Sir,

Dr.Mcleod’s claim “Why the question of Guru Nanak is a complex one” is a piece of confusion and contradictions. The truth of his denial that he did not say categorically that Guru Nanak was not the founder of Sikhism can be judged from his statements first in his book of 1975 “The Evolution of Sikh Community” that it is misleading to call Guru Nanak the founder of Sikhism as he did not originate a new school of thought or set of teachings and second in his book of 1989 “The Sikhs” writing “If we seek origin of Sikh tradition the place to look for is surely the wider area of Hinduism and specifically the teachings of the Sants. Nanak did not found Sikhism for that would have meant founding something which already existed.” Secondly his statement that when he read Dr. Jodh Singh’s book “Kartarpuri Bir De Darshan” he abandoned the notion as meaningless for two reasons. First because Dr. Jodh Singh’s book relates to a page by page account of the Kartarpun Bir and not to ideological matters. Secondly it appeared decades before Dr. Mcleod made his two statements in his books of 1975 and 1989. He even referred to Jodh Singh’s book in his former publication.

If Mcleod’s abandonment of the notion relates to the authenticity of the Kartarpuni Bir the same is self-contradictory because in 1975 he wrote “The conclusion which seemed to be emerging with increasing assurance that the widely disseminated Banno version must represent the original text and that the Kartarpuri 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. “Later still portions of the Kartarpuri manuscript (the original manuscript written by Bhai Gurdas) were rather ineptly obliterated in order to bring the two versions in line” McLeod wrote the above even though in the very book of his he quoted Jodh Singh’s statement in Kartarpuri Bir De Darshan that there was no such deletion.

The above are McLeod’s own clear conclusions. Nothing has been quoted out of context.

Dr. Satnam Singh Dhami

New York City NY

Article extracted from this publication >> January 4, 1991