A true mark of greatness is that the message conveyed by a person by work/deed as well words, conduct as well as character, brings solace to people and reduces distress of people in contemporary times. At the same time the message is also found to be of enduring importance to people when they cope with difficult problems and issues even after a long time

This is certainly true of the work and teachings of Guru Nanak which continue to have a very inspiring influence after nearly five centuries. November 8, 2022 is the 553^rd Birth Anniversary. While Guru Nanak is very widely recognised as one of the greatest spiritual leaders and social reformers of all times, perhaps more effort needs to be made to more specifically place his life and teachings in the context of present day problems and needs. In this way our deeply troubled world can benefit more from Guru Nanak’s essential message of equality, simplicity, justice and peace and a deep spirituality which can help to spread these basics much more effectively and widely.

Seen in such a present day context, one of the most inspiring aspects of Guru Nanak’s life and work is his work for protection of those who are most distressed, or trapped by society in unjust positions or those who have been temporarily caught in most difficult situations resulting from war and turmoil. While returning from one of his all too frequent travels, near Aminabad he came to know of the extreme distress of civilians taken as prisoners by an invading army. Guru Nanak protested against this, there and then, in a time no protection was available from the actions of ruthless rulers. The impact of his quiet but firm determination and spiritual strength was such that many prisoners were actually released. Even after this “success,” Guru Nanak stayed on for a longer time to ensure that they were not troubled again.

When he was asked about his caste and his background during his travels to far-away places, Guru Nanak often did not reveal his real middle class background and instead replied that he identifies himself with those who were considered then to be the lowest of the low by contemporary society. This shows very clearly that he was very troubled by the discrimination against the so-called low castes and he was very keen to use the influence of his spirituality and the fame based on this to promote the cause of the weakest and poorest sections.

 While placing himself close to the poor and the exploited, Guru Nanak, at times even refused to accept the hospitality and food of those very rich and influential persons who were widely known to be exploiters of the poor.

Guru Nanak was a firm believer in communal harmony and this is how he was able to attract followers among Hindus as well as Muslims. This is also why he was equally at ease while travelling without any local contacts to areas dominated by diverse religious communities.

Guru Nanak rejected the exaggerated rituals of various religions, their claims to be the only truth and the strong tendency on the part of religious leaders to carve out a dominant and often lucrative position for themselves. Instead he emphasised a spirituality based on a simple and highly ethical life and closeness or bhakti to God based on such a life. Compassion and truth were much more important for him compared to any rituals and fasts which were emphasized by so many other preachers.

A remarkable aspect of the life and achievements of Guru Nanak relates to his skills as a great communicator. As he was travelling very frequently to new places and inter-acting with strangers, Guru Nanak developed exceptional skills for getting across his point of view even among hostile people in new areas. Quite often when he wanted to oppose some hypocrisy or superstition based ritual, he achieved this not by raising a shrill voice against this ritual, but by quietly playing the role of a very innocent person who just could not comprehend or understand the logic or rationality of an empty ritual or a false belief.

For example when he wanted to oppose the ritual of offering water to dead parents at a pilgrimage site, he simply stood in the opposite direction to pour water. As he had anticipated, immediately everyone started shouting at him that he was offering water in the wrong direction. Nanak now played the innocent to perfection and said, “My parents are not dead. They live in a village located in this direction. I thought after looking at all of you that if water poured by you can reach heaven which must be very far away, then surely water poured by me will reach my parents living in my village which is relatively nearer.” Everyone started laughing instead of getting angry, but in a subtle way Nanak communicated the absurdity of the ritual.

Similarly, in another instance when he was very tired in the course of his travels, he fell asleep with his feet placed unintentionally towards a place of worship. He was rudely awakened by a narrow minded religious leader who ordered him to immediately remove his feet from the position that pointed towards the place of worship. Nanak did not move but very calmly told the aggressive man, “I am not aware of any direction where God does not exist. If you know such a direction then kindly move my feet towards that direction.” The aggressive man did not have a reply to this and lurked away, ashamed.

Society is supposed to have “progressed” in recent times but can it still claim to live up to the ideals of Guru Nanak, Sant Kabir and Sant Ravidas? Has the discrimination against those considered to be from lower social groups ended? Has many-sided injustice to the poorest sections ended or has it even increased in some ways? How many people in society want today to identify with the lowest of the low as per the path shown by Guru Nanak? These are questions which we need to ponder as we try to find a more compassionate path of progress, guided by the great saints of the Bhakti movement.

The authors have worked together on various issues of social relevance to write several articles and booklets.

The post Guru Nanak’s Birthday, November 8, A time to Remember the Message of Social Justice, Harmony & Peace appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As a child, I was very curious about my religion. My grandparents would recite the prayers (paath) with us children in the evenings and take us to the Gurudwara for morning prayers. The daily Ardas (prayer) always included a clause,

which translates to “O Immortal Being, eternal helper of the Panth, benevolent God, bestow on the Khalsa the beneficence of unobstructed visits to and freedom to take care of Sri Nankana Sahib and other Gurdwaras and places of the Gurus from which the Panth has been separated.”

For an 8 year old, this seemed like a strange addendum in a spiritual prayer so I would ask questions relentlessly. My grandparents being survivors of Partition violence themselves, were a little hesitant to open up. It took many years for me to fully grasp what Partition meant, how the uprooting of families affected Sikhs and what it felt like to be unable to visit the birthplace of their Guru, or the first settlement where Sikhism was established. The pathos of lakhs of Sikhs in India who felt overpowered by the international politics of India-Pakistan is evident in this line of the daily Ardas. Everyone prays to someday be able to visit the Gurudwaras that have been separated from them by the border.

The opening of the Kartarpur corridor is thus eliciting a very emotional and nostalgic reaction from Sikhs, with many of them- especially elderly people- either already on their way or in the process of planning their pilgrimage to Kartarpur. Before this corridor, pilgrims from India had to take a bus to Lahore to get to Kartarpur, which is a 125 km journey (arduous for most elderly and disabled people) although people on the Indian side of the border could physically see Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur on the Pakistani side. An elevated platform had also been constructed for the same on the Indian side, where people can use binoculars to get a good view of the Gurudwara. Though a substantial fee will be levied, the visits through the corridor will not require a visa, which is a big step.

The corridor inaugurated on November 9^th, 2019 had a total of 562 pilgrims as part of the first ‘jatha‘ who visited Gurdwara Darbar Sahib on the first day of the pilgrimage. While the politicians and leaders are expressing their happiness and gratitude, all that matters for the pilgrims is the emotional relief-that there is hope for the fulfilling of each word of their Ardas.

I visited Gurudwara Hemkunt Sahib when I was 9 years old with my family. It is a brutal climb for most people and many pilgrims prefer to go in a kandi (a carrier strapped onto the back of a mountain guide) or by mule. I chose to climb on foot alongside my Father, and as we climbed the winding mountain with extremely sore legs for two days, I could only wonder, “Why are we doing this?”

I have always pondered the question of pilgrimage and visiting places of worship. Our holy book (Guru Granth Sahib) says “God is everywhere”, “God is inside us”, “God is in every living or inanimate thing”, then why must we visit a place to pay obeisance? Maybe it’s not about where we think God is. It’s about more than that. It’s about sharing spirituality with a community- it’s about roots, history, where we come from. It’s about our identity and faith, and tracing our own story back to the generations of wise Gurus who led us here. Maybe it reminds us of countless others who walked that place on a path of righteousness, maybe it reminds us of the kindness and love that brought a community together, a community that still stays true to those values more than 500 years later.

I have never considered myself religious, but I do love visiting Gurudwaras since I was a child. There’s always a story in every historical Gurudwara- maybe a Guru preached a message of love, maybe a wayward sinner found hope there, maybe a fighter found their final resting place after a courageous battle. History is always held in little pockets inside the places we make pilgrimages to. It is important to remember why we’re visiting a holy place, and what it means to us. For many Sikhs like me, Kartarpur represents the home of our ancestors, the place where it all started. Hope and faith live on, and I end this essay in the best way I can, with the final words of the daily Ardas,

“Nanak Naam Chardi Kala, teraa bhane sarbat da bhala”

(Nanak, with your name comes prosperity and with your blessings, peace for everyone)

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Image credit:  Haroon Khalid

There is quiet struggle going on in the city of Nankana Sahib in Pakistan – the birthplace of Guru Nanak.

Facing Gurudwara Janam Asthan, built on the spot where the first Sikh guru’s home once was, is a large mosque with a tall minaret.

Over the last few years, on each visit I make to the city, I find that the length of the minaret has increased. Its construction seems never-ending – and perhaps it is. The minaret is a symbol, an assertion of an identity that believes it is under threat.

Leaving home

After Partition, no Sikh families were left behind in Nankana Sahib. Its holiest shrines, associated with Guru Nanak, were abandoned and came to be occupied by tall grass and drug addicts. Over time, with the situation worsening for the Sikh community in the tribal areas following the Indo-Pak wars of 1965 and 1971, a few Pathan Sikh families moved to Nankana Sahib. The numbers increased exponentially with the emergence of the Taliban in the tribal areas and their demand for Jizya, a tax historically levy on non-Muslim subjects in a Muslim state.

As the community’s population in Nankana Sahib grew, there emerged a confidence and collective sense of identity that Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan’s Punjab had been robbed of at the time of Partition. This reflects in the ever-increasing scale of celebrations during Guru Nanak Jayanti, when a festival is held here in November to celebrate the guru’s birthday.

Empowered local Sikhs and foreign-currency wielding pilgrims meant better care of gurudwaras in the city. The government of Pakistan woke up to the potential of Sikh religious tourism and started renovating and protecting Sikh places of worship. Nankana Sahib once again emerged as a significant Sikh city in the eyes of Pakistanis and the rest of the world, even though there are only a few thousand Sikhs living here compared to hundreds of thousands of Muslims.

On the surface, they share a harmonious relationship, with local vendors benefiting from the surge of the tourists and local Sikhs merging into the economy of the city. However, a little bit of probing reveals the tensions. One example is that of religious purity. Many restaurants refuse to offer food to members of the Sikh community, fearing that their contact would yield their utensils impure.

In 2012, a young Sikh from the city, Dhavinder Singh, was killed, leading to tensions between the Sikh and Muslim communities. Further, there is property running into hundreds of acres linked to the gurudwaras of Nankana Sahib, most of which is now under the control of Muslim traders. As a result of this, tensions between the communities remain high. It is in this context that the tall minaret of the mosque facing Gurudwara Janamasthan should be seen. The minaret is an exertion of dominance, of asserting that one religion is superior to the other.

Lost heritage

In this engagement between these two communities the Hindu heritage is ignored. It is conveniently forgotten that there was once a thriving Hindu community here as well, which has left behind an equally remarkable architectural heritage.

When I first spotted the turret of a temple from the roof of Gurudwara Tambu Sahib in Nankana Sahib, I was drawn to it like a magnet. It was a lone structure surrounded by houses, domes of the gurduwaras and minarets of mosques. It was the only one brave enough to fight for space in an already-contested land. Following the turret, I walked through the streets of Nankana Sahib, passing several Sikh pilgrims gathered around the gurudwaras.

The temple at Nankana Sahib

Unlike other street, this was quiet. The quest for the turret led me to a wooden door with a chain on the top. I knocked the chain on the door, and in an instant, the door opened, as if someone was already waiting inside.

“Please come in,” said a middle aged man wearing a white shalwar kameez, not even asking me my name or the purpose of my visit. His name was Amjad and he was a professor at a local government college. He led me past a narrow staircase to the top floor of his house. The temple was on the roof, a tall turret with a small room underneath. Outside, at the entrance, there was an idol of Hanuman.

Surprised, I turned towards Amjad.

“No one worships here, so I saw no point in destroying the idol,” he said. Islam is regarded as an iconoclast religion. Mahmud Ghaznvi’s invasion of Somnath temple in the religio-nationalist discourse is projected as a heroic action. It is the same tradition that the Taliban followed in Afghanistan when they destroyed thousands of years old Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

After Partition, most Hindu temples of Punjab were taken over by migrants who had come from India or property grabbers and were severely damaged. Their idols were removed and destroyed. Frescoes depicting Hindu deities were chiseled out.

Some of these temples were used as houses and were whitewashed to remove all trace of their Hindu past.

So this was a rare instance of residents making an effort to preserve the sanctity of the temple that gave way to their house. The main shrine was unoccupied but clean. Its frescoes – mostly floral patterns but also sacred scripts – were well-preserved.

“Hundreds of rioters gathered outside our home in 1992 after the destruction of the Babri Mosque,” he said. “They wanted to destroy the temple. But my father dissuaded them. He told them it is not a temple but our house.”

Remnants of the past

The story reminded me of another tale I heard hundreds of kilometers away, in the heart of Margalla Hills near Islamabad, where the mighty city of Taxila once thrived. The ruins of the ancient city are scattered along its vicinity. The Taxila museum next to the ruins contains hundreds of items unearthed from these ancient sites.

Almost exclusively Buddhist, the museum contains some of the most iconic depictions of the Buddha. I was on my way out of the museum when, in the middle of the contemporary city of Taxila, I saw the turrets of a Hindu temple. I knew I had to visit the shrine.

Driving through the crowded streets of the city I found myself at the gate of the temple, a black structure with three turrets. I was greeted at the gate by a young Pasthun boy named Muhammad Ali. “There are three families living in the complex of the temple but the main shrine which was upstairs is unoccupied and locked,” he told me. “One day when I was sleeping with my feet towards the temple, an old man with a white beard appeared in my dream who told me to respect the sanctity of the temple. He also told me that I should regularly clean it. Since that day, every morning I open the temple and clean it. I also pray here sometimes and know god is listening to me.”

On the outskirts of the historical city of Bhera in the Punjab province, a great learning centre when the Chinese traveler Fa Hien arrived here in the fourth century CE, is a lonely structure of a small Shiv temple, a little out of place in the midst of newly constructed brick houses. Sometime in the fourth century BCE, the city was razed to the ground by the forces of Alexander the Macedonian.

In the 16th century, it faced the wrath of the Mughal King Babur. It was then renovated by Afghan king Sher Shah Suri, in the 1940s. Sher Shah Suri had established the Sur dynasty after he deposed Babur’s son, Humayun, to become king. Just outside the walled city, there is a historical mosque believed to have been summoned by the Afghan king.

The Sher Shah Mosque at Bhera

Standing on a vacant plot, the Shiv temple is a single-storey structure, with a shivling in the centre. There were blackened lamps around it, showing that they had been recently lit.

A teenage boy followed me into the temple and told me that it was an abandoned shrine till a few years ago, when some people from the city noticed an old man – a saint with long, white hair and a beard – sitting inside. He sat there into the night. “It was then that the people realised this place was sacred and started lighting lamps here.”
 

Haroon Khalid is the author of the books In Search of Shiva: A study of folk religious practices in Pakistan and A White Trail: A journey into the heart of Pakistan’s religious minorities.

(This article was first published on Scroll.in.)

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