By: Dr. Hakam Singh
According to Oberoi, towards the second half of nineteenth century the Sikhs, by and large, believed in, and practiced rituals and rites and customs akin to those practiced by the Hindus of! Punjab, for some unknown reason he has coined the word “Sanatan Sikhs”, which he has given to this presumed majority. The reason for this title is explained as follows.
“The word Sanatan derives from Sanskrit and has connotation of something that is ancient, almost ‘as if out of secular time (P.92).” He further explains, “The Sanatan Sikhs came in the course of the nineteenth century to quite literally believe that their theology, rites, and practices had ancient origins and were beyond the pale of diachronic time.” He goes onto say that “the Sanatan Sikhs, in addition to considering Adi Granth and Dasam Granth as their sacred texts, also began to accord an almost analogous status to the Puranas (P.99)”, The reason for inclusion of Puranas into the category of sacred texts je “that much of the Dasam Granth materials had been culled from the Puranas (P. 100) “. ‘To substantiate his arguments Oberoi quotes Anandghan as “one of the best known Sikh exegetes™ and gives in extensor his exposition of the words “Satnam Karta, Purakh”’, the first line of the first stanza of Japu Ji to prove the pervasiveness of the impact of what Dasam Granth represented. After carefully going through this exposition of Anandghan the only conclusion that one could draw is that it was unimaginative and that even with the stretch of one * s imagination one could not: draw the conclusion that Oheri has been able to extract. In addition to the Sanatan Sikh religion Oberoi also invokes the idea of a popular religion in Punjab in the nineteenth century. At some places he has intermingled the two while at other places, as it suits him, he has made efforts to keep the two separate, Anyway, the main attributes of these followers of Sanatan and/or Popular Sikhism are the worship of Sakhi Sarver, Guga Pir, Seetla Devi, and the village ancestors. Of these only in the case of Sakhi sarvar worship has he presented some statistics. But the conclusion he has drawn from these figures are just short of fantasy. According to him about 3% of the total population of Sikhs in 1911 reported that they were the followers of Sakhi Sarvar. On the basis of this measly figure he has the temerity to conclude that the Sanatan Sikhism was the prevalent faith during the nineteenth century. He must have soon realized the weakness of his argument because he tries to hedge by saying that as a result of the efforts of Singh Sabha movement a sharp decline in the number of followers of Sakhi Sarvar must have taken place between 1880 and 1911. Thus he seems to believe that there was a sharp rise in the number of Sanatan Sikhs between the beginning of the nineteenth century and 1880 and an equally sudden fall in their numbers after 1880 as if by the waving of a magic wand. At another point in this book Oberoi has inadvertently given a rather different thought on which these so-called Sanstan Sikhs were. During the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, “the Khalsa principles were watered down by the Lahore state, in part how it sanctioned the rituals and life cycle ceremonies associated with Brahmanical Hinduism and its accompanying social system encapsulated in the Varna hierarchy.” This explanation seems more plausible because a sudden opportunistic influx of Hindus into the folds of Sikhism resulted in a number of such people getting close to the maharaja, e.g., Dogra brothers, who were never Sikhs at heart. Such people manipulated the maharaja, who himself, to start with, was not too enthusiastic and staunch a follower of the Khalsa tradition. It will also be incorrect to say that all of the new converts were opportunist is because even after the Khalsa Raj was gone a fairly large number stayed within the folds of Sikhism. However, it will be treasonably correct to assume that a fairly large number of the new initiates could not and did not give up their age old traditions and break blood relations and thus observed only the most a significant rules! of the new religion as is reported by Ibbetson;2)”” With the exception of the Akalis, who still adhered to the ordinances of the Khalsa, many of the original observances of the Sikhs had fallen in disuse but for the five external signs and abstinence from tobacco”. As a matter of semantics Oberoi has the liberty to give this group of Sikhs any romantic name. They came from the so called Sanatan Dharm and therefore one could justify this name but not for the reasons given by Oberoi.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 11, 1994
