Introduction

In order to understand the Sikh worldview, it is necessary to answer a number of questions, namely,

 (1) What is the spiritual experience of the Gurus about the fundamental Reality?

 (2) What are the logical implications of that religious experience?

 (3) How do these implications or ideas differ from those in other religions?

 (4) Did those ideas govern the course of Sikh religion?

 (5) What future does the Sikh worldview hold for man? In answering these questions we shall confine ourselves entirely to the bani in Guru Granth Sahib and historically accepted facts about the lives of the Gurus. Many of the misrepresentations about Sikhism arise from the failure of writers to understand Sikhism on the basis of its thesis or to define Sikhism in terms of doctrines in the Guru Granth Sahib. Obviously, in this short paper, we shall only give an outline of the Sikh worldview. We shall start with a definition of the fundamental Reality or God in Sikhism.

 God in Sikhism

The Reality or God has been profusely defined in the Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Nanak calls Him “Karta Purkh” or “Creator Person”, the world being His creation. Apart from being immanent in the world, He is the Ocean of virtues, i.e., He is a God of Attributes. In defining the fundamental nature of God, the Guru says, “Friends ask me what is the mark of the Lord. He is all Love, the rest He is Ineffable.”! Thus, the key to understanding the Sikh worldview is that God is Love. And Love has four clear facets. It is dynamic; it is the mother of all virtues and values; it is directive or has a Will; and it is Benevolent towards life in which He is immanent; i.e., it generates neither a dialectical movement, nor a class war, nor suicidal competition or struggle.

Corollaries of ‘God is Love’

 This spiritual experience leads to five corollaries. First, it ipso facto gives status, meaning and reality to the world and life, because Love and God’s Attributes can be expressed only in a becoming universe. For, when God was all by Himself, the question of love and devotion did not arise. In unambiguous words, the Guru says, “True is He, and true is His creation”. Second, it clearly implies that the religious man has to lead a life of creativity and activity. Consequently, a householder’s life is accepted and monasticism is spurned. Third, this gives spiritual sanction to the moral life of man, indicating thereby that it should be of the same character as the loving nature of God. For, “Love, contentment, truth, humility and virtues enable the seed of Naam (God) to sprout”. 3 This clearly prescribes the methodology of deeds. Fourth, it unambiguously points out the direction in which human effort should move, and the yardstick with which to measure human conduct. This sets the goal for the seeker, or God-man. Fifth, it shows the gracious interest of God in human affairs and activities. An important attribute of God is that He

is ‘Guru’ or Enlightener who gives both knowledge and guidance, i.e., spiritual experience is noetic. The Guru’s God being a God of Will, one feels confident that one is working in line with His altruistic Will. For, God is perpetually creating and watching the world with His Benevolent Eye.” And, He rewards every effort to become divine. For that matter, it gives man hope, strength and optimism.

Implication of ‘God is Love’

Here it is necessary to stress that the definition that God is Love, is extremely important for determining the category of Sikh religion. For, all systems in which God is Love, are life affirming, and there is an integral combination between the spiritual life and the empirical life of man. And, as in the case of Abu Ben Adam, love of one’s fellowmen, is the primary and essential counterpart of the love of God. But, in life-negating systems there is a clear dichotomy between the empirical life and the spiritual lite of man. And sanyasa, asceticism, monasticism, withdrawal from life, pacifism or ahimsa and celibacy are the normal modes of the spiritual path. Sikhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity belong to the first category.

 Jainism and most other Indian systems belong to the second category. In fact, differences in approach to life are due to the basic difference in the spiritual experience. In the second category of systems like Vaisnavism and Vedanta, God has been defined as ‘sat-chit-Ananad’ (truth, consciousness, bliss). This is far from being a dynamic concept. Stacey has made a detailed survey of the description various mystics give of the nature of their spiritual experience of the Ultimate Reality. They all give blessedness, tranquility, holiness, unitary consciousness and ineffability as the nature of their spiritual experience. No mystic mentions love as the characteristic of that experience. The distinction is not arbitrary but real. Huxley says, “The Indians say, the thought and the thinker and the thing thought about are one and then of the way in which this un owned experience becomes something belonging to me; then no me anymore and a kind of sat chit-ananda at one moment without Karuna or charity (how odd that the Vedantists say nothing about love) … I had an inkling of both kinds of nirvana the loveless being, consciousness, bliss and the one with love, and, above all, sense that one can never love enough”.’ He also says, “Staying in this ecstatic consciousness and cutting oneself off from participation and commitment in the rest of the world this is perfectly expressed today in powerful slang, in the phrase ‘dropping out’. It completely denies the facts, it is morally wrong, and finally of course, absolutely catastrophic”. “Absolutely Catastrophic”. Hence, the religious system laid down by the Gurus is radically different from the earlier Indian systems.

Consequent differences with other religious systems of India

As it is, the Guru’s concept of God is quite different from the concept of many of the quietest mystics, or from the Indian concept of Sat-Chit-Ananda. We find that Guru Nanak’s system follows strictly his spiritual experience and his view of the Attributes of God. And as a God man, he seeks to follow the line of expression of God’s attributes in the world of man. Consequently, in the empirical life, this concept has important implications which stand emphasised in the bani and life of Guru Nanak. Hence, Guru Nanak’s system and its growth are entirely different from his contemporary religious systems and their growth.

First, it means, as already pointed out, the reality of the world and the life-affirming character of Sikhism. For, God is not only immanent in the world, but He also expresses His Love and Attributes in the empirical world, and casts a Benevolent Eye on His creation. But in Vedanta and other Indian systems, the world is either mithya, illusion, a misery, or a suffering. Second, Sikhism being life-affirming, this, inevitably, involves an integral combination between the spiritual life and the empirical life of man. This constitutes the foundation of the Miripiri doctrine laid down by Guru Nanak in his bani. In other words, Guru Nanak’s system is a whole-life system like Islam and Judaism which also combine the spiritual and the empirical lives of man. Third, in consequence of it, monasticism, sanyasa, asceticism, pacifism and withdrawal from life are rejected, and a house holder’s life is accepted as the forum of spiritual activities and growth. Logically, monasticism and celibacy go together, and Guru Nanak categorically rejected both of them. Obviously, God’s qualities of being ‘Shelter to the shelter less’, ‘Milk to the child’, “Riches to the poor’, and ‘Eyes to the blind’,’ can be expressed by the God man only by being a householder and participating in all walks of life, and not by withdrawing from them. The fourth difference follows as a corollary to this and to the rejection of celibacy, namely, equality between man and woman. In contrast, we find that in life-negating systems, and more especially in the Indian systems, the position on all these four points is essentially different. For them, life is far from real or an arena of spiritual endeavors. The spiritual path and the worldly path are considered separate and distinct. Whether it is Vedanta, Jainism, Buddhism, Vaisnavism or Nathism, asceticism, monasticism, ahimsa, sanyasa or withdrawal from life into Bhikshuhood is the normal course. In consequence, celibacy is the rule, and woman is deemed to be a temptress. Dighambra Jains believe that a woman cannot reach Kavalla (spiritual summit), and has first to achieve male incarnation.’° In Buddhism, woman Bhikshus are deemed second grade compared to male Bhikshus who are considered senior to them.’’ A male Bhikshus is not supposed to touch and rescue a drowning woman, even if she were his mother.!? Sankara calls woman ‘the gateway to hell’? Both Ramanuja and Shankar deva (a liberal Vaisnava saint) would not admit a woman to be a Vaishnav. The latter stated, “Of all the terrible aspirations of the world, woman is the ugliest. A slight side glance of hers captivates even the hearts of celebrated sages. Her sight destroys prayer, penance «id meditation. Knowing this, the wise keep away from the compar. of woman”.’5 Bhagat Kabir, we know, is considered a misogynist calls woman ‘black cobra’, ‘pit of hell’ and ‘the refuse of the world’. 6 It is well Known that even today in Catholic Christianity, a woman is not ordained as a priest. Against this, Guru Nanak not only sanctioned a householder’s life but stated as to, “How can a woman be called impure, when without woman there would be none”!

All this has been explained to stress that the basic perceptions about the nature of the spiritual experience and the ontological Reality being different, the spiritual paths, under the two categories of systems, become automatically divergent. Further, the acceptance of a householder’s life has important empirical and socio-political implications. Except for Guru Harkishan, who died at an early age, every Guru married and led a householder’s life. By way of demonstration, this step was essential, otherwise, the entire Indian tradition being different, Guru Nanak’s system would have been completely misunderstood and misinterpreted. We are well aware that it is the Naths who questioned Guru Nanak as to how incongruous it was that he was, on the one hand, wearing the clothes of a householder, and, on the other hand, was claiming to follow the religious path. Guru Nanak’s reply was equally cryptic and category when he said that the Naths did not know even the cemeteries of the spiritual path. For this very reason, the Guru did not make his son, Baba Sri Chand, a recluse, his successor.

Regarding the filth important difference about the goal of life of the religious man, Guru Nanak has made the position very clear in his Japuji. After putting a specific question as to what is the way to be a ‘sachiara’ or a true man, the Guru, while clearly rejecting the method of observing silence, coupled with continuous concentration or meditation, replies that the right method and goal are to carry out the Will of God.!? And, God being Love and the Ocean of virtues, His Will is altruistically creative and dynamic. The Sikh goal of life is, thus, to be active and live a creative life of love and virtues. The goal is not personal salvation, or merger in Brahman, but an ever active life of love. It is in this context that Guru Nanak gives the call, “If you want to play the game of love, then come to my path with your head on your palm; once you set your foot on this way, then find not a way out and be prepared to lay down your head”.”° For him, life is a game of love. It is significant that the same advice was given by Guru Arjun to Bhai Manjh who was then a Sakhi Sarvarya and wanted to be a Sikh of the Guru, “You may go on with the easy path of Sakhi Sarvar worship, because Sikhism is a very difficult path, and unless you are willing to be dispossessed of your wealth and to sacrifice your very life, it is no use coming to me’.24 Exactly, the same call for total commitment and sacrifice was given by Guru Gobind Singh on the Baisakhi Day, 1699, when he created the Khalsa and administered Amrit to the Panj Piaras. The goal being different, the sixth implication is as to the method to achieve that goal. In Sikhism, the emphasis is on the methodology of deeds. Guru Nanak has made this point very clear when he says in Japuji: “Man’s assessment in His court is done on the basis of one’s deeds”,”” and “It is by one’s deeds that we become near or away from God”. In order to stress the fundamental spiritual importance of deeds, Guru Nanak says, “Everything is lower than Truth, but higher still is truthful living”.4 In fact, when the Guru defines the Gurmukh or the superman, he calls him: ‘One who always lives truthfully”.

Essentials of Sikh life and its differences with other systems in matters of social responsibility

The basic difference between a whole-life system and a dichotomous system is that in the former, every field of life of operation of God, is also the field of operation and responsibility of both the God man and the seeker. This is the broad approach. Having defined the nature of God and the goal of man, the important issue is what the essentials of the religious life are. In the context explained above, Guru Nanak has fixed specific duties and responsibilities of the religious life. The first is of accepting equality between man and woman. Guru Nanak clearly stated, “Why downgrade woman, when without woman there would be none”, and “It is she who gives birth to great persons”.2° When the Third Guru created Manji or districts of religious administration, women were appointed in charge of some of them.?’ The second responsibility is of maintaining equality between man and man. This was a direct blow to the social ideology of Varn Ashram Dharma which gave scriptural sanction to the hierarchical caste system. Guru Nanak found fault with that ideology saying, “The Vedas make a wrong distinction of caste”,2 and “One cannot be a Yogi by mere wishing, real Yoga lies in treating all alike”.2? He demonstrated the primary importance of treating all as equal by taking, after his enlightenment, Mardana, a low caste Muslim, as his life companion. This meant a total departure from the then existing religious prejudices, not only against lower castes, but also against Muslims who were regarded as malechhas. He made it clear that any one wanting to join his society, had, at the very start, to shed all prejudices against inter-religious or inter-caste dining and social intercourse. The revolutionary character of this step could be gauged from the fact that a Ramanuja would throw the entire food as polluted, if any one cast a glance on it while he had been preparing or eating it

The third social responsibility, Guru Nanak emphasised, was the importance of work. This too, we find, was something opposed to the then prevalent religious practice. Evidently, otherworldliness, sanyasa and monasticism excluded the religious necessity of work and sustaining the society. In fact, the Naths who were then the principal religious Organisation in Punjab took a vow never to engage themselves in any work or business. But Guru Nanak says, “The person incapable of caring his Jiving gets his ears split (i.e. turns a Nath Yogi) and becomes a mendicant. He calls himself a Guru or saint, do not look up to him, nor touch his feet. He knows the way who earns his living and shares his earnings with others”.?

The Guru deprecates the Yogi who gives up the world, and then is not ashamed of begging at the door of the householders ? The fourth social responsibility Guru Nanak stressed was about the sharing of wealth. He stated, “God’s bounty belongs to all, but men grab it for themselves”! “Man gathers riches by making others miserable”. “Wealth cannot be gathered without sin, but it does not keep one’s company after death”. All this clearly condemns exploitative collection of wealth. The story of Guru Nanak rejecting the invitation of Malik Bhago, a rich person exploiting the poor, but accepting the hospitality of Lalo, a poor labourer, illustrates the same point as stressed in his bani.

Thus, the twin ideas about the brotherhood of man and the sharing of wealth to eliminate poverty and maintain equality in society were stressed by Guru Nanak. Even after his missionary tours, Guru Nanak took to the role of a peasant for the last 18 years of his life. It is significant that till the time of the Sixth Guru, when social and military duties of the leadership and Organisation of the Sikh society became quite heavy and absorbing, every Sikh Guru had been doing a vocation or business to support his family.

The fifth Social responsibility, where Guru Nanak radically departed from all the contemporary religious systems, including Sufism, Santism and Christianity, was his approach towards injustice and oppression of all kinds in society. He made a meticulous study of injustice and corruption, aggression and incongruity in every field of life. He pointed out the greed and hypocrisy of Brahmin priests and Mullahs, the ‘blood thirsty corruption’ and injustice by lower and higher-rung officials in the administration, the misrule, oppression and irresponsibility of the local rulers, their inability to give security, fair play and peace to the people, and brutal and barbaric butchery of the people. All this was not just idle rhetoric, but a diagnostic assessment of the prevailing turmoil and conditions in the society, which the Guru felt, needed to be changed. It needs emphasis that in Guru Nanak’s ideology, there was nothing like private or personal salvation. Just as God of Love is benevolently looking after the entire world, in the same way, the God man’s sphere of activity and responsibility & equally wide, and is un hedged by any self-created barriers. This is, as we shall see, a fundamental difference between a salvation religion catering for individuals, and a universal religion catering for the spiritual well-being of society as a whole.

Here it is very relevant to give, as recorded by Bertrand Russell, the contrasted approach of St. Augustine, one of the greatest exponents of the Christian gospel and author of “City of God”. Russell concludes: “It is strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the dark ages were concerned, not with saving civilization or expelling the barbarians or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants. Seeing that these were the preoccupations that the Church handed on to the converted barbarians, it is no wonder that the succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition”.*” Whereas Guru Nanak meticulously points out every dark spot in the religious and socio-political life of his times, St. Augustine is simply unconcerned with socio-political conditions of his period. For, “Augustine’s ‘City of God’ (426) attacked both Christians who expected the world to get better and pagans with a cyclic view of history. Augustine did not believe that the spread of Christianity would ensure political and economic improvement. The earthy city of self-will would continue to exist amidst the rise and fall of states and empires”.

Another important fact is Guru Nanak’s criticism in ‘Babar Vani’ of the brutalities and massacres perpetrated and misery caused by the invaders. He condemns them in the strongest terms and complains to God for allowing the weak to be trampled upon by the strong.” This hymn has an extremely important lesson, which many of us have missed. For, anything which is within the sphere of His creation and the responsibility of God is certainly within the sphere of responsibility of the God man. The hymn has four implications; first, that injustice and oppression are violative of the Order of God; second, that as the Master and God of Love, harmony has to be maintained by His Will; third, that, as the instrument of God, it is the spiritual duty and responsibility of the God man to confront all kinds of injustice; and, fourth, that, as such, resistance to oppression was a task and a target laid down by the Guru for the religious society he was Organising. Because, it is Guru Nanak who declines God as “Destroyer of the evil-doers’, 40 ‘Destroyer of demonical persons’,”!

‘Slayer of the inimical and ‘Protector of the weak’. Such being the God of Guru Nanak, it is equally the responsibility of the God man, Gurmukh, or the Sikh to carry out His Will which is just and altruistic.

In short, in Guru Nanak’s system to ensure equality and fair play and to react against injustice and aggression, become the religious duty and responsibility of the Sikh. Since the dawn of civilization, the greatest oppression and injustice have undeniably been done by the rulers, the State, or the Establishment that has possessed all the instruments of power and coercion. It is impossible for individuals to confront that power. This leads to two important inferences. First, that in a whole-life system like Sikhism, which combines spiritual life with the empirical life of man and accepts the miri-Piri doctrine, the religious man must, as a religious duty, resist and confront injustice, wherever it takes place. Second, that such a religious man should not only be cognizant of such injustice, but also organize a society that should be in a position to face the challenge of such injustice and oppression. This follows logically both from Guru Nanak’s bani and his system. This also explains why from the very beginning of his mission, he started Organising the Sikh societies at places which he visited and how the societies were logically linked and developed by his successors into the Panth. These aspects are very significant and important about his society and religion. It is obvious to every student of the Adi Granth that so far as the ideology is concerned, it had been completely laid down in the bani of Guru Nanak. But what was lacking was the presence of a properly motivated and responsible society that should be in a position successfully to discharge the responsibility of reacting against injustice and oppression prevalent in his times.

There is another important and related issue. Having cast on his society the responsibility of confronting injustice, again it is Guru Nanak who eliminated the hurdle of ahimsa or pacifism that stood’ as a bar against the religious man or a religious society trying to confront socio-political aggression. Among Vaisnava, Jains, Buddhist Bhikshus, Naths, or Radical Sants like Kabir, ahimsa is deemed to be a cardinal virtue and meat eating is a prohibition. These religious persons are all from life-negating systems, with personal salvation as the ideal. But a society that has to accept the social responsibility of confronting injustice cannot remain wedded to the hurdle of ahimsa. For, reason and force are both neutral tools that can be used both for good and evil, for construction and destruction. That is why Guru Nanak says, “Men discriminate not and quarrel over meat-eating, they do not know what is flesh and what is non-flesh, or in what lies sin and what is not sin”,? And that “there is life in every grain of food we eat”.

Role of later nine Gurus

In a country which for over 2,000 years had been trained in religious systems involving a clear dichotomy between the spiritual life and the empirical life of man, and which had accepted ahimsa as a fundamental value and individual salvation as an ideal, it was no easy task to create a mature society with new motivations of accepting the religious or social responsibility of always reacting against injustice and oppression in all spheres of life.

It is very significant that Guru Nanak laid the foundations of every institution that was later developed and matured by his successors. By starting the institution of langar (common kitchen) and taking Mardana as his life companion, he gave a heavy blow to the divisive institution of “Varn Ashram Dharma’, pollution and caste. He created a separate Sikh society with their own Dharmasalas as centres of religious worship and training. He sanctified the role of the householder as the medium of religious expression and progress, and made it plain that work was a necessity of life, and idleness a vice. He emphatically made it clear that reaction against injustice and oppression is an essential duty of the religious man and the religious society. For that end, while he created a new society with a new ideology, he also removed the hurdle of ahimsa, so that his society could discharge its socio-religious responsibility without any unwanted inhibitions and impediments in its path. And since the new society had not yet been fully organized and developed, and had yet to be properly oriented to enable it to discharge its responsibilities, he also created the institution of succession. It is very significant of the social and societal aims of Guru Nanak that after passing the succession to Guru Angad, when he found him to be living a somewhat solitary life, he reminded him that he had to be active since he had to organize a society or Panth.

In the time of the Second, Third and Fourth Guru, four important steps were taken. Through the creation of 22 Manji or districts of religious administration, the Sikh society was organised into a separate religious Panth. But, the most important and difficult part of the task was the creation of new motivations and the acceptance of the new life-affirming religious ideals of Guru Nanak. For, these were radically new in their approach, implications and goals. The stupendous nature of the task of the Gurus can be judged from the fact that even today great Hindus, like Jadunath Sarkar, Rabindra Nath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, and Christians like McLeod, Cole, Toynbee and the like, all coming from pacifist traditions and conditioned by them, find it difficult to understand the spiritual role of the Sixth and the Tenth Master.

The Third Guru created new institutions which had a dual purpose, on the one hand, of weaning away the Sikhs from the old Hindu society, and, on the other hand, of conditioning the Sikhs in new values, ideals and practices. For example, while Guru Nanak had bypassed his recluse son, Sri Chand, for the same reasons, the Second and the Third Guru avoided persons of ascetic tendencies from entering the Sikh fold. The institution of Langar with the dual purpose of feeding the poor and climinating the caste and status prejudices and distinctions, was strengthened. Finally, the important religious centre of Darbar Sahib and the town of Amritsar were founded and developed for the periodical meetings of the Sikh society and visits of the Sikhs to the Guru. The object of all this was to establish a separate historical identity of the Sikhs and to wean them away from the traditional society, its centres of pilgrimage, and its religious practices and rituals. Not only had they to be trained in the essentials of a new religious system, but they had to be taken out of the strangle-hold of the Brahmin priests claiming to be the sole medium of religious growth, practice and interpretation. Then came the stage of the Fifth Guru who created and installed the Sikh Scripture as the revealed and final doctrinal authority. The system of Daswandh (giving 10% of one’s earnings for the cause of the community) was organized. Sikhs were initiated into trading in horses, so that the transition to the next stage of militancy could become smooth. As the instrument of God on earth, the Sikhs called their Guru, ‘True Emperor’. In the time of the Fifth Guru, the Sikh society had become ‘a State within a State’,4® and had developed a social identity which had caught the eye of the Emperor, who considered it an unwanted sociopolitical growth. By his martyrdom, the Guru not only strengthened the faith and determination of the community, but also sought confrontation with the Empire, leaving instructions to his son to begin militarisation of the Sikhs. In the process, the Sixth Guru even recruited mercenaries to train his people. This phase of martyrdom and confrontation with the empire was continued by the subsequent Gurus till Guru Gobind Singh did, as recorded by his contemporary Kavi Sainapat, the epitomic work of starting the institutions of Amrit and the Khalsa. ” Having felt that the Panth had become mature and responsible enough, the Guru created the Khalsa in 1699, and requested the Panj Piaras to baptise him.’ It is significant that at that time the entire Guru’s sons were alive, meaning thereby that Guru Nanak’s mission had been completed and thereafter the succession was not to be continued. And, finally, the Guru made Guru Granth Sahib the Everlasting Guru of the Sikhs.

Let us have a rapid look back to find out if the five tasks indicated by Guru Nanak had been accomplished. First, the Sikhs had been formed into a distinct new religious society with a Scripture of its own, being the full repository and complete and final guide of the Sikh ideology and its way of life. This separateness was made total by Guru Gobind Singh’s Nash doctrine five freedoms, Dharam Nash, Bharam Nash, Kul Nash, Karam Nash and Kirt Nash.’ This means freedom from the bonds of old religions and traditions, of earlier superstitions, prejudices, of earlier acts and of restrictions in choice of trade or calling, or in professional mobility. The Tenth Master made a complete break with the earlier traditions and societies. Second, it was a society of householders, rejecting all kinds of otherworldliness, idleness and monasticism. Three, it was a casteless society with complete fraternity among its members. Men from the lowest and Sudra castes rose to be its leaders. Four, it was a society which was fully earth aware; and habits of work, production and service became ingrained among its members. Begging was considered a disgrace in its social ethos. The contrast is evident from the fact that while the Sikhs have never had Brahmin leaders, in India after Independence in 1947, the Prime Minister and practically every Chief Minister was a Brahmin. The fifth social responsibility discharged by the Sikhs was to free the country from the curse of a thousand-year wave of invaders from the North-West. Though the Sikhs were subjected over the years to the worst persecution in the ludian history, yet they suffered it and emerged triumphant. And, finally, they were able once and for all to stem that tide. They have been trained to react against wrong, injustice and oppression. A society has been created with the ideal of Sant-Sipahi (Saint Soldier).