On a clear Baisakhi day in Anandpur Sahib…
On a clear Baisakhi day in Anandpur Sahib in 1699, the great warrior and saint, Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji founded the Khalsa. The Khalsa, he explained, was the martial arm of the faith that Guru Nanak had established just a few short centuries ago. The creation of the Khalsa, he emphasized, was to provide protection to the weak from tyranny and to enforce a sense of discipline in the Akal Purakh Ki Fauj – the army of the almighty Lord. The tenth Guru blessed and praised his army of saint soldiers and wrote
Khalsa is God’s Army
It’s sustained by the Will of the Almighty
While the Khalsa remains pure
I will give it all my strength
When they mimic the habits of others
I will not offer it my assistance.
As the rightful successor of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the Guru created this righteous army from amongst those who had answered the Guru’s call and had become a part of the Sikh faith and religion. By creating the Khalsa, the Guru did not repudiate or reject the piety or the faith of the Sikh masses – rather, he created a subset of the Sikhs whom he charged with the onerous responsibility of living their lives strictly in accordance with the military code of conduct and the uniform that the times demanded.
Interestingly, the essence of the induction of the Panj Pyare into the Khalsa Panth was not the adoption of the five K’s. It was the baptism with Amrit which was the defining moment of the Khalsa. Having administered the Amrit to the Panj Pyare, the Guru went on to become the sixth person to become a part of the Khalsa. Tradition tells us that the sharp edge of the Amrit that the Guru had prepared was tempered with the sweetness of the sweets added by the Guru’s wife. Baptism was thus supposed to infuse not just enormous courage and a fighting spirit in the Khalsa, but also compassion and empathy.
At no point of time in that assembly or even thereafter was the decision to be baptized into the Khalsa fostered onto any follower of Guru Nanak or his successors. The masses that had assembled at Anandpur Sahib on that day voluntarily chose to follow their spiritual and military leader into the Khalsa Panth.
The creation of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh Ji was not a repudiation of the Sikh faith. In Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s times there was no occasion for the saint to take up arms – to defend himself or any others against persecution.
Guru Nanak had found sufficient reason and need to discourse with exponents of the Sufi way of life, saints following in the tradition of Prophet Mohammed, the Hindu Sadhus and sants as well as the learned men of every other denomination throughout his four great expeditions. Having distilled the essence of each faith, he gave it the name and form of the Sikh religion.
His Sikh were a classless class of people who had given up ritualism and unscientific superstition and who accepted the existence of the one God. A God whose essence could be found in the very forces of nature, whose fragrance was present in every living being and whose footprints could be found in every inanimate thing.
Guru Nanak’s Sikh was the perpetual student. Indeed, the word itself connotes a seeker of knowledge, engaged in this perpetual quest, ending only when one attains brahm gyan or enlightenment. Guru Nanak preached the presence of that infinite God in everything, including the very forces of nature. He exalted the wind as the teacher, the waters as the father and the earth itself as the mother while describing the lord.
Guru Nanak’s teachings and philosophy were wholly inclusive and one did not need to conform to one or the other method or system in order to find place at his feet. Many of his closest associates and disciples retained their linkages with other schools of theology or religion and even their accession to his nouvelle religion was a mere formality at a later point in time. They did not cease to be Sikh only because they followed him imperfectly.
The later Gurus, notably Guru Hargobind lived in times which demanded not just practice of Piri or piety, but also exercise of Miri or temporal power. As the defenders of the downtrodden, they bore on themselves the brunt of the retaliation by the rulers of those times.
The question which now begs to be asked is whether Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s Khalsa is in para materia with Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Sikh? Is it the case of the custodians of the religion today, that by establishing the Khalsa, Guru Gobind Singh Ji repudiated the very concept and existence of the Sikh; or that the strict definition of the Khalsa is to be read as the new definition of Sikh, replacing that which Guru Nanak Dev Ji formulated?
I find it difficult to believe that the tenth master would have destroyed the benign, compassionate and expansive religion created by the first master. I find it difficult also to believe that those who tread the path of all the ten masters without drinking at the baptismal font would be damned into a Godless existence, denied even the right to call themselves Sikhs.
I like to think that the Sikh and the Khalsa constitute concentric circles. There is a vast circle constituting the Sikh, not excluding people of all faiths religions and beliefs, and including those who have eschewed superstition or other vices proscribed by the first nine masters. Within this larger circle, revolving around the same fulcrum, that is the collective wisdom of the Gurus, is a smaller circle consisting of those braves who answered the tenth Guru’s clarion call for a class of warriors. Possibly, even within this smaller concentric circle, you could also place another smaller circle, of the Nihangs – the fearless who fight with utmost faith and the tenacity and strength of crocodiles.
There is no gainsaying that the Nihang who have been oft described as the vanguard of the Khalsa is also an intrinsic part of the Sikh faith. For a Nihang to denounce every non-Nihang as a non-Khalsa would be as deplorable as for every Khalsa to denounce an unbaptised follower of the great masters as Patit. It may be an oversimplification, but it makes sense to think of the Sikh as the entire population of the country, the Khalsa its glorious army and maybe the Nihangs as the elite units within the army.
The word Patit itself is most derogatory and conjures up images of the damned – the hopeless, those incapable of finding mercy before the Lord and those who are condemned for eternity. To apply this harsh descriptive to someone who believes in the words of the great masters, who abjures every vice mentioned in the holy texts, who shuns unscientific and superstitious nonsense, is most unjust and painful.
Some scholars say that after three days of being submerged in the Bein River, the young boy Nanak emerged as the enlightened Guru Nanak. His first words thereafter were Ek Onkar. Scholars, religious teachers and the wise say that having uttered these words, the Guru had said all that was to be said. The entire Brahm Gyan vests in these two short words. But because the key to these powerful words is not possessed by those of us who are far from enlightenment, he proceeded thereafter throughout his life to interpret and simplify that Godly message for the benefit of the masses. Each verse in each composition of every one of the Gurus is an exposition of this message which echoes throughout the universe, which the enlightened Guru Nanak received, and which they tried to pass on to us.
It cannot be said that the message passed on by Guru Nanak was incomplete. It cannot be said that the successive Gurus repudiated any part of the message and the wisdom passed on by their predecessors. It can also not be anyone’s case that the later teachers improved on the earlier teachers for any reason. The teachings and the way of life preached by each and every one of the Gurus has to be harmoniously read together.
It is important to remember that the Gurus hardly ever condemned or tried to convert someone who had not adopted their ways or their form. The savior of the oppressed Kashmiri Pandits did not require them to become a part of the Sikh religion before seeking his help. It is therefore quite tragic that the Sikh and the Khalsa are sought to be projected as one and the same, and those who are not baptized and those who do not become a part of the Lord’s army are denigrated as Patit.
The Sikh religion was always an inclusive and benevolent religion. It was said that to believe in the one God and to lead a life shorn of deceit was in and by itself sufficient to make you a worth Sikh of the Gurus. If one elected to be baptized in the way of the tenth Guru, so much the better. Even historically, most families in the region used to have the eldest male child baptized and made a part of the Khalsa.
The Khalsa lead a purer way of life undoubtedly but even so, cannot claim moral or religious or other superiority over all others. This conceit would undermine the very essence of what a Khalsa ought to be.
What also seems to have been forgotten is that the defining criterion of the Khalsa in not just the external accoutrements but the very act of baptism. Many of those who inexplicably confuse the distinction between a Sikh and a Khalsa, claiming to be a part of the latter, are neither baptized nor adhere to the maryada in their personal lives. The dichotomy between the public and private persona of some is an open secret and defies credibility.
It only takes a moment to glance at the opening words of the Sikh Gurudwaras Act 1925 to resolve the dilemma that many Sikh have found themselves to be in. The law passed by the British all those years ago cannot and does not regulate matters of faith and religion. The Act says that is has been enacted to provide for the better administration of certain Sikh Gurudwaras and for inquiries into matters connected therewith.
The statutory enactment is clearly only for better management of the Gurudwaras. It neither confers nor pretends to confer any legitimacy to any spiritual authority nor lays down a list of do’s and don’ts for being entitled to call oneself a Sikh. It contains a definition of the word Sikh only for the express purposes of establishing a committee for the management of these places of worship and eradicating certain malpractices and corruption which had started to be noticed. Interestingly, the disqualifications disentitling a person to take a place on a committee not only include the consumption of alcohol, but also insolvency, inability to read and write Gurumukhi and being an unbaptised Keshadhari Sikh. To all intents and purposes, the enactment is more of a tool to provide for the control and management of the generous donations collected in the Gurudwaras than for any other purpose.
How can an enactment by the Governor General of India in August 1925 determine whether or not a person is a Sikh at heart or not? How can a person who holds the teaching and ideals of Guru Nanak and his successors be called a patit? How can it be said that a person who has internalized the teachings of his masters but has not been formally baptized into the Khalsa is unworthy of the grace of the teachers and of the Lord?
Questions of piety and religion and emotions cannot be the subject matter of legislation or litigation. The question of control over the drawstrings of the purse is of course squarely within the domains of the law. Whether a young boy trims his beard or cuts his hair; or a young girl has her arms or legs waxed or eyebrows plucked is far less important than inculcating in them the values cherished by the Gurus.
It may be of great concern today to some, whether the boy with shorn hair or the girl with plucked eyebrows is given admission in a college run out of money donated in a Gurudwaras by the baptized and the unbaptised, but let us not insult their faith and their devotion to the way of life shown by the Gurus.
The Gurus were always ready to adopt worthy ideas, thoughts, ideals and hymns from those professing other faiths. In that spirit, in the ongoing debate, would it not be appropriate to take a worthy idea from yet another great book and to suggest that let him who is truly Khalas cast the first stone?
On a clear Baisakhi day in Anandpur Sahib in 1699, the great warrior and saint, Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji founded the Khalsa. The Khalsa, he explained, was the martial arm of the faith that Guru Nanak had established just a few short centuries ago. The creation of the Khalsa, he emphasized, was to provide protection to the weak from tyranny and to enforce a sense of discipline in the Akal Purakh Ki Fauj – the army of the almighty Lord. The tenth Guru blessed and praised his army of saint soldiers and wrote
Khalsa is God’s Army
It’s sustained by the Will of the Almighty
While the Khalsa remains pure
I will give it all my strength
When they mimic the habits of others
I will not offer it my assistance.
As the rightful successor of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the Guru created this righteous army from amongst those who had answered the Guru’s call and had become a part of the Sikh faith and religion. By creating the Khalsa, the Guru did not repudiate or reject the piety or the faith of the Sikh masses – rather, he created a subset of the Sikhs whom he charged with the onerous responsibility of living their lives strictly in accordance with the military code of conduct and the uniform that the times demanded.
Interestingly, the essence of the induction of the Panj Pyare into the Khalsa Panth was not the adoption of the five K’s. It was the baptism with Amrit which was the defining moment of the Khalsa. Having administered the Amrit to the Panj Pyare, the Guru went on to become the sixth person to become a part of the Khalsa. Tradition tells us that the sharp edge of the Amrit that the Guru had prepared was tempered with the sweetness of the sweets added by the Guru’s wife. Baptism was thus supposed to infuse not just enormous courage and a fighting spirit in the Khalsa, but also compassion and empathy.
