The word Sikh is the Punjabi form of Sanskrit Shishya, which means a learner and a disciple. The Sikhs as a community are the disciples and followers of the Gurus, Nanak to Gobind Singh, who created, out of the disunited and shredded fabric of society in northern India, a well-knit homogeneous body of people devoted in, bold and selfless spirit to the service of their countrymen. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, was born in Talwandirai Bhoi (now called Nankana Sahib), to the southwest of Lahore (Paki an) in April 1469. He was a revolutionary, religious and social reformer according to whom the political and cultural domination of the people by the ruling and priestly classes was chiefly responsible for their degeneration. Their emancipation, he thought, could only be brought about by new consciousness which should instill into them the unity and fatherhood of God and the equality and fraternity man, He refused to recognize the distinction between man and man and between the sexes created by the old caste system and other orthodox social conventions and proclaimed that all women born were equal in the eyes of God.
He felt that the real cause of the misery of the people was their disunity born of diversity of belief. He sought, therefore, to bring them together both in thought and deed. He inculcated a common mode of worship and a common social organization based on equality of man. He laid the foundation of Sangat or mixed congregations where his disciples met in the ‘evenings as brothers in faith, sang the hymns of the Guru and derived inspiration for remoulding their lives. He also established a free community kitchen, Guru Ka Langar, where all sat and ate together in the same row (Panga), regard Jess of distinctions of caste, creed or status in life. The Hindus and the Muslims, the Brabimns and the Sudras were thus brought by Guru Nanak to a common social level.
Unlike many other saints and reformers of India, Guru Nanak did not confine himself exclusively to a life of prayer and devotion. He refused to sit idle in slumbering meditation while his people groaned under the heel of the oppressor. He awakened them to a new political consciousness and upbraided the rulers of his day, saying: ‘kings are butchers, cruelty their knife, Dharma, or the sense of duty and responsibility, has taken wings and vanished’. According to him “it was only fools and idiots who ruled’ with little regard to the good of the people, “The kings’, according to Guru Nanak, ‘should be dispensers of equity and justice’. He felt outraged at the spectacle of Eminapad during the invasion of Babar in 1521 and protested with tears of blood at the helplessness of his countrymen reduced to abject slavery by the soldiers of the Mughal. His protest was simultaneously a demand for liberty and for freedom from foreign yoke. The same demand for freedom applied to his attacks on religious bondage and social slavery. Attack on any type of slavery is born of a yearning for liberty. The freedom of conscience is the first requisite for the uplift of a downtrodden people and Guru Nanak laid the greatest stress on it. This was a message of hope to the people to shake off their cowardice and dependence and to have faith in God ‘who could, in an instant, demolish the old kingly edifices and raise the lowest of the lowly to the highest pedestal’. His institutions of Sangat and Pangat brought before the people the vision of a classless democratic society where all could claim equal status, This made Guru Nanak, a symbol of manly independence and self-reliance, which, as history shows, helped create a people whose paralle in indomitable courage and dogged tenacity in war ‘and peace has yet to be seen. Guru Nanak was a great traveller. He visited the centers of various religions and obtained firsthand knowledge of the lives and practices of their followers. At Hardwar, Kurukshetra and Banaras he saw Brahmanism in practice. In the Himalayas and in the northern parts of India, he discoursed with the Yogis, Sidhs and Naths. He met the Buddhists in Tibet, Burma and Ceylon, He went to Arabia and Iraq and met the Muslim Hajis and divines in Mecca and Baghdad, He is believed to have visited the land of the black Habash, Abyssinia, and some of the islands of the Indian Ocean, Thus for forty tong years of his life, he travelled throughout the length and breadth of India and in the far off foreign lands to study the various religions in practice ‘and to preach his message of the brotherhood of mankind as sons of the same Divine Father, with diversity due only to geographical and historical causes. Wherever he ‘went he proclaimed that there was but one God, not of the Hindus or of the Musalman but of all mankind, Under whatever name He is worshipped or remembered — Rama, Allah, etc., — He is the ‘One, formless, invisible, uncreated creator, fearless and friendly, great and bountiful. The worship of God is not the exclusive privilege of a priestly class. He is best worshipped in selfless service of humanity wherein every man and woman should participate to deserve His blessings. Guru Nanak protested against idolatory, blind superstition and empty ritual which had sapped religious faith and morality and parted the hearts of men from their Creator.
“In the doctrines of Nanak’, says CH, Payne, ‘morality holds higher place than in those of any other Hindu reformer. Few, even of the world’s greatest philosophers, have laid down a more exalted ‘moral code than is to be found in the pages of the Granth Sahib (the Sikh scripture). Purity of life is set forth as the highest object of human endeavor … Loyalty, chastity, honesty, justice, mercy and temperance are among the virtues on which vital stress is laid’.
Guru Nanak did not advocate renunciation or asceticism. Towards the end of his life he settled down with his family and sons at Kartar pur (now in Pakistan) opposite to Dera Baba Nanak in the Gurdaspur district. He was a prophet of the people. Their service ‘was the greatest happiness of life. He lived amongst them, shared their sorrows and pleasures and taught them the way of honest and truthful living, “Truth is high, but higher still is truthful living’, said he.
He wished his disciple to be the servants of God and His people. “Having created the human body, God has installed His very self-therein,” said he. And, ‘this world is the Chamber of God wherein the True One resides’ — Jh jage sachche ki hai kothri, sachche ka vich yas, Therefore, with this human body, ‘Let us be of service in this world so that we may find a seat in the court of the Lord’ — Vick duniya sev kamayie, tan darsgeh baisan paiye,
Guru Nanak was a great poet. The entire literary legacy bequeathed by him consists of poetry. He not only gave his people a living philosophy, a distinct outlook on life, but also a rich literary tradition, for which he has, ever since, served as a perennial fount of inspiration. He adopted as the medium of his expression his ‘mother tongue, Punjabi, the potentialities of which for high literary work had not yet been explored. He raised it to the status of a rich and elastic language which could adequately express the fine shades and moods of powerful mind like his own.
He was held in affection not only by his Sikh disciples but also by his Hindu and Muhammad an countrymen who looked upon him as a national holy Saint and called him Baba Nanak or Nanak Shah. On his death in 1539 at Kartar pur he was claimed by both as their own, and they both in their ‘own fashions raised mausoleums in his memory with a common wall between them a thing unique in the history of religions.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 14, 1986
