Thirdly, the Guru took special care that anti-Muslim sentiment should not stain the crusade he was about to launch against the Mughals. ‘My sword strikes tyrants, not men’, he said. Amongst the earliest recruits to his army were Muslims. Although he fought the Mughals all his life – as indeed he did the Hindu Rajputs of the hills – he had both Muslims and Hindus fighting on his side, shoulder to shoulder with his Sikhs. This followed naturally from his conviction that all men were of one caste: ‘Manas ki jat sab ek pacanbo,’ he exhorted. He believed that the mosque and the temple were the same; the call of the muezzin and the chanting of the pandit were the same.
The non-communal tradition started by Guru Gobind Singh was continued into the time of Maharajah Ranjit Singh (1780–1839) who was, as pointed out by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India, one of the few genuinely secular rulers of our country. It was, therefore, in the fitness of things that in the crowning success of Sikh arms, the flag that the Muslim warrior, Colonel Sheikh Bassawan, triumphantly carried through the streets of Kabul in 1839 bore the emblem of Guru Gobind Singh. Likewise, the Dogra general, Zorawar Singh, planted this saffron banner bearing Guru Gobind Singh’s chakra, with kirpans crossed beneath, in the heart of Tibet.
Guru Gobind Singh was able to raise his fight against the Mughals into a struggle of the downtrodden against the oppression of the rich and into a demand for justice against the tyranny of wrongdoers: in short, into a crusade, a veritable dharma yudha (a war to protect righteousness) against the powers of evil. He forbade his soldiers from looting. He made them take solemn vows that they would never molest the women of the enemy. He emulated the example of our ancient rishis and yogis and insisted that all Sikhs should wear their hair and beards unshorn – for they were not common soldiers but Sant Sipahis, soldier-saints.
Fourthly, what deserves attention is the incredible sense of loyalty and sacrifice that the Guru was able to arouse amongst his followers. Let me give you a few examples. You may have heard of the famous baptismal ceremony when five men willingly agreed to have their heads cut off. There are innumerable examples of similar sacrifice. As well known as these first five Sikhs, known as the ‘Panj Piyaras’, were, there was another group of known as ‘chali mukte’ (40 liberated ones). Under great stress during the prolonged siege of Anandpur beginning in May 1705, these 40 individuals asked the Guru to let them go. After getting a deed of renunciation, the Guru released them from their obligation. When they returned to their homes, their women folk taunted them for disloyalty to the master. The 40 (including amongst them a woman, Mai Bhago) rejoined the Guru at Muktsar and fell fighting in December 1705. The last request their leader, Mahan Singh, made to the Guru, was to have the deed of renunciation torn up before he closed his eyes for ever.
Yet another example is that of an old woman who came to the Guru for help. She told him that her husband and two sons had been killed fighting. All that remained of her family was her youngest son who was dangerously ill. She begged the Guru’s blessings to restore him to health – not to have someone to look after her in old age, but in order that this son too could attain martyrdom in the battlefield.
How was Guru Gobind Singh able to instil in his followers this kind of inspired valour? He could do so primarily by setting an example himself. He fought alongside his men. He never put his family before his followers. On the contrary, at one of the engagements, he allowed two of his sons to go to a certain death before he allowed any of his ‘Panj Piyaras’ to do so. Within a few months he lost all his four sons: two were killed fighting; the other two, aged nine and seven, were executed by Wazir Khan, the governor of Sirhind (in Punjab), in December 1705. The Guru’s own mother died of grief. When his wife asked him, in tears, for her four sons, the Guru answered: ‘What if four be dead; thousands live to continue the battle.’ It was by this kind of personal example that the Guru was able to train poor rustics, who had handled nothing more lethal than a lathi, and flabby, pot-bellied, timid shopkeepers, to become some of the greatest fighters India has ever known. He redeemed his pledges that ‘he would train the sparrow to fight the hawk’ and ‘teach one man to fight a legion’.
Pathans, Persians, Afghans and Baluchis of the North West Frontier region, who had for centuries invaded India, and terrified, massacred and looted our people, were beaten back into their homelands by these new soldiers of Guru Gobind Singh. It has never been fully appreciated by our historians that these Sikhs set up a human barricade against the invaders and so made possible the rise of Maratha power in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when they (the Marathas) ruled over vast territories in the Indian subcontinent.
Fifthly, and the final point, is the genuinely democratic spirit of this great leader of men. Guru Gobind Singh never claimed divinity for himself. He denounced those who tried to make him an incarnation of God: ‘I was ordained to establish a sect and lay down its rules,’ he wrote. ‘But whosoever regards me as Lord shall be damned and destroyed. I am, and [about] this let there be no doubt, I am but a slave to God, as other men are: a beholder of the wonders of creation.’
He took no credit for what he did. He attributed all achievements to the Khalsa (the pure) – all his victories, his power, his prestige, he said, were due to the efforts of his followers. Although he was their Guru, he made himself their disciple: aape gur-chela. Whenever the congregation passed a resolution, it acquired the sanctity of a gurumata – an ordinance of the Guru binding even on the Guru himself.
Guru Gobind Singh was thus a rare combination of many qualities: a sophisticated aesthete composing poetry in many languages such as Sanskrit, Prakrit, Persian and Punjabi; a handsome cavalier fond of courting danger; a soldier who dedicated his life to fighting tyranny; a leader who looked upon his followers as comrades and equals; a Guru who exhorted people to worship the God they loved best but insisted they look upon their fellow beings as equals; and a man who sacrificed all he had – his family and his worldly possessions and ultimately himself for his ideals. This ideal he stated in lines that have become the most quoted of his compositions:
O Lord of Thee these boons I ask:
Let me never shun a righteous task.
Let me be fearless when I go to battle.
Give me faith that victory will be mine.
Give me power to sing Thy praise,
And when comes the time to end my life,
Let me fall in mighty strife.
Has the world produced many men as great as Guru Gobind Singh?
CHAPTER NINE
RELIGION VERSUS MORALITY
… the role of religion in present-day Indian society has shrunk to minimal proportions. Instead of bringing the best out of human beings, religion now brings out the worst in us by providing facile means of forgiveness through performance of pilgrimage or some trite form of penance or the intercession of godmen. We have to either give a totally modern reorientation to religion or scrap it altogether.
There is a trading community of north-western India and the adjoining areas of Pakistan that is renowned for its scrupulous observance of religious rituals as it is for its unscrupulous methods of business. To this community are ascribed the following lines in Potthohaaree (or Pothwari) dialect, spoken in and around the districts of Rawalpindi and Campbellpur:
Koor vee aseen mareney aan,
Ghat vee aseen toleyney aan,
Par sacchey patshah
Aseen naan vee teyra lainey aan
(Lies we often tell,
Short we do often measure,
But true Lord,
Your name we also take.)
These lines pithily sum up the divorce between the practice of religion and the precepts of morality that bedevils the Indian society today. It would be instructive to know why and when this divorce took place and whether there is any possibility of bringing the two together again. In order to do so we need to examine the origins of religion and its subsequent development.
First, the genesis of religion lies in the fear of
the unknown. While fear continues to be the main reason for the hold of religion over the ignorant masses, the desire to know the truth about the unknown remains the chief preoccupation of religious philosophers, who want to know how life began, its purpose and the possibility of its continuance after death. All this came to be summed up in the concept of God as the trinity of the creator, preserver and destroyer. It was at a later stage of civilization that religion extended its sphere of activity to include making laws for society. This came about when it was discovered that the fear of the unknown God was a more effective means of preventing men from hurting each other, from stealing each others properties, slaves or wives than the scaffold or the lash.
Secondly, having established a precedent, religion further extended its sphere by making rules of social intercourse. For example: who could marry and who could not; the number of wives a man could have; and even prescribing rules of diet and hygiene as if they were divinely ordained. In this period of development came the laws of Solomon, Moses’s Ten Commandments, the Code of Man, the concept of halal (just) and haram (unlawful/forbidden) enunciated in the Holy Quran and the tradition of the Prophet (Hadith). Later religions like Sikhism likewise evolved their own sets of dos and don’ts, which were spelt out in their Rahatnamas. So, a whole lot of traditions were built up by different religious groups: Catholics could not eat meat on Fridays; Hindus were forbidden from eating beef; Jains could not consume flesh of any kind or any vegetable grown under the earth; Jews and Muslims could eat no pork; Sikhs could not eat non-jhatka meat or take tobacco in any form. None of these rules could be regarded strictly as within the purview of religion, but since religion provided self-imposed restrictions, in due course, they assumed dominant roles in their respective religious groups.
The third development vis-à-vis religion was introspective: a looking within oneself to examine one’s own behaviour to make a personal balance sheet of one’s own conduct. Had one been unfair in dealing with others or succumbed to some temptation? This usually took the form of meditation, prayer, telling the beads of the rosary and other similar practices designed to make one better as well as restore peace of mind.
When a new religious system came into existence, the three functions were performed by the founder. After his death they required the services of three different people: the speculative by the philosopher; law enforcement by the priest – qadi or mullah; and the introspective by the guide – guru or peer. As society advanced from the medieval to modern times, the state gradually deprived these functionaries of their religious duties. The role of religion in human conduct began to be diminished. At the same time, since religious theories about the origin of the universe and after-life failed to convince an increasingly sceptical generation and scientists admitted their limitations in probing these mysteries, soothsayers, armed with their paraphernalia, including sky charts, palm impressions, playing cards and even tea leaves and coffee cups (which they claimed helped them look into the past and future), came into their own; the astrologer took over from the astronomer and the palmist from the futurologist. These charlatans gained widespread acceptance by passing themselves off as men and women of religion. As in the world of commerce, so in the world of religion, bad currency drove out the good.
Depriving religion of its law-making and law-enforcing functions was carried out with greater thoroughness and with more serious consequences with the passage of time. The state became the law maker, the law administrator and the final arbiter. Civil and criminal codes replaced religious codes leaving out of their purview pointless prescriptions about diet, ritual and external forms, which became the principal preoccupations of organized religions. Thus, religious censorship in the form of ostracism came to be confined to trivia: If you ate flesh, garlic, onions and so on, you would not be regarded by Jainis as a non-Jain, if you ate beef, you could become a Hindu outcaste; eating pork (by the Jews or Muslims) brought on your head the wrath of the rabbi and the mullah; and clipping hair and smoking (by a Sikh) could lead to denunciation by the Khalsa Panth. But when it came to aspects that mattered like murder, rape, arson, robbery, stealing or seducing another’s wife, it was no longer the fear or religious censure that was the ultimate deterrent but the hangman’s rope, solitary confinement in a prison cell and a policeman’s baton. This was a great pity because the self-restraint that religion had inculcated was gone, and when administration of law and order fell into desuetude (as in India in recent years) criminal instincts, which religious persuasion had kept under control, began to resurface.
People committed crimes because their consciences were undisturbed; they learnt to square their lying and cheating by paying lip service to God, by displaying external symbolism and performing rituals. Moral values went completely haywire. Lying, which was condemned as a sin by religion but not punished by secular law (unless on oath in court), became common. Deviations from what were regarded as normal pattern of behaviour in matters of sex assumed exaggerated importance. While in the advanced societies of the West, adultery and homosexuality came to be regarded as people’s private business, with us Indians they became matters of public censure. A ‘godless’ West liberated itself of sexual inhibitions but learnt to be more truthful; a ‘religious’ India learnt to forgive liars and cheaters but condemned lechers and sodomists. The cleanest bill of moral health that could be paid to an Indian by Indians was his being naadey da succha – having the purity of the pyjama cord. Paradoxically, with the loosening of the hold of religion, we also lost our respect for women as mothers, sisters and daughters and incidents of ‘eve teasing’ and rape increased.
There remains another aspect of religion: an individual’s personal equation with himself or herself. If he or she was unhappy or if his or her mind was disturbed, he or she sought guidance from his or her guru and, according to the latter’s instructions, chanted appropriate mantras, did yoga asanas and meditation to bring peace to his or her tortured mind. In the West, these functions came to be largely performed by the psychiatrists, although some godmen and godwomen flourished.
It will be evident from the foregoing discussion that the role of religion in present-day Indian society has shrunk to minimal proportions. Instead of bringing the best out of human beings, religion now brings out the worst in us by providing facile means of forgiveness through performance of pilgrimage or some trite form of penance or the intercession of godmen. We have to either give a totally modern reorientation to religion or scrap it altogether.
A country as vast and as populous as India, and with such a high proportion of illiterate and deprived people, can never abolish religion; nor can it afford religion being perverted. There is enough tolerance of spirit among Indians of all religions to accept each other’s concept of God and allow each other to individually pursue the quest for peace of mind. What has faded into the background and needs to be restored to its legitimate primacy is religion as a social phenomenon setting out rules how people should conduct themselves towards their fellow human beings. This I suggest can be done by re-elevating Truth in all its dimensions to the status of God: as an abstract concept as another word for God; as the principle of behaviour towards one’s fellow beings; and as the touchstone of one’s conscience. It is only when this many- splendoured Truth becomes the object of our worship, our code of conduct and the healing balm for our souls, that religion and morality will become reunited as two sides of the same golden coin.
CHAPTER TEN
GOD IS NOT FOR SALE
Priests and raagis have acquired vested interests in religious practice. Until and unless they are divested of their stranglehold on places of worship, there is little chance of worship and there is little chance of their being restored as havens of spirituality.
There was a time when I used to look forward to Thursday afternoons and to spending a couple of hours at the mausoleum of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325) in New Delhi. Although beggars lined the long corridors leading to the graves of the Peer Sahib and the renowned mu
sician, scholar and poet, Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), once you got past them you were left in peace to enjoy the qawwalis sung in the courtyard.
Soon, the mujawwars (caretakers) of the shrine got to know of me. Every time I went there, someone or the other approached me with a receipt book and a ballpoint pen in hand. Would I make a donation for the langar (free kitchen) and upkeep of the place? After a while, I stopped going to Nizamuddin.
There was a time when I used to look forward to going to Hardiwar for Purnima (full moon). The worship of the river Ganga at sunset at Har Ki Pauri with lit candelabras and leaf boats with flickering oil lamps floating down the river presented a truly magical sight. Seeing the Ganga in moonlight was a mystic experience.
I was younger and could brush aside persistent beggars, pandas (priests who keep genealogical records), purohits (priests) and the innumerable agents of innumerable so-called charitable organizations who surrounded me with the standard receipt books and ballpoint pens soliciting contributions for gowshalas (cow sheds), ashrams and other institutions. I stopped going to Hardiwar.
It was the same at Varanasi. The one and the only time I went to Puri (in Orissa) to see the Jagannath temple, I was unable to step out of the car because hordes of pandas were clamouring for my attention and claiming to be my family purohits.
I have never been much of a gurudwara-goer. But on the rare occasions I visited gurudwaras, I never placed any money in front of the Granth Sahib or in the golak (donation box). I have enough evidence of money being misappropriated by members of caretaker committees, granthis and sewadars (volunteers who offer their services to the gurudwaras). Whatever daswandh (one-tenth) of my earnings I wished to give for charity, I gave to Bhagat Puran Singh (a well-known philanthropist), Mother Teresa or directly to people engaged in good works.
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