‘Nanak, you are a different person today from what you were,’ the people exclaimed. ‘Tell us the path you intend to take. We only know of two ways: one of the Hindus and the other of the Mussalmans.’
‘There is no Hindu, there is no Mussalman’, replied Nanak.
‘You talk in cryptic language,’ they said. ‘In this world we understand the two ways: of Hinduism and of Islam.’
‘There are no Mussalmans, there are no Hindus,’ repeated Nanak. (Mehervan’s Janamsakhi.)
Nanak spent another two years in and around Sultanpur before he forsook the habitations of men and took to the forest and solitude. The faithful Mardana was his sole companion. He wore a strange dress: a long cloak worn by Muslim mendicants. He also wore a cloth cap (seli topee). He carried a beggar’s bowl, a staff and a prayer mat. When asked why he wore this outlandish garb, Nanak replied: ‘I am dressed like a clown for the amusement of my Master. If my apparel pleases Him, I will be happy.’
Nanak’s first journey took him eastwards to Hindu centres of pilgrimage. His biographies have fabricated many incidents based on Nanak’s hymns, many of which depict the Guru’s love for nature.
One day, says Mehervan’s Janamsakhi, Nanak and Mardana, while travelling, espied a flock of swans flying overhead. Nanak was bewitched and began to run after them with his eyes fixed on the birds. Mardana followed him. The flock descended in a field and let Nanak approach them without showing any sign of fear – for Nanak was a man of God, who harmed no one. Nanak admired the birds; their long slender necks, their luminous dark eyes and their silver-white plumage. He wondered whether these birds – which spanned the heavens – had ever cast their eyes on their Maker. Why, he asked himself, should such beautiful birds wander restlessly across the continents – from Khorasan in Central Asia to Hindustan and back again to Khorasan? He blessed the swans and bade them Godspeed on their journey.
Another hymn illustrates the political and social conditions of the time through picturing an incident that occurred in the suburbs of the capital city, Delhi. The city was at the time ruled by a bloodthirsty Pathan king (Ibrahim Lodhi). Nanak’s fame had preceded him and large crowds of citizens, sightseers and seekers after truth, Muslims as well as Hindus, came to see him. Near Nanak’s camp was a place where beggars and mendicants were fed free of charge by the wicked king. The people told Nanak of their king’s evil ways and how he expiated his sins by feeding beggars.
Nanak spoke to them:
Listen ye children of God! This charity of the king is of no consequence; it is the act of a blind man stumbling in the dark. He is worse than a blind man because even if his eyes lose their light, a blind man can hear and speak and comprehend, but one who has lost his mind has lost all. What avail is the giving of alms to one who sins by day and gives in charity at night? A stone dam can hold the flood but if the dam bursts you cannot repair the breach by plastering mud. Evil is like the flood, the stone dam like faith. If faith weakens, the dam will give way and the flood will sweep all before it. Its force is then so great that no boat or boatman dare embark on it to save its victims. Then nothing abides save the Name of the Lord.
(Mehervan’s Janamsakhi)
We do not know how long Nanak stayed in Delhi. He then proceeded to Hardiwar on the banks of the Ganga. It was apparently at a time of some religious festival when large crowds had turned up to bathe in the ‘holy’ river. Mardana was very impressed with the sight and said to Nanak: ‘What a lot of good people there are in the world! They must be genuinely desirous of improving themselves that is why they come on a pilgrimage.’
Nanak was not so impressed by the sight of the people ‘washing away their sins’ by the ritual of bathing. ‘Only a bullion dealer can tell the difference between the genuine and the counterfeit,’ he replied, ‘and at this place there is no bullion dealer.’
Nanak and Mardana stayed at Hardiwar for some time in order to be present at the Baisakhi (12/13 April) fair. It was on this occasion that an incident, which made Nanak famous, took place.
There was a large crowd bathing in the river. Nanak saw them face eastwards and throw palmfuls of water to the sun. Nanak entered the stream and started throwing water westwards.
‘In the name of Rama!’ exclaimed the shocked pilgrims, ‘who is this man who throws water to the west? He is either mad or a Mussalman.’ They approached Nanak and asked him why he offered water in the wrong direction. Nanak asked them why they threw it eastwards to the sun.
‘We offer it to our dead ancestors,’ they replied.
‘Where are your dead ancestors?’
‘With the gods in heaven.’
‘How far is the abode of the gods?’
‘Forty-nine crore kos [approximately two-and-a-half miles equal one kos] from here.’
‘Does the water get that far?’
‘Without doubt! But why do you throw it westwards?’
Nanak replied: ‘My home and lands are near Lahore. It has rained everywhere except on my land. I am therefore watering my fields.’
‘Man of God, how can you water your fields near Lahore from this place?’
‘If you can send it 49 crore kos to the abode of the gods, why can’t I send it to Lahore, which is only a couple of hundred kos away?’
The people were abashed at this reply. ‘He is not mad,’ they said, ‘he is surely a great seer.’ (Mehervan’s Janamsakhi.)
A large number of Hindu pilgrims who had foregathered at Hardwar became disciples of the Guru. He stayed on there after the Baisakhi festival preaching to the people:
The most precious gift of God is human birth because it is by reason and responsible action as human beings that we can get out of the vicious circle of life, death and rebirth and attain salvation. One must abolish duality in order to be a complete devotee.
‘And how does one overcome duality?’ they asked.
[Nanak replied:] ‘By faith in the One; by hearing and speaking of the One; by never abandoning belief in Him. By austerity, truth, restraint in his heart.’
(Mehervan’s Janamsakhi)
From Haridwar, Nanak and Mardana proceeded to Prayag (modern-day Allahabad) where the rivers Jamuna and the mythical Saraswati join the Ganga. From Prayag, the Guru went to Banaras (or Varanasi), the centre of Hindu learning and orthodoxy. The Adi Granth describes the many encounters Guru Nanak had with pandits who chided him for his unorthodoxy and probed his knowledge of the sacred texts. Nanak declared:
It matters not how many cart loads of learning you have nor what learned company you keep; it matters not how many boat loads of books you carry nor the tree of knowledge; it matters not how many years or months you spend in study nor with what passion and single-mindedness you pursue knowledge. Only one thing really matters, the rest is but a whirlwind of the ego.
‘And what is the one thing that matters?’ they asked.
Nanak replied: ‘There are a hundred falsehoods, but only one sovereign truth – that unless truth enters the soul all service and study [are] false.’
Nanak was equally forthright about the pandits’ fetish regarding the purity of their cooking vessels and kitchens. He decided to draw their attention to this in his usual manner of highlighting the incongruous aspects. He went with them and saw with what care they bathed, scrubbed their utensils, swept the ground near the hearth, washed the vegetables and cooked the food. When one plate was laid before Nanak, he refused to eat from it, saying: ‘I am not satisfied with the purity of the food you offer me. It is prepared by one who is full of sin and sins cannot be cleansed by washing the body.’
The pandits did not fully comprehend the import of Nanak’s words and prepared the meal afresh. This time they dug up the earth and replastered it; they even washed the logs of wood before kindling them. Again Nanak refused to partake of the meal and continued his sermon: ‘You err in believing that purity can be gained by scrubbing and washing. That does not apply even to inanimate things like wood, dung-fuel or water, much less to a human being. Man is
unclean when his heart is tainted with greed, his tongue coated with falsehood, his eyes envious of the beauty of another’s wife or his wealth, his ears dirty with slander. All these can only be cleansed by knowledge. Basically all men are good but often they pursue a predetermined path to hell.’
Nanak was questioned on his attitude towards the sacred texts of the Hindus: ‘The Vedas say one thing and you another. People who read the Vedas do not follow their teachings and now you confuse them more than ever. Why don’t you either combine your teaching with that of the Vedas or separate them more distinctly?’
Nanak replied: ‘The Vedas tell you of the difference between good and evil. Sin is the seed of hell; chastity the seed of paradise. Knowledge and the teaching of the Vedas complement each other; they are to one another as merchandise to the merchant.’
It would appear that by this time Nanak had decided that his faith was to be an eclectic one for he sang hymns of Namdev, Kabir, Ravi Das, Sain and Beni. His new disciples tried to persuade Nanak to settle down in Banaras. Nanak refused to do so: ‘I pursue the one and only path of devotion to God,’ he replied. ‘Your learning and religion do not appeal to me and I have no interest in trade other than the name of God for God Himself has extinguished the desire for acquisition in me.’
Piecing together evidence from other sources, we find that the first journey apparently took the Guru as far east as West Bengal and Assam. On his way back to the Punjab, he spent some days at Jagannath Puri (in Orissa). He travelled round the Punjab and visited the Sufi headquarters at Pak Pattan (now in Pakistan) before he set out on his second long journey – this time southwards. He is said to have travelled through Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Konkan and Rajasthan, though there is little evidence to show that he did so.
Nanak sojourned in the Himalayas for some time before he set out on his last and longest journey. This was westwards as far as Baghdad and to the Muslims’ holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It was on this journey that another incident took place. He was staying in a mosque and fell asleep with his feet towards the Kaaba – an act considered to be of grave disrespect to the house of God. When the mullah came to say his prayers, he shook Nanak rudely and said: ‘O servant of God, thou hast thy feet towards Kaaba, the house of God; why hast thou done such a thing?’
Nanak replied: ‘Then turn my feet towards some direction where there is no God.’
By the time Nanak returned home around 1526, the Mughal Emperor Zahir-ud-din Babar had invaded the Punjab. The Guru was at Saidpur when the town was sacked by the invaders. Nanak makes many references to the havoc caused by this invasion.
Nanak was by this time too old to undertake any more strenuous journeys. He settled in the village Kartarpur where he spent the last years of his life preaching to the people. His disciples came to be known as Sikhs (from the Sanskrit shishya or Pali sikkha). He built a dharamshala (abode of faith) whose inmates followed a strict code of discipline: rising well before dawn, bathing and then foregathering in the dharamshala for prayer and hymn singing. They went about their daily chores and met again for the evening service. At the dharamshala was the Guru ka langar (the Guru’s kitchen) where all who came were obliged to break bread without distinction of caste or religion.
Among Nanak’s disciples was a man called Lehna whom Nanak chose in preference to his two sons as his successor. Said Nanak to Lehna: ‘Thou art Angad, a part of my body.’ He then asked another disciple to daub Angad’s forehead with saffron and proclaimed him the second Guru.
Nanak died in the early hours of 22 September 1539. He was a poet and lover of nature to the last. As he lay on his deathbed he recalled the scenes of his childhood. ‘The tamarisk must be in flower now; the pampas grass must be waving its woolly head in the breeze; the cicadas must be calling in the lonely glades,’ he said before he closed his eyes in eternal sleep.
Mehervan’s Janamsakhi records the manner in which his body was laid to rest. Said the Mussalmans: ‘We will bury him.’ Said the Hindus: ‘We will cremate him.’ Nanak said: ‘You place flowers on either side, Hindus on my right, Muslims on my left. Those whose flowers remain fresh tomorrow will have their way.’ He asked them to pray. When the prayer was over, Nanak pulled the sheet over him and went to eternal sleep. Next morning when they raised the sheet they found nothing. The flowers of both communities were fresh. The Hindus took theirs; the Muslims took those that they had placed.
It is little wonder that Nanak came to be revered as the king or shah of the holy men – the guru of the Hindus and the peer of the Mussalmans:
Baba Nanak Shah Fakeer
Hindu ka Guru, Mussalman ka Peer
Guru Gobind Singh
In the summer of 1922, a strange phenomenon was witnessed in the Punjab. That year the Sikhs launched a passive resistance movement to take possession of one of their historic shrines called Guru Ka Bagh, about 20 km from Amritsar. Batches of passive resisters went to this shrine. They were mercilessly beaten by the police. Their arms and legs were smashed; they were dragged by their long hair; and many were hung upside down from branches of trees till they became senseless.
Instead of being cowed down by these brutalities, the number of passive resisters increased steadily till 500-strong jathas (groups) began to arrive every day at Guru Ka Bagh – amongst them many who had suffered beatings earlier and had been discharged from the hospital after treatment.
This ‘rare species of courage’, as Mahatma Gandhi and Reverend C. F. Andrews (an Englishman who supported the struggle for freedom by India) described it, ‘was born of religious fervour’, which, in turn, was born of a legend widely accepted by the Sikhs. It was said that wherever five passive resisters (called satyagrahis) assembled to say their prayers, Guru Gobind Singh (the tenth and last Sikh Guru) appeared before them. It was believed that he led them to Guru Ka Bagh. And he, not the passive resister, received the blows showered by the police. When these satyagrahis were produced in court and asked their names and addresses, they gave their names correctly. But of their parentage and addresses, the answer invariably was: ‘My father’s name is Guru Gobind Singh; my mother’s Mata Sahib Devan. My home is the Guru’s own Anandpur Sahib [a holy place for the Sikhs].’
The Guru Ka Bagh satyagraha went on for some months till the Punjab gaols were crammed. Ultimately, it was the police and the government that gave in and agreed to Guru Ka Bagh being handed over to the Sikhs. I have met many of these passive resisters and, with my own ears, heard them tell of the darshan of the Guru, and his ethereal form leading them to face the police. They swear that they lost all fear and when they were tortured they felt no pain.
Soon after Guru Ka Bagh, yet another phenomenon was witnessed in the Punjab. The sacred pool surrounding the Hari Mandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) in Amritsar was drained and desilted. In this kar seva (doing service), as it was known, millions of people took part. One met hundreds of men and women who swore that many a time while they were engaged in this kar seva, Guru Gobind Singh’s white hawk swooped down from the skies and settled on the gold pinnacle of the Hari Mandir Sahib – and then as dramatically vanished into the blue heaven.
Sceptics will undoubtedly have explanations for these phenomena. Let us concede that in an atmosphere of religious fervour, such experiences are possible. However, the point to bear in mind is that for the Sikhs these phenomena have been usually connected with Guru Gobind Singh, because he has been to them their father-figure, their supreme hero, the sustainer of faith, hope and courage, and their beau idéal – all in one.
What kind of man was Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708)? Most readers, I think, must be familiar with the main events of his life. I will not repeat them. I will only draw attention to five points to help one judge the Guru’s place in history. The choice of the number ‘five’ is deliberate. Five has some kind of mystic significance in the Punjab – the land of five rivers. The Guru himself subscribed to the sanctity of five:
Pancon men nit bartat main hun
panc milan to piran pi
r.
(Wherever there are five there am I.
Where five meet, they are the holiest of the holy.)
First, it should be borne in mind that he was only a child of nine when his father, the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, was executed (beheaded) by the order of the sixth Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. In any mortal, such an experience would result in a traumatic shock followed, first, by fear and, then, by hate and a desire for revenge against the people who had perpetrated the crime. I have little doubt that many persons must have tried to fill young Gobind’s mind with feelings of hatred and revenge against the Mughals. The Guru, however, remained impervious to these influences. When he grew into manhood, he announced his mission in life in the following words:
I came into the world charged with the duty to uphold the right in every place, to destroy sin and evil ... the only reason I took birth was to see that righteousness may flourish, that good may live, and tyrants be torn out by their roots.
Secondly, we should constantly bear in mind that the Guru never subscribed to the theory of ‘might is right’. Although he introduced the worship of arms in Sikh religious rituals and even described the sword, the spear and the musket as ‘the peers’, religious mentors of the Sikhs, this was entirely in the context of using force as the ‘righter of wrongs’. He was fully aware of the fact that the teachings of the first five Gurus and the Granth Sahib were pacific in content. But should truth and goodness be allowed to suffer annihilation at the hands of falsehood and evil? Guru Gobind Singh’s answer was a categorical ‘no’. In a Persian composition entitled the Zafarnama, the epistle of victory, said to have been sent to Emperor Aurangzeb, he wrote:
Chu kar uz hama har heel te dar guzusht
Halal ust burdan ba shamsheer dust.
(When all other means have failed,
it is righteous to draw the sword.)
In this context, it is significant that although Guru Gobind Singh dictated the final version of the Guru Granth Sahib, he did not include any of his own compositions exhorting people to rise in arms in the sacred text.
Agnostic Khushwant Page 12