By Dr. Mohan Singh

SIKHISM is the religion of prayer minded people. Prayer is the very breath of Sikh culture and/or way of life both at the individual as well as organizational levels. Sikhs pray to God on all occasions of happiness and sorrow, of trials and triumphs, and for starting and concluding individual and corporate enterprises. They conclude their supplication (Ardas) with the prayer “NANAK NAM CHARDHI KALA TERE BHANE SARBAT DA BHALA”. When translated into English, it means that Sikh people beg the Lord to grant them undying optimism and the ability to work toward universal welfare and they wish happiness and bliss for everybody.

In my judgment, “undying optimism” (CHARDHI KALA) is a psychological state and in order to experience it and keep it at a higher level, the Sikhs have to raise their level of self-concept both at individual as well as collective level, but for improving self-concept individually and collectively, Sikhs have to understand, defend and protect their cultural identity.

The Sikh cultural identity has external (visible and recognizable) as well as internal (psychological) dimensions which interact with each other and are mutually supportive. Thus the maintenance of external identity by keeping unshorn hair and following other externals facilitates behavioral adherence to fundamentals of Sikhism such as saintliness, soldierliness and scholarliness.

Saintliness has been well defined in the Sikh Holy Book “GURU GRANTH SAHIB” in a number of places including in Guru Arun’s composition Sukhmani (PEACE LAGOON).

Soldierliness owes its origin to the concept of ‘MIRI” (people organized to defend their cultural identity) which became an integral part of Sikh culture as a historical necessity, in response to threats of extermination by hostile environmental forces. The Sikhs eulogize the qualities of soldierliness in their daily prayer for cataloguing names of martyres, who laid down their lives for the defense of “Sikh identity” and an updated list, in addition to others would certainly include names of Baba Kharak Singh, Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwala, and Sardar Beant Singh.

Scholarliness means behaving as a lifelong learner and that is what the word Sikh literally means. While he is supposed to be created in God’s image like the rest of humankind, nevertheless, the Sikhs have to be shaped in the images of their Gurus from Nanak to Gobind Singh. There are numerous examples of Sikh scholarliness and these would certainly include, in addition to others, names of Bhai Gurdas, Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha and Sardar Kapur Singh, LGS The behavioral adherence to saintliness, soldierliness and scholarliness should strengthen the “Sikh belief system” and resolve to defend their external identity.

Cultural identities of all people function within environmental forces of broader culture. The influences of broader culture could provide nourishment to cultures functioning within it and facilitate its growth and development or contaminate or poison it resulting in its gradual decline and ultimate death.

Historically speaking, Islamic, and Brahmanical cultures are two major forces within which the Sikh culture functions in its native home. The Sikh culture did and could coexist with Islam in spite of confrontations between the two in the past. The same cannot be said about its relationship with Brahmanism. History stands testimony to the intrinsic and inborn hostility of Brahmanism to Sikhism right from the time of Guru Nanak to date. An in-depth analysis of fundamentals of Sikhism and Brahmanism conclusively prove that they have irreconcilable differences. Sikhism did and could coexist with Brahmanism in India as long as Brahmanism did not monopelise control of India’s political system as the case was before 1947. Conclusive Statistical evidence is available since 1947 of Brahmanisation at an alarming Tate of all organs of the political system of India including the legislative, executive and Judiciary,’ Guru Gobind Singh, father of the “Sikh people” made the following observation regarding our duty to maintain and defend our unique cultural identity:

Article extracted from this publication >>  July 10, 1987