Contemporary Sikhism
At the centre of contemporary Sikh organisations lies the Gurdwara Management Committee, or SGPC, set up to administer the major temples in Punjab. This is an elected body, which has always been under the control of one or another group of the Akali Dal, the main Sikh political party.
In keeping with the long-standing traditions of Sikhism, the SGPC is run by lay members, and the officials of the temples, whether readers (granthi) or musicians (ragi), are its paid servants, without the sacerdotal status of‘priests’ in the accepted sense of the term.In lesser temples, too, whether in the Punjab or in the diaspora, a similar pattern of management obtains, with lay members having chief responsibility for running the temple and the langar attached to it, for ensuring compliance to the Khalsa discipline, and if necessary undertaking the excommunication of members for grave infractions, such as the cutting of hair, or fixing penalties for lesser offences. A summary code of guidance, laying down the fundamental rules of Sikh belief, religious and personal life, was issued by the SGPC in 1946.
The evolution of Sikhism has, however, been such that its purely religious aspect is only somewhat artificially to be regarded in complete isolation from its contemporary political expression. The political activism to which the reformists’ energies had become increasingly directed received further impetus through the circumstances in which the British Empire in India was dissolved in 1947. This involved the partition of the Punjab between the successor states of India and Pakistan and a massive transfer of population between the two halves of the province, with the whole Sikh population of the western districts being forced to migrate to India.
A long campaign by the Akali Dal eventually secured the establishment of the Sikh-majority state of Punjab in India in 1966. But the dream of a fully independent Khalistan (‘land of the Khalsa’) has continued to appeal to some Sikhs.
It received further impetus from the campaign of violence instigated by Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (1947-84), a village preacher with a message of charismatic fundamentalism, and from the Indian Army’s storming of Sikhism’s holiest shrine, the Golden Temple complex at Amritsar, in June 1984, when Bhindranwale and his followers were killed and from the continuing subsequent repercussions of this military assault.As has, however, been indicated by subsequent events in India and the polarisation of feeling among many sections of the Sikh diaspora, it would be unwise to disregard the appeal of the new fundamentalism in attempting any assessment of the contemporary profile of Sikhism, which continues to contain within itself the effects of the several stages of development which have gone into its making.
Further Reading
Cole, W.O. and Sambhi, Piara Singh The Sikhs, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1978)
Grewal, J.S. and Bal, S.S. Guru Gobind Singh (Chandigarh, 1967) Harbans Singh The Heritage of the Sikhs, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1983) Khushwant Singh A History of the Sikhs, 2 vols., 2nd edn (Delhi, 1977) Macauliffe, M.A. The Sikh Religion, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1909), reprinted as 3 vols.
(Delhi, 1963)
McLeod, W.H. Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1968)
----- The Evolution of the Sikh Community (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1976) (ed.) Textual Sources for the Study of Sikhism (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984)
Shackle, C. An Introduction to the Sacred Language of the Sikhs (University of London, SOAS, 1981)
----- The Sikhs (revised edn) (Minority Rights Group Report no. 65, London, 1986)