Religious history and creation of the Khalsa
In our brief survey, we have indicated four categories of religious systems. The Indian systems are all dichotomous. To the second category belongs pacifist Christianity which, though it originally suggested the love of one’s neighbours as oneself, has gradually but ultimately reduced itself to sheer Secularism, Individualism and Consumerism bereft of any religious component. To the third category belong Judaism and Islam which started with a full blooded combination of the spiritual life with the empirical life, but ultimately, under pressure of circumstances, bifurcated, on the one hand, into otherworldliness or mystic quietism, and, on the other hand, into the pursuit of worldly gains and sheer animal survival.
Sikhism belongs to a different or a fourth category of the religious systems. For the purpose of understanding, clarity and comparison, it will help us if we recapitulate the salient features of Sikhism. The Gurus say that the Basic Reality is creative and free. It has a Direction and a Will. It is the Ocean of values, Destroyer of evil doers, Benevolent and Beneficent. That Reality is Love and we can be at peace with ourselves and the world only if we live a life of love and fall in line with the Direction of that Reality. Though ego is God-created and man is at present at the ego-conscious (Manmukh) stage of development, it is his destiny to evolve and reach the stage of Universal or God consciousness and work in line with His altruistic Will, i.e., achieve the Gurmukh stage of development, when alone he can ‘be spontaneously moral’ and ‘live truthfully’. At the present, or the egoistic stage of his development, man cannot avoid conflicts and suicidal wars. It is a futile search to find the moral base of man either in the animal life or in the material constituents of man. Nor can reason, which is just a tool of the egoistic psyche, like any other limb of the individual, devise and give man a helpful ethics. God or the Basic Reality, which is Love, can alone be the source of the moral life of man. Ultimately, it is only God or Naam consciousness, involving link with the Basic Fount of Love that can lead to truthful living. That is why the Guru says, “Naam consciousness and ego consciousness cannot go together”.”1 The two are contradictory to each’ other. It is a hymn of fundamental significance. For, ego consciousness means man’s alienation from the basic Force of love. And, greater the alienation or isolation of man from his spiritual and moral source, the greater would be his drive towards destruction. Secularism as an institution represents that egoistic isolation. This trend, the Guru says, is inconsistent with the path towards link with the Universal Consciousness, the spring of moral life. The Gurus have given a lead to man in this field. Ten Gurus or ten Gurmukh lived the life of God consciousness. In one sense, it is the life of one Gurmukh completing a demonstration and furthering the progress of life and its spiritual evolution and ascent. Guru Nanak’s thesis involved the integration of the spiritual life of man with his empirical life. This integration has to enrich life and society. Because of the earlier cultural and religious tradition, it took ten lives for Guru Nanak, the Gurmukh or Sant Sipahi, to demonstrate his thesis and role, and discharge his social responsibilities. These socio-spiritual responsibilities involved not only the creation of a society motivated with new ideas, but also the completion of the five tasks Guru Nanak had indicated as targets before himself and his society. With every succeeding Guru, the ideal of Gurmukh or Sant-Sipahi, as laid down and lived by Guru Nanak, unfolded itself progressively. It is a path of Jove, humility, service, sacrifice, martyrdom and total responsibility as the instrument of God, the basic Universal Consciousness moving the world. A question may be asked as to why there have been ten incarnations of Guru Nanak in Sikhism, while in other religions there have generally been only one prophet. To us, four reasons appear quite obvious. First, in a society in which dichotomous religions stand deeply embedded and established for over three thousand years and which claims to have contributed asceticism and monasticism to the cultures of the rest of the world, it was not easy tor a whole-life religion with the miri-Piri concept to be acceptable and take firm roots in one generation. Second, the Sikh ideology did not involve individual salvation, or a Gurmukh just living truthfully, but it also involved compulsively the creation of a society motivated with new aspirations and ideals. And this new orientation and conditioning could be done only by the process of creating a new ideology, embodying it in a new scripture, Organising new institutions, socio-religious practices and centres of the new faith, and inspiring the people, by the method of martyrdoms, into accepting a new ethical standard or morality and values. For, as Ambedkar’ and Max Weber have stated, the Hindu society cannot be reformed from inside, and rid itself from the unjust system of caste and untouchability, because the Varn Ashram Dharma has the sanction of Shashtras and scriptures; and a Hindu while making caste distinctions and exhibiting caste prejudices never feels any moral guilt or abhorrence. Instead, he feels a real sense of religious and moral satisfaction that he is observing his Dharma and Shastri injunctions. Hence, the inevitable necessity of creating a new ideology and Scripture with a new religious and socio moral code of conduct. Third, even if the ideology and institutions had been there, the Sikh society would, like some reformed societies, soon have reverted to the parent society, if it had not successfully achieved the social targets discussed above, including those of creating a fraternal society of householders, of dislodging the political misrule, and sealing the North-Western gate of India against the invaders.
The fourth reason appears to be very important. Our survey of the major religions of the world shows that revealed systems which start with a combination of the spiritual life with the empirical life and even with clear social objectives, over a period of time, either shed their social ideals and become pacifist, otherworldly, or a salvation religion, or become dichotomous, bifurcating, on the one hand, into monasticism, and, on the other hand, into either political misrule and tyranny or sheer secularism. Sikhism does not stand any such danger of ideological decline or bifurcation, because of its gradual and firm ascent and unfolding. It shows the prophetic vision of Guru Nanak that he not only profusely and clearly defined all aspects of his life-affirming and integrated ideology, but also detailed the targets his society had to achieve. He laid the firm foundations of the institutions and the socio-religious structure his successors had to develop and complete. Guru Nanak defined his God not only as the Ocean of virtues but also as a Sant-Sipahi or the Destroyer of the evil-doers; and the ideal he laid down for the seeker was to be the instrument of the Will of such a God. Guru Arjun gave instructions to his son to militaries the movement and thereafter, as was explained by Guru Hargobind to Sant Ramdas,’? His sword was for the protection of the weak and the destruction of the tyrant. While Guru Arjun, the first martyr of the faith, had confrontation with the empire and gave orders for militarisation, the subsequent five Gurus manifestly proclaimed and practiced the spiritual ideal of Sant-Sipahi. So, whatever some votaries of pacifist or dichotomous ideologies or other outsiders may say, to students of Sikhism or a seeker of the Sikh ideal, there can never be any doubt as to the integrated miri-Piri or Sant-Sipahi ideal in Sikhism. Because in the eyes of a Sikh, any reversion to ideas of pacifism, personal salvation or monasticism would be a manifest fall from the spiritual ideology laid down by Guru Nanak, enshrined in Guru Granth Sahib, and openly, single-mindedly and demonstrably lived by the ten Gurus, culminating in the creation of the Khalsa, with Kirpan as the essential symbol for resisting injustice and oppression. The Kirpan essentially signifies two fundamental tenets of Sikhism, namely, that it is the basic responsibility of a Sikh to confront and resist injustice, and that asceticism, monasticism, or escapism, of any kind is wrong. Thus the Kirpan, on the one hand, is a constant reminder to the Sikh of his duty, and, on the other hand, is a standing guard against reversion to pacifism and otherworldliness. The extreme sagacity and vision of the Sikh Gurus is evident from the thoughtfully planned and measured manner in which they built the structure of their ideology and the Sikh society, epitomized in the order of the Khalsa. That is also the reason that so far as the ideology and ideals of the Sikh society are concerned, there cannot be any ambiguity in that regard. Hence, considering the manner in which the lives of the ten Gurus have demonstrated the Sikh way of life, the question of its bifurcation or accepting pacifism or otherworldliness does not arise. And this forms, we believe, the fourth important reason for there being ten Gurus and the closure of succession after the Khalsa was created.
Conclusion
The summary of the Sikh ideology, in the background of the religious history of some higher religions, makes the viewpoint of the Sikh Gurus and the Sikh position very clear. The Gurus emphasis that at the Manmukh stage of man’s development, man is constitutionally incapable of avoiding injustice, wars and conflicts. Because man is basically egocentric and stands alienated from the fundamental Force (God) which is Love.
So long as he does not link himself with the Flow of Love and fails to work in unison with it, his problems of clash, disharmony and tensions will continue. The diagnosis of the authors of ‘Limits of Growth’ is also the same, namely, that unless man is able to shed his egocentrism, there appears little hope for peace and happiness in the world.’
The state is an instrument devised by man to curb the basic egocentrism or wickedness of individuals and power groups. But, politics divorced from the fundamental spiritual force, or moral brakes creates the situation that the State or Establishment is seized by individuals and groups, who openly use and employ all the enormous means of the modern state for the satisfaction of their egocentrism, working to the detriment of the masses and the poor. And the more backward or poor a country, the greater the oppression uninhibited Secularism can do with the power machine of the state. The result, logically and unavoidably, is that the gap between the downtrodden masses and the oppressive elites goes on widening. This happens both within a state, and among the various national states. We wonder if anyone who is acquainted with recent history can contradict this observation.
Rationally speaking, Secularism is incapable of reversing the present trend, or finding a solution of the existing malady. The causes for this failure have been stressed by the Gurus. Reason being a tool or limb of the egocentric man (Manmukh) and being unconnected with the Universal Consciousness or spiritual-moral base of man, it can never make the individual spontaneously altruistic. Hence, any search for a humanitarian ethics through empiricism, communism or secularism is doomed to failure. The hopes which science and the first decades of the century had raised stand tragically dashed.
To us, materialism and morality seem a contradiction in terms. Similarly, dichotomous or life-negating religions are equally amoral in their social impact. It is because of the Indian religions being dichotomous that the unjust secular institution of Varn Ashram Dharma and caste could continue in the Indian society, and also have the approval of its scriptures and Shastras. The study of the three Western religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam also furnishes the same lesson. The moment any of these societies became otherworldly, or showed dichotomous tendencies, the moral strength of the society to face the challenges of life became minimal. Or vice versa, the society became dichotomous, when it failed to face effectively the challenges of life. And, ultimately it is the moral stamina of a people or culture that by and large determines its survival. This is evident from the known history, both of Judaism and Islam. But for the subordination of religious institutions to the national state, following the Reformation, the triumph of secularism and scientism to crude the Christian ethical base from the Western life would never have been possible. The ethical field today is in complete disarray.” Since religion is the only source which could furnish the moral sap to maintain social cohesion, and Christian clan being at its lowest ebb, the twentieth century has witnessed the worst slaughter and butchery of tens of millions, both at the international and the national Levels. Hitler, Stalin and Hiroshima are phenomena of the twentieth century Secularism. The nations of the world are spending on arms a thousand billion dollars each year. It is this dismal spectacle that had , on the one hand, forced the Soviets to talk of the ‘priority of universal values over the class or group values’, and, on the other hand, led the North American Churches to suggest cooperation with other religions in order to fight the common danger of Secularism. For the present, either out of their ignorance, or for other reasons, the European Churches have overruled the American view. But, the problem remains and stands highlighted by thinking persons. Decades back, Collingwood wrote: “The discovery of a relation is at once the discovery of my thought as reaching God and of God’s thought as reaching me; and indistinguishable from this, the performance of an act of mine by which I establish a relation with God and an act of God’s by which He establishes a relation with me. To fancy that religion lives either below or above the limits of reflective thought is fatally to misconceive either the nature of religion or the nature of reflective thought. It would be nearer the truth to say that in religion the life of reflection is concentrated in its in tensest form, and that the special problems of the theoretical and practical life all take their special forms by segregation out of the body of religious consciousness and retain their vitality only so far as they preserve their connexion with it and with each other in it”. This statement presents the view that unless reason and religion are combined, or the spiritual life is combined with the empirical life of man, his problems will remain insolvable. Reason is incapable of devising or creating a moral force. Hence, the inherent incapacity of Secularism to create any worthwhile values, much less universal values. The fall of the Russian Empire has made this clear. Five hundred years ago, Guru Nanak emphasised that unless the spiritual component enriches the empirical life, man’s problems of conflict, war and disharmony will remain. The solution lies in working in consonance with God’s Will or the basic force of Love and Altruism. The brotherhood of man cannot be a reality without accepting the Fatherhood of God. For the Gurus, the Fatherhood of God or Force of Love or Universal Consciousness is not an assumption but a reality. For them it is a true and most indubitable experience, spontaneously leading to activity. It is an experience far more real than the sensory perception of external phenomena or the construction of a pragmatic or utilitarian ethics, or the assumption of a dialectical movement raised by human reason. The Gurus exhort man to follow the path of altruistic deeds to reach the next evolutionary stage of Gurmukh or God man. It is a worldview of combining the spiritual life with the empirical life of man, thereby breaking the alienation from which man suffers. It is a worldview of total responsibility towards every sphere of life, the God man’s sphere of responsibility being co-terminus with the sphere of God. At a time when most of the higher religions have either become dichotomous, or are withdrawing from the main fields of social responsibility, and human reason feels frustrated, the Sikh Gurus express a comprehensive worldview of hope and eternal relevance. At the same time, it is important to state that, far from being exclusive, Sikhism is universal in its approach, always anxious and willing to serve and cooperate with those who aim at harmony among beings and welfare of man. For, the Guru’s prayer to God is that the world may be saved by any way, He may be Gracious enough to do.” And, Guru Nanak proclaimed that his mission was, with the help of other God men, to steer man across the turbulent sea of life. This fundamental ideal stands enshrined in the final words of the daily Sikh prayer, “May God bless all mankind”.
