By H. Singh
ONE notices a very tenacious and dogged tendency on the part of some of our Hindu brethren to present to the world at large, the Sikh religion as nothing more than a tiny offshoot of Hinduism. To make their point they employ number of set propositions. We will state and examine at length, the most frequently used propositions by them here below.
Proposition No. 1
“Sikhism was started 500 years ago by Guru Nanak who was a Hindu. All the nine Gurus that followed Nanak were Hindus. Therefore, all the Sikhs are Hindus”.
True, Sikhism was started by Guru Nanak. The other nine Gurus (spiritual teachers) came after him in the course of time. The last one, Guru Gobind Singh, breathed his last in 1708 A.D. It is plain falsehood to assert, however, that anyone of the Sikh spiritual preceptors was a Hindu. Nanak was born in a Hindu family. But does that historical fact alone make him a Hindu? If the answer to this question is in the affirmative then we have to admit that there is no such thing as an independent Christian religion. All the Christians are Jews, since Jesus was born to Mary, who was Jewish by faith.
Our Hindu friends who advance the above noted ludicrous argument should have the sense to realize the fallacy of their reasoning. All the founders of new faiths were born in families holding religions other than the ones they founded. If the reasoning that the faith of the parents determines the religion of a person, is accepted as valid, then today there would have been only one religion on the face of the earth.
Our Hindu brethren conveniently forget the most important historical fact that Nanak, at the age of 9, declined to be initiated into Hindu faith by not donning the cotton thread, at a special ceremony arranged for that purpose by his parents. When the family priest Hardial, wanted to put the sacred thread on his person, Nanak responded by saying:
“Make Mercy the cotton, Contentment the string,
Self-restraint the knot, and Truth the widing thereof. Verily,
this alone is soul’s sacred thread!
Pundit, if you’ve thread like the one,
On my person, sure, you put it
- For, it breaks not, it soils not, It burns not, it wastes not”. (Adi Granth 471.2)
Proposition No. 2
“The great Gurus and their devotees did not lose their faith overnight just because the last Sikh Guru (Gobind Singh) started the order of wearing beards, turbans, combs, swords etc.”.
It is to be noted that all the Sikh spiritual preceptors wore turbans, beards, and combs. The wearing of the sword was first added to the list of Sikh apparel by the 6th Guru, Hargobind, and not by Guru Gobind Singh. Guru Gobind Singh merely formalized what was already there before him, by introducing the institution of baptism of the double-edged sword and the sweet water.
A noted Hindu scholar, Dr. Gokul Chand Narang, has most aptly described this aspect of Sikhism in his book “Transformation of Sikhism”. According to Narang, the sword that Guru Gobind Singh gave to his disciples was made out of the steel that was in reality produced by Guru Nanak.
There was no essential difference at all between the teachings of Guru Nanak and those of Guru Gobind Singh.
Proposition No. 3
“The Holy Book of the Sikhs draws its inspiration from the Hindu Vedic scriptures. Therefore, the Sikh religion is a sect of Hinduism”.
The Sikh scripture draws inspiration from the Vedas’, is a statement which can be made only by an individual not conversant with the contents of the scripture. The Sikh holy book, on page 2, instructs us as follows.
The Guru’s Word is the Nada for you,
The Guru’s Word is the Veda for you.
While “Veda” is a Brahminic word, “Nada” is characteristically a Yogic concept which is used for
“sound” and “word”. “Nada”
when used in the sense of AnhadNad, stands for mystical music which is said to be heard by the Yogins in a state of their deep concentration (Samadhi).
Again, on page 773 of the Sikh scriptures, we read:
Looking upon Guru’s Word as Brahma, Looking upon Guru’s Word
as the Veda, Being resolute in the practice of righteousness, Shall Thou dispel, with Grace, all thy sins.
On page 804 of the Sikh holy book, we read:
I have reflected on the Vedas, the Shastras, and the Smirities,
But I will cross the Sea of Existence only by dwelling on Lord’s Name.
On the same page, once more, the importance of Guru’s Word has been stressed upon in the following terms:
I have reflected in my mind on Guru’s Word,
And through it got all my wishes and hopes fulfilled.
The foremost of all the wishes of a Sikh remains the attainment of his oneness and unity with his creator, the Lord.
On page 288 of the scripture, Guru Arjan informs his Sikhs as to how the prime goal of their lives, that is, Supreme Spirit, has to be realized by them. He says:
All your efforts are in vain, They will save you not. Nor all the readings of the Smirities,
Nor of the Shastras and the Vedas.
With all your heart, meditate on Lord’s Name. And get all your mind’s wishes fulfilled.
On page 1126 of the Sikh Scripture, Guru Nanak appears to warn his audience not to adopt the Brahminic ways as has been prescribed in their ancient books, in these words:
You’re not conscious that your feet stagger,
You reish not setting your mind on the Word. Instead, you’ve involved yourself in Vedas and Smirities The books that keep you bound to the objects of this world.
O you ignorant one! you’re engaged in a senseless . strife,
The point that the place of the Vedas has been taken by Gurbani (Guru’s Word) in Sikh religion, is hammered again on page 879 of
the holy book, wherein we are informed:
The Gurbaniis the Nada for us, The Gurbaniis the Veda for us, Through it, we are imbued with the Lord.
For the followers of Nanak, the Vedas are out, for good; the Guru Granth is in forever, and forever. There can be no going back on this count.
As we will see in the essays that follow, the Sikh Holy Book contains the Word of God, received through the vehicle of the Sikh Gurus. Abandoning this nector Word, a Sikh will never commit the fatal error of putting his faith on the Vedas, whose status as being the books revealed by God is questioned even by the Hindus themselves.
Devinder Nath Tagore observes: “Venerable as the Vedas might be as relics of the former age, they contained so much that was childish, erroneous and impossible as to make their descent from the Divine source utterly untenable”.
Another Bengali scholar of high repute, K.K. Bhatacharya, after making an extensive study of the Vedas, has this to say: “…… dreary wilderness, but at distant intervals
redeemed by slight flashes of satire and quaint flights of fancy”.
- Radhakrishnan, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, does not consider that the Rig Veda is a book revealed by God. Rather, he regards the hymns of the Rig Veda as the utterances of the primitive though poetic people. He writes: “The hymns are philosophical to the extent that they attempt to explain the mysteries of the world not by any superhuman insight or extraordinary revelation, but by the light of the unaided reason”, (Indian Phil. Vol. I, P. 71).
On the other hand, the spiritual message that Guru Nanak gave to the world, was not only new and fresh in its flavor, it was quite revolutionary in the frame of time in which it was delivered. He clearly contradicted the atheistic doctrines of the most venerated Sage Kapila, the founder of Samkhya, the first and the oldest Hindu system of thought. Nor did he share the atheistic views of Sage Patanjali, the founder of Yoga system. He did not see eye to eye with Buddha who remained liptied throughout his whole life, as regards the existence of God.
Nanak did not agree with the great Shankracharys, who having denied the act of creation of God,
declared that the perceptible universe was nothing more than an illusion of the human mind. Hinduism, or more accurately Brahminism, is essentially a polytheistic faith with a belief in many gods, (Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Surya, Chandra, Ganesha, Agni, Indra, Vayu, and Varuna, to mention only a few) and many goddesses (Parvati, Saraswati, Durga, Kali and the like) which in one form or another are daily venerated and worshipped by adherents of its faith. In contrast, Sikhism, like Juda ism, Christianity and Islam, is a monotheistic religion with a belief in the one everexistent Reality. As Nanak, himself puts it: The Author of Things doth ever last,
True is His glory, oh True is He! He is not born, nor doth He die,
He is, was, and ever shall be!
(Adi Granth 6:13)
Notwithstanding the geographical proximity that existed between the Sikhs and the Hindus, Nanak’s belief in the existence of one God and equality of man, and his forthright rejection of both idol worship and caste system, philosophically
, take him nearer to Semitic religions than to the mutually contradictory and unintelligible plethora of cults that are lumped together under one grey blanket of
Brahminism.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
Article extracted from this publication >> October 9, 1987
