by Owen Cole
Guru Nanak often affirmed that he had but one guru, God, the Sat Guru or Guru of Gurus. He had no human spiritual preceptor. Suggestions that he was a disciple of Kabir (the Indian sant whose writings influenced the Bhakti movement) are based on unreliable sources.
Besides the belief that God is one, Guru Nanak taught that God had no garb, that is no form or attachments by which one could claim deity to be Hindu or Muslim. He used Hari, Ram and Gopal, Allah, Khuda and Sahib (e.g. AG 903), depending on the beliefs of his hearers, but his fundamental affirmation was that:
My master is one, brother, the One who alone exists. (AG 350)
Guru Nanak was what might be described as a critical universalist, though, taken to its logical limits, he might, perhaps, be said to hold a position which transcends accepting the authenticity or validity of all religions, for each, at some point, implies that the Truth is limited by or conditioned by its own tenets.
He was not hesitant in challenging ideas, beliefs or practices that fell short of the vision that he had received summed up in the belief in one God and one humanity.
The concepts of ritual purity and pollution have already been discussed. No further comment on them need be made here.
Priestly domination of one group of people by another was also anathema. Sometimes Guru Nanak criticized the potential for exploitation that resulted from religious power, whether it be of the brahmin, yogi or mullah. More fundamentally, he believed that the Nam-filled devotee, the gurmukh, had no need of the offices of such ministers or of intermediaries of any sort. Guru Nanak often spoke of the necessity of having a guru, but in doing so he was never commending himself but the Sat Guru, God.
What power have I to utter the name of God? If you cause me to worship then only I can worship. If you abide within me, then I am rid of ego. Whom else should I serve? Without you there is no other. (AG 1331)
As a married young man Nanak went to Sultanpur to live with his older sister, Nanaki. There, his brother-in-law, Jai Ram, found him employment as an accountant in his Muslim master’s employment. One of the first stories relating him to Islam belongs to this period.
One day soon after his river Bein experience, Nanak was at the home of Daulat Khan Lodi having a religious discussion with him and the village qazi. The subject was Guru Nanak’s assertion that there is neither Hindu nor Muslim. The time came for the second prayer. According to one version the Guru committed the grave insult of laughing during the prayer; others simply say that while the qazi and the headman prayed he stood in silence. Asked to defend his behaviour, the Guru replied saying that he could not have prayed because they were not praying. The qazi, he said, was anxious because his young filly had been left untethered in the courtyard behind the house. A well was there and he feared that the horse might fall into it. As for the Khan, his servants were in Kabul trading in horses, and he was wondering what kind of profit they had made. Niyat, intention, is often said to be the most important requirement in Islamic prayer. Neither of them had the right intention so, Guru Nanak said, they were not actually praying. He could not then pray with them. Frequently, such anecdotes are followed by a spiritual message. On this occasion he declared:
There are five prayers, they have five names. The first is truthfulness, the second honest learning, the third charity in God’s name, the fourth purity of intent, and the fifth God’s admiration and praise. Repeat the kalima of good deeds [the statement that ‘There is no God but God and Muhammad is his prophet’], then call yourself a prophet. (AG 141)
This account is a denunciation of hypocrisy, deceit and formalism. It is clearly not a rejection of Islamic worship as such. Of Allah he said:
Baba Allah is inscrutable. He is boundless. His abode is holy and so are his names. He is the True Sustainer. His will surpasses comprehension. It cannot be described adequately. Not even a hundred poets assembled together could describe the smallest part of it. All hear and talk about him, none fully appreciates his worth. (AG 141)
Allah consults no one when he makes or unmakes, gives or takes away. He alone knows his decree [qudrat], he alone is the doer. He beholds everyone and bestows grace on whom he wills. (AG 53)
These sentences might well have been uttered by a Muslim.
Guru Nanak could even find some place for the varna system and much more for the Vedas. He does not reject the Hindu varna structure, and certainly not the authenticity of the Vedas as the following passages demonstrate:
The way of union is the way of divine knowledge. With the brahmin the way is through the Vedas, the kshatriyas way is that of bravery. That of the shudra is the service of others. The duty of all is meditation on the One. (AG 1353)
Here the emphasis is not on purity but on service, the cardinal Sikh virtue:
The Vedas preach the sermon of devotional service. He who continually hears and believes sees the Divine Light. The shastras and smirtis impress meditation on the Name. (AG 731 and 832)
Hearing alone is not enough. Responding through faith is what matters:
A fool residing with a pandit hears the Vedas and shastras. Like a dog with a crooked tail he remains unchanged. (AG 990)
Beyond the Vedas is its creator who must be attained if liberation is to be achieved:
It is God who created the Vedas. It is through the One that the world is saved. (AG 930)
One is led to the conclusion that Guru Nanak’s primary belief in the immediacy of brahma vidya, the liberating knowledge of Brahman, meant that belief systems held a subordinate place in his theology. It does appear, however, that through aspects of them, such as imbibing the Vedic message or sincerely performing namaaz, God could be realized. We may not agree that conventional Hindu belief and Islam were fundamentally wrong (McLeod, 1997: 161). Truth could be reached through them, though it may be said to lie beyond them.
Jainism
Before ending this section on Guru Nanak’s attitudes to other religions some mention might be made of the Jains. He refers to them only twice in any detail. They have never been a numerically large, popular Indian way of liberation. The Jain movement is, in a sense, one with the Upanishads and Buddhism, but unlike the former, and in common with the way of the Buddha, it was regarded as unorthodox because it did not acknowledge the authority of the Vedas. It owes its origins to Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara or teacher, who may have lived at about the same time as the Buddha, some writers suggest 599 to 526 BCE. Jainism is extremely austere and ethical in its teachings and requirements. The laity must take three vows – of non-violence, truthfulness and charity. This means that Jains are vegetarian, concerned for the environment, and have often practised as businessmen, such is their honesty. Such an austere religion has never appealed to the masses and today may have less than 4 million adherents.
Jains do not believe in a personal creator God. Liberation is through their way of life and entails becoming a monk or nun, which may not be achieved in their present existence. It is nontheistic; the gods are themselves souls on the way to liberation. The religion is also dualistic with a division into that which is alive (jiva), and non-living (ajiva). Among the ajiva is karma, which attaches itself to the jiva and weighs it down, thus preventing the attainment of moksha, or mukti, to use the Sikh term. Jains were known to be in Lahore in the time of the Emperor Akbar and may have been found in the Punjab in Guru Nanak’s day. He certainly considered them deserving of attention:
They pluck the hairs from their heads, drink water in which people have washed, and beg leftovers. They rake up their excreta and inhale its smell. They detest water. They pluck their heads like sheep and smear their hands with ashes. They turn from living with their parents and families, leaving them to grieve. No rice balls are offered to the ancestors and funeral rites are neglected. No lamps are lit for them. They do not seek the refuge of the sixty-eight places of pilgrimage or feed brahmins. They always remain filthy, day and night, and there is no tilak to be seen on their foreheads. They sit about in groups as if in mourning, and do not
share in public activities. Brush in hand, begging bowl over the shoulder, they walk along in single file.
From water came the jewels when Mount Meru churned the ocean. The gods established sixty-eight pilgrimage places where festivals are held and God is praised. The wise always walk. Muslims pray after ablutions, after bathing. Hindus worship. Water is poured on the living and dead to purify them.
Nanak says, these pluck-haired devils will have none of this.
Rain brings happiness. The cow can graze continually and the housewife churns the curds. With the ghee, havan, puja and festivals are sanctified. The Guru is the ocean, all his teachings are the rivers, bathing in them brings glory.
If the pluck-haired do not bathe, says Nanak, let seven hands full of ashes be put on their heads. (AG 149/150)
The second passage reads:
Some are Jains who wander in the wilderness. They are wasted away by the Primal Being. The Name is not on their lips and they do not bathe in places of pilgrimage. They pluck their heads with their hands, refusing to use a razor. Night and day they remain filthy. They have no time for social behaviour or responsibility. They live in vain.
Their minds are soiled and impure. They eat one another’s leftovers. Without the Name and virtuous living, no one is ever blessed. By the Guru’s grace the mortal merges in the One reality. (AG 1285)
One must say at the outset of discussing these passages that Jains would certainly deny their veracity and be concerned about what they would see as the pillorying of their beliefs and practices. Today they are among the most respected communities in Indian society.
The vitriolic attack on Jains is in sharp contradiction to the portraits one is accustomed to of a benign, white-bearded old man. Though this picture may be as far from the truth as popular notions of the God of the Bible who has a long white beard and sits enthroned on a cloud! Why Guru Nanak made it is not the only perplexing matter. In fact the question ‘why’ may be the easiest to answer.
Ishnan features strongly in Guru Nanak’s teaching, together with Nam, meditation, and Dan, giving to the needy. It means washing or bathing. It seems a little strange for the emphasis to be upon an apparent ritual when this aspect of religious behaviour is so frequently under attack. Ishnan, however, for Sikhs has to do with cleanliness and hygiene rather than ritual. Each morning most of the people of India, regardless of faith, bathe. This is often a preliminary to puja or, in the case of Sikhs, Nam Simran, but it is a practice of which the Guru approved (the river Bein episode began with Guru Nanak bathing), and which he encouraged or even demanded of his disciples. At the other extreme come the Jains who, according to the Guru, rejoice in filth.
Jains are also nontheistic in practice. As we have noted the gods are beings who are themselves on the journey to enlightenment. Guru Nanak believed emphatically in one God who was essential to spiritual liberation. He therefore believed they were engaged in a vain journey.
It is also asserted that Jains fail to give alms and reject their living families and their ancestors. They are clearly indifferent to society and lack community responsibility – Dan, the practice of alms giving and mutual support, which Guru Nanak considered to be so important. In common with other groups, they denied the value of the householder life, which he saw as the cornerstone of society and the means by which men and women achieved spiritual liberation.
What is more difficult to comprehend is the Guru’s apparent approval of Hindu practices, which he elsewhere condemns, such as making pilgrimages or feeding brahmins. Perhaps we may infer that he was not praising these activities but was really demonstrating how the Jains fell even below the expressions of Hindu devotion. While there may be a chance that Hindus will experience God through the acts they undertake, the Jains have no such hope – they are ‘rejected by God’.
Plucking the hair on the head has drawn some comments from Sikhs who have seen in it an assertion that people should keep the natural form which they were given. This is a reason why Khalsa Sikhs, and many others, though not all, keep the kesh intact, neither shaving nor cutting their hair. (One has even heard of Sikhs being greatly exercised in their consciences if surgery requires the removal of body hair.)
There are, however, a couple of lines in which Jains are treated more positively. Digambara is the name by which the group who went about naked is known. The Guru writes, with ahimsa in mind, the Jain tradition of not injuring sentient beings, or, to put it positively, reverence for life, a principle that greatly attracted Mahatma Gandhi:
The naked Digambara is one who has compassion and examines his inner self. He slays his own self and does not slay others. You are but One, though your appearances are many. (AG 356)
This occurs in a passage where yogis, Jains and other practitioners of austerities are commended if the emphasis is placed upon trust in God.
An explanation of Guru Nanak’s responses to the forms of religion he encountered
From the above examples it seems impossible to provide a simple answer to the question of what Guru Nanak thought of the forms of religion he encountered. Certainly much that he saw met with his disapproval but he could find a place for the Vedas and for Islamic practices and beliefs.
A clue to his views might be found in his attitudes to Jains and Naths. For these he had little time or none. The unimportance of God which they seem to have preached by their conduct and their words was in stark contradiction to Guru Nanak’s message which had God at its very heart.
His monotheism left no place for apparent polytheism. We know that a fundamental Hindu teaching is that God is one:
Truth is One; sages call it by many names such as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Yama, Garutman, or Matarishvan. (Rig Veda: 1:164:46)
The Yajur Veda, another important scripture, expresses the same truth as follows:
For an awakened soul, Indra, Varuna, Agni, Yama, Aditya, Chandra – all these names represent only One spiritual being. (32:1)
These words lie at the heart of the religion but for many devotees and non-Hindu observers the reality seems to be polytheistic. The pictures and images which may be seen in a mandir, ranging from Rama and Hanuman, to Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Guru Nanak and Gandhi, might convey this message to the uninformed, rather than one of diversity within unity which is at the heart of Hinduism. Certainly that seems to have been true of the village Hinduism that Guru Nanak experienced.
Duality, which popular, polytheistic Hinduism, seemed to teach, was something else abhorrent to the Guru. Therefore rival religious systems would be inimical, not only the sectarian differences within Hinduism but also the discord that Islam might be creating in villages and regions that had once been Hindu. Social duality included caste and for its distinctions he again had nothing but disapproval. The equality of man and woman would also come under this heading.
An ethic, or lack of it, which did not emphasize social responsibility was also anathema. Thus the Jains were sharply rebuked, but again caste, which could express concern for members of one’s own biradari but ignored others who were outside it, would be a target for his comments.
Finally, we are again left with the phrase Nam, Dan and Ishnan. At Kartarpur we may envisage a community focused upon these three principles of meditation upon the One, care for everyone regardless of gender, caste, wealth, belief and cleanliness. To quote Bhai Gurdas, the great Sikh theologian who lived in the century after Guru Nanak:
The sun with its light dispels the darkness of night. Likewise the gurmukh, making people understand the importance of Nam, Dan and Ishnan sets them free from the bondage [of transmigration]. (Var 16: Pauri 7)
Guru Arjan
The fifth Guru exercised a considerable influence upon Sikh attitudes to other religions both directly and indirectly. He was responsible for a consolidation of the Panth as an entity distinct from Hinduism and Islam. This he did principally by compiling a scripture, the Adi Granth (see Chapter 12). Like Hindus and Muslims the Sikhs now had a book for which they claimed divine authority. The word
adi, as mentioned in Chapter 11, means ‘first’ in the cardinal sense of primal or primary. Adi Guru is a term frequently used to describe the original guru of a particular order. Caitanya, as adi guru, is revered even more highly than Krishna by his devotees.
Inclusion of bhagat bani in the Adi Granth has already been noted (see Chapter 11). It is highly relevant to our examination of Sikh attitudes to other faiths for it is, perhaps, the only example of a corpus of literature not of the particular religion being included in its scripture. (The inclusion of the Jewish scriptures in the Christian Bible is not comparable or relevant here.) It is an indication of the critical universalism of Sikh thought; critical in that only material which accorded with the Gurus’ concepts of God and humanity were admitted; universalist in that compositions by Hindus of a variety of varnas, and those of Muslims were included. Importantly, nothing already in the Qur’an or srutis or smirtis was incorporated. Synthesis or synchronism was evidentially not in the fifth Guru’s mind any more than it had been in Guru Nanak’s; there may have been a suggestion that here was a scripture open to all. Certainly Sikhs in the present day make much of the bhagat bani as an example of ecumenical openness.