Sikhism is the youngest among the living faiths of the world today. Youngest and the most modern. It maintains that truth is God and the service of humanity is the love of God. It promises salvation to those living a clean, God-fearing normal life of a householder. It asserts the importance of active life over the life of sheer contemplation, encourages hard labour and sharing one's earnings with others. A simple faith carved for the simple folk of the Punjab which has a universal appeal.

Hardly 500 years old, however, its history is in shambles. There are ever so many loose threads. Several scholars, more particularly in the West, have misinterpreted the fundamentals of the Sikh faith, presenting distorted pictures.

And yet little has been done to put the record straight. As it is, even Guru Gobind Singh's date of birth, as commonly believed, has been proved wrong by researchers. It is 18th December, 1661, and not 22nd December, 1666. The fact of the matter is that Guru Tegh Bahadur, the father of Guru Gobind Singh, visited Patna twice and Guru Gobind Singh was born during his first and not the second visit. We owe this revelation to D.R. Narang and G.B. Singh. Similarly, Guru Hargobind, the Sixth Sikh Guru, is believed to have been incarcerated by Emperor Jehangir in Gwalior Fort by various historians for various spans of time — twelve years according to Hari Ram Gupta and Mohsin Fani, ten according to Piara Singh Padam, about five according to I.B. Bannerjee. Khushwant Singh has it that he was imprisoned for a year or more and Macauliffe for just forty days. The truth is that Guru Hargobind was imprisoned in Gwalior Fort in early 1613 and was released at the end of October 1619 after some seven years of detention. The worst is that some misled scholars, by design or ignorance, committed the sacrilege of ascribing a fairly large segment of spurious text to Guru Gobind Singh and had it compiled into Dasam Granth which in due course came to be consecrated.

It was beyond the range of any scholar, howsoever eminent, to undo this wrong individually and carry conviction. This task has been undertaken by the Institute of Sikh Studies, Chandigarh, who have, as a first step, come out with a 728-pages volume, entitled Sikhism : Its Philosophy And History. Divided into five well-marked sections, it deals with the Sikh ideology with cardinal doctrines (section I), Nathism, Vaisnavism and the Radical Bhaktas with which Sikhism is usually confused (section II), salient features of the Sikh way of life (section III), a brief history of the Sikh people (section IV) and some of the major controversies regarding the Sikhs and Sikhism (section V).

A valiant endeavour, indeed, to pool the talent of a galaxy of scholars to write on the various aspects, the venture seems to suffer from the obvious overlap and glaring gaps here and there. Be that as it may, it meets an urgent need of a community misunderstood and mercilessly maligned of late on account of the doings of some misled elements.

There are two copiously documented chapers, The Punjab Problem and Fundamentalism by Kharak Singh and The Militancy and the Jats by Jagjit Singh, on the problem of militancy which raged in the Punjab recently. While Kharak Singh has convincingly listed the Sikh grievances leading to the unrest, Jagjit Singh has tried to prove it as factually wrong on the assumption that "the initiation and development of militarisation within the Sikh movement was due to the cultural patterns and traits of the Jats who joined it in large number."

However, to my mind, the two chapters relating to the Dasam Granth, demolishing the contention that the entire text of the volume, as it has travelled to us, was composed by Guru Gobind Singh, are, perhaps the most significant contribution to the Sikh studies. It needed tons of courage to say what Daljeet Singh has been able to state with utter conviction; none dared articulate it, though several scholars had an inkling of the truth about it. As it is, Dasam Granth is given, more or less, the same reverence as given to the Holy Granth at a number of Sikh shrines associated with Guru Gobind Singh. It is, at best, "a haphazard collection of heterogenous material."

Here is a book which the non-Sikhs desiring to learn the truth about the Sikh faith and Sikh people must read and, not the least, the Sikh people themselves who will find it highly rewarding.

~~~


Courtesy : The Hindu, Madurai, September 30, 1997

Repairing the Damage Done to Sikh Image

A people known for heroism, chivalry, loyalty, self-sacrifice, enterprise and truthfulness, they encounter many a moment of embrassment in day-to-day life, more especially outside India. It has, therefore, been considered imperative to project the correct image of the community with a view to disabusing the minds around. That explains this voluminous work.

It should also help remind the offended youth in the community as to what Sikhism is, why it was created and the noble tradition it can boast of. Produced by the Institute of Sikh Studies devoted to research in the Sikh lore and the Sikh way of life, it is a compilation of definite papers by some of the renowned Sikh and non-Sikh scholars on the various aspects of Sikh philosophy and history.

Besides the compilers, Daljeet Singh and Kharak Singh who have contributed well-researched papers on a variety of issues by eminent scholars and historians like Gurtej Singh, Dr H.S. Shan, G.S. Mansukhani, Dr Harbans Singh, Dr H. R. Gupta and Jagjit Singh.

The compilers have also been well-advised to get Noel Q. King to contribute the article Fundamentalism, Modernity and Sikhism : A Tertium Quid and James R. Lewis on misrepresentation of Sikh tradition in world religious textbooks. Commenting on the Sikh's search for identity, Noel Q. King says, "It was not one person, however brilliant, saying `Ham Hindu Nahin Hain' late in the 19th century, but the first teacher coming up from the three day waters saying `Ham Nahin Hindu, Ham Nahin Musalman,' which is back. The 19th century remark is but a working out of the early teaching."

Writing about the prejudiced studies in respect of the Sikhs, particularly in the U.S., James R. Lewis observes, "Their condemnation of Sikh militancy is really a projection of their own (unexpressed, repressed) condemnation of the Christian tradition. The point here is not to criticise Christianity, but rather to once again point out the differential treatment that the Sikh religion has received at the hands of Western scholars."

The last section of the work is devoted to controversies; it should remove mental cobwebs and should go a long way in rehabilitating a people with a many-splendoured past. A tastefully produced work, it meets the dire need of the time.