After Akal Takht, It is Guru Granth Sahib Now The sly Brahmin won’t ever leave Sikhism alone. Sikhism poses potential danger to the essentially exploitative character of Brahminism. It is a potent challenge to the privileges that he has manipulated by creating artificial caste distinctions and by perpetuating a ritualistic social and religious order. Guru Gobind Singh declared caste a taboo in the order of the Khalsa consolidated by him. He only consolidated into the steel frame of the Khalsa what Guru Nanak had most rigorously, eloquently and repeatedly enunciated in his divinely inspired ‘bani.’ “True service is the service of the low caste people,” proclaimed the tenth Master. Guru reordered the angry reaction of the Brahmin to this principle as follows, “Malice boiled in him and anger burnt as briskly as straw burns in flames . . . the Pundit wept and wailed at the plight of his neglected order.”
To negate the emerging challenge and to reassert his contrived preeminence, Brahmin considered it imperative to nip the new creed in the bud, hence his antagonism and his conspiracies against Sikhism right from the time of Guru Nanak.
The perceptive Brahmin had recognized in the vision of Guru Nanak the nascent militant trend that was to manifest after the fifth Guru and finally culminate as a natural and historical evolution in Guru Gobind Singh. He also recognized the doctrinal harmony and continuity in Sikh thought from first to the tenth Guru, but refused, and continues to refuse, to openly acknowledge it.
The politically motivated seminar on the “Growth of Extremism cause and cure” organized recently in Delhi, when subjected to analytical examination, does not stretch beyond a comic exercise by pedestrian minds to divide Sikhs through the hollow myth of trans valuation of Sikhism during Guru Gobind Singh’s period. In this seminar pseudo Sikhs like the pan chewing Khushwant Singh and opportunist Amrik Singh parrot like repeated the language of the ruling Brahmin class. Mr. Khushwant Singh, who has the dubious distinction of not writing a single honest line in the whole range of his writing career, is primarily concerned with his scotch and extensive ancestral estate in New Delhi. Amrik Singh, who is adept in the art of wangling lucrative jobs despite his marxist mantle, is quick to see ‘real danger’ in the development of S.G.P.C. into a kind of “Sikh Parliament”. Curiously both grow myopic to the shocking predicament of the Sikhs in India.
It does not interest them that the Sikh young men had sought shelter in the Golden Temple to save themselves from the brutal police atrocities and fake encounters in which hundreds of them had been murdered in cold blood. It does not interest them that Sant Bhindranwale was targeted for his crusade in effecting Sikh revivalism through the medium of Guru’s Amrit and for arresting the decadent process of Sikhs lapsing into caste ridden, superstitious Brahmin pantheism. It does not interest them that the post-independence Sikh history is a disquieting study in brazen betrayals, diabolic discriminations and sordid plundering of Punjab resources. It does not interest them that the tragedy of Punjab is the byproduct of Indira Gandhi’s anxiety to perpetuate dynastic rule. On the contrary these pseudo Sikhs are more than eager to swallow the distorted government versions like ‘misuse of Gurdwaras’. The misuse of power, the misuse of media, the destruction and desecration of holy shrines, the state terrorism, the propping up of Sarkari cults like Nirankari Mandal and RadhaSwamies to undermine Sikhism do not interest them, and they feel no compunction in quietly digesting Prabhash Joshi’s impudent rubbish in suggesting the need for reinterpreting Guru Granth Sahib as per the Brahmin dictates and his wicked insinuation that Sikhs are suffering from “persecution mania.”
These self-style intellectuals assemble at the instance and expense of the government, masticate the whitepaper garbage and faithfully endorse the official line. Time has come for the genuine intellectuals to assert themselves and to explore avenues to stop the intolerant Brahmin fundamentalism from its suicidal course of fighting the Sikh religion. They must categorically tell the bigoted Brahmin to shed his communal b as that has produced a situation where the primary concern of the Sikhs today is their survival, where to save their identity and honor, they find no alternative other than working for a sovereign status. Let it be understood that transparent conspiracies like the irresponsible talk of reinterpreting Guru Granth Sahib or searching for nonexistent dichotomy in the ethic spiritual unity of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh would only serve to further alienate and annoy the Sikh.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 13, 1985
