Dr. Bakhshish Singh Nijjar Idolatry, worship of material image which is held to be the abode of a super human personality. The practice was common among primitive peoples and was also a characteristic of such great civilizations as the Egyptian, Chaldean, Indian, Greek and Roman. Worship of idols appears to be phase of Religious evolution natural to man at a certain stage of culture. The earlier stages were nature worship (qv), the adoration of personified objects and animism (qv) or belief in spirits embodied in material things. Influences exerted by the Babylonian and Egyptian cultures led the nations of Palestine to adopt symbolical representations of the gods until the Hebrew prophets forced their abandonment. Islam forbids the making of a representation of any living thing. Christian veneration of sacred images was at various times in history confounded with idolatry. Idolatry has been very popular with Hindus in India. All the Sikh Gurus, practically revolted against the image worship and also the Hindu Saints, whose compositions were included in the Adi Granth. Sikhism is unequivocally against idolatry. Guru Nanak has reflected on the Hindu idol-worshippers: “The Hindus have forgotten God, are going the wrong way. They worship according to the instruction of Narad. (Narad’s Pancharatra, which includes idolatry) they are blind and dumb, the blindest of the blind. The ignorant fools take stones and worship them. O Hindus, how shall the stone which itself sinketh carry you across? (Bihagre-ki-var).
“My brothren, you worship goddesses and gods; what can you ask them? and what can they give you? Even if a stone be washed with water, it will again sink in it.” (Guru NanakSorth-Ashtapadi) God is pleased with love and service, not with idolatry or pilgrimages.
“God maketh Himself manifest and beholdeth men.” He is not pleased by obstinate penance nor by many religious garbs.”(Guru Nanak-Dhanasri).
“How can a stone be pleased, and what can we gain by worshipping it? God who is life within our lives, by whose support we exist, and who is ever bounteous to us all-that God you supposed to be a stone. God prevelleth sca and land, who conferred happiness here and hereafter, who is contained in animate and inanimate nature, who is in the past, present and future, who is supreme in the three worlds and to whom none is equal- that God you imagine to be an inanimate object. How can He be pleased with you when you treat him with such utter indignity?” (Guru Arjan Adi Granth p.196).
“To the chaste woman repetition of idols’ names, ablutions, aims, austerities, penance, pilgrimage, fasting worship, and daily ceremonies are of no avail.” (Bhai Gurdas XXXIX).
“The worship of images is unreal: the worship of God alone is real. Nothing can be obtained by image worship. They who place images before them and worship them are fools. Let all my Sikhs ever meditate on the immortal God and worship none be- sides.” (Dasam Granth P.143). “If I bring a pitcher and fill it with water to bathe the idol. Forty lakhs of animals species are in the water, God is contained in them; why should I bathe Him? Wherever I go there God is contained; God supremely happy ever sporeth.” (Bhagat Namdev, in the Adi Granth p.963).
“If God be found by worshipping a stone, I will worship a mountain; Better than that stone is a hand-mill which grindeth com for the world to cat.”(Kabir Bhagat Adi Granth p.873) Bhagat Kabir condemns the Sharhads and idolatry:
“No body obeyth his parents when alive, yet he giveth them feasts when dead:
Say how poor parents obtain what the raverns and the dogs have eaten.” “Men make goddesses and gods of clay, and offer them living sacrifices.” As your lifeless gods, your deceased, who ask not for what they want themselves. (Kabir Bhagat- Adi Granth = p.963). Bibliography
- Text: Bhat Gur-Bani
- Text: Adi Granth
- Religion of the Hindus vol. I Professor H.H. Wilson.
- Bharat Khanda chatravachin Kh 5. Gur-Shabad Ratnakar-Mahakosh- Bhai Kahan Singh.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 31, 1995
