message; encouraged widows to remarry and condemned the horrendous practice of satee – self-immolation by widows. He also started the tradition of twice-yearly conclaves of Sikhs, to reconnect with the teachings and confer on current issues that might impact the community.”
Guru Ramdas followed. He founded Ramdaspur that became Amritsar. It remains, over 400 years later, the largest, most important commercial, cultural and educational hub of Punjab. It defines, through its history, the Sikh psyche today;
Guru Arjan compiled writings of the previous four Gurus, along with his own, added compositions of a few selected Hindu and Muslim saints and poets whose views resonated with Sikh teachings, and installed the compilation as the first rendition of Sikh scripture (Adi Granth) in 1604. This became the authoritative document on Sikh ethos. The Harmandar (Golden Temple) located in Amritsar. Amritsar has been the defacto capital of all Sikh activities, social, educational, administrative or political, whether local or international since that time; Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, completed its development. He was the first Sikh martyr in the cause of freedom of religion. The lesson: One must learn to die before one may pick up a weapon.
Over the 100 years since Guru Nanak, much had changed. Islam had become aggressively fanatic. The Sikh movement had acquired heft and visibility, and continued to emphasize peaceful coexistence with other faiths. Guru Nanak had taught that the Creator is not found in seclusion, ascetism or renunciation but within the active worldly life – the two are not mutually exclusive.
Now Guru Arjan had been martyred. So, Guru Hargobind, the sixth Founder-Guru formally enunciated the doctrine of Meeri-Peeri that emphatically merges the internal spiritual life of the mind with the outwardly directed worldly pursuit of action. These two primary fundamentals of Sikh existence must never be sundered. Sikhs are to be peaceful and non-violent but not pacifist. Guru Hargobind wore two swords –of Meeri and Peeri, thus recognizing that a successful human life is one of action (Meeri) but never torn asunder from its spiritual foundations (Peeri). One without the other remains incomplete. He raised a militia to counter armed warfare thrust upon him. Each subsequent Guru maintained an armed militia. Guru Hargobind also built the townships of Hargobindpur, Mehraj and Kiratpur, and even a mosque for the many Muslims in the area. Briefly, Meeri-Peeri and Akal Takht that he defined and built are at the core of nation building and critical to Sikh history and Sikh values. Nation building here does not imply geographical lines drawn in the sand.
Guru Har Rai and Guru Harkishan served briefly. It was the time for consolidation for the movement and a growing community. The towns of Anandpur and Paonta Sahib are associated with Guru Tegh Bahadur. But this ninth Guru lives in our memories for accepting martyrdom to assert the fundamental right of religious freedom – for Hindus to refuse conversion to Islam under duress. Guru Tegh Bahadur himself was not a Hindu. The underlying principle here remains that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The saga of Guru Gobind Singh deserves books, much more than the brief paragraph here. In 1699 he brought the transformative change started by Guru Nanak to its mature modern form. He created the community of the Khalsa that changed the face of Punjab and India into a free outer directed people at peace with their inner self— remember the underpinnings of Meeri-Peeri that must remain in sync. Guru Gobind Singh also added Guru Tegh Bahadur’s compositions and prepared a final recension of the Adi Granth that he installed as the Guru Granth.
In the two centuries from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh Sikhi had come a long way. Guru Gobind Singh further saw that his Sikhs had now earned self-governance. He decreed, therefore, that henceforth, in Sikh praxis Guru Granth remains the repository of all Sikh spiritual heritage while temporal authority rests in the Sikh community acting in awareness of their defining spiritual heritage.
He institutionalized the community as the Khalsa. As he initiated his followers, in a dramatic step, he knelt and asked that the Khalsa now initiate him into that order. This creates a unique bond between the teacher (Guru) and the student (Sikh) – Gur-Chela in Sikh parlance. It antedates the very modern idea of Servant-Leader that we see today in modern models of education and management.
A terse historical nugget has resonated from the time of Guru Nanak to capture unerringly the magic and mystery of his teaching. Equally in vogue today, it captures the Sikh way of life as one of 1. honest earnings, 2. sharing rewards of life with the needy, and 3. remaining always connected to the one Creator common to all, regardless of caste, color, creed, gender or religious, cultural and national identity. Note that two of the three are social, societal constructs.
Soon after Guru Gobind Singh in early 17th century, Sikhs had evolved the traditions of Sarbat Khalsa where community representatives would gather in conclaves -- like town hall meetings that you see across the world today – to debate and discuss issues of peace and war or critical turns in direction that face us. Also, matters like traditions, Code of Conduct (Rehat Maryada), protocols and related Constitutional matters may be revisited as needed.
These systems exist but have been corrupted by neglect and human inertia. As in any path we need to know where we are at a given point. But even more critical is the trajectory of the path. Only then, as Sikhi promises, the journey becomes the destination. A continuing exploration is necessary so that we don’t throw away the baby with the bath water.
My mandate today was to delineate the parameters of Guru Nanak’s mission. My plea is that you see Guru Nanak, unusual and special as he surely was, as the one who founded and shaped our journey. -- a revolutionary movement that still tugs at us today.
The process won’t be easy but it is essential. The journey started with Guru Nanak and we celebrate him. It does not end with his mortal life or with ours. There can be no better legacy.The onus is ours.
I offer today not a paean of praise to Guru Nanak, the man and the prophet, but an exploration of the transformative agenda he gifted us – its meaning and purpose.
Ground realities in Punjab and India when Nanak was born?
Religions alone cannot always hold a nation together. Bangladesh was created out of Pakistan. Both are Muslim nations but their 24 years old union collapsed in 1971. Sunni and Shia Muslims remain at logger heads. Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews not too fond of each other. Christian history is instructive on internal frictions and travails of the many sects.
India is somewhat like Europe. It never was a single unified nation except under the British and the Mughals. Ergo, invaders could dominate India with only limited manpower. India was then a mélange of independent or quasi-independent nation states, each with a distinct culture, language, cuisine, music and ethos. Since 1947 it is a politically unified nation as it was under colonial masters, but the fragmentation persists.
When Guru Nanak appeared 550 years ago India was ruled ruthlessly by Muslim invaders bent on converting natives at the point of a sword, if necessary. Hindu society, despite its noble antecedents, was hamstrung by a decadent divisive religious culture, reprehensible caste system that exists even today, and shamefully degraded place of women. A divided society had lost its moral compass, often willing to sell out to invaders. This is what the young Nanak saw.
What do a People Need?
How do a people reclaim their own humanity and dignity? The hope that tomorrow will be better has prerequisites: Freedom of speech and action, participatory self-governance with transparent accountability, security, economic progress, infrastructure and an ethical code for a productive life.
Easier said than done! Two choices surface: evolution or revolution. Revolutions are bloody. They change rulers but not as easily the mindset of a people which is a product of long-standing inter-generational and culturally ingrained habits of the heart, traditions that define the self; in other words, the paradigm or the default position of the mind. Lasting paradigm shifts demand time that transcends generations
A transformative paradigm shift is exactly what Guru Nanak launched, and it took a good ten generations – almost 240 years -- to mature and bear fruit in its modern form. The path was mine-laden. Muslim with connivance of some Hindu rulers went on the warpath to defend their politico-religious dominance. Hindus saw Sikhi as undermining their hold on the people with a challenging new ideology that rejected their timeless but backward teachings on caste, place of women, idol worship -- practices that divided and weakened the people.
The first step in the endeavor was the creation of community of the dispossessed people. Nanak started a kitchen (langar) where people of all castes would come together, prepare and serve food to all irrespective of caste, creed, color or gender. Enjoy a meal, listen to uplifting poetry and teachings with music (keertan), and relate to each other as equals. In the traditional Indian society high and low castes would never mingle or break bread together. Nanak rejected such notions and taboos. People had to learn to live with each other -- not caring if they were sharing time with a king or pauper, a Brahmin or an untouchable. In India of that time, this was revolutionary.
Guru Nanak’s teaching begins with a revolutionary alphanumeric of his own making – Ik Oankaar. Ik stands for the number One; Oankaar, rooted in Sanskrit, speaks of the Creator. If one can see the Oneness of the Creator, there is then no room left for a sectarian separate Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Brand X, or any other form of the Creator. That would be a lesser god, not worthy of worship. Guru Nanak’s Creator has no physical form and transcends all physical descriptions. This infinite reality by definition can never be captured by our human finite mind and vocabulary.
This profound message framed the fundamentals of a productive meaningful life in the language of the people -- norma loquendi – as poetry to be musically rendered. Why? Because, at best, the spoken message settles in the head, music takes the message to the heart. And what exactly is the mind or the soul but both the heart and the head put together. Poetry is roomful of allegories, analogies and devices to hold the mind. The compositions used the classical timeless Raga system of Indian musicology. Music and poetry are thus internalized and interpreted, not literally rendered.
Guru Nanak, accompanied by a Muslim musician, Mardana, took his message across the known world of that time well beyond Punjab and India.
Did Nanak start a new faith system?
I believe he did. Guru Nanak traveled through India, modern Pakistan and beyond -- south to Sri Lanka, north to Tibet, east beyond Assam and west to Afghanistan, Mecca, Turkey and neighboring areas; perhaps even China. He held dialogues with scholars of many faiths. After four odysseys, he returned to Punjab and founded Kartarpur, now in Pakistan, as the Sikh model of Utopia where he nurtured the first Sikh community. Kartarpur became a bustling presence with businesses and traders. The community prospered. Guru Nanak lived there with his wife and two sons, preached the Sikh way of life and tilled his farm.
Kartarpur, was a defining step forward towards development of economically viable infrastructure for a people. Note that it was not near any Hindu or Muslim religious center. Guru Nanak never ever recommend that Sikhs go to a Hindu or Muslim place of worship. The gurduara (Dharamsal) in Kartarpur was the community’s hub and place of worship.
Passing the Torch
Think a moment: If a business, or shop closes its doors at the death of the founder it is a failed venture. An enterprise must continue past the generations to earn the sobriquet of an institution or movement.
How do you rebuild a nation and its people diminished by centuries of invasions and destruction? A massive transformative task is not accomplished in hours, days, months or even years. There are dots to connect; life models, habits of the heart or paradigms need to be re-explored, tweaked, modified, even jettisoned and replaced. A paradigm shift is called for. Habits of the heart are never easy to reform or displace.
Guru Nanak’s message continued and was further developed by his nine successors. Helived centuries ago. Times change; newer questions surface. Sikh institutional development continued. As Guru Angad, Lehna succeeded Nanak. Significantly all ten Gurus; wrote under the name and authority of Nanak.
Guru Angad moved his activities to a new settlement – Khadur Sahib. Now there were two urban centers flourishing in Punjab. He also systematized the rules of Gurmukhi, the script of the Punjabi language.
Amardas, the third Guru, chose Goindwal as his base. His presence attracted businesses, creating a third Sikh community without diminishing the luster of Kartarpur and Khadur Sahib. In order to upend the injustice to women, he appointed them to leadership positions in spreading Sikhi’s message; encouraged widows to remarry and condemned the horrendous practice of satee – self-immolation by widows. He also started the tradition of twice-yearly conclaves of Sikhs, to reconnect with the teachings and confer on current issues that might impact the community.”
Guru Ramdas followed. He founded Ramdaspur that became Amritsar. It remains, over 400 years later, the largest, most important commercial, cultural and educational hub of Punjab. It defines, through its history, the Sikh psyche today;
Guru Arjan compiled writings of the previous four Gurus, along with his own, added compositions of a few selected Hindu and Muslim saints and poets whose views resonated with Sikh teachings, and installed the compilation as the first rendition of Sikh scripture (Adi Granth) in 1604. This became the authoritative document on Sikh ethos. The Harmandar (Golden Temple) located in Amritsar. Amritsar has been the defacto capital of all Sikh activities, social, educational, administrative or political, whether local or international since that time; Guru Arjan, the fifth Guru, completed its development. He was the first Sikh martyr in the cause of freedom of religion. The lesson: One must learn to die before one may pick up a weapon.
Over the 100 years since Guru Nanak, much had changed. Islam had become aggressively fanatic. The Sikh movement had acquired heft and visibility, and continued to emphasize peaceful coexistence with other faiths. Guru Nanak had taught that the Creator is not found in seclusion, ascetism or renunciation but within the active worldly life – the two are not mutually exclusive.
Now Guru Arjan had been martyred. So, Guru Hargobind, the sixth Founder-Guru formally enunciated the doctrine of Meeri-Peeri that emphatically merges the internal spiritual life of the mind with the outwardly directed worldly pursuit of action. These two primary fundamentals of Sikh existence must never be sundered. Sikhs are to be peaceful and non-violent but not pacifist. Guru Hargobind wore two swords –of Meeri and Peeri, thus recognizing that a successful human life is one of action (Meeri) but never torn asunder from its spiritual foundations (Peeri). One without the other remains incomplete. He raised a militia to counter armed warfare thrust upon him. Each subsequent Guru maintained an armed militia. Guru Hargobind also built the townships of Hargobindpur, Mehraj and Kiratpur, and even a mosque for the many Muslims in the area. Briefly, Meeri-Peeri and Akal Takht that he defined and built are at the core of nation building and critical to Sikh history and Sikh values. Nation building here does not imply geographical lines drawn in the sand.
Guru Har Rai and Guru Harkishan served briefly. It was the time for consolidation for the movement and a growing community. The towns of Anandpur and Paonta Sahib are associated with Guru Tegh Bahadur. But this ninth Guru lives in our memories for accepting martyrdom to assert the fundamental right of religious freedom – for Hindus to refuse conversion to Islam under duress. Guru Tegh Bahadur himself was not a Hindu. The underlying principle here remains that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The saga of Guru Gobind Singh deserves books, much more than the brief paragraph here. In 1699 he brought the transformative change started by Guru Nanak to its mature modern form. He created the community of the Khalsa that changed the face of Punjab and India into a free outer directed people at peace with their inner self— remember the underpinnings of Meeri-Peeri that must remain in sync. Guru Gobind Singh also added Guru Tegh Bahadur’s compositions and prepared a final recension of the Adi Granth that he installed as the Guru Granth.
In the two centuries from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh Sikhi had come a long way. Guru Gobind Singh further saw that his Sikhs had now earned self-governance. He decreed, therefore, that henceforth, in Sikh praxis Guru Granth remains the repository of all Sikh spiritual heritage while temporal authority rests in the Sikh community acting in awareness of their defining spiritual heritage.
He institutionalized the community as the Khalsa. As he initiated his followers, in a dramatic step, he knelt and asked that the Khalsa now initiate him into that order. This creates a unique bond between the teacher (Guru) and the student (Sikh) – Gur-Chela in Sikh parlance. It antedates the very modern idea of Servant-Leader that we see today in modern models of education and management.
A terse historical nugget has resonated from the time of Guru Nanak to capture unerringly the magic and mystery of his teaching. Equally in vogue today, it captures the Sikh way of life as one of 1. honest earnings, 2. sharing rewards of life with the needy, and 3. remaining always connected to the one Creator common to all, regardless of caste, color, creed, gender or religious, cultural and national identity. Note that two of the three are social, societal constructs.
Soon after Guru Gobind Singh in early 17th century, Sikhs had evolved the traditions of Sarbat Khalsa where community representatives would gather in conclaves -- like town hall meetings that you see across the world today – to debate and discuss issues of peace and war or critical turns in direction that face us. Also, matters like traditions, Code of Conduct (Rehat Maryada), protocols and related Constitutional matters may be revisited as needed.
These systems exist but have been corrupted by neglect and human inertia. As in any path we need to know where we are at a given point. But even more critical is the trajectory of the path. Only then, as Sikhi promises, the journey becomes the destination. A continuing exploration is necessary so that we don’t throw away the baby with the bath water.
My mandate today was to delineate the parameters of Guru Nanak’s mission. My plea is that you see Guru Nanak, unusual and special as he surely was, as the one who founded and shaped our journey. -- a revolutionary movement that still tugs at us today.
The process won’t be easy but it is essential. The journey started with Guru Nanak and we celebrate him. It does not end with his mortal life or with ours. There can be no better legacy.The onus is ours.
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