This Study of the theopolitical status of the Golden Temple is from the pen of the renowned Sikh Scholar Sardar kapur Singh.
Sardar Kapur Singh has forcefully brought out the unique place that Harimandir Sahib and Akal Takht occupy in the hearts of the Sikhs and why they would never tolerate any sacrilege or injury to this holiest of their holy shrines.
As the author has admirably brought out, the Golden Temple’s position and status “is unique in the religious and political centres of world history.”
THE GOLDEN TEMPLE Its The oPolitical Status
The world famous Golden Temple of the Sikhs, situated at Amritsar in India, bears Harimandir, “The Temple of god,” as its original name and it forms an island in a lake to which the name of Amritsar was given by the Nanak V. Guru Arjan (15631606), in the year 1589, when he laid the foundations of what is now known as the Golden Temple and the town which grew around this Mecca of the Sikhs has only subsequently acquired the name of Amritsar.
The Nanak V requested his great contemporary mystic and Muslim savant, Mir Mohammed muayyinul Islam. popularly known as Miran Mir to lay the foundation stone of the temple and this fact, as well as the name bestowed on the lake, bears a basic significance in relation to the Sikh doctrines.
The impact of Islam on the North Western India in the 11th century had been through military conquest and sword, and this had naturally created reactions in the proud and sensitive Hindu mind, that resulted in impassable barriers of hatred and prejudice between the two world culture currents and their mutual contacts have therefore, left irritating and unfortunate monuments of bigotry and misunderstanding, spiritual and physical, that still mark the Indian scene.
The Sikh prophets the Nanaks, desired to level down these barriers with a view to discover and provide a common spiritual ground for the two, Hinduism and Islam, where Hinduism gets over its injured superiority and sense of exclusiveness and Islam, its arrogance, born out of military superiority. the Nanak V declared:
Musalmanu momadil hovai, antar ki mal dil te dhovai, duniya rang na avai nede jio
Guru Granth Maru V. 13.iii.12
“Let Muslims rediscover the truth that the essence of religious practice is compassion and its goal, the purification of soul, and that political utilitarianism is foreign to Islam as such, and let the Hindu concede that Islam thus understood is as respectable and ceremoniously pure as the flowers, the silk the deerskin and the butterfat.”
Sikhism — a meeting ground of Hinduism & Islam
And since Sikism was to be this common meeting ground between these two world culture streams, that is why a prominent Muslim divine was asked to lay the foundation of the Golden Temple. Amritsar name was given to the lake encircling this temple, as amrt a means, the enduring principle of all that is, in Hindu metaphysical thought, and water is the first symbol of the first impulse of manifestation of the Un manifest in Aryan thought idiom and the Golden Temple in the embrace of the waters of Immortality thus, was intended to be a profound symbol of future confluence of the world Cultures into a universal culture for the mankind.
In this temple, the proposed centre of a world culture and world religion the Nanak V installed the Sikh scripture Guru Granth Sahib ever since the presiding place, even when the Sikh Gurus were personally present, has remained reserved for the Book and the religious ceremonial and services have exclusively and always consisted of prayers to, singing praises of, and mediatition upon God in this sanctum sanctorum 2of Sikhism.
Status and Position of the Golden Temple
This position and this status of the Golden Temple is unique in the religious or political centres of the world history.
It is the St. Peter’s at Rome, for it is capital of Sikh theocracy but it is very much more and also something less and different. Sikhism has no ordained priestly class and therefore, there can be no theocratic political state of the Sikhs in which the priests rule in the name of an invisible God. They have no corpus of civil law of divine origin and sanction and they, therefore,. must have a state based on secular nontheocratic laws. It is more, because it remains the real capital of ultimate Sikh allegiance, whatever the political set up for the time being.
It is the Varansai or Banaras of Sikhism, because it is the holiest of the holiest of the faith, but it is not precisely that because the true Sikh doctrine does not approve of any traditions of belief which seeks to tie up theophany with geography.
It is the Jerusalem of Sikhism because it is the historical centre of the epiphany of Sikhism but it is not precisely that because Sikhism, as a religion, is not history grounded, that is its validity is not tied up with or dependent upon any historical event.
It is not precisely the political capital of the Sikhs, because political capital presupposes a state under the control of the Sikhs, and when the Sikhs do have such a state, it is not imperative that its administrative centre must be at Amritsar, and even when it is, the Golden Temple and its precincts shall still retain their peculiar independent character apart from this administrative centre. When the Sikhs do not have a sovereign state of their own, the Golden Temple with its surrounding complex continuously retains its theopolitical status, which may be suppressed by political power, compromised by individuals or questioned by politicians, but which remains and never can be extinguished for, it is generis and inalienable and imprescriptible.
It is owing to this unique status, grounded in certain peculiar doctrines of Sikhism that, many misunderstandings continuously arise concerning the use of the Golden Temple with its surrounding complex for “political purposes,” for allowing ingress into and housing of those whom the political state may deem as “offenders” and for pursuing, “extra religious activities” from inside its precincts. The sikhs, themselves, have never viewed any of these activities started or controlled from inside the precincts of the Golden Temple as either improper, or repugnant to the Sikh doctrine, or contrary to the Sikhs historical tradition. The reasons for this Sikh attitude are three, in the main not singly but collectively.
One reason is that this geographical site itself is charged with theopathic influences as no other known and still accepted site on earth, including the old site of the Solomon’s Temple, revered by three great religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, can claim to be.
It was in 1609 that the Nanak VI Guru Hargobind (159516440 erected the Akal Takht edifice opposite the entrance bridgehead of the Golden Temple upon which the Guru sat in state wearing two swords of dominion over the two worlds, the seen and unseen and the peculiar Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty took birth, the essence of which is that a man of religion must always ‘owe his primary allegiance to Truth and Morality and he must never submit to the exclusive claim of the secular state to govern the bodies and minds of men and the whole of subsequent Sikh History must be seen as an unfoldment of this Sikh attitude, it is to be properly understood. The Nanak X Guru Gobind Singh (16661708) explained this doctrine to Mughal emperor, Aurangzib ina written communication, the Zafarnameh (1707) in the following words:
When all means of peaceful persuasion fail, it is legitimate (for a man of religion) to move his hand to the hilt of the sword.”)
This Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty promulgated in the beginning of the 17th century has a curiously modern ring and flavor, as from 19th century onwards, a growing school of writers in Europe have tended to think on the lines in which it is grounded. The main substances of this doctrine is that any sovereign state which includes Sikh populations and groups as citizens, must never make paranoiac pretensions of almighty absolutism entailing the concept of total power, entitled to rule over the bodies and minds of men, in utter exclusiveness. Any state which lays such claims, qua the Sikhs, shall automatically forfeit its moral right to demand allegiance of the Sikhs and there is thus an eternal antagonism between such a state and the collective community of the Sikhs, represented by the order of Khalsa and in the deadly duel the state shall never emerge out as finally victorious for self-destruction is the fruit of the seed of non-limitation, and the status and the prerogatives of the Khalsa are imprescriptible.
The 19th century German wnier, Schulse, supports the basic premise of this doctrine by asserting that the state is absolutely supreme and incapable of doing wrong is misconceived and dangerous (Deutshes Staatsrecht VolI Sec 16) . The whole Sikh history is relentless jehad against this dangerous misconception, and the Sikhs haye always insisted that any state fit and entitled to demand their allegiance must ab initio recognize and concede its own self limited character, arising out of the principles of morality the teachings of Religion the principles of abstract justice the principles of the Sikhs metalegal constitution which lays down that, (1) they must be approached and dealt with at state level as a collective group and entity, and (2) they must be governed impersonally that is, through the rule of law and not by arbitrary will and this self-limitation must further be circumscribed by the immemorial customs, long established traditions and the facts of the history of the Sikhs. This Sikh doctrine is, in essence, the same which today finds explicit expression in the modern concept of the pluralistic state, which recognizes that the state, in practice, is the government and the government is no more than a group in control of the governmental machinery, and that the aims and the objects of this group, may anytime, clash with group not in power. The government may be the temporary principal of all groups but is only pares, the elder amongst equals, it is not the sole repository of power or focal of loyalty. This is, indeed the sole essence of the Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty, which finds powerful support in the writings of Professor Harold J. Lashi, Mr. G.D.H. Cole, and the French jurist, Duguit and also Dr. J.N. Figgis.
The Sikh revolt during the 17th and 18th centuries, against the Mughal state was in reality, an attempt to assert their doctrine of Double Sovereignty against the Muslim absolutist theomonist theory of State, as a result of which the Sikhs had to pass through the valley of death, as the narrative that follows would show, before they emerged out with the scepter of political sovereignty in their hands, and it would be well to understand that the present bitterness and misunderstanding that clouds relations between the Sikhs and the state is also grounded in the same doctrinal conflict. In 1708 Guru Gobind Singh after protracted discussions and parleys with the Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah, the son and successor of Aurangzib came to the firm conclusion that “all the means of peaceful persuasion” had failed, and it had, therefore, become the right and duty of the Sikhs to “move the hand to the hilt of the sword,” and in the same year (February, 1708) the Guru initiated a Hindu yogi and occultist, Madhodas bairagi as a Sikh and renamed him, Banda Singh and then appointed him the Generalissimo of the Sikhs, after conferring upon him the military tile Bahadur. Banda Singh Bahadur was then ordered to proceeded to Punjab with the assignment of, “due chastisement of the Mughal rulers who have usurped the power that belongs to the people condign punishment of those guilty of atrocities, destruction of their military bases and reestablishment of the freedom of the people.”
Banda Singh Bahadur carried out his assignment with admirable fidelity and in 1710, declared the freedom of the province of Sirhind fixed as its capital the fortified Mutkhalispur in the hills, near Ambala, and the Sikhs adopted the legend on their state seal which began:
“We hereby place our impress of sovereignty upon both worlds, the seen and unseen.”
And thus they reiterated the basic doctrine of Sikhism that of Double Sovereignty.
After the collapse of political power of the Sikhs under Generalissimo Banda Singh Bahadur in 1716 there follows a complete blackout till 1721, when the Sikhs shifted their centre of activities their spiritual and political capital and their acropolis to the Golden Temple the lake that surrounds it and the complex of buildings, including Akal Takht, that are attached to it.
Ever since 1721, the Golden Temple with the complex of attached structures, has renamed the centre of the Sikh world, the Sikh history, the Sikh politics and the Sikh theories. Throughout the last 250 years whether the Sikhs were declared as outlaws by the state, whether the Golden Temple and its adjuncts were reduced to mass of tuins or they were forcibly occupied by the state whether the Sikhs were a sovereign people or politically subjugated, they never abandoned or compromised the position that, (1) the Golden Temple and its adjuncts are the hub of the Sikh world not as a matter or concession by any worldly power but as the inherent right of the Sikh people, sui generis and inalienable and (2) there is no ultimate dichotomy in the true Sikh doctrine between this world and the next, the secular and the religious the political and the spiritual.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 2, 1989
