By Daljeet Singh
A major drawback of the book is that the author has chosen not to rise above the journalistic level. This small volume of 119 pages has seven chapters.
The Sikhs, The Origins of the Sikh Tradition, Four Centuries of Sikh History, Sikh Doctrine, The Literature of the Sikhs, and Sikhism in the Modern World.
The treatment of subjects is casual since references to original sources are scanty. For example, in the 15 pages of the Chapter on the Sikhs are cramped, vague and general statements, many even incorrect, about Guru Nanak, the Janam Sakhis, Adi Granth, Sikh Religion, developments during the Guru period, Mughal hostility towards the Sikhs, the arming of the Panth, the creation of the Khalsa, the Sikh struggle and the rule of Ranjit Singh, the British Rule, ending with the partition of Punjab, the struggle for Punjabi Suba and provincial autonomy after Independence, the appearance of Bhindranwale and his death in the Blue Star Operation, the assassination of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, the RajivLongowal accord, HinduSikh tensions, etc. Similarly, the 12 page chapter on Sikh Doctrine is too sketchy and lopsided to be reliable. Even out of the 12 pages hardly half are devoted to the Sikh religion. This summary account lacks authenticity because in the whole book there is not a single couplet quoted from the 1430 pages of the Guru Granth excepting one from the book of Shackles which is their only to show Islamaic Joan words in the hymns of Guru Nanak.
Obviously, even a bare outline of facts and events, much less a depth study, of such diverse subjects as Sikhs theology, its comparative study with Naths, Sufis, Vaisanvas and Sants, 400 years of Sikh history, Sikh literature, current Punjab political problems cannot be made within a space of 119 pages. But McLeod, has no inhibition in making dogmatic and incorrect assertions, with hardly any reference to available sources, a substitute of analysis even increase where his knowledge seems casual or minimal.
Another failing of the book is that it is merely a rehash of McLeod’s earlier work, The Evolution of the Sikh Community, with hardly anything new by way of facts or arguments. In 1975 McLeod brought out a small volume of 104 pages dealing with a large variety of subjects making therein erroneous or conjectural statements about accepted facts of Sikh Religion, Sikh History and Sikh Institutions. Practically, all the formulations of McLeod became in 1986 the subject of a study (The Sikh Tradition, edited by Justice Gurdev Singh) by six specialists like, Ganda Singh, Hari Ram Gupta, Noel O. King, Harbans Singh and others. Each of them found, regarding his respective field, McLeod’s formulations to be without any basis. In July 1987, the Punjabi University, Patiala, published Commemoration Lectures holding that McLeod’s observations about the authenticity of the Kartarpuni Bir were ‘unfounded and misleading’. The present publication is a disappointment because instead of responding to their criticism of McLeod and of continuing the academic debate, he has stopped it by omitting altogether any reference to those two related books or their contents. The book can, thus, serve no academic purpose, because mere reiteration of exploded assertions cannot constitute a piece of research.
In the interests of conservation of space we shall indicate only a few of the faults of the book and its altogether erroneous perception.
McLeod displays a complete lack of knowledge of the Sikh theology, and, consequently, his statements about Sikh Doctrine and the Sikh Movement remain fundamentally faulty.
In making a comparative study of religious doctrines of Nathism, Vaisnavism, Sants and Islam with those of Sikhism, McLeod follows no standard or analytical methodology of identifying the metaphysical position, the goal, the religious practices, the overall world view of a system; or whether it is life negating or life affirming.
Nor does he use available sources for the purpose. Accordingly, his description or assessment of different religions remains patchy and erroneous, and in the case of Sikhism itis exactly contrary to what Sikhism really is. He calls Sikhism a religion of interiority of the practice of Nam Simran which “ranges from the repeating of a word or Mantra (One which summarily expresses the divine reality) to the singing of devotional songs and beyond that to mystical concentration of the most sophisticated kind.” We are not aware of any hymn in the Guru Granth prescribing any particular system of meditation or use of any word or Mantra for repetition, and Mcleod has not cited any hymh in support of his calm. Except prophet Muhammed Guru Nanak is the only man of God who preached a religion of the deed, involving an inalienable combination between the spiritual life and the empirical life of man. Mcleod quite ignores the contrast between the life negation of Sants who avoid social responsibility, deem woman to be a temptress and accept Ahimsa, and the life affirming system of Guru Nanak who completely rejected monasticism, celibacy, and Ahimsa and accepted full social participation and responsibility. It is common knowledge that, almost invariably, Ahimsa, celibacy, monasticism and life negation go together; and it is Guru Nanak who rejected all four of them and organized a society with new faith and motivations, Besides, Kabir’s cosmology is entirely different from the cosmology of Guru Granth.
It is amazing that Mcleod has used the negative word ‘Akal Purakh’ (Timeless Being), and has omitted fundamental statements of Guru Nanak defining his God and system. In the Japuji, starting on the first page of Guru Granth, Guru Nanak calls God ‘Karta Purakh’ or ‘Creator Being’, Ever Creative and watching his creation with a gracious eye and the sole spiritual path he prescribes is of activity, namely of “carrying out the will of God” which Will he calls ‘Altruistic’ and ‘The Ocean of virtues and values.’ The Guru Granth describes God, thus ‘friends ask me what is the mark of the Lord. He is all love, rest he is ineffable.” And God of love has clear implications. For love can be expressed only in a real world, love being both dynamic and the fount of all values and virtues. Accordingly, the call Guru Nanak gave to the spiritual seeker was “if you want to play the game of love, come with your head on your palm.” His emphasis on deeds is epitomized in his hymn. “Truth is higher than everything, but higher still is truthful living,” and that man’s “spiritual assessment depends on his deeds.” It is unfortunate that either out of ignorance or out of design McLeod has omitted all the above hymns defining Sikhism and has quoted nothing from the Guru Granth in support of his view prescribing ‘the prepetition of a Mantra or sophisticated meditation.’ Even the couplet quoted from Shackle’s book, in a way, controverts Mcleod’s idea of ‘repetitive remembrance or use of a ‘Mantra’. For the Guru says, “Make good works your Kaaba, take truth as your Pir, and compassi as your creed and your prayer.” Thus the Guru recommends good deeds and compassion in place of prayer. In fact, the Guru says, ‘everyone repeats God’s name but by such Repetition one gets not to God.” For, “love, contentment, truth, humility and other virtues enable the seed of Naam to sprout.” Significantly it is Guru Nanak who in his Babur Bani condemns ‘oppression of the weak by the strong’ he calls God ‘the destroyer of the devils or tyrants, and slayer of the villians.”
Where God is the destroyer of the tyrant, the seeker has to carry out His Will, and Guru Nanak rejected Ahimsa, and put on his society the social responsibility of resisting oppression and tyranny.
It seems McLeod’s lapse in omitting all the positive attributes of God in Sikhism and the life affirming character of Sikh theology, and instead of selecting a single negative attribute of God, ‘Akalpurkh’ a word which hardly appears in the Guru Granth, is intended to suggest that Sikhism is an uncreative, life negating salvation religion. And this view he does appear to express when he says, after quoting God’s Timelessness or Ineffability “Many more are words which designate his attributes, commonly as negatives which attempt in the traditional style to define reality in terms of what it is not. Indeed the term a Kal or “timeless” is a conspicuous example.” (p. 49) Considering the emphatically positive aspects of Guru Granth, the Sikh Scripture and the Sikh movement, it is not easy for us to resist the inference that McLeod’s compulsions in making serious misrepresentations indicated above are that unless he did that all his interpretation about Sikh history being without clear objectives and internal drive and direction, and being determined principally by the environment would fall to pieces. The book clearly. Suffers from many serious omissions, some of them being calculated. McLeod’s handicap in understanding the Guru Granth appears to be his lack of adequate knowledge of Punjabi and the Sikh religious idiom and concepts. His statements regarding the Sikh religion are at best naive, in fact, a misrepresentation, since his work lacks the rudimentary method of first identifying the chief elements of a system from its original texts and then of comparing them with those of other systems.
Here is another instance of a misstatement, McLeod writes, “the impact of Nath influences can presumably be observed in the characteristic Sant stress on the irrelevance of caste status as a means of deliverance, the folly of sacred languages and scriptures the futility of temple worship and pilgrimage.” (p. 26). Little does McLeod know that not only do the Naths observe caste prejudices but they also believe in the utility of pilgrimage to sacred Hindu places and the worship of images of Hindu gods at their monasteries. Failure to consult proper sources remains his chief disability.
Another untenable observation of Mcleod is about the authenticity of the Adi Granth compiled by the Fifth Guru in 1604 A.D. In 1975 McLeod wrote, “the conclusion which seems to be emerging with increasing assurances was that the widely disseminated Banno version must represent the original text, and that the Kartarpur manuscript must be a shortened version of the same text. A few portions must have been deleted because they could not be reconciled with beliefs, subsequently accepted by the Panth. This much appeared to be well established. “Later still portions of the Kartarpur manuscript (the original manuscript written by Bhai Gurdas) were rather ineptly obliterated in order to bring the two versions in line.” Early in 1980’s the University team of scholars from Amritsar, Principal Harbhajan Singh and Prof Pritam Singh all separately examined the Banno Bir at Kanpur and found that it had been written in Samvat 1699 (A.D 1642), since the Bir bore that date. Prof Pritam Singh actually read a paper abroad and later published it in the University Journal of Sikh Studies in 1984. We examined the Kartarpuri Bir and early in 1987, delivered commemoration lectures, published in July 1987 concluding as had earlier been done by Dr. Jodh Singh and Mohan Singh, that Kartarpuri Bir was the original one and suffered from no “inept obliteration” as suggested by Mcleod whose statements at Cambridge and Berkley were found to be incorrect, And in his Present book of 1989 Mcleod repeats his earlier assertion: “A textual problem of considerable significance is indicated by a comparison of the Banno recession with reports concerning the actual contents of the Kartarpur manuscript This comparison suggests that the Banno recension may actually represent the original text inscribed by Bhai Gurdas,” but adds that if this is indeed the case the original version has subsequently been amended by obliterating occasional portions of the text.” Without Reference to the preponderant and long standing published evidence to the contrary regarding the two Birs and without his ever having examined any of them, Mcleod’s repeated statement wrongly casting doubts on the authenticity of the scripture of another religion, seems to suggest both the Poverty of his scholarly awareness and the lack of a sense of Propriety. (To be continued)
Article extracted from this publication >> September 29, 1989
