Sikhism’s Struggle to Reconcile an Unstable World
While one of the more recent religious traditions, Sikhism’s impact throughout the world motivates two fascinating themes, one of religious lineage in its leadership and ultimately altruistic ending, and one of extremism where religious fanaticism spills over into real-world violence. I’ll take each one in turn.
Beginning with Guru Nanak in the late 15th century, Sikhism arose out of the teachings and movements of Kabir, of Sufi traditions, and the Bhakti devotional practice in Islam and Hinduism, but centers on the premise that any human being can have a direct relationship with God. This direct relationship manifested itself for a young Guru Nanak during his travels west from modern day India towards modern-day Iran, where he disappeared from the caravan for three days and is said to have experienced a union with the divine. This experience of seeing, or darshan, isn’t just seeing God, but also being seen by God, and through these experiences, Nanak concludes, in contrast to Hinduism, that there is only one God. That He’s the center of the world, and omniscient. This transcends traditional Hinduism and Islam, but also distills and simplifies faith into one of uncomplicated personal relationship. One which rejects asceticism as a means of bridging the limbic gap between atman and brahma, reduces the prominence of ritual, and advocates for equanimity and duty towards society. A purity of thought and simplicity of action characterized by reflecting upon the established order of the universe through calming of the mind.
But if Guru Nanak was earth-bound in his teachings, the very notion and definition of guru was also malleable, where Sikh practitioners could further their personal, individual relationships with God not just through Nanak’s teachings, but also through scripture and community. That God was the ultimate guru, and that He manifests in many different ways. He is the Satguru, the true teacher, or as the Adi Granth text describes, ‘The Lord pervades every heart. He dwells concealed in the waters, the land, all that is in between the heavens and earth, but through the word of the Guru Nanak he's revealed his grace is the guru, with a true guru, him to me in this world’.
But unlike God, Nanak’s time on earth was finite. The establishment of a lineage of teachers followed him, spanning the 15th to the 18th centuries across ten different teachers, who furthered the transition from oral tradition to written text, expanded the communal influence and impact of Sikhism, created military connections and established the ritual traditions of kesh, kangha, kara, kachha and kirpan. This lineage echoes what we might recognize in Christian culture through the lineage of Popes or Archbishops, but the key difference in Sikhism is that the lineage deliberately, consciously ends.
Guru Gobind Singh, in drawing the three hundred year tradition to a close, did not name a successor, but simply left the text of the Adi Granth and its teachings to guide the community, and that the community itself, not gurus, would pick their own leaders. This again has echoes of Christianity in its adherence to the gospels of The Bible, but it’s hard to imagine existing papal lineage performing such an act of altruism.
Secondly, while we may think of many of these teachings as ones predicated upon simplicity and peace, of communing with the divine, and of experiencing revelation and union with God through Darshan, they also exist in a world where others believe differently. Differences between pluralist and inclusivist methods of faith, both within and outside of the Sikh faith rub up against those with whom they share the world, especially their immediate Hindu and Muslim neighbors.
These challenges, while obviously not exclusive to East Asian tradition, co-exist inside of the ever-changing samsara of geopolitical, economic, military, and cultural change. Sikhism, in contrast to Hindu tradition, has long had a close relationship with the British military since the beginning of colonization in the mid nineteenth century, something we see as highly controversial in modern contexts as the engine of reparations for past transgressions accelerates across the world.
But even outside of this relationship, Sikhs have had a long tradition of militarism, especially through the lineage of the ten gurus, and the declaration of separation from Mughal rule by Guru Hargobind in the 16th century. Localized agitation in recent modern India history between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims has resulted in extremist violence, most notably in the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 by Sikh militants, and the later assassination of son, also serving as Prime Minister in 1991 by Sri Lankan Tamil separatists. I spent some time this week with the contemporary news coverage of the 1984 assassination, and a notable juxtaposition on the front page of The New York Times on October 31st 1984 where Indira Ghandi’s death co-exists with a stark image of an unrelated Islamic execution in Tripoli. Two stories strongly motivated by fanaticism sit side-by-side on the front page, and sadly something we’ve only seen accelerate in the subsequent decades. We’ve experienced and continue to experience such violence domestically too of course.
Depth of faith is something we seek, but it also carries enormous risk. Such devotion can commonly spill over into violence as stark differences in belief struggle to reconcile inside of an already unstable world. For as much durable aspiration of communing with the divine as the original texts and teaching may hold, there is also a dangerous rigidity which can emerge which divides more than it unites. The work of peaceful, pluralist co-existence can often feel insurmountable, but in many ways is what all faith, irrespective of origin and practice, aspire to.
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