Swami Agnivesh - An Amazing Indian Life

Interestingly and intriguingly, 2020 had begun for me with an affectionate meeting at the Sahmat Cultural function on 1st Jan. with my favourite Swami ji, Swami Agnivesh.

Author with Swami Agnivesh at Sahmat Cultural function
(1 January 2020)

Coming from a liberal family of saints / scholars, I feel instinctively quite at ease with open minded Sadhus ... Fakirs. I had first seen Swami ji in 2005, presiding over an Arya Samaj meeting in Delhi. I recall how he had proposed that Nepal should be greeted on becoming a secular state. There was a loud unanimous "No, No!" by all those present and Swami ji had quietly shelved his suggestion.

Swami was a crusader for the poor and oppressed and called a spade, a spade... about all religious rituals... like Amarnath Yatra. To end the old blood feud, he had even proposed that 'derogatory' about Guru Nanak in Satayarth Prakash could be deleted... again vehemently opposed by other Arya Samajis.

Further links and information

• BBC Hindi report... what a journey of life...
  
  • https://www.bbc.com/hindi/india-54122887
• A Tribute...
  
  • https://scroll.in/article/972887/agnivesh-1939-2020-the-man-who-tried-to-reclaim-the-colour-saffron-from-political-opportunists
• Aap ki Adalat - Part-1
• Aap ki Adalat - Part -2

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Guru Nanak's 550th Anniversary - International Conference in Chandigarh

Dear and Esteemed Colleagues,

I presume that you might be interested in the evolving contours in the recent years of Sikhism in its scholastic, spiritual, political and cross cultural dimensions. The subject has indeed assumed significant diplomatic-strategic aspects also of the 'Pilgrimacy' and role of radical elements of the Sikh Diaspora in the context of the global celebration of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak (April 15, 1469 - September 22, 1539) and more particularly of Pakistan's quite unexpected coming forward for the implement - at a lightning speed indeed - of the long cherished 'Sikh psychic dream' of the 'Kartarpur Corridor'.

An institution, named interestingly, 'Centre for Research in Rural & Industrial Development (CRRID)', in Chandigarh, proclaiming its founding to Sh P.N. Haksar's inspiring motto 'ceaseless striving in search of Truth through research' hosted, co-sponsored by Govt. of Punjab and Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), an 'International Conference on Guru Nanak's Philosophy...' on 7-8 Nov 2019.

I had the pleasure to participate in this conference of eight sessions - with as many as 32 scholars / academicians making their presentations on various subjects related to the Vaani / teachings of Nanak - of the Seminar apart from the inaugural session with keynote address by Prof Murli Manohar Joshi & Presidential remarks by Sh M. Hamid Ansari. The valedictory session was addressed by Dr Manmohan Singh.

The deprivation of 'Khulle Deedaar - Unrestricted Access' to the Sikh Shrines in Pakistan has been the most agonisingly experienced psycho-spiritual wound among the faithful of the dynamic community. The matter has got incorporated in the regular Ardaas - Prayer after every formal religious function. The words are reproduced below:

ਸ੍ਰੀ ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਤੇ ਹੋਰ ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਿਆਂ, ਗੁਰਧਾਮਾਂ ਦੇ ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਪੰਥ ਨੂੰ ਵਿਛੋੜਿਆ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ,
Sree Nankaanaa Sahib tae hor Gurdvaareaan’, Gur'dhaamaan’ dae jinhaan’ thon’ Panth noon’ vichhor-eaa geaa haee
ਖੁਲ੍ਹੇ ਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਦੀਦਾਰ ਤੇ ਸੇਵਾ ਸੰਭਾਲ ਦਾ ਦਾਨ, ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ਜੀ ਨੂੰ ਬਖ਼ਸ਼ੋ ॥
Khullhae darshan dee-daara tae sevaa san-mbhaal daa daan Khaalsa jee noon’ bakhsho.

I am taking the liberty of presenting - below - the Paper, running into about 2750 words, presented by me titled, 'Guru Nanak - Poet and prophet of Oppressed and Persecuted'. I was tempted to quote a few parts of it in this covering note - but was dissuaded by the feeling not to make it any longer - and leaving it to you to have a quick look at it - as and when you feel inclined.

Guru Nanak - Poet and Prophet of Oppressed and Persecuted

Bal Anand, Indian Foreign Service (Retired)

All those who have lived through the last five centuries in the mystically blessed and also terribly tormented ancient lands of five rivers, and areas lying beyond the adjoining north-western regions of Bharat i.e. India, have indeed been spiritually solaced and sustained by the resplendent eternal presence of Baba Guru Nanak Dev Ji (April 15, 1469 - Sept. 22, 1539 A.D.). During all these years of trials and tribulations wrought upon the people of these lands by their own innate flaws of character or inflicted upon them by the unjust rulers and rampant invaders, ‘the dhuur ki Baani-the deepest Divine discourse’ of the Guru conveyed in the soul stirring sublime poetry, in their own genuine tongue, has been burning bright for all to enlighten their lives.

2. When the toiling and harmony loving people of Guru Nanak’s beloved Punjab were brutally cut apart, amidst rivers of blood and tears - four centuries after his lifelong mission of healing the wounds of religious and social divides with Divine notes of harmony in knitting humanity together-I too had experienced shivers into morrow of my bones as an innocent child of four years, awkwardly awakening to the cruelest ways of the world, by the soul piercing song in my ‘maan-boli’, which seemed, as if, to convey it all to me, “Nanakaane vall nuun jaandia raahiaa ve, meire Pritam nuun sandesha devin jaa… O dear traveler, journeying towards Nankaana, please do convey the deepest cry of my soul to my beloved Guru…” I need not delve into details of those days of the most barbaric mass murders in history of humanity to which people of Punjab had been subjected when India was proclaimed to have awakened to the long awaited dawn of Independence.

3. While speaking to you all at this moment, ladies and gentlemen, in the city beautiful, I indeed feel acutely conscious about my own odd journey of life spanning seven decades and a half, my obvious limitations to fully fathom and understand the most pious life of the great Guru. In his relentless and epochal search until his last for the ultimate truth and an eternal moral order, more pin pointedly during the last five decades since the world had celebrated the quincentenary of the self-proclaimed ‘Saier- songster (of Supreme Creator) and ‘Neechan andar neech-the lowliest among the lowliest’, one of the most extraordinary poet-prophet of humanity has ever known..

4. Dear Friends, please permit me to start with certain basic facts to elucidate my topic of the day. Firstly, we have to begin with an honest admission that ‘no manuscript in Guru Nanak’s own hand has survived the onslaught of time’. Prof. Pritam Singh, the painstaking scholar of manuscripts, has underlined at length how the pervasive practice of writing anything in Gurmukhi or Devanagri scripts ‘without separating different syntactical units from each other’ has posed a formidable challenge and that ‘readers needed a long period of training to read such text correctly…’ Guru Nanak had, however, most thoughtfully entrusted to his toughest tested successor, Bhai Lehna elevated to be Guru Angad, the manuscripts of his own compositions and also the writings of other likeminded saint poets collated so diligently by him during his wide spread travels and intimate discussions with several of them. A total of 974 hymns - in 19 major ragas i.e. melodies of Indian classical music - attributed to Guru Nanak had been later incorporated in Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS) by Guru Arjan Dev Ji, when he compiled the Granth, sixty five years later. A majority of Guru Nanak’s verse creations are in the form of quatrains and in other popular verse forms -  ‘the themes are ethical, philosophical, or devotional and in their totality make up the cosmic vision.’

5. Guru Nanak’s composition titled Japji - the Holy chant - comprising of 38 Pauris, literally 'ladders', implying poetic stanzas, has been rightly adopted as the prayer for recitation at early dawn, known in the Sikh tradition as ‘Amrit Vela-the ambrosial hour’. Japji, opening with invocation to God, has amplified the concept of Supreme Being, with a statement on the nature of God: His uniqueness, Omnipotence, Immortality, etc. and reaffirms His being both Truth and Reality. It concludes with an assertion that knowledge of God is obtained through the grace of the Guru - an enlightened individual. The prominence of this composition has been ‘recognized as such by the Fifth guru, Arjun, when he gave it the first place in the sacred anthology.’ In essence, it is a monotheistic concept of Supreme Being, known in Sikh tradition as, ‘Ek Oankar - One Sole Supreme Being’. Another composition of Guru Nanak for morning recitation is Asa Ki Var, ‘a disquisitional poem of 24 stanzas, interspersed with Slokas (groups of poetic couplets); it denounces falsehood and hypocrisy in the practice of religion in society.’ The Var Majh; in Raga Ram Kali Dakhani Onkar; Solahe (sixteen-stanza poem) in Maru Rag and Sidha-Ghoshti, again in Rag Ram Kali, Guru Nanak expresses his broader thinking over philosophical and ethical issues and points out that meditation - Naam Simran is indeed the true Yoga. The primary purpose of all these verses has been to free the minds of the ordinary people from all types of superstitions and negative social practices.

6. When we turn to the group of four poems, in Raga Asa and Telang, ‘expressing strong indignation of Guru Nanak over the barbarities perpetrated by the invading armies of Babur over the people of Punjab including large scale dishonour of the women-folk’, we come across a rare example of a man of prayer and meditation demonstrating a supreme courage of convictions in denouncing the tyrannical deeds of the ‘the Paap ki janj – marriage party - mafia of sinners coming from Kabul’. The death and destruction during the sack of Lahore for four days in the middle of January 1524 finds mention in the boastful narration in ‘Babur-nama’ by emperor Akbar’s grandfather and the forceful challenging counter narrative in the poems ’Babar-vani’ by Guru Nanak- “Bavarvani phir gayi… Babar’s sway has spread all around; even princes are roaming without food…” The painful plight of people is poignantly pictured by Nanak in another hymn: “O our Lord, our Creator, when there is such killing, such suffering, such pain, so much spilling of blood, so much shrieking, do You not feel pity for the poor!” Guru Nanak’s had felt deeply outraged with the indignities and cruelties piled upon helpless women and expressed their plight with the most graphic poetic images: “Jini siri sohani pattian, mangi paae sandhur - Women whose heads were adorned with tresses; Parting of whose hair was daubed with vermilion; Their locks are shorn with shears, their throats choked with dust… Thou art the Author of all things; Thou seest all. Strange are Thy manifestations!”

7. Guru Nanak - the indefatigable seeker of Mukti - the Salvation of the soul via the pursuit in practice of an honest living following the path of Truth and Nobility - was passionately committed to justice, equality, fraternity and fair play for all. He castigated the rich and powerful for their greed and lust and indulging in atrocities against the poor - he chose to be counted with the clans and classes of Bhai Laalo, the hardworking carpenter friend and Bhai Mardana, a soul mate lifelong musician companion, who was also dubbed to be of low caste even among followers of much acclaimed equalitarian faith of Islam. Here Guru Nanak consciously moved beyond limitations of Bhakti movement and its attendant divide of Nirgun and Sargun i.e. Formless and Formal. He equivocally challenged the hypocritical orders of the day - the caste and rituals ridden Hinduism and unjust and intolerant practices of comparatively recently arrived Islam. Guru Nanak indeed echoed Kabir, “Tu kehta kagad ki lekhi; mein kehta aakhan ki dekhi - you speak of what is written on the paper; I speak of what I have seen with my eyes,” by proclaiming, “Jiho dittha, tiho kiha - I said what I saw.” The inspiration and courage of conviction for Guru Arjan for the inclusion of the verses of the several low caste saints - Kabir, Ravidas, Nama, Sadhna, Sain, etc. - in the Granth Sahib had certainly its sacred fountain source in the integrating spiritual ground so assiduously prepared by Guru Nanak.

8. We have to understand how Guru Nanak had adopted systematic strategy to diagnose the crises of institutions of the contemporary society. He noted quite clearly how the native Hindus had become deeply demoralized and confused and were leading contradictory lives, “Antar Pooja parhi kiteba sanjum Turka Bhai… - inside home you worship (as Hindu), but outside you read other books to impress the Turks; Discard this hypocrisy! Devotion to Name will ensure liberation.” Though the ‘Nirguna’ saint poets had not hesitated to employ blatantly strong expressions to condemn caste distinctions, Nanak, in a rare poetic restraint, preferred to use touching poetic twists to ceremonial practices like the wearing of ‘janeoo - sacred thread’ saying, “Daya Kapah, santokh soot… Out of the cotton of compassion / Spin the thread of tranquility / Let continence be the knot / And virtue the twist there on. O Pandit…” Similarly, Guru Nanak sought to chastise the Muslims to follow their religion as enunciated by their saintly guides and not the sinful rulers,” Musalman kahanu muskilja hoe ta Mussalman kahave / Awwal Aaoli din kar mittha musklmana mal musaave… To be a Mussalman is not easy: only he who is one in reality, should make the claim. Follow first in the footsteps of the saintly; accept their bitter words as sweet… O Nanak, if he extends his mercy to all; treats all living beings as the same - himself a Mussalman he can proclaim.”

9. The most refreshing and relevant notes for his troubled times struck by Guru Nanak pertain to defending the dignity of the womenfolk and underlining biological and societal crucial role of women in the overall scheme of Nature. He condemned extolling of the orthodox Hindu cults of celibacy and renunciation and sought to elevate ‘Grahisatha-life of a householder’ as the noblest obligation ordained by ‘Srijanhar-Supreme Creator’ of the Universe. He was strongly critical of perverted notions among Muslims of treating women as slaves for indulging in animal lust. He emphasized that husband and wife are indeed created equal and that fidelity was enjoined on both. Guru Nanak pictured domestic bliss as a cherished ideal of life and marriage as the metaphor for consummation of love for the Divine. In the Asa ki Var, Nanak rejects the superstition of Sutak - implying that a woman giving birth to child is unclean and impure for a number of days - depending on the caste to which she belongs! In his masterly composition, Nanak says, “Impurity of the mind is greed and the impurity of the tongue is falsehood. The impurity of the eyes is to gaze upon the beauty of another man’s wife and his wealth. The impurity of the ears is to listen to the slander of others…” Nanak proclaims the eternal truth saying, “Within a woman, a man is conceived; to a woman he is engaged and married… through a woman, his future generations come… So why call her bad? From her, Kings are born.” Guru Nanak had condemned the ‘Sati-pratha - wife burning herself on pyre of dead husband’ - he says that it is nobler to live with pious memory of the departed loved one than embracing an unnatural quicker death.

10. Most esteemed friends, in the pointed context of Bharat, we must finally reckon all the reformative social and spiritual movements and their eminent apostles at the altar of the fraternity and equality of people: for their totally unalloyed belief and practice in the equality and justice for the spiritually dehumanized for ages, the so called ‘Shudras - the untouchables’: born to be treated worse than animals according to the glorified scriptures of dubious Divine Origins. Guru Nanak’s travels far and wide for interaction with the leaned scholars of various schools of spirituality including those with humbler origins but higher thinking minds indeed represented a path breaking initiative in the spiritual annals of the world. He castigated the caste distinctions as totally false and vicious man made divides, “Jaanhe jot, naa poochhe jaati - recognize the godly light in all; Braham binnd te sab utpati hoee, maati ek sagal samsaran - The Cosmic minute created it all, the entire creation has the same element.”

11. Following the path lit by Guru Nanak, the assigning of place of honor to the so called low caste Bhakats and Muslim savants in the Granth has been indeed the most admirable example in the history of the holy books of the world. The truest tribute to Baba Nanak, therefore, on the 550th anniversary of his arrival will be the sincerest pledge by all for the total rejection and purging of caste from their lives in all its ugly manifestations: the Sikhism had indeed owed its origin to equality of ‘Sangat in Pangat’ - the pious Congregation in the queue of perfect equality: enough of preaching so far, the hour of action and practical measures beacons us all from Kartarpur! The 550th anniversary of great Guru’s auspicious arrival and 70 years, 5 months and 7 days of his gracing the planet earth indeed deserve to be celebrated by everyone in the world by reflecting over all those days of his life and 974 most precious hymns composed by him to illuminate mind and soul: they are like the shining pole stars in the arduous and complex voyage by human beings in this complex world. Guru Nanak indeed exults in concluding several of his hymns, saying, “Nanak, Saier eva kahiya-thus spake, Nanak, the poet” - indeed a rare example by a spiritual master to proclaim himself a bard of Almighty! Guru Nanak was a gifted reconciler of religious and cultural differences; in a way, he foresaw the plural and multicultural destiny of India. It is no surprise why Dr BR Ambedkar had deeply admired Sikhism as a great faith practicing equality and justice and an ideal option for his people oppressed and persecuted in the name of sacred scriptures. The Nanak community has to do ‘Atam-manthan i.e. self-scrutiny to rededicate itself to eternal values of hard work, devotion, truthful living and self-sacrifice.

12. To conclude, dear friends, I may kindly be pardoned for re-striking some intimately personal notes. I recall how since my early childhood, the Gurpurab - ‘Kattak di Pooramashi, mela Nakane da’ - falling exactly a fortnight after Deepawali on Amavas, was a soul stirring festival - commemorating not any distantly mythological event but historically well documented happening of the arrival of a godly person who had no claims to any name, fame or kingdom. My pious grandmother, with always prayers on her lips, gave me ‘Gutika - a sacred booklet’ to recite, as soon as I had learnt the Gurmukhi alphabet; my initiation to Japji, Rehraas and other verses of ‘Nitnem-daily prayer’ began during years of my profound innocence. Grandfather was also not behind the scene and tried to smarter by making me soon learn ‘Hanuman Chalisa’ by heart. From a sleepy village in a small state of Muslim Nawab, the family moved to a newly emerging neighbouring town in 1951. The most impressionable first writing inscribed on a wall to be read by me was on the roadside water tank of the Gurdwara meant for animals, saying: “Sewa Kraee 500 Rupaye, His Highness Nawab Iftikhar Ali Khan Sahib of Malerkotla”. I soon understood how Guru Nanak was indeed for all faiths and all ages; children played games, shouting, “Amba Vali kothri, Anaaran Vala Vehra; Babe Nanak da Ghar Kehra?” My generation has indeed grown up shaping our sensibilities about teachings of Nanak by particularly relating them to various contours during the march of the nation since the celebration of quincentenary of his birth. Incidentally, the grand success of feature film ‘Nanak Naam Jahaj hai’ and the regular reports of excellence of the University founded in his name in Amritsar come instantaneously to my mind.

13. Esteemed Friends, exactly half a century after half the millennium of birth of Guru Nanak, our country and our world have indeed been witness to amazingly spectacular changes of the technological and socio-psychological kind. Humanity would seem to be confronted with more and more complicated challenges - including even the sheer survival of the human race on the only planet known so far to house humanity! Personally, I had never dreamt that I would be destined to trot the globe in the service of motherland, including 777 days of the ‘Tapasya-Pious Act’ of the duty in the sacred soil of the holy footprints of Nanak i.e. Nankana Sahib, Panja Sahib and 26 other ‘Guru Nanak – Dhams’ and in addition the birth place of Guru Ram Das; eight sacred spots associated with Guru Arjan and 12 with Guru Har Gobind were officially recorded by Govt. of Pakistan in 1962. I and my wife had the good fortune of roaming about in the streets of Dera Baba Nanak on March 12, 2012 - and were, by grace of Guru, luckier even in locating the long left home of birth of my wife in ‘Guru ki Nagri’. While we were having, via ‘doourbeen-telescope’, ‘Darshan-holy sight’ of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib of Kartarpur, we had not visualized that the realization of ‘historic dream’ was around the corner and that a new glorious destiny was awaiting Dera Baba Nanak and Kartarpur Sahib.

14. Guru piari Saadh sangat ji - Guru’s beloved and blessed congregation before me, lastly, let us hope and pray that in spite of various attendant odds, the Kartarpur Corridor would indeed inaugurate many new flood-lit gates for the forcibly separated people of the land of five rivers, longing for ever to live in love, peace and prosperity for all! The ‘Gurmukhs’- people of Guru’s grace - indeed look forward to the time when they would also be able to roam about as free spiritedly as their Guru had in his own epoch, singing hymns composed by him for all and for eternal Time - with ‘sarbatt ka bhala-welfare of all’ on their lips and in mind and soul!

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My Lessons of History in School

I consider myself singularly lucky and blessed that the lessons in history - and poetry- started for me much earlier in life than for most people. I was myself, however, innocently unaware about all this at that time.

To begin with, take the case of the date of my birth. It was determined as 15th November, 1943 - perhaps, a year less - at the time of my admission, in October 1949, in the District Board (soon changed to be ‘Government') Primary School of the neighboring village, located in what was still called the Angrezi Ilaqa (British Territory). It was a school with one kutcha (made of mud) room; a small court yard which had low (less than three feet high) mud wall around it; two teachers and four classes. The school had about forty students from the surrounding villages.

The name of the village is Sohian, near the old town of Malaudh, about 30 Km from Ludhiana. I do recollect that the senior teacher Pandit Lachhman Dass Ji had asked my father whether he had thought for me a plan of higher education or putting me in some job soon after my matriculation. My father had replied, in a very polite but deeply determined voice, that he would like me to go for the highest possible education.

I was to come to know 55 years later - a few years after my own retirement at age of 60 - that this popular but strict disciplinarian teacher who had commanded deep respect among generations of students had served in the same school for his entire teaching career!

It was in this school, I had heard the couplets of the first folk poem by a senior student, Jagga Singh, praising Mahatma Gandhi to be clever enough to ‘outwit' the foxy white rulers!

The white Kothi (mini-palace) with high walls and surrounded by the thick lines of tall trees of a Sardar (petty chief, feudal lord) called Kaka Ji of Sohian was visible from the school. It was, however, more a like a mysterious fort for us, the young students- something like the complex buildings I was to see later in the horror films. I had, however, come to know that the Young Sardar-Kaka Ji has been recruited as a Poolas Kaptan (Police Superintendent) by the Government of Independent India. Later in life, my efforts to meet the then octogenarian, Sardar Narinder Singh Phulka, IPS (Retd.), could not bear fruit, in spite of the fact that one of his sons-in-laws, now retired in anonymity from the IAS, had been a friend from my college days.

The next historic turning point for me came in May 1951 when I was admitted in the third grade in the High School in Ahmedgarh, the nearby town. The family took some more time to shift there from the village. I felt quite at ease being exposed to a refreshing atmosphere of freedom, patriotism and nationalism surcharging this school named, soon after Independence, from Public High School to 'Mahatma Gandhi Memorial National (MGMN) High School'.

The eight years of the continuous studies in the school provided me with ample opportunities to look all around far beyond the lessons in the class rooms. I must thank Master Ashni Kumar, a senior teacher of English and Social Studies who had started mentoring me right from my sixth class.

The town of Ahmedgarh (named after Nawab Ahmed Ali of the tiny state of Malerkotla (1881-1947) had been founded in 1905 in the wake of the construction of the revolutionizing rail link connecting Ludhiana to the southern-eastern belt of Dhuri-Jakhal and beyond. The new look town regularly witnessed, as if it were a typical Greek city state, debates and dramas in the school which were often joined by the chaudhris (elders) of the town too.

The local wings of political parties - Congress, Socialists and Jan Sangh in particular - seemed to be vigorously competing to bring their national leaders to address the people in the Gandhi Chowk, in the miniature Connaught Place of the town, proclaimed to have been planned after Montgomery! The location of the town on the cross-borders of adjacent Riyasati (Princely) and Angrezi (British) pockets of territories had made it a favorite and strategic meeting place for freedom fighters playing grim games of hide and seek after daring protests and acts of defiance including an act of loot - at gun point - of the government funds in a train robbery between Ahmedgarh and Malerkotla!

In terms of history, I must refer to the tragically maddening times in the wake of Partition. My great grandfather Param Sant Vaid Bhushan Pramatma Nand Ji had passed away on October 19, 1947, a day after the death of Nawab Ahmad Ali of Malerkotla. I can vividly recall how the mourners at the Bhog ­- the last prayer - were cursing the kaliyuga (Evil Epoch) for the calamities befalling the nation and her noble people. I could later notice that many houses had been burnt down in my mother's village - apparently belonging to Muslims. The mosque had been quickly converted into a Gurdwara!

I was luckier as a child to be spared the trauma of witnessing the scenes of murders and violence. But what about the feelings of a ten-year-old boy who was witness to his father getting critically wounded when he fell down trying to board an over packed vehicle leaving Sialkot for India? He had been left behind as dead on the road. The boy turned out to be a brilliant student and rose to the highest professional position for an engineer in India. But how would the pain of losing a father in that cruelest way ever go away - even though in retirement, he became Director of Gandhi Museum, opposite the Raj Ghat!

I do remember that I was able to broadly read, when I was in the fifth class, the Golden History of India by Vishva Nath, M. A., B.T., and Jagan Nath Grover B.A., B.T., senior teachers of History, Arya High School, Ludhiana. It was a popular text book for high classes and belonged to my uncle appearing for matriculation.

I remember vividly how among brief sketches of the contemporary historical personalities: Winston Churchill was described as the plain and blunt speaker; Joseph Stalin was the son of a cobbler of Georgia; De Valera was a great revolutionary freedom fighter, and so on.

Among the teachers of history at school, Master Ram Kishore - in his typical Poadhi dialect of Punjabi - would become deeply emotional in praising Chanakaya, the great teacher and his gifted disciple Chandra Gupta Maurya. Then, he would blame all the current ills of the country on the lack of respect for the teachers! Kishori Lal Sahir would quote couplets of Persian and would turn the lesson into play - assigning the students roles of characters of history, e.g., showing Hemu getting wounded with an arrow in the eye by covering the eye of a student with the corner piece of his turban!

Giani Romesh, known for punishing students with Bhrind - painful pinches, would often use the idiom, Dushmanan de Dand Khatte kar Ditte (leave a sour taste in your enemy's mouth).  It was not by making them eat tamarind, but putting up a brave fight.

The most reputed teacher of history / Geography and English in our school was, however, Master Ashni Kumar, a skeleton-thin person known for his razor sharp intellect and sharp satirical remarks. I was destined to be his favorite student and remain so for more than four decades till he breathed his last at a ripe old age in 1999.

In the tranquility of the years of my retirement, I have endeavored to reinvigorate my interest in the history of the select historical personalities and places-particularly in the more intimate region of the Punjab. My childhood interest in Sirhind was strongly reinforced when, during my posting to Pakistan in 1993, I had to facilitate the visit for a pilgrimage to the city by Prof. S Mojaddid, a former President of the Interim Govt. of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal - the family claims 14 generations to have been buried there! The city with a significant strategic location has the most fascinating and absorbing history of the rise and fall of its rulers. The Ambala-Ludhiana-Sirhind section of the Delhi-Lahore railway line was opened on Oct.1, 1869.

Sirhind has turned a new page in its history with the recent establishment of excellent institutions of higher education including the Shri Guru Granth Sahib World University. A sort of personal history was made for me when, on 8th of November, 2011, the Acting Vice Chancellor, Dr Gurnek Singh, welcomed me to the University with a very special personal warmth and affection. He surprised me by telling me that he was my student in 1968 when I was a lecturer in the Govt. Rajindra College, Bhatinda. After the privilege of crisscrossing the continents representing India in distant alien lands, it is a very special soulful delight to rediscover the deeper eternal roots of friendship and love in the soils nearer home!

The learning - and teaching - of the History of India with a balanced and dispassionate approach is a great challenge. The average individual in society rightly seems to consider the past dead and gone; and the future all day dreaming! It is, therefore, all in the present and near future which is relevant for thought and action. But our battles in the present are often fought over the different versions the past and visions of the future. When I remember the school books and the teachers, so many live images flash before my mind's eye. Alexander, the great, impressed us as students as the most mesmerizing figure of the earlier era. Ashok and Akbar seemed to define the essence of India. Whatever may his later day critics say, for most of my generation Jawaharlal Nehru certainly qualifies to be called the architect of modern India.

Epilogue

The history is continuously in the process of being re-evaluated; the state-craft is such a gigantic entity ­- the search for the total and un-alloyed truth in the affairs of the state would remain a noble pursuit. The pursuit of power and the greed for riches would seem to know no limits - the truth for the cash loads for votes in the Parliament House gets more and more mysterious! The Right to Information has been emerging as an interesting search-light to illuminate deeply hidden dark spots in the files of current history.

Let us hope for better times ahead in terms of truthful history.

References to this article

• This article was included in the collection "India of the Past, Preserving memories of India and Indians"

Bhai Ditt Singh Gyani - the Poet-Polemicist and Scholar-Ideologue of Sikh Resurgence

This article has been published in, 'Studies in Sikhism and Comparative Religion', Volume XXXII No-1, January-June 2013

Bhai Ditt Singh Gyani

The last five decades of the nineteenth century in the history of Punjab had indeed witnessed an epochal and rapid transformation of the social, economic and spiritual domains of the vast former kingdom of ‘the lions of the Punjab’. The valiant Sikhs had been cheated - not defeated - by the dark deceit of the ‘Gora’ - the white British and the tragic treachery of traitors from within. The British had moved quickly to consolidate their position with a comprehensive political and administrative plan of action for the newly annexed kingdom of ‘Koh-i-Noor’, a territory of historic strategic significance to the vast empire of Malika Victoria.

The far reaching fall out of the uprising of 1857 had resulted in several rewarding dispensations - territorial and financial - for the Cis-Satluj Sikh rulers. The confused and demoralised Sikh soldiers who were licking their wounds after the loss of their popular and powerful kingdom were also sought to be mollified. The British administrators, to consolidate their control in a long term perspective, debated in depth the strategy to win over the hearts and minds of the Punjabis, the Sikhs in particular. They apparently invested considerable thoughtfulness in ‘Operation - Peaceful, Prosperous and Loyal Punjab’ undertaking unprecedented efforts to understand the Sikh mind and their energetic creed as a faith distinct from the fluid Brahamanical-Hinduistic traditions. A special space was soon sought to be earmarked for them, as a martial race in the British army - deeply reinforcing their particular physical identity with the Five K’s. 

The British administrators, in a good or bad faith, soon unleashed the ‘game of numbers’ of each faith - and it was never a looking back in the history of India. As could indeed be expected, an inevitable and never-ending tussle on the religious turf - with the innumerable attendant sects and sub sects of each religion and also the explosive caste divides among the Hindus and Sikhs - broke out soon to claim and reclaim the new and the lost religious and spiritual territories - more obviously in terms of the head count. The first comprehensive and reliable census in Punjab in 1881 reported a Sikh population of 1,716,114 - believed to be a gross underestimation because of census commissioner Ibbetson’s definition ‘appearing to be a Sikh’ - with a strong impression among the Sikhs that it had decreased from one crore when they were rulers. The British soon manouvered to slip into playing the role of an umpire - a schematic arbiter - with its own axe of Faith (Christianity) to grind - adopting a biased and motivated, albeit cautious approach in the battles among ‘warrior-preachers’ of the myriad hues of competing faiths. 

The Sikhs indeed faced a complex situation of being caught in the middle of cataclysmic changes of this unprecedented socio-religious and cultural-educational fermentation. The determined and state-supported Christian missionaries had started making daring forays of poaching on the Sikh elite - with the deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh and Kapurthala Princes as their earlier trophies. The large scale conversions to Christianity from the ranks of numerically significant but forever the humiliated and insulted as ‘Achhut - the untouchables’ among Hindus / Sikhs sent shock waves into the citadels of the self-aggrandizing custodians of the local religions. 

The rulers of Sikh states in the Southern Punjab and their attached feudal elements; the new aristocracy groomed by the British and also so many saints-scholars-soldiers had felt the urgent need of an organized body of the Sikh Panth to counter the newly emerged serious dangers posed by the Christian Missionaries and other reform movements including Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ahmadiyas not to speak of the countless rebel sects of the mainstream religions. The result was the founding of the Sri Guru Singh Sabha in Amritsar on July 30, 1873. The body was registered with S. Thakur Singh Sandhawalia (1837-1887), a cousin of deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh, as President, and Prof Gurmukh Singh (1849-1898), Bhai Ditt Singh Gyani, Bhai Mayia Singh (1862-1928) and Bhai Jawahir Singh (1859-1910) as the other office bearers. Prof Gurmukh Singh as secretary and Giani Ditt Singh as in-charge of the office worked day and night to spread the mission of the Sabha. The Sabha was, however, soon rocked by differences. The immediate cause of rift was over Baba Khem Singh Bedi (1832-1905), a descendant of the first Guru, seating himself over the ‘mattress’ adjacent to the Granth Sahib and receiving ‘obeisance’ - ‘Matha Tekna’. The reform-minded group of Gurmukh Singh, Ditt Singh and Jawahir Singh parted ways and launched a parallel Singh Sabha in Lahore on November 2, 1879 with the avowed aims of undertake the contingent necessary reforms in restoring the pristine character and practices in strict conformity of the teachings of the most exalted Shri Guru Granth Sahib - the Living-Eternal-Guru. The war of words - and even court battles raged between the Amritsar and Lahore Sabhas for many years till the main protagonists passed away, within a couple of years of each other, at the turn of the century.

The life of Bhai Ditt Singh (b. April 21, 1850; d. September 6, 1901), the first to qualify formally the degree of ‘Gyani’ from the Oriental college, in the first ever examination held in 1878, is an inspiring saga of immense scholarship and dedicated service in the cause of the Sikh Panth during a very controversial and challenging period. He was born in a pious Ravidasia family - a low caste according to the practice of prevailing norms of social order - and his father Divan Singh was known as a Sant for his piety. Himself an admirer of the liberal and free-spirited Gulabdasia sect, his father sent him at the age nine years to be educated in the Dera in Teor, near the town of Kharar. Ditt Singh studied diligently for about seven years learning the various traditional studies in Gurmukhi, including grammar, prosody, Vedanta, Niti shastra, etc. Then he shifted to the main center of the Gulabdasis at Chathiawala, near Kasur and was soon initiated as an independent preacher. The contact with Jawahar Singh, a former Gulabdasia, who had joined the Arya Samaj led Ditt Singh also into this new wave organization. The two friends were soon drawn into Sikh fold by Bhai Gurmikh Singh, an educated activist for reforms in Sikhism and Ditt Singh’s life was transformed for ever for his most luminous scholarly contribution to the Sikh resurgence.

Apart from being one of the leading lights of the Singh Sabha movement, Ditt Singh was in the unique category of his own for inspiring the Sikh youth to follow the path of knowledge and being the pioneer to promote Punjabi language and literature. He was a crusader for establishing educational institutions and played a crucial part in the establishment of the Khalsa College in Amritsar. He pioneered, in close collaboration with Prof Gurmukh Singh, publication of journals and newspapers in Punjabi for social and spiritual awakening of Punjabis. He was amazingly prolific in his journalistic, literary and religious writings. According to Pritam Singh, a senior civil servant who retired in 2000, and has since been making Herculean efforts to retrieve and laboriously edit / publish the complete works of Bhai Ditt Singh, Giani Ji wrote 72 books - 60 in exquisite traditional poetry. The available works have been classified as consisting of the eight authentic accounts of the Sikh martyrs; seven biographies of the Sikh Gurus and twenty five didactic booklets and declamatory brochures explaining at length the Gurmat point of views on the raging controversies of his time. He has employed his immense talent as a poet and prose stylist in all his works. He was indeed a precursor and path finder for the entire next generation of Punjabi writers in the line of Bhai Veer Singh.

The folk fame of Giani Ditt Singh in the Sikh circles has been firmly woven around the three debates he had held with Swami Dayanand, recorded to have been held in Lahore on April 19, 24-27 and June 24-27, 1877. The 40 pages text titled, ‘My Debate with Sadhu Dayanand’ details an interesting account of the points and counter points of an extended discourse about the concept and identity of God; Vedas being of divine origin and the attainment of salvation. Giani Ditt Singh dared to assert that Swami Dayanand succeeded in impressing his followers in Punjab because of their limited knowledge of Sanskrit and linguistics and it also explains why he could not succeed in Bengal and southern India. Another longer essay titled, “How are Nations Born and How do They Prosper” dwells on the nobler tasks undertaken by the Christian missionaries in spreading education among all and providing the health facilities. Gyani Ji narrates the progress of Buddhism and Islam and the rise and decline of Hinduism and Sikhism. He quotes Kabir, 

Yahan gyan tahan dharam hai; 
yahan jhuth tahan paap. 
Yahan lobh tahan kaal hai; 
Yahan khima tanhi aap. 
Where there is knowledge, there is righteousness; 
ignorance is synonymous with sin. 
Greed breeds destruction; 
forgiveness is divine.

Gyani Ditt Singh has been rightfully, though belatedly recognised as the father of journalism in Punjabi. The British had undertaken the monumental ‘Project Punjab’ pushing and rushing province headlong from medievalism to modernity. The magical machine of the printing press of Gurmukhi was as much as much an engine new era as gigantic rail road projects. Prof Gurmukh singh and Gyani Ditt Singh and their close friends were all children of the spirit of the time and the saga of the ‘Khalsa Akhbar’, started in June 1886, indeed symbolized the new dawn. Gyani ji who edited 695 issues out of 699 of this first formidable weekly of the Panth till his last in September 1901 must be the most influential wielder of the pen in Punjabi. When Prof Gurmukh Singh was ‘thrown out’ of Panth by the feudal clique controlling the Amritsar Singh Sabha by adopting the Gurmata-religious edict, Gyani Ji stood up to valiantly defend him by writing the most convincing articles in Khalsa Akhbar and succeeded in forcing the withdrawal of the unjust edict. When Gyani Ji published in May 1887 ‘Swapan Natak - A Dream Play’, a satire targeting the false practitioners of Sikhism, the Amritsar faction dragged him to court in a defamation case - the conviction by the lower court imposing a fine of Rs 51/- was reversed by the higher court on April 30, 1888.

Biography by Pritam Singh

It augurs well that during the last three decades, the researchers in the universities of Punjab and public spirited cultural activists have invested lot of efforts to evaluate the multi-dimensional personality and totality of the writings by Gyani Ditt Singh. To quote Harjot Oberoi, “one man can rarely change the course of history, but without Ditt Singh the Singh Sabha might have been a rather different body. Author, publisher, journalist, public speaker, preacher, consultant, teacher and polemicist par excellence, Ditt Singh remained unrivalled in his command over print culture.” The books by Dr N.S. Kapur (1987); journalist-scholar Gurditt Singh ‘Giani’ (1999, Tercentenary of the Khalsa) and Dr K.S. Somal have comprehensively brought out the path breaking contribution of Gyani Ji in the social, intellectual and literary life of the Sikh people. According to the modern secular and Dalit scholars Gyani Ditt Singh courageously faced the personal insults inflicted on him by the feudal orthodoxy and the upper caste elite among the Sikhs. In the words of Dr. N.S. Kapur, “No doubt, Gyani Ditt Singh was a giant of his age. He was utterly lacking in material means but he turned the impossible into possible by dint of his dedication, determination and single mindedness… he steered the ship of Sikh Panth from the whirlpools to the shore of safety like an accomplished boatswain.” 

The untimely demise of Gyani Ji on September 6, 1901 had occasioned a deep and wide spread grief in the Panthic circles. Bhai Vir Singh paid rich tributes to his twenty years senior and precursor in a real sense of Sikh ideology, Punjabi literature and journalism by penning three poems and two touching tributes. A few lines are worth quoting, “Sade vicchon sajjan bhara guunm ho giya, bhai: Ditt Singh editor gyani, panth kare vadiaaee - A thorough gentleman has departed from among us, brothers: Ditt Singh, Editor and Gyani is most admired in the Panth.” The two other poems namely, ‘Long Lasting Sleep of Bhai Ditt Singh,’ and ‘An Elegy of Bhai Ditt Singh’s Pen’ express a deep sense of loss and bereavement of the Sikh community in the death of its most gifted scholar. The fairly longer ‘Editorial Note’ in Khalsa Samachar of September 11, 1901 titled, ‘Qaum Looti Gayee - The Nation has been Looted (Robbed)’ appeals that, “…The loss suffered is irreparable and nor can we ever repay for his services, but the best thing to preserve the memory of the dear departed is to make the best arrangements for the completion of the interrupted education of his son…” Gyani Ji’s son Baldev Singh ‘Sher’ did become a highly qualified doctor but found the doors in India to all the positions commensurate with his qualifications shut in his face - because of his being born in a low caste! H.W. McLeod has narrated how the curse of caste had vitiated the life of Dr Baldev Singh - even at the edge of the world in distant New Zealand!

One hopes that the Panth Khalsa in Punjab and its cultural historians will fully embrace and put this most scholarly son of soil on a higher pedestal of the honor that he had earned by his noblest pen.

Shri Guru Ravi Dass - Poet and Prophet of Emancipation

The article was published in the bi-annual, Studies in Sikhism and Comparative Religion, Volume XXXI Number-2 July-December 2012, Guru Nanak Foundation, New Delhi

          Painting by Rajni Kashyap

The elevation - in a geometric progression - of the spiritually inspirational stature of Shri Ravi Dass Ji (Circa 1450-1520) from an initial Bhakata - a devotee/worshipper - in his contemporary and earlier Hindu Brahmanical religious discourses to a Sant - a spiritualist par excellence - in the later medieval period and to an emancipator - Guru / the liberator-teacher - in the more recent epoch of democratically determined ethos indeed represents an arduously marathon and excruciatingly revealing pilgrimage of India's challenging tryst with her complex - Varna Ashram / caste system singed - religious and spiritual identity. The defining departure and the path breaking turning point for the ‘revolutionary re-envisioning’ of Ravi Dass Ji - a spiritual and moral colossus yet an incarnation of humility to the extent of even self-denigration - was, however, the inclusion of his select sublime verses - 40+1 in 16 celebrated classical ragas measures of melodies - in the Adi Granth, compiled in 1604 AD by Shri Guru Arjan Dev ji (1563-1606 AD), the uniquely scholarly and divinely farsighted fifth master who was the first to embrace martyrdom on the altar of the ‘freedom of faith and conscience’ in the evolution of the most distinct tradition of making the supreme sacrifice of in the Sikh faith. The rest, as they say, is the history and the ‘tryst with the societal and spiritual destiny’ of independent India.

When introspecting back and forth over the centuries after the decline of Buddhism and the consolidation of the Muslim rule over Delhi and the territories much beyond it in all directions, we find that that the saints of the Bhakti and the Sufi traditions had surged forward to guide the masses amidst the confusion and conflict of moribund Hinduism and aggressive Islam. The spiritual horizons of the entire north-western Bharat were indeed brightened as never before by the several saint–gurus, most of them with the lowly and humble origins according to the so called ‘divinely sanctioned Brahamanical scriptures’. The spiritually most polluted region of Awadh with Benares emerging as the capital of Brahmin ‘Thugs’ plying their nefarious trades by exploiting the names God and the dark deserts of orthodoxy of the kingdoms of Rajputana were indeed dazzled by the songs of light and beauty attributed to the true messengers of humanity, particularly Kabir (C. 1398-1518?) and Ravi Dass. The wandering folk singers were quick to carry far and wide the heart touching Vaani - the verses - of the two inspired masters with abode in Benares, like gentle breezes carry, on their invisible wings, the fragrance to the dark and desolate corners.

The inspiration for a just and egalitarian social order in the heart and mind moving poetical narratives of the various eminent saint-poets would seem to have culminated in the concept of Begumpura - The Sorrow-less City - a very earthly abode proclaimed by Ravi Dass Ji. He was loud and clear to announce his project to make God a public wealth, available to all through purity of heart and the simple means of love: “The Lord is no one’s property; to love does the divine monarch yield.” The entire environment of the various places of worship in India becomes full of Divine fragrance when the accomplished musicians sing the Ravi Dass Vaani like the soul stirring song in Sri Raag, “Tohi mohi, mohi tohi; antar kaisa… You and I, I and You - how are we different? Only in the sense that gold differs from the bracelet, and water differs from the wave. If I did not sin, O Eternal Lord, You could not be called Purifier of sin… ” (SGGS P.93 TR. Nirmal Dass). Ravi Dass made a frontal attack on the empty rituals and discriminatory practices which had polluted Hinduism, “Though a man bathe in the pools of all sixty-eight shrines; though a man worship the twelve Lingams; though he dig public wells and create ponds of fresh water - but if he reviles others - all his good deeds shall be utterly wasted….” (SGSS P.875 Tr N. Dass). He indeed struck a strongly original note in his epoch emerging as a practical social-reformer-crusader, addressing, as if, our own time today. No surprise that the people belonging to the toiling and devoted community of Ravi Dass - the oppressively persecuted and systematically marginalized - in the entire Northern India, in the vast and valiant historical Punjab in particular, were to find an eternal fountain of solace, strength and salvation in the dynamic faith based on equality and fraternity formally launched by Shri Guru Gobind Singh Ji in AD 1699.

It has been interestingly a combination of several factors - above all the parameters of democratic polity - that the last five decades have witnessed an era of diligent and dedicated research and scholarship to explore more and more original sources and references relating to the non-Brahamanical discourses on spirituality like the Bhakti and Sufi movements. Interestingly, the life and works of Guru Ravi Dass have been subjects of many new learned treatises following the rigors of modern research methodologies and the over all inclusive approach. The universities of the northern states of India would seem to have been vying with each other to establish chairs to promote special studies on the works of low born saint poets.

There has been a phenomenal resurgence of resourceful Ravi Dass Deras and they have been very energetic in availing of all the modern popular means of mass media like the audio / videos of the exquisite Vaani sung by distinguished artists apart from bringing out attractive editions in various languages, including in English, for the strong diaspora community, of all the verse attributed to the saint-liberator who had roared about and even celebrated his so called ‘lower class station of caste’. The internet facility with dedicated websites, publications and all the other attendant means have been systematically pressed into service to promote the ideals contained in the verses of the ‘divine teacher.’ The birth day of Guru Ravi Dass - now a closed holiday in several states of India - is celebrated with huge fan fare festivities in the Ravi Dass temples with special gathering in the recently consecrated magnificent Seer Govardhan Temple, the pristine place in the periphery of modern in Varanasi.

It is indeed quite interesting and purposeful to examine the various available accounts - unauthentic and unreliable as per the prevailing practice in the medieval times - to elucidate upon the life of Guru Ravi Dass. What can be inferred with certainty is the humble - low caste - birth of Ravi Dass in the vicinity area of present Varanasi and that he followed the family occupation of tanning hides and shoe making. There are several references in the verses by Ravi Dass himself and also by the fourth Guru Ramdas (1531-1581 AD) and the fifth Guru Arjan Dev (1563-1606) indicating his caste as Chamar and occupation of maker of shoes and disposer of carcasses of animals. The verses of other saint poets and later commentators further reveal this reality and also suggest the period of his life. Bhai Gurdas (1551-1629 AD) in his verse compositions called Vaar - ballad - contain important insightful references to Ravi Dass. Among the earlier Punjabi sources, mention may also be made of the Janam Sakhi of Sri Guru Nanak Dev ji by Sodhi Manohar Dass Miharban (1581-1640) - son of Prithi Chand and nephew of Guru Arjan - mentioning how Mardana would sing Pads of the Bhagats, including Ravi Dass, to Nanak. Pothiprembodh (C. 1693 AD) contains accounts of lives of sixteen saints including Ravi Dass.

Among the early Hindi sources of references on Ravi Dass, the Ramanadian tradition refers to Hariram Vyas of Orcha (C. 1560 AD), the celebrated Bhaktamal of Nabhadas (C. 1600 AD) and the Bhaktirasbodhini by Priyadas (C. 1712 AD). Furthest the Raidas Parchian (C. 1588 AD), The Raidas Kabir Goshti by Sain (C. 1600 AD ?), The Bhaktnamavali by Dhruvdas (C. 1538-1623 AD), The Vaani Dadu (C. 1554-1603 AD), the Sarvangi (SAR) by a prominent Dadu disciple Rajab (C. 1567-1689 AD), the Vani of Sundardas (C. 1596-1689 AD) another Dadu disciple, Garibdas-Dadu’s son-have all paid tributes to Ravi Dass in their works. The single most fact about Ravi Dass - Raidas to locals in Benares - which is totally undisputed - is that he was a Chamar - ‘an untouchable caste, whose vocations included the hauling away of the carcasses of dead cattle, skinning and tanning their hides and making leather objects as shoes etc.’

The verses of Ravi Dass contain respectful references to Namdev (C. 1270-1350 AD), Kabir (circa 1398-1518 AD), Trilochan (b. C. 1267), Sadhna (?) and Sen (b. C. 1290 AD) indicating his spiritual fraternity with them. Acharya Prithvi Singh Azad, himself a Ravidasia scholar with background Arya Samaj, has even opined that a meeting took place between Guru Nanak Dev Ji and Ravi Dass Ji around 1555 Bikrami - 1498 AD. There are ample references to Princess Meera Bai (C. 1503-1556 AD) paying homage to Ravi Dass Ji as her Guru. There are ample references that Ramanand (C. 1400-1476 AD) was the spiritual mentor of Shri Ravi Dass. HW McLeod and other Western scholars clearly reject this suggestion that 'it would be early enough to be his disciple’. It is also mentioned that Sikandar Lodhi (C. 1489-1517 AD) was the ruler in Delhi during the life of Ravi Dass. There are six different sets of dates - between 1376 to 1444 AD - all contested by scholars - to be the year of birth of Shri Ravi Dass. Most recently of all, in 1984, Dr Jasbir Singh Saabar, in his painstakingly researched book, has concluded that Ravi Dass would have been born around AD 1376 to 1414 and that he might have died around AD 1517. There are many references and accounts of passing away of Ravi Dass Ji in a very ripe old age, even suggesting at the age of 120 years. It is safe to assume - for our frame of reference and analysis - that Ravi Dass ji’s earthly sojourn was during 15th/16th centuries. According to the two meticulous scholars - WM Callewaert and PG Fridlander, 'his floruit was at some time between C. 1450-1520 AD’. To quote them further, "…common core to the hagiography of Raidas has been embedded within a Brahmanical contextualization…about (his) rebirth and final revelation of his Brahman status… they allow even high caste devotees to accept Raidas into their own pantheons of saints… the story of Raidas’s essentially ‘Brahman’ nature must have been accepted in the Dadupanth by the early seventeenth century.” They add further, “In contrast to this, the life story of Ravidas in Punjabi Pothipremabodh does not allow such Brahmanical contextualization, containing no references to Ramanand or Ravidas’s ‘Brahmin’ origins. Instead, the Sikhs contextualized the figure of Ravidas by assimilating him into the company of Bhagats who were the precursors of Nanak.”

Apart from the authentically revered Vani in the Adi Granth, the traditional centers of Ravidas scholarships as well as the modern universities have identified eleven credible manuscript sources for the Vani of the saint poet including the Fatehpur manuscripts (AD 1582; 5 pads) representing a nonsectarian tradition and the ten Dadu Panthi tradition - Panchvani - and other sources available in Rajasthan and Punjab. In sum, the songs - Pads - of Ravidas had begun, perhaps during his life time and certainly soon after, to spread beyond Benares. By the mid-sixteenth century distinct oral recessions of his Vaani had developed in Rajasthan and the Punjab. The popular Poets and musicians recited his verses, adding songs or lines of their own or even changing the lines according their own inclinations and genius. It must be appreciated that the verses of Ravi Dass were primarily intended to be sung at gatherings of pious devotees and could be considered as ‘texts’ in the sense as far as the oral performances could be texts- ‘Each Pad being a glimpse into Raidas’s thoughts, experiences, and beliefs.’ 

Adopting the criteria that the Pad appearing in at least 7 out of the 10 select Rajasthani manuscripts or in any other Rajasthani manuscript as well as the Adi Granth should be graded genuine has resulted in 72 Pads, leaving out 39 others occurring in different sources. It is important to note how these Pads composed in several genres invoke the typical ideas as per the ‘inherent rhetoric’ of the genre: in case of Ravi Dass, scholars have noticed ‘Warnings - Chitavani’; ‘Entreaty - Vinaya/Binati’; ‘Love-in Separation - Virah’; ’Destruction of illusion/Error - Bharam Vidhashan'; 'Glory of Name / God - Bhajan Pratap'; ‘Union with Pure - Sadh Milap'; ‘Devotion - Bhakti'; ’Recognition of Beloved - Pia Pehchan’ and ‘Enlightening Experience - Anubhuti’. The Sant tradition - Nirguni Prampra - identifying God as ‘ineffable, without shape or form, and immanent in creation’ is sought to be distinguished from the Sagun Bhaktas who ‘conceived of God as having incarnated, in the form of Avatars.’ To quote HW McLeod, "the Sants were monotheists, but the God whom they addressed and with whom they sought union was in no sense to be understood in anthropomorphic terms. His manifestation was by His immanence in His creation and, in particular, by His indwelling within human soul.”

We are indeed witness in the 21st century to the new era interpretations, interrogations and re-envisioning of the religious and spiritual inheritance of the civilization of India. The broad vision traditions of the movements like the Bhakti and the Sufism are certainly more in tune with the spirit and ethos of the globalization. Guru Ravi Dass has been increasingly visualized and identified with the recovery of the truest dimensions of piety and spirituality; he emerges as the spokesperson of the underprivileged and oppressed - no wonder to Ravi Dass 'God is up lifter of the lowly, purifier of the defiled and deliverer of the poor.' The Vani of Ravi Dass represents his quest for emancipation in a society based on human dignity and freedom. What could be more eloquently clear than the ringing verse of Guru Ravi Dass in Raga Gauri - SGGS Page 345:-

Begampur (Sorrow-less City) is the name of that place,
Without suffering or distress,
Without anxiety, taxes or property,
Without fear of failure or fear of loss.
I have found a good home in my own land,
O my brother, there is ever lasting well- being there.
Its everlasting sovereignty is firm and stable
There none is third or second, all are one.
Flourishing and ever famous,
The wealthy dwell in that town.
They wander around wherever they please,
They stroll through palaces unchallenged,
Say, Ravidas the liberated Chamar,
Whoever is my fellow citizen, is my friend.

In the context of the above quoted masterly composition of the ‘Indian Socialist Manifesto’ by Guru Ravi Dass in the medieval times, it would come as no surprise that Dr BR Ambedkar - the titanic scholar, a rare constitutionalist and the presiding deity over India’s march to modern social renaissance - “inscribed (On Jan.1, 1948) to the memory of Nandnar, Ravi Dass and Chokhamela - the three renowned saints who were born among the untouchables and who by their piety and virtue won the esteem of all” - his magnum ovum, 'The Untouchables, who were they and why they became Untouchables?’

My Ocean of Memories

This article was published in monthly magazine Identity, March 2012

Maldives, India's oceanic neighbor in the south, surfaces in the media but once in a blue moon - often for the attempted coup plots, with a tailor made role for India to thwart them. The nature and consequences of what happened on 7th of February this year forcing President Mohamed Nasheed, the first to be democratically elected in the history of the nascent republic, to resign his post, is still being debated in the concerned diplomatic and political quarters. India has, in the meanwhile, rushed its two top diplomats to help restore calm in troubled political waters. These entire goings on made me look back and reflect with the mellowed wisdom of decades of hindsight on my own 555 consecutive days of duty as an envoy of India to this country of a garland of islands of the Indian Ocean.

I may start with a bit of a startling confession. My worst fears about joining the Indian Foreign Service with duties of 'lying abroad' had indeed stared squarely in my face during the first posting abroad to Tehran where I had joined on September 29, 1975, the day of the anniversary of the martyrdom of the 1st Shia Imam, Ali. My wife and I had lost, suddenly and quite prematurely, our fathers at ages 56 and 58, in December 1977 and April 1978 respectively. We, the eldest in the families, were feeling an overwhelming burden of emotional responsibilities. I was advised by sympathetic colleagues to make a representation to the 'dear Ministry' requesting for the next posting in one the 'neighboring countries' on 'compassionate grounds'.

The invisible and inscrutable hand of 'Mighty Ministry' struck like a proverbial 'bolt from the blue'. I was posted to, what appeared to me, the most mysterious piece of planet Earth, which could technically or more appropriately 'geographically', be termed to be situated in the neighborhood of Bharat! In the afternoon of the 'Bag Day' on 7th Sept'78, the friendly but often stressed Private Secretary to Ambassador V K Ahuja breezed into my room and intriguingly scribbled 'MALE' in my table diary. I reflexively quipped, "Bhadgal Sahib, who has been blessed with a son?" Her returned to my room after the 'bag fever' had subsided and explained to me that I have been posted to Maldives and that 'Male - pronounced Maa-Le' was the name of its capital! I continued to be in a state of shocking disbelief about the decision of the Ministry over my petition for a posting to a place in the periphery of the country. Before leaving office for the day, Ambassador Ahuja called for me and told me, holding the letter of the Ministry in his hands, that I have been posted as Charge D'Affaires in the recently established Embassy in the Republic of Maldives and added, "You will be the monarch of all you survey."

I was literally and metaphorically 'at sea' about my posting to Maldives and even considered making another representation to 'Dear Ministry', a recourse Ambassador Ahuja firmly rejected. Meanwhile Iran had started witnessing street processions with the students in the forefront. The protests gathered strength and had culminated into crippling strikes by end of November. I was able to sell my car but had to leave my TV and refrigerator with Shri Bhadgal to salvage some reasonable amount. The professional packers had become unavailable in view of the disturbed conditions. We packed our wares in the Indian style to catch the last civilian flight departing in the late evening of 11th December from Mehrabad Airport just before the revolutionary guards took it over. The Ministry had turned down my request for a brief leave in India, even a week's consultation duty in the Ministry during the transit in Delhi. Leaving my wife and four year old son behind, I reported in Male on 12th December 1978, flying Indian Airlines up to Trivandrum and further by a small Avro plane.

Like most of the Punjabis and a majority of the north Indians, I had the least opportunities to see the sea in its magnificent moods. Many in Punjab wondered what the hell promising singer Ishmeet who had crowned Voice of India had gone to do in Maldives in July 2008, but driven by the destiny of a watery grave! I remember how my well read school teacher Giani Sucha Singh Ji was singing songs of the sea after having actually seen the ocean in Bombay for the first time - he was at great pain for more than a month to explain how what we read in books could not exactly convey the vast expanse and massive might of the real oceans which cover the four-fifths of the surface of the planet. I myself had 'Sagar darshan' as late as in Feb 1973 during the offical Bharat Darshan tour and later around Nourouz in March 1977 in Iran during travels with Dr SS Johl who was then serving in Iran as ans adviser with UNDP.

When I reached Maldives, President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom had just taken over as President. India was the first country to open diplomatic mission in Male, to be followed by who else, but Pakistan!

My predecessor in Maldives, a well meaning Tamilian who had risen from the ranks (he was reputed to be an expert in 'decoding' the handwriting of Shri TN Kaul, I.C.S., had been at logger heads with the India experts on deputations particularly the school teachers. The State Bank of India and the Indian Airlines wielded a larger presence, and an obvious clout, than the embassy, a Padmini Fiat, imported from India came with some manufacturing defect and could never function properly and the local driver, in disgust, had once pushed it in the sea! The International Airports Authority of India (IAAI) was executing the project of Hulule Airport. It was indeed a challenging task with even the soil and sand imported from India and the German Consultants engaged by the donors, the Kuwait Fund pressing hard on the quality of the work. The project proved to be a long drawn affair with series of controversies it was being said that everyone had made a good profit out of it except the contractors, i.e. the IAAI.

Let us know more about our lesser known neighbor. Maldives, also earlier called Maldive islands now, formally Republic of Maldives, Divehi Jumhurriyyah consist of a chain of about 1,300 small coral islands and sand banks. They extend in Indian Ocean for more than 820 Km from North to South and 130 Km from East to West. The Maldive Islands with a total land area of about 298 sq Km is built of coral on the crowns of an ancient submerged volcanic mountain range. All the islands are incredibly low lying, none rising more than 6 feet above sea level. The clusters of islands or atolls have sandy beaches, lagoons and luxuriant growth of coconut palms, breadfruit trees and tropical bushes. The tourism potential of the country was envisioned in seventies by the western tour operators and several islands around capital Male were developed with necessary facilities. The chartered flights from European countries to this 'Paradise of Sun, Sand and Surf' have indeed transformed the entire life pattern of the people of Maldives. Fishing and shipping are the other pillars of the economy of the country. The smallest in term of land surface and the ocean arrested Maldives scores over other members of the South Asian community in several vital indicators of socio-economic development including education and health with only 16 percent of its total population of about 400,000 counted below poverty line.

I had tried to cope with the most trying conditions of living in terms of the hot and humid climate (no air conditioning) and non availability of the provisions of daily food, particularly the vegetables. The medium of cooking was kerosene stove. The rain water was collected in a well and boiled for drinking. The messenger cum-driver Mohamad Naeem who had served in a ship and had also lived in Mumbai, was very efficient and dedicated young man. The other house help Ismail would ask us when we would go to our island! A snake was found near the refrigerator and there were too many large sized lizards and chameleons roaming about the house making my wife run in panic.

Male, and island of one and a half sq Km, wore a neat and clean look. But during the rains the streets became pools of water for days. I had not imagined all this to be a part of the Indian Foreign Service. The only advantage of this experience was, perhaps, that we became toughened to face any odds in future.

The 16 mm projector in the embassy proved to be a real blessing. We could screen several popular feature films received from the Ministry; I do recall that we had repeatedly screened Kora Kagaz, Garam Hawa, Shatranj Ke Khilari and Satyajit Ray's Gopi Gayan Bagha Payan. We could also arrange the facilities for Table Tennis and Badminton which became quite popular involving Maldivian officials also. I started building up a small library. I particularly remember having read there Balwant Gargi's Naked Triangle among many other books. The Radio Maldives played popular film songs and the only so called cinema showed pirated copies of Indian films using several TV screens. The audio cassettes were becoming popular and the two in on sets were indeed considered a prize item.

The interaction with a few Pakistanis in Maldives proved quite interesting. The Pak CDA Amir Mohammad Khan, an elderly gentleman with four pretty young daughters had been transferred from Kenya. I remember that he gifted me a cassette of songs by Didar Singh Pardesi. My staff member Gurchetan Singh told me one day that Hanif of Pakistan embassy had greeted with Sat Sri Akal saying that he was a Punjabi with ancestral link with Hoshiarpur and had further added that it was nice that the CDA of India was also a Punjabi. Gurchetan said that when he asked bout the Pakistani CDA, Hanif had replied that 'he was from UP/CP'. It was my early lesson in the ethnic divides and the Mohajir issue. The manager of Habib Bank, Baz Mohamad Khan and his charming family had been very friendly towards us. He surprised me by telling, on the eve of my departure, that Parvez Hasan Cheema (he too professed great friendship with me), the Maulvi, religious instructor, deputed by the government of Pakistan in Maldives, had complained to the Pak authorities against him for being friendly with me. Baz Mohamad added that such so called religious but foolish people as Cheema posed a serious threat to not only the good relations between Indian and Pakistan but peace all over the world. How prophetic from someone belonging to the tribe of Badshah Khan!

The Role of Religion in Modern Era, and Sikhism

This was delivered at the 27^th Bir Memorial Lecture, on 23rd October 2011 at India International Centre, New Delhi

I indeed feel greatly privileged and honored to deliver the 27th Bir Memorial Lecture on the topic, ‘The Role of Religion in Modern Era, and Sikhism.’

As some one who has nourished a firm faith in the ancient axiom, since I learnt it at school, ‘Faith moves mountains’, I feel more deeply convinced today, in the proverbial ‘ripe age’, that the collective destiny of humanity on our tiny planet – only one known so far to be sustaining human life – would for ever be determined by the eternal spiritual values taught by all the prophets of all the peoples in all the lands.

I am, however, acutely conscious of my individual inadequacies in dealing with the discipline of Divinity; debatable theological, philosophical, socio-anthropological and above all the explosive political dimensions of the seminal subject. I would, therefore, approach the issues involved more as a seeker-Jigyasu-and a way farer – a Musafir – whom the Almighty has bountifully blessed with duties of long travels and living sufficiently longer among peoples of distant lands, professing different faiths.

While engrossed in my thoughts about ‘religion’, I felt that one’s family exercises the most impressionable influence in inculcating the primary religious colors and elementary moral values. I belong to an era when the grandparents used to be loving friends, philosophers and guides to grand children for their basic moral training. I do recollect how my grand father had fondly made me learn by heart the Hanuman Chalisa before I was even admitted to school. The grandmother had ensured that I was able to recite the Rahiraas in the evening soon after I was able to learn the Gurumukhi script at school. I further vividly recall how my grandmother, who would remain busy reciting the Bhagat Maal and the Bhagawad Gita, did not allow me to go to cinema to see film Bhagat Kabir saying, “no, no, they must have distorted the life-story of Kabir mixing vulgar songs and dances!” I can also recall an atmosphere of fear and anxiety in Punjab, for any transgression of the Panthic values, when the first film with the background of Sikhism ‘Nanak Naam Jahaz Hai’ had been released.

The socio-religious scene in India since Independence has been subjected to an interesting spectrum of cultural influences. The exponential increase in 24x7 TV channels in the recent decades would seem to have redefined the atmosphere in families. The satellite channels have dwarfed the planet to be ‘a global village’ in the truest sense of the term. I do remember the day when the mercurially brilliant Z.A. Bhutto had termed the inauguration of the TV station in Amritsar as ‘cultural aggression’ on Pakistan by India! The socio-political analysts in India point out that the TV serials about the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata had deeply impacted the cultural horizons in South Asia. The daily increasing channels serving a big variety of stuff rooted in alien values of morality and saints and Sadhvis groomed to look better than models would seem to be scripting the new era codes of moral etiquettes.

The term ‘modern era’ would seem to denote interesting interpretations. The eminent sociologist, Prof. T.N. Madan, explains that modernity embraces larger and deeper perspectives of human freedom and choices in religious options. The modernists in India, according to Madan, entertain anxieties about future of secularism in India and in South Asia. I vividly recall how about fifty years ago, as a fresh student of BA, on the suggestion of my Professor of Sociology, I had studied the book, ‘Hints for Self Culture’ by Lala Har Dial (1884-1939), the celebrated encyclopedic-scholar and Ghadarite revolutionary. The chapter titled ‘Comparative Religion’ in the book had made such an abiding impression on my mind that I seem to carry it till today. Please permit me to quote from this book, dedicated ‘To a Young Fellow-Rationalist’, date-lined April 6934 AH (Anno Historiae), equivalent to 1934 A.D.,

Study the great religions carefully … their origin, history and present position. For social progress, they have been what the mighty rivers have been for the material prosperity of mankind. They have supplied the life-giving waters of Ethics, which are, however, very dirty and turgid on account of the large admixture of superstition…Comparative religion is a fascinating study; it will introduce you into the presence of noble sages and saints, who will teach you the social virtues of self denial, temperance, patience, simplicity and love…borrow their virtues, and reject their errors,…rub and rinse and wash and cleanse the old religions; but don’t rub and wash away the Ethics altogether.

As for the most mystifying concept of ‘God’, the Special Millennium issue, interestingly date-lined January 1st 1000-December 31st 1999, of prestigious London weekly The Economist, had put ‘GOD’ in its celebrated column ‘Obituary’, and had observed, “When your friends start looking for proofs of your existence, you’re heading for trouble. That was God’s situation as the millennium got into its stride… Few ordinary folk, though they had different names for him, doubted the reality of God. He was up there somewhere (up, not down; in his long career, no one ever located him on the seabed), always had been always would be. Yet not quite so far up, in the churches and monasteries of Europe, many of its cleverest men would be racking their brains for ways of proving it… They (God’s troubles) were largely his own fault. Like many great personalities, he had countless admirers who hated each other - and he let them do so… For one of infinite knowledge, he was strangely careless how he spread what bits of it to whom… Each set of believers had its version of what he was like and what he said. No wonder cynics began to hint that, if believers differed so widely, belief might be a mistake …Christians nationalized God, as Jews had long since, like some coal mine… The Christians turned not cheeks but swords against Muslims, Jews and each other. Muslims, while averring that “in religion there is no compulsion”, did the like to them and to Hindus, and put to death apostates from Islam… The test will come on Judgment Day, when man, we are told, will meet his maker. Or will it be God meeting his?”

The world has indeed witnessed the weirdest developments in the first decade of the new millennium. The century of dominance by the USA would seem to be fading, mired in many an insoluble problems. President Barrack Obama, the precocious son of an African evokes an image of a brave boy on the burning deck in the poem Casabianca, struggling to put out so many fires. Is this the intensity of darkness before the break of a new dawn for humanity? Will the ancient civilizations of Asia reclaim their roles not only in the global economic arena but also in building a more moral and humane new world order? Are the fault lines of the religions of children of Abraham likely to get repaired by their interaction with the oriental creeds characterized by the credo of pluralism and a continuous process of renewal? The leaders of all religions have to guide their flocks into the modern era of multiculturalism with attendant realities of an intimately interconnected planet. The minds of seven billion inhabitants of the planet would need to be fine tuned to the transformed world of instantaneous communications and global culture. The saint-astronomer of the modern era, Carl Sagan (1934-2006) indeed speaks the most telling poetic-scientific truth about humanity, rather the entire phenomenon of life on earth, “Every breath you take includes a billion oxygen molecules that have been at one time or the other in the lungs of the 50 billion humans who have ever lived.”

The pilgrimage of independent India after a much deliberated and conscious choice on path of religious freedom and secularism certainly makes an illuminating chapter in the history of modern world. The learned scholars have traced ‘Bharat’s Dharma Nirpekshta’ to an eternal ethos of the Hindu way of life, a legacy of an Asoka, an Akbar, and a Ranjit Singh. It was also hailed as the epitome of the national freedom struggle with MK Gandhi, RN Tagore, Maulana AK Azad, Jawaharlal Nehru and their many visionary comrades, not to forget the most self sacrificing soldiers of Neta Ji’s Azad Hind Fauj exemplified by the trial and triumph of Sehgal, Dhillon, Shah Nawaz from the Red Fort. The task of formulating an unprecedented legal frame work of India’s secular polity was diligently and faithfully performed by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar who had the first hand experiences of the perversities and persecutions of the religious and caste kind. The deeply brutalizing wounds of Partition would, however, not stop bleeding and injecting cancerous virus of communalism in India’s body politic. India certainly needs eternal vigilance and sincere commitment by the main stream political parties to the genuine values of a secular way of life, fully backed by the spiritual and religious institutions. The multicultural and pluralistic traditions of the nation have to be carefully nourished and perceptions of the minority groups must be addressed effectively and expeditiously. The religious minorities must also come out of their ‘stay apart’ mentality to embrace broader values of our uniquely multicultural country.

Coming to the historical and philosophical evolution of Sikhism in the contemporary contexts, one is indeed overwhelmingly impressed by the unique universality of teachings by great Gurus and inspired Bhagat-saints representing their different faiths and distant regions of India and honorably included in the Sikh faith book compiled in 1604 by Guru Arjan Dev Ji (1563-1606). The book was bestowed the ‘highly exalted status of Sri Guru Granth Sahib’ in 1708 when Guru Gobind Singh Ji (1666-1708) declared the line of human Gurus to be closed; updated Guru Arjan’s Book by adding work of his father, Guru Tegh Bahdur Ji (1622-1675) and nominated the augmented book as his eternal successor. The Granth Sahib, to quote Prof Pritam Singh (Patiala), “is the most lavishly bedecked, the most richly appareled, the most magnificently housed, the most demonstratively venerated and the most ceremoniously apotheosized book of all times and places.” The consecration of Sri Guru Granth Sahib as ‘Eternal-Living Guru’ indeed represents the most momentous development in religious-philosophical, socio-cultural and literary-linguistic domains in the history of India. The realm of spirituality was never the same again after the revolution of Sikhism upholding the values of human fraternity based on fair play, freedom of conscience and fellow feeling among all children of Almighty.

The founder of the faith of Sikhism Sri Guru Nanak dev Ji (1469-1530) has been universally acclaimed as Satiguru, the True Guru, Teacher par excellence. Guru Ji’s prime composition, the Japji - literally sacred recitation, remembrance, of Guru’s divine utterances - has been rightly hailed as the quintessence of philosophy of Sikhism. The Japji is preceded by a short, cryptic, highly revered basic precept popularly known as the Mool (Root) Mantra (Hymn) that succinctly summarizes the three key elements indispensable for the soul in its quest for fulfillment in God. They are: faith in one God as the sole reality; meditation on the Name, the sole Truth; and the Guru whose grace makes it possible for the devotee to realize God. The Japji is such a rare treasure-ocean of thoughtful contemplation that deeper a devotee delves into its nectar, the more he is blessed with the gems of liberating thoughts. The Japji expounds, in the most exquisite poetic language, the fullest concept of God; the human quest for Divine; the Divine Will and Order; the path of loving adoration of God; cultivation of a virtuous way of life; dignity of Human Life and the profoundest cosmological Truths. The human soul is on the wings of ecstasy of liberation when reciting the immortal Bani of the Japji,

Spheres there are beyond our own; /And numberless more beyond these, / What power sustains these spheres aloft? Eternal Thou art, O Lord of the Universe! / Ever True is Thy Name,/ Thou who hast created this Universe,/ Art, has ever been, and shall ever be…Guru’s word to the human soul is as vital/ as air is to man’s very being,/ Water is the source of all life,/ And Mother earth its benign sustainer,…At the True Master’s seat shall our deeds/ be judged aright...

The quad-centenary of the martyrdom in 2006 of the fifth Master, Guru Arjan Dev Ji, was the solemn occasion for the community to introspect deeply on his sterling contribution in consolidating the Sikh religion by compiling the Holy Scripture and strengthening the Sikh traditions and institutions. Guru Arjan Dev Ji, by the unique imprint of his individual character and conduct, has become the personification of an exemplary ideal for moral courage, unflinching faith, complete surrender to the Divine Will, cosmopolitan spirit and love for all humanity. The Sukhmani Sahib-the Panacea for the (aches of) Mind-indeed provides a perfect solace to the soul yearning for the peace of mind. This Psalm of peace and equipoise, according to Prof Puran Singh, ‘flows in an ambrosial stream of hope and light from the bosom of the Guru.’

I recently had the opportunity to once again live through the Bani of the Ninth Master Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji to rediscover how deeply the Guru’s verses epitomize the values of the spiritual heritage of not only of India of his epoch but of the entire humanity. The soul piercing hymns drive home the truths of ultimate destiny of a human being and how one should aspire for an honest life detaching from greed, pride, luxury, sensuality –“the pleasures of Maya-Illusion-are unstable like the wall of sand.” The Guru’s supreme sacrifice of life in the mythological city personifying the heart of Hindustan and his immortal message in a deeply mystic poetry in the popular language of India will continue to inspire eternally all the people confronted with tyranny and injustice.

Inspired by the life transforming teachings of the great Gurus, the followers of Sikhism have made the most conspicuous contribution in all walks of the national life of India and have distinguished themselves in the world reflecting their dynamic and vibrant character steeled by their faith. The community has gone through many tragic experiences too-may be quite disproportionate-and continues to be confronted with many avoidable controversies in the modern era. The Community, according to many well wishers of the Panth, could handle the contemporary socio-cultural and political issues in a more pragmatic and imaginative manner. The various recent significant historical landmarks including the Tercentenary of the Founding of the Khalsa Panth in 1999; the 400th anniversary of compilation of the Granth Sahib in 2004 and the Tercentenary of the Bestowal of the status of the Eternal Guru on the Granth Sahib in 2008 have been the momentous occasions for the Sikh community for the collective soul searching and the resolute rededication to the values and teachings enshrined in the Granth Sahib.

Like all the human societies, the Sikh community has also certain complex issues to address in a sincere and forthright manner. The Sikh community, as ordained so emphatically by the Gurus and considered the single greatest asset of the faith, has not been able to discard the curse of the caste divides in the practical social life. The matrimonial columns of The Tribune on the last 31st July listed under the title Sikh-Bahti, Tonk Kashatry, Ramdasia, Bawa, Lobana, Mazhbi, Rajput, Kumhar, Kamboj, Nai and had separate categories listed Jat Sikh; Sikh Khatri; Sikh Arora; Sikh Khatri / Arora; Ramgarhia / Dhiman, etc.…No wonder that the split wide apart between the pious principles and perverted practices had disillusioned Dr BR Ambedkar to return from Amritsar with a heavy and empty heart. How profoundly the heart of the thinker-Doctor had been touched by the soul stirring Shabads of Amrit Bani sung so melodiously in the serene precincts of Harmandar Sahib eulogizing ‘Manab Ki Jaat Sabhai ek Pehechanbo’- Recognize, understand that the entire race of humanity is one!

The Sikhs, as per the blessings of the Gurus, have prospered more when they are away from their original homes. The soil of Punjab, of course, remains the anchor of their emotional, cultural, spiritual moorings and even some divisive aspirations too. It is important that the various Sikh organizations- with the SGPC / the DSGMC in the forefront (By the grace of Wahiguru, they are known to have abundant resources) put their houses in perfect order. They should play more constructive role in promoting high quality education and health services in healthy competition with other communities and should actively undertake campaigns to check the social evils including the serious problems of drinking, drug addiction,dowry and sex selection. The Panth has played a pioneering role in the past against such malpractices. The Sikhs settled abroad have a much greater responsibility to highlight the positive image of the community. The violent incidents like the one in Vienna tarnish the reputation of the community and must not be allowed to happen. The sensitive issues of activities of the sects and cults should be better allowed to be tackled within the laws of the land. The question, ’Who is a Sikh?’ is extremely sensitive and should not be treated as a game of short tem political gains. The deep historic ties and contemporary realities dictate that the promotion of Hindu-Sikh harmony must remain the primary focus the spiritual leaders of the two communities.

I have been deeply humbled to note that H.H. the Dalai Lama has also delivered the Bir Memorial Lecture. To me, the mirthful monk philosopher has truly transformed himself to be the conscience keeper of our modern epoch. Let us carefully listen to his words of quintessential wisdom,

For true global harmony, it is necessary to understand the diversity of other cultures and traditions through love and respect for every human being, every religion ,every country…it is a mistake to place all our hopes for happiness on external development alone-the key is to develop the inner peace…In today’s increasingly complex and interdependent world, we are compelled to acknowledge the existence of other cultures, different ethnic groups, and, of course, other religious faiths..

To conclude, let us all pray with the immortal words of the Tenth master, Guru Gobind Singh Ji exhorting the people of India, nay, this entire world to remember:

Dehura Maseet Soi, pooja au niwaj oee,
Manas sabai ek, Pai anek ko bharmao hai /…
Alah abhekh soi, Puraan aou Quran oee,
Ek hi saroop sabai, ek hi banao hai.

Temple and mosque are same sacred spots;
Worship (of Ishwar) and prayer (to Allah) are indeed one
Humanity is one, impressions may be many…
He is Fathomless and Formless;
Puraan and Quran speak one Truth
Divine Essence is One; permeating the whole cosmos.

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Recordings from the Lecture:

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