Syncretism

Yet a different kind of response is what is here termed “syncretism.” Syncretism, used here, means the creation of a new form or movement with explicit borrowing from one or more sources.

Some of the panths (movements) emanating from Kabir’s life and thought may be termed syncretistic. Some would call the theology of Dara Shikoh a form of syncretism.

The finest example of syncretism in this period was the emergence of Sikhism, a movement forged by gurus which has become a full-blown “religion.”

Sikhism

The story of Sikhism starts, for all intents and purposes, with Guru Nanak. There were a number of influences that informed the life and thought of Nanak. That background included a significant presence of Sufism and bhakti in Panjab (literally, “the five rivers”). As mentioned earlier, there was a series of gurus who preceded Nanak. They included Jayadeva, who emphasized recitation of the name of god in a way that is reminiscent of both the vaidika recitation of sound and the Islamic recitation of the Qu‘ran. The sound itself was understood to represent the divine and the cosmos. Another saint, Ramananda, sought a religious orientation free of “legalism” and caste. “Legalism” was the unnecessary following of disciplines thought to be extraneous to “true” religion. Vegetarianism, for example, was thought to be a form of legalism. Rather, religion was a matter of internal reform. Something of this attitude was found in Kabir (1440-1518), who was apparently raised by Muslims and influenced by Hindus. Kabir rejected the use of icons and rituals that were not deemed central to attaining religious fulfillment. Scripture was useful only insofar as it was combined with the inner experience of “truth.” He wrote in the vernacular in a way that made his monotheism attractive to a broad range of people.

Nanak (1469-1539) followed in the spirit of these antecedents.

He was born Hindu but raised in contact with Muslims. A storekeeper, he decided he wanted to find some answers to the questions troubling him; he left his home and spent time as a wandering minstrel. The tradition insists he had a life-changing vision one day while bathing. In his vision, Nanak saw himself in paradise (as if in a temple) and heard the word of the one God (ek omkar); the metaphor of listening and hearing the name of the divine became central to his thought.⁴² His life was reoriented, and he became a guru, establishing the community of Sikhs.

Guru Nanak’s religious ideas were drawn from many sources. God was one (ek); he was unseen, sovereign, and transcendent (in a manner consistent with orthodox Islam). But God was also accessible in ways both Sufi and bhakti poets had sung: God was to be celebrated and relished; He made himself manifest in a personal way. Human beings were made for submission to God. Yet maya,, like avidya, hid the reality of God. One must move beyond appearances and book knowledge to wisdom and acting according to the truth. That truth could be discerned by reciting the names of the one God. The aim of life was to discover and serve God, the omnipotent and the immanent, He who infused the world. With the free will given to humans, one was to discern the flow of God’s purpose in the cosmos.

Nanak established a system of guru succession. The guru was a perfected exemplar who teaches, passes on the tradition, and gives leadership to the community.

Nanak once wrote:

The guru is the ladder, the dinghy, the raft by means of which one reaches god;

The guru is the lake, the ocean, the boat, the sacred placed pilgrimage, the river.

If it please thee I am cleansed by bathing in the lake of truth.⁴³

Nanak’s immediate successor was Angad (1539-52) who started collecting the scripture of the community, the Adi Granth, later known as the Guru Granth. Sahib, based on the poems of the gurus. He also established the langar (common kitchen), a symbolic representation of the idea that all persons were equal and could eat food prepared by any member of the group (an explicit critique of brahmanic culinary fastidiousness).⁴⁴

Amar Das (1552-74), successor to Angad, emphasized egalitarianism further, and expressed concern for the social well-being of the community.

Ascetism was discouraged in favor of altruism and community life. A caste group known as jats (farmers and warriors) was beginning to be attracted to the community; Amar Das therefore instituted certain rituals intended to develop a sense of community and identity. Rituals for marriages and funerals, for example, though borrowed largely from Hinduism, were intended to provide a uniquely Sikh way of being in community. Not least important, this guru identified Amritsar as the place where the Sikhs would be centered and which, with the construction of a temple, would become a Sikh pilgrimage center.⁴⁵

It was left to his successor Ram Das (1574-81) to raise funds for and start the building of the famed Golden Temple at Amritsar (the lake of amrt [the nectar of immortality]). The fifth guru, Arjun (1581-1606), completed construction of the Amritsar temple and made it a pilgrimage center with a distinct language and ritual tradition. Arjun also continued compiling the sacred scripture of the community, the Guru Granth Sahib.

By now tensions were growing between the Sikh community and the Mughals, largely because Jahangir, the son of Akbar, reversed Akbar’s policy of tolerance to all faiths. In addition, Sikhs had supported Jahangir’s son in revolt against his father, thereby initiating a perpetual tension with the Mughal court. Jahangir honored Islamic figures, ignoring Sikhs and other saintly figures. The Mughals perceived Sikhs, who were becoming more powerful in the valleys of Panjab, as a threat. The result: Arjun was executed in 1606 and the Sikhs and Mughals were at odds with each other.⁴⁶

Hargobind (1606-45) became guru at the age of eleven. He was the first to assemble a military force and take up arms as a defense against the Mughals as well as against Afghans and Marathas, who coveted the fertile area of the five rivers. Controlling the Panjab became a major concern of the Sikhs; hence, Hargobind spoke of two swords - one political and one religious.

The increased number ofjats in the community and these political- geographical issues moved Sikhism increasingly into a defensive force.

The tenth and last guru was Gobind Singh. He was ten years old when he assumed his responsibilities in 1666. His predecessor had been executed, this time by Aurangzeb. After Gobind Singh, the tradition of living gurus was replaced by the scripture, the written legacy of the gurus. The scripture (the Guru Granth Sahib) serves as the center of worship and of the community to the present. In fact, the Sikh place of worship even today is known as the gurdwara (the doorway to the guruas represented in the book). According to the tradition, Guru Gobind Singh was responsible for making the movement even more militantly oriented and giving it a more visible identity: from now on, males were to take five vows, by which they would take the name of Singh (lion) as a surname. The five vows were: the wearing of under drawers (kach), indicating a readiness to move quickly; an iron ring on the right arm or bangle (kara), an insignia of strength; a small dagger (kirpan), a symbol of one’s readiness to defend oneself; long hair (kes), representative of saintliness as well as strength; and a comb (kangha) which holds in the hair and represents cleanliness and neatness (all men were to wear turbans to cover the hair). This new “brotherhood,” known as the khalsa, is said to have been inaugurated in 1699, though some aspects of it may have been added later as the influence of the jat community increased.⁴⁷

After Gobind Singh, the Sikhs were rather loosely organized into misls (circles) while fighting for rights to the Panjab continued. Afghans, Marathas, and, eventually, the British sought hegemony over the “five waters.” A low point in the life of the community was the infamous gallughara (devastation) of 1762. Afghans entered the Panjab and slaughtered many Sikhs. The tragedy galvanized the community, which longed for greater centralization: Ranjit Singh managed to bring together the various misls and restored the Sikhs to a point where they were able to retain hegemony in the area until the British took over in 1849.

Subsequently, it has been difficult to distinguish political concerns from religious ones.

In a number of ways the experience of the Sikhs in the twentieth century mirrored the experience of India at large. Sikhs were among the first Indians to migrate to North America, for example, first settling as farmers in Northwestern Canada then working their way down into the US. The Sikhs experienced considerable discrimination in British Columbia and Washington State in the first decade of the twentieth century.⁴⁸ But by the 1920s Sikhs were settling in California, marrying Mexican women and constructing the first Indo-American religious edifice, a gurdwara, in Stockton, California. During this same period, Sikhs had also migrated to the Malay Straits to work in security positions.

Meanwhile back in the Panjab, the Akali Dal (“army of the immortals”) was formed in 1920-21 to oversee gurdwaras and maintain Sikh identity and rights.⁴⁹ A year earlier, a second “gallwg^hara” had occurred, with the massacre by British troops of non-violent Sikhs protesting near Amritsar. After independence in 1947, when Panjab was partitioned between India and Pakistan, Sikhs continued to struggle for their rights in the Panjab. Though against the partition in 1947 and siding with Hindus at that time, they believed their rights were diminished thereafter. Indian Panjab was split into two regions, in which Sikhs were the majority in the south but still believed themselves to be without power because: the state government was supposed to be secular, yet its Sikh administrators were perceived to be bending over backwards not to offend Hindus; and more and more Sikhs were learning Hindi and there was fear that increased “Hinduization” was occurring. Hindi and Panjabi were made the official languages in the state, yet in 1953 while no Sikhs were in positions of leadership, the central government decided there would be no Panjabi-speaking state, increasing Sikh frustration.

By 1967 that decision was reversed, when the area was divided again, creating two new states, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, leaving Panjab to a majority of Panjabi-speaking peoples. Even then there was some disarray amongst the Sikh political leadership, leading by 1978 to the increased visibility of a separatist movement led by those who wanted the creation of an autonomous state, to be called “Khalistan,” evoking a suggestion thought to have once been made by Guru Gobind Singh. Among those agitating for autonomy was a Sikh fundamentalist named Bhidranwalla. Bhidranwalla was accused of an assassination and asked by the central government to lay down his arms. When he refused to do so he was labeled a terrorist and was sought by government forces. The “crisis” came to a head in 1984, when, while Bhidranwalla was “hiding” in Amritsar’s Golden Temple, the Indian army, led, ironically, by a Sikh general, attacked the Golden Temple and the alleged terrorists within. While the government’s view was that the raids were justified, the Sikhs saw this event as an act of genocide and became increasingly galvanized to action. At the least, “Operation Bluestar” managed to kill a number of pilgrims during a festival, and review committees which were not sympathetic with the Congress Party, studying the events post facto, agreed primarily with the Sikh position. Among the results of the tragedy was the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her own Sikh bodyguards. This was followed by Hindu-Sikh conflicts, riots, and reprisals which led to communal tensions for years. While some of the issues troubling the Sikhs were subsequently addressed, others are still pending. Nonetheless, outright hostilities have been kept to a minimum in recent years and the

Sikhs continue to play a significant role in Indian life, not least as progressive farmers in the fertile Panjab valleys where 25 per cent of India’s rice is raised, and as members of various security forces.

Syncretism

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