by Navtej Sarna
To this village had come the family of Kalyan Chand, a Bedi Khatri by caste, from across the Ravi. Kalyan Chand or Mehta Kalu, as he was popularly known, became the revenue accountant for the Rai. It was to Mehta Kalu and his wife Tripta that Nanak was born, according to the Puratan janamsakhi, in ‘Samvat 1526, month Baisakh, on the third day of the moonlit night, in the morning, three hours before dawn’.
The birth of Nanak was announced by the heavens themselves. The humble room in which the birth took place suddenly became radiant. There was rejoicing among the wise in the celestial realms as well as on earth. Daulatan, the midwife, said that she had never seen a birth like that one—the first cry of the child was like the laughter of a wise, grown-up person joining a social gathering. The exultant father rushed to the house of Pandit Hardyal, the family priest, and requested him to make a horoscope for the child. Hardyal drew the constellations and made his calculations. Amazed by what he saw in the stars, Hardyal bowed to the newborn and pronounced that a great man had been born in Kalu’s house who would be revered by Hindus and Muslims alike and whose name would be known on earth and in the heavens. Without doubt, Hardyal had seen in the stars that day that the prophet the age had been waiting for, had come.
That leaves one question unanswered: If Nanak was born in Baisakh, which corresponds to April, is his birthday now celebrated on Kartik puranmasi, or the full-moon night that generally falls in November?
As late as 1815, during Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s reign, the Gurupurab, or the Guru’s birthday, was celebrated at Nankana Sahib in the month of Baisakh. The celebrations were later moved to the month of Kartik. The reason, according to some scholars, is that in Baisakh the peasants are busy with the harvest whereas in Kartik they are done with the autumn crop and more willing to congregate for the celebrations in better weather. A more convincing reason appears to be that it was on the full-moon night of Kartik that Nanak attained enlightenment after his bath in the Bein rivulet and came out of his trance with the revelation: ‘There is no Hindu, no Mussalman.’
In any case, it is generally agreed that Guru Nanak died on Asauj Shudi 10 Samvat 1596 (22 September 1539) and that he lived for seventy years, five months and seven days. Working backwards, the date of birth is 15 April 1469. And there we must let it rest.
The Dark Times
The political events of the age, the social conditions and the religious landscape form an important context to Guru Nanak’s life and teachings. When Nanak was born, the pillage of India at the hands of Timur in 1398 was still in living memory. For the half-century that had followed the visitation by the lame robber of Central Asia, Punjab had lived in spasmodic political turmoil. While the Sayyids ruled in Delhi, rebellion by three notorious leaders ensured that destruction was meted out regularly among the people of the land of the five rivers. Jasrat Khokar of Jhelum terrorized Punjab and reduced Lahore to a city of owls. He was followed in the pursuit of destruction by Sheikh Ali of Kabul and Folad Turkbacha of Bhatinda.
Some semblance of order was restored when Bahlol Lodhi took the throne of Delhi in 1451 and established his dynasty, destined to be the last of the Delhi sultanate. Guru Nanak was twenty when Sikander Lodhi sat on the throne. During his lifetime, Nanak saw the rule of Ibrahim Lodhi as well as his defeat at the hands of Babar after five invasions by the latter.
More immediate were the political conditions in Punjab. The western provinces of the Lodhi sultanate enjoyed relative political peace for the half-century following Nanak’s birth. Tatar Khan Lodhi was the Governor of Lahore and Dipalpur till his death in 1485. In 1500, his son Daulat Khan Lodhi became the Governor of Lahore and remained loyal to the Lodhis before turning against them and inviting Babar to invade Hindustan in 1523. Babar’s invasions that had already begun in 1518 form the most dramatic political events of Nanak’s lifetime and led to the defeat of the Lodhis in 1526. Babar died a decade or so before Nanak, and while Nanak lived the life of a householder at Kartarpur in his last years, Babar’s son Humayun battled to strengthen the fledgling Mughal dynasty. At this stage, Punjab came under the sway of the Mughal governor, Mirza Kamran. A year after Guru Nanak’s death, Kamran evacuated Lahore to Sher Shah and Humayun fled to Persia to seek assistance against the Suri.
Though for all practical purposes there was peace during the Lodhi years, these were not especially enlightened or happy times. The domination of the ruling race was complete, and Indian society, both Hindu as well as the non-privileged Muslim sections smarted under the whip of injustice, discrimination and exploitation. The rule of Sikander Lodhi (1488–1518) was particularly harsh on non-Muslims as the sultan was known to be overzealous and fanatical, with the non-Muslims having to pay the discriminatory ‘jizya’ tax to protect their life and property. The administrative and political machinery was largely the prerogative of the ruling race, the nobility being predominantly Afghan. Sunni Islam was the dominant religion of the ruling classes, though Shias and Ismailis also existed. The Qazis, Muftis and the Ulema, while trying to implement the Shariat, often reflected the bigoted approach of the rulers. However, the presence of Persian knowing non-Muslims in the lower rungs of the administrative and revenue set-up, particularly the class of muqaddams, was not unknown.
The provincial governors enjoyed a great degree of power in their regions. Punjab, it is said, did not suffer from instances of religious discrimination. That may well have been because of the disposition of men like Daulat Khan Lodhi, though that did not necessarily ensure a deliverance from the oppression of the ruling class or the administrative echelons. In fact Nanak’s own words best describe the political conditions of the times:
The dark times are like a knife,
The Kings are butchers,
Goodness has taken wings and flown;
In the dark night of falsehood,
The Moon of Truth,
Is nowhere to be seen.
—Var Maja
He was openly critical of the rulers and their oppressive administrative machinery:
The Kings behave like lions while their officials are dogs
—Var Malhar
And at another place:
Greed is the King, Sin his Minister,
Falsehood, master of the mint,
Lust is the trusted advisor—
Together they plan and plot
—Var Asa
Meanwhile, Hinduism had retreated defensively into orthodoxy and ritualism. Its responses to the times were severely hampered by the rigidity of the caste and the sub-caste systems. Weighed down by moribund traditions and completely at the mercy of the priestly class, Hindu society was a victim of dark superstition and defensive blind faith. The position of women was particularly backward and marked by practices of infanticide, child marriage and the boycott of widows from society. Hypocrisy and expediency provided convenient shelters from the harsh realities of the current day. These were propagated by those who had a vested interest in them—all manner of holy men who roamed the countryside and controlled every aspect of daily life. These men, in many coloured robes, ash smeared, carrying rosaries and pipes of hemp, their bodies naked in self-mortification, their consciousness clouded with charas and ganja, were the parasites of society. They encouraged gullibility and then fed on it. They terrorized the population, begging and threatening, telling fortunes, spouting curses, extracting money, food and shelter.
But there were also genuine ascetics, sanyasis and yogis. Prominent among the yogis of Punjab were the followers of Gorakhnath; the most accomplished of these were known as the ones with split ears, or the kanphata sect. Nanak was to take issue with such men several times and in his hymns there is ample criticism of the superficial nature of ritualistic practices.
The Qazi tells untruths and eats filth
The B
rahmin kills and takes a holy bath
The blind yogi knows not the true way
All three make for mankind’s ruin.
—Raga Dhanasari
Given these conditions, a moral and spiritual regeneration was clearly called for. Nevertheless the situation was not completely lost. Hope lay in the Sufi movement in Islam and the Bhakti movement in Hinduism.
The Chisti and Suharawardy Sufi orders were the earliest to be established in India. The Sufi tradition underlined the mystical experience that arose out of a deep and personal love for God. The Sufis sought the ecstasy of union with God and suffered the anguish of separation. God was omnipresent and was everything. The seeker needed to remember Him repeatedly. The Sufis preached tolerance and piety, equality of men and personal correctness. In the times of the Lodhis, the Sufis were well established in Punjab. Besides Lahore, Multan had become an important centre, particularly of the Suharawardy sheikhs. But the most important seat was at Pakpattan, that of Sheikh Fariduddin Ganj-i-Shakar. The Chisti sheikhs dominated Thanesar, Hansi, Narnaul and Panipat.
The Bhakti movement had come into its own in south India with Ramanuja giving a philosophical basis to the devotionalism of other earlier mystics. In north India, the tradition was propagated by Ramanand. He had several important followers—Ravidas, a shoemaker; Kabir, a Muslim weaver; Dhanna, a peasant and Sena, a barber. The Bhaktas inculcated the worship of one God, denounced priesthood and allegiance to ritualistic form, and broke through the barriers of caste. They preached the belief in one God and urged an absorption in the absolute through expression of love.
Based on a passionately personal expression of love with the divine, both the movements taught the equality of men, control of worldly desires and avoidance of all forms of external piety. They had let loose a new freedom of thought and moral belief and provided the spiritual space needed to build a more flexible and resilient philosophical framework. They had also done something more—they had defined a narrow band of commonality between the two religions. However, in their purest form, Sufism and the Bhakti movement centred around the individual’s private experience and did not aspire to become widespread religion for the common man. But the trends that they had set were to receive further impetus from Guru Nanak, who would bring to them an understanding purely his own and preach and inspire an integrated philosophy of life based not on ascetic renunciation or denial but on an affirmation of the reality of the world with the ultimate truth.
What the astrologer Hardyal saw in the stars on the morning of the birth of Nanak, would certainly come to pass. In the words of the poet Iqbal:
At last the voice of monotheism rose in the Punjab
An exalted being woke Hindustan from its slumber.
The Early Years
The son of Mehta Kalu and Tripta was a prodigious child. At the age of five, he amazed the villagers, Hindus and Muslims alike, by uttering words of spiritual wisdom. In fact, the Hindus among the villagers declared that a God had been born among them, while the Muslims celebrated the coming of a true follower of Allah.
When Nanak was seven years old, his father, keen that the child should acquire some basic education, decided to send him to Gopal, the priest-teacher who ran a small school for the village children. As recompense, Mehta Kalu took with him a tray of sweetmeats, rice, betelnut and a coin. But it soon became clear that Nanak was above ordinary learning and his mind would not be confined by the alphabet and the numbers. He amazed his teacher by writing, not just some letters of the alphabet but an entire poem on his patti or tablet. The poem or acrostic, known as ‘Patti Likhi’ (‘Written on the Tablet’), is set in the Raga Asa and contained in the Adi Granth. Each stanza begins with one of the thirty-five letters of the Gurmukhi alphabet in serial order, and expounds eternal truths, like the omnipresence of divine reality and the transience of the material world. Nanak says the maya that surrounds this life can be cleared only through meditation on His name or simran. This bani or writings of the Guru shows not only Nanak’s early understanding of the human condition but also reveals his prodigious poetic talent that was to mark all his later renditions.
O foolish heart, why do you forget Him?
When you render your account, O brother,
Then alone will you be among the educated.
—Raga Asa
Pandit Gopal was grateful for the presence of such a gifted child in his class, but Nanak was not to stay there for long. He soon left the school but composed another song for Pandit Gopal, in which he revealed the nature of true learning:
Burn worldly love, pound it to ash and make thy ink,
Turn thy intelligence into fine paper
Make Lord’s love thy pen, the mind thy scribe,
Consult the Guru and write God’s thoughts.
Write the praises of God’s name
Write that He is without end, without limit
O brother, learn to write such an account
So where an account is asked for, your mark is true.
—Raga Sri
Nanak began to show an increasing tendency to withdraw into solitude and silence, and often he would leave home and walk away into the fields and woods around the village to associate with wandering holy men. This worried his father, and a little later, when Nanak was nine years old, Kalu renewed his attempts to force Nanak to take lessons in traditional learning.
Rai Bular, the village landlord, assured Kalu that if Nanak learnt Persian, which was the language of the administration, he would be able to become the village accountant. So Nanak was sent to the Muslim maulvi of Talwandi to learn Persian. Once again the teacher was amazed at Nanak’s quick grasp of the language. The maulvi proclaimed that a blessed child had come to him, one gifted by God himself with a vastly superior intelligence. After going to the maulvi for a few days, Nanak once again became silent and withdrawn and finally stopped going for his classes. He would lie despondently at home and paid little attention to the entreaties of his parents to get up and eat his food. In desperation, they called the maulvi home, hoping that Nanak would listen to him. The maulvi persuaded Nanak to get up for the sake of the God that he loved so much. Nanak then uttered a verse in Persian on man’s transient existence in this world:
Know for certain in thy heart, this world perishes.
—Raga Tilang
The maulvi was astonished by the young child’s perception and knowledge.
As was customary in Brahmin and Khatri families, Mehta Kalu arranged the yajnopavitam, or the ceremony of the sacred thread, for Nanak when he turned eleven. It was a momentous occasion and Kalu made elaborate arrangements, inviting a large number of friends and relatives to the occasion. Pandit Hardyal made all the customary arrangements for the sacred ceremony—the courtyard was washed and sanctified, incense lamps were lit and the floor decorated with holy signs. Amidst the chanting of holy mantras, Hardyal produced janeu, the sacred thread, made out of seven twisted and braided strings and long enough to go under one of the child’s arms and stretch to the waist. As the priest proceeded to put the thread to the child’s shoulder, Nanak inquired what he was doing. The priest explained that he was investing Nanak with the holy thread that would distinguish him as a member of the high castes. But Nanak waved him away. He said he saw no holiness in the thread. It would soil, wear out and break. Nanak then spoke to all who had gathered: Wearing a thread does not elevate a man; rather it is his actions and his commitment to the path of truthful living that distinguish him. His words are reflected in the Adi Granth:
From the cotton of Compassion, spin the thread of Contentment,
Give knots of Continence and twists of Truth;
This is the sacred thread for the soul—
If thou hast o
ne such, O Brahman, then put it on me.
It will not snap, nor soil; nor will it be burnt or lost
Blessed is the man, O Nanak, who wears such a thread around his neck.
—Raga Asa
The entire congregation was shocked by these bold words and the child’s rejection of an ancient custom.
There were two people who recognized Nanak’s extraordinary qualities very early in his childhood: his elder sister, Nanaki, and the Muslim village landlord, Rai Bular. While Nanaki doted all her life on her younger brother, Rai Bular’s devotion was ignited by several events that he observed during Nanak’s teenage years. The janamsakhis relate these events, using the vehicle of miracle.
Disturbed by Nanak’s growing withdrawal and silence at home, and noting that he was much happier in the fields and forests, Kalu assigned him the responsibility of grazing the family buffaloes. Nanak would leave the buffaloes in the fields to graze while he meditated and felt at one with nature and with his own soul. He would also meet wandering ascetics and listen to their discourses. On one such occasion, the buffaloes trespassed into the abundant fields of a neighbour and began to graze there. The owner of the field was livid and insisted on taking Nanak to Rai Bular for justice. The village chief called Mehta Kalu and told him to recompense the aggrieved farmer. Meanwhile Rai Bular’s messengers had gone to check out the nature and extent of the damage in the field. The messengers came back with a surprising report. ‘The owner is telling lies,’ they said. ‘Not a blade of his crops has been damaged.’ The farmer was as surprised as everybody else. He said that he had himself seen his crops being destroyed by Nanak’s buffaloes and only a divine miracle could have restored the fields. The shrine of Kiara Sahib, in Nankana Sahib, marks the field where this incident is said to have taken place.