SIKHISM

SIKHISM Sikhism is the religious faith of those who call themselves Sikhs, the followers of Guru Nanak, his nine successors and their teachings, embodied in the Guru Granth Sahib, the sacred scripture of the Sikhs. The Sikh population worldwide at the beginning of the twenty-first century was estimated at 20 million; of these, 17 million reside in India, with 14 million living in Punjab. Of the 2 million or so Sikhs who live outside India, the Sikh diaspora, the majority are in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada.

Origins and Early Sikh History

Sikhism originated in the Punjab region of northwestern India during a time when many religious teachers, known as "Sants," were seeking to reconcile the two opposing dominant faiths, Hinduism and Islam. The Sants expressed their teachings in vernacular poetry based on inner experience. Although the teachings of Guru Nanak were broadly aligned with some of the Sants, his own mission is thought to have emerged out of his direct experience of the divine, initiated with the words na koi Hindu, na koi Mussalman ..("there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim") signaling a third way that was to become the Nanak Panth, or the path of Nanak. The first community of his disciples, those who chose to follow Nanak as their Guru (divine teacher), was composed primarily of former Hindus, who came to call themselves his "Sikhs" (followers).

For the details of Guru Nanak's life Sikh tradition relies on a body of hagiographical literature called the janamsakhis (life testimonies), which appeared a century and a half after Nanak's death, undergoing expansion for sometime until printed editions were made in the nineteenth century. Sikhs today mainly rely on the accounts given in the Puratan Janamsakhi, which expounds four main cycles in Nanak's life story. In the first cycle, Nanak was born in 1469 in Talwandi, a village 40 miles (64 km) from Lahore, and was acclaimed by Muslims and Hindus alike as a future religious leader. In the second cycle, Nanak was married at twelve, his wife joining him at age nineteen; they had two sons. Nanak experienced difficulty settling into any profession, trying his hand as a herdsman, a trader, and finally as an accountant for a local official at Sultanpur. Nanak seemed to be mainly preoccupied with spiritual concerns, preferring the company of holy men and ascetics. Together with his closest associate, a Muslim bard named Mardana, Nanak organized regular nightly singing of devotional hymns, going to bathe in a nearby river before daybreak. During one of these sessions, at age thirty, Nanak underwent his first major mystical experience, in which he received a calling to teach people a path of devotion to the divine Name. According to the Puratan Janamsakhi, shortly after this experience Nanak entered the third phase of his life, in which he spent the next twelve years traveling eastward to Banaras (Varanasi), Bengal, and Orissa, southward to Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, northward to Tibet, and finally westward to the Muslim regions as far as Mecca, Medina, and Baghdad. In the final phase of his life at about the age of fifty, Nanak founded a settlement at Kartarpur where he led a community of disciples, instructing them in spiritual practice and study, with nam simaran (remembrance of the Name) and kirtan (singing hymns of praise) regular features of devotion. At the same time he insisted that his disciples remain fully involved in worldly affairs by doing practical labor (Nanak himself tended his own crops) while maintaining a regular family life.

Shortly before his death in 1539 at age seventy, Guru Nanak's appointment of a successor not only inaugurated a two-centuries long politico-spiritual lineage, with each successor taking the title of Guru, but also marked a break with prior Sant practice of not appointing spiritual successors. During the next two centuries the early Sikh Panth (community) underwent significant expansion and development into a defined and disciplined order, with different steps taking place under successive Gurus. The second Guru, Angad (b. 1504; r. 1539–1552) collected Nanak's hymns, developed the alphabetic script called Gurmukhi ("from the Guru's mouth"), and institutionalized the langar, or communal kitchen, to feed disciples who came to visit Nanak's dharamsalas. Guru Amardas (b. 1479; r. 1552–1574), the third Guru, encouraged the observance of separate Sikh shrines, pilgrimage traditions and festivals, as well as instituting the manji system of supervising distant congregations. The fourth Guru, Ramdas (b. 1534; r. 1574–1581), founded a new center called Ramdaspur (later named Amritsar), where he supervised the excavation of the sacred pool that later became the central site of Sikh pilgrimage. Guru Ramdas appointed masands, or deputies, to represent the Guru's authority in his more dispersed congregations.

Sikhism became more firmly established under the fifth Guru Arjan (b. 1563; r. 1581–1606), who introduced several important innovations. Relying on extant collections, Arjan supervised the compilation and canonization of a scripture, the Adi Granth ("original text"), which contains the compositions of Sikh Gurus and other non-Sikh saints. The completion of the Harimandir temple, and the installation therein of the Adi Granth in 1604, proved to be highly significant for molding Sikh identity. Guru Arjan also founded new towns, such as Tarn Taran, Kartarpur, and Sri Hargobindpur, and extended trading links across India's northwestern frontier into Afghanistan and beyond. The increasing success and expansion of the Sikhs in Punjab inevitably led to confrontation with the Mughal authority under the emperor Jahangir. Guru Arjan was accused of supporting a rebellion led by Jahangir's son Amir Khushru. Charges of sedition were followed by imprisonment and finally execution in Lahore in 1606. Guru Arjan's martyrdom led to increased militarization and overt political involvement under his son and successor, the sixth Guru Hargobind (b. 1595; r. 1606–1644), symbolized by his donning of two swords, one representing spiritual authority (miri), the other representing political authority (piri). Maintaining a small but effective army, Guru Hargobind consciously prepared the Sikhs to resist willful state oppression. Although confrontation receded during the tenure of his successor Gurus, Har Rai and Har Krishan, they nevertheless maintained a similar style of leadership with a retinue of armed followers. It was the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur (b. 1621; r. 1664–1675), who again was forced to confront the increasingly restrictive policies of Jahangir's grandson, the emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), which included enforcement of Islamic laws and taxes and the replacement of local Hindu temples by Muslim mosques. Guru Tegh Bahadur's active resistance against such policies, his public defense of Hindus' rights to practice their religion freely, and his own refusal to accept Islam under pain of death led to his imprisonment and execution in Delhi's Chandni Chowk in 1675.

The Sikh Panth's involvement in political resistance came to a climax with the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh (b. 1666; r. 1675–1708). Shortly after the execution of his father, the ninth Guru, the young Gobind Rai moved from Anandpur deeper into the Himalayan foothills. Neighboring hill chieftans, nervous about the young Guru's increasing power, unsuccessfully attacked his men at Bhangani. Following this episode the Guru moved back to Anandpur, where he successfully fought a Mughal force at Nadaun. The Guru built several other fortresses at Anandpur, Lohgarh, Keshgarh, and Fategarh. His best-known contribution to the development of Sikhism was to redefine the very core of the Sikh Panth as a military-cum-spiritual order, the Khalsa ("sovereign" or "free"). According to tradition, he called his followers to assemble for the Baisakhi festival in 1699 at Anandpur. There he called for five volunteers to pass a test of absolute loyalty. Those who passed the test, the so-called panj piare (five beloved ones) were initiated into the new Khalsa order by a ceremonial rite called khande ka pahul (baptism of the double-edged sword), thus forming the nucleus of a sovereign, casteless community. Each member of the Khalsa order undertook to wear the five external symbols, or five "K"s (kesh, long, uncut hair; kirpan, short sword; kanga, comb; kara, steel bracelet; kaccha, breeches), to adhere to a formal code of conduct (rahit), and to relinquish family surnames, with males assuming the name Singh (lion) and females assuming the name Kaur (princess), thereby removing sexual inequality while maintaining gender difference. The Guru in turn received the same initiation from the panj piare, thereby assuming the name Singh and signifying a merger of identities between Guru and disciples. Many thousands more accepted this initiation. The last nine years of Guru Gobind Singh's life were spent either in protracted battles against the combined forces of Aurangzeb and the hill rajas, in which the Guru lost his four sons and his mother, himself becoming a fugitive relentlessly hunted by the Mughals. Despite these setbacks, the Guru resurrected his army, and upon Aurangzeb's death supported the succession of his son Bahadur Shah to the throne. While at Nander, the Guru commissioned a hermit named Banda Singh to inflict punishment on Wazir Khan, one of Aurangzeb's generals.

The tenth Guru was a prolific writer, composing literature in Braj, Hindi, Persian, and Sanskrit. Much of this literature forms the Dasam Granth (Book of the Tenth Master), which contains devotional hymns such as Jaap, Svaye, Chaupas, mythological treatises such as Chandi Ki Var (Tales of the goddess), and a semiautobiographical work Bachitar Natak (The wonderful drama). Tradition records that Guru Gobind Singh also recomposed from memory the entire contents of the Adi Granth, since the extant copies were either lost during his battles, or remained in the hands of rival claimants to the Guru's position. Guru Gobind Singh died in 1708 at the hands of an assassin. Before his death, however, he declared the line of living Gurus to be at an end, issuing a command for the Sikh community to look to dual sources of authority, namely, the scriptural text (Adi Granth), which henceforth became known as the Guru Granth Sahib, and the body politic of the Khalsa Panth.

The Post-Guru Period

The Sikhs faced their most difficult period during the first few decades of the eighteenth century, their fortunes depending on the degree to which they could assert themselves against Mughal forces in the southeast and the steadily increasing incursions of the Afghans in the northwest, at the same time jockeying for position with the local Hindu princes in Punjab.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Sikhs had forged themselves into twelve independent militia units, or misls, which were instrumental in eventually dislodging the Mughals from power. The twelve misls were finally unified by the most illustrious Sikh ruler, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who took Lahore and was proclaimed maharaja of the Punjab. After a series of successful campaigns against the Afghans and Pathans, Ranjit Singh had also secured India's northwestern frontier by the 1820s. Among other things, Maharajah Ranjit Singh is celebrated as the benefactor of the Harimandir (Golden Temple) in Amritsar, which he covered in gold leaf. Shortly after the maharaja's death in 1839, however, in-fighting broke out among his successors, the Sikh kingdom fell into disarray, and, after a series of hard-fought battles, was annexed by the British Raj in 1849.

Emergence of Modern Sikhism

The advent of British colonial rule not only marks the entry of Sikhism into Western modernity, but also the emergence of three reform movements (the Nirankaris, the Namdharis, and the Singh Sabha movement), each attempting to revive a sense of separate religious identity among Sikhs at a time when most such traditions were considered to be sects of Hinduism. The Namdharis, founded by Baba Dyal Das (1783–1853), took their name from their condemnation of idolatry and participation in Hindu rituals that had become prevalent among many Sikhs. The Namdharis, founded by Baba Ram Singh (1816–1884), came to be regarded as a separatist movement when they instituted a separate baptismal ritual and code of conduct. Ram Singh advocated strict vegetarianism, the wearing of all-white dress, and loud chanting, which led to their nickname, kukas (howlers), because of their spontaneous outbursts during devotional trances. In 1871 the Namdharis came into conflict with the British when they violently opposed the colonial administration's reintroduction of cow slaughter (previously banned by Maharaja Ranjit Singh), and in the process killed Muslim butchers in Amritsar and Ludhiana. The British ruthlessly suppressed the uprising by tying sixty-five Namdharis to the mouths of cannons, blowing them to pieces.

By far the most influential Sikh reformist movement was the Singh Sabha, founded in 1863 under aristocratic patronage. By 1879 the movement had suffered an internal schism that led to the formation of the conservative Amritsar-based faction, led by Baba Khem Singh Bedi, and the more radical (and ultimately far more successful) Lahore-based faction, led initially by Giani Ditt Singh and Principal Gurmukh Singh, and subsequently by Kahn Singh Nabha, Teja Singh, Vir Singh, and Jodh Singh. Through its political functionary, the Chief Khalsa Diwan (CKD), a body set up in 1902 to jointly conduct the affairs of the Amritsar and Lahore factions, the Singh Sabha movement achieved the most successful reinterpretation of Sikhism adapted to modernity, which has, until recently, exerted a hegemonic influence on Sikh identity. Their reformulation was based on the colonially inspired distinction between, on the one hand, a monotheistic-historical Sikhism centered on the authority of a clearly recognizable scripture and embodied by the Tat (authentic) Khalsa ideal, and on the other hand, a pantheistic ahistorical Hinduism. Crucially the Singh Sabha redefined the means by which the tradition was communicated. Making use of British colonial patronage and new forms of transportation, commerce, and communication (especially the printing press), the Singh Sabhas were able to develop an extensive network of chapters across North India. Through the combined effect of tract publications and more systematic works of theology and history, the leading Singh Sabha scholars redefined the doctrinal foundations of Sikhism. Major political successes include the passing of the Anand Marriage Act in 1909, which prescribed circumambulation of the Guru Granth Sahib in Sikh marriages, replacing circumambulation of the Vedic fire. Under the banner of the Akali Dal Party, political successors to the CKD, a more violent campaign was launched in the early 1920s to wrest control of the Harimandir and other historical gurdwaras from the Mahants or traditional custodians, resulting in the Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925, which handed administration of these gurdwaras back to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), an elected body dominated by the Akali Dal, which continues to dominate the religious and political affairs of the Sikh Panth. An important milestone for the SGPC was the publication of the Sikh Rahit Maryada, or Sikh Code of Conduct, in the 1950's, which guaranteed greater uniformity of Sikh religious practices.

Following British withdrawal in 1947, the partition of India split the traditional Sikh homeland of Punjab into two parts, its western half going to Pakistan, and its eastern to India, with its capital in Amritsar. Amid widescale ethnic and religious violence, approximately 3 million Sikhs were displaced from western Punjab, fleeing across a hastily, ineptly drawn border to India's Punjab. At the time of partition, there were some who called for the creation of a Sikh homeland, to be called Sikhistan or Khalistan, but this suggestion received no official support. However, the desire to create a majority Sikh state in Indian Punjab encouraged the Akali Dal to agitate for a Punjabi-speaking state as part of the Indian Union, which was achieved in 1966 through the separation of Sikh-majority Punjab from Hindu-majority Haryana. Continuing this tradition of political agitation into the late 1970s and early 1980s (when an increasingly Hindu-dominated India viewed Sikh demands for improving Punjab's economic resources with hostility) resulted in a violent confrontation between the central government of India, led by Indira Gandhi, and groups of Sikh militants. Events culminated in June 1984, when Prime Minister Gandhi ordered India's army to launch its deadly Operation Bluestar, sending tanks into Amritsar's Golden Temple to remove Sikh militants, led by the charismatic preacher Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, killing over a thousand Sikhs according to government records. In retaliation, Indira Ganhi was assassinated that October by two of her Sikh bodyguards; subsequently Hindu mobs launched reprisals against Sikhs, killing thousands in Delhi alone. More than five thousand innocent Sikhs were killed that November throughout India. Violence escalated throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s as young Sikh militants, supported by Sikhs of the diaspora, revived the demand for a separate Sikh Khalistan.

Sikh Theological Doctrine, Worship, and Customs

The distinctive nature of Sikhism may be traced from Guru Nanak himself, embodied in his hymns that are part of the Adi Granth, and amplified in the lives and works of his nine Guru successors, explained in the exegetical writings of Sikh scholars, such as Bhai Gurdas in the sixteenth century, or Bhai Vir Singh in the twentieth century. For devout Sikhs the most succinct expression of Nanak's thought is encapsulated in the syllable ik oankar, which appears at the very beginning of Nanak's Japji Sahib (the first and most authoritative hymn in the Adi Granth), and which is often translated in conformity to the rationalized idiom of monotheism as "One God Exists," though it is more accurately translated as "The One Absolute, Manifested through Primal Word-Sound." According to Guru Nanak, the Absolute is nondual (One). From the conceptual standpoint of the human ego, however, the Absolute is perceived dualistically in terms of either/or distinctions, such as nirgun/sargun (without qualities/with qualities; formless/form), or in terms of the difference between God and man. A person limited to mere conceptuality is manmukh (ego-centered individual) and therefore unfree, ignorant, limited by a self-generating consciousness. For Guru Nanak, the Absolute cannot be conceptualized or obtained through rituals (sochai soch na hovi), through mere silencing of the mind (chupai chup na hovi), or by satisfying one's cravings (bhukhian bhuk na uttari). The Absolute can only be realized through experience. As such, the nonduality of the Absolute is conceptually inseparable from the notion of freedom (mukti) found in the classic mystical themes of separation and fusion between lover and beloved. To realize the One, the individual must be grounded in a state of existence that relinquishes the individuality of the self, so that what remains when ego is abandoned—the man (heart/mind/soul)—emerges as the lover and is able to merge with the Other (its Beloved). In this state, one instinctively avoids relating to the One in terms of subject and object. Such a realized individual (gurmukh) no longer represents the Absolute to himself, since the conscious distinction between self and other, I and not-I, lover and beloved, disappears, leaving an ecstatic and purely spontaneous form of existence (sahaj).

In Sikh tradition, the figure of the gurmukh and the spontaneous freedom associated with it are seen as an intensely creative form of existence that is "oriented toward the guru" and aligned with the divine order (hukam) yet released from the mechanism of individuation (haumai). The transition from duality to nonduality (or, stated otherwise, the transition from manmukh to gurmukh) turns on the efficacy of naam (the Name), which is both the object of love and the means of loving attachment to the beloved. Being the point of contact between transcendence (God) and immanence (world), naam is the medium by which the ego loses itself in human communication with others, that is, the medium par excellence for experiencing the condition of nonduality. In Nanak's hymns, naam is not a particular word or mantra, but is both written within and yet comprises the vibration of the cosmos. Being the link between mystic interiority and worldly action, naam is appropriated by the gurmukh through the practice of simaran (constant remembrance or repetition of the Name)—a form of meditation in which the One simultaneously becomes the focus of an individual's awareness (surati) and his motivation to perform righteous action (karam kamahe). However, naam cannot be obtained voluntarily. Its attainment depends on grace or the favorable glance of the Guru (kirpa/nadar), receiving which the individual can change his predestined nature (likhia nal) into the spontaneous being of the gurmukh, which no longer generates sa?sk?ras (the soul passed from one life to another). Sikhs therefore hold a belief in the transmigration of souls, which come and go (avan jan) until one is liberated from the bonds of the ego. From the standpoint of the gurmukh, the conceptual duality between religion and politics, mysticism and violence, and so on, becomes superfluous, as is evident in the lived experience of the Sikh Gurus, for whom there was no contradiction between mystical experience and the life of a soldier or householder.

As one of the central terms in Sikh doctrine, the term "Guru" takes on theologico-political connotations that go well beyond its meaning and application in Hinduism, where it is limited to a teacher, initially of worldly knowledge, or a conveyor of spiritual insight. In Sikhism the term "Guru" automatically incorporates this earlier meaning, referring thereby to Guru Nanak and his nine successor Gurus. Metaphorically it refers to the same divine light manifested in all ten Gurus; practically it serves to indicate the authority vested in the name "Nanak." Thus the hymns of the different Gurus in the Adi Granth are cited by referring to their respective composers as sequential locations (mahalas) for the manifestation of the name "Nanak." Just before the death of the tenth Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, authority was jointly vested, on the one hand, in the Adi Granth (henceforth Guru Granth Sahib), leading to the doctrine of scripture or Word as Guru (shabad-guru), and on the other hand, in the collective wisdom of the initiated community, the Khalsa, giving the doctrine of Panth as Guru (gurupanth). Underpinning all of these notions is the fourth notion of Guru in Sikhism, namely, the satguru, or true Guru, which recurs in the hymns as identical to the divine principle itself: that which bestows or gives to those who follow in the way (hukam).

Sikh congregational worship takes place in the gurdwara (door of the Guru), which is essentially any building in which the Guru Granth Sahib can be appropriately installed. The modern gurdwara has evolved out of the dharamsalas (resting places) established by Guru Nanak during his travels. The principal congregational activities in the gurdwara include kirtan (the singing of hymns), katha vachic (narrative exposition of Sikh philosophy and history), and more recently, akhand path (unbroken recitation of the entire Guru Granth Sahib), funeral services, and marriage ceremonies. Any adult Sikh, male or female, can conduct religious ceremonies. Specialized readers of the sacred texts, called granthis, and professional singers are qualified to perform congregational duties by skill rather than by ritual ordination. In most gurdwaras meditational worship begins before dawn with recitals of Guru Nanak's Asa di Var, followed at dawn with his Japji, and by Guru Gobind Singh's Jaap.

Sikh festivals known as gurpurbs (the rising of a guru) are associated with an event in the respective Guru's life. The most important gurpurbs are Guru Nanak's birthday, celebrated on the full moon in November, Guru Gobind Singh's birthday (December–January), and the martyrdoms of Guru Arjan and Tegh Bahadur (May–June), all of which follow a lunar calendar. Sikh festivals that follow a solar calendar include Baisakhi and Divali. Baisakhi, celebrated as New Year's Day in North India, usually falls on the thirteenth of April. Originally a grain harvest festival for Hindus, it has acquired particular importance for Sikhs due to Guru Gobind Singh's creation of the Khalsa on Baisakhi of 1699. Sikhs today celebrate Baisakhi as a historical birthday for the community. Similarly, while for Hindus Divali is a festival of lights celebrating the return of Ram Chandra to Ayodhya, for Sikhs Divali marks the return of the sixth Guru Hargobind from his imprisonment by the Mughal emperor Jahangir. Another Sikh festival is Hola Mohalla, the day after Holi (which Hindus celebrate by freely throwing colored powder on each other to commemorate an event in the life of Prahlad, a devotee of Vishnu). Sikhs follow the same custom but for different reasons. The emphasis Guru Gobind Singh gave to Sikh observance was to channel people's energies toward military exercises through organized athletic and literary contests.

Arvind-Pal S. Mandair

See alsoAmritsar ; Bahadur Shah I ; Gandhi, Indira ; Guru Nanak ; Jahangir ; Sikh Institutions and Parties ; Singh, Maharaja Ranjit

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