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‘Construction of Religious Boundaries’
Gurtej Singh
Thanks to the reputation of the group to which the author belongs and the sort of theme developed by his companions in the recent past, one had a fair idea of how the book would turn out even before one picked it up from the shelf. Added advantage was that one was aware of the articles written by the author which form the nucleus of this book. The work of his group can be understood in the context of India’s recent history, particularly since 1947. It was felt that since the Constitution of 1950 contravened all promises solemnly held out to the Sikhs and other nations comprising the Indian sub-con-tinent, and that since its purpose was to establish and maintain a political dominance of the permanent cultural majority over all minorities, a revolt against the scheme could be expected. The Sikhs in particular could not be expected to go on kissing their chains for ever. It was to obviate such possibility that the theme so popular with Harjot Oberoi and the group to which he belongs, was evolved. It attained some sort of misplaced academic acceptance abroad with Dr Hew McLeod, and has since the early seventies been beamed back to us in the transparent wrapper of ‘Western scholarship’. Those interested in the indigenous variety, will find it in the pronouncements of certain leaders of the Congress party and in the political writings of the ultra- Hindu Rashtriya Sewak Sangh.
The burden of the song is that Sikh identity is inconvenient and
hard to digest. It has to be subtly dissolved and permanently subsumed
without in anyway jeopardizing secular and democratic pretensions.
Lala Achint Ram MP and some of his colleagues invited their Sikh
friend Professor Niranjan Singh, a well known ‘nationalist Sikh’ and a
brother of the fearless Master Tara Singh, at a place in Delhi,
immediately ‘after independence. They praised his secular and
nationalist credentials profusely, and ardently requested him to now
strike a big blow for national integration. The plan was simple. Sikhs
and Hindus were no different in any significant aspect, except in
physical appearance. So he was requested to lead the Sikhs in shaving
off and becoming truly integrated with others around him. He was
only a first generation convert, and was expected to agree. But he was
totally disgusted with his erstwhile colleagues whose true colours
were revealed to him for the first time in many decades. His reply was,
that if that was all the difference between a Hindu and a Sikh, would
they consider the other alternative of leading the Hindus in letting
their hair and beard grow long for the sake of national integration?
The theme has been pursued ever since. Like his mentor Dr
McLeod, Harjot Oberoi has also taken up the strings.
The main thesis of this work is built on the false premise that
unlike in the Semitic religious sphere of influence, religious boundaries
have never been clearly defined in India. Indians of all faiths are
supposed to have borne their religious identities on their sleeves.
This is a strange thesis to propound in a sub-continent which has
seen great religious turmoils. Almost half the population of which
stands con-verted to Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, Christianity and of
course Sikhism. History of the violent reconversion of Buddhists to
Hinduism, destruction of their Stupas and monasteries, burning of
their libraries, and razing of their educational institutions to the ground,
took place in this land a thousand years ago. In the eleventh century
Alberuni could go to the extent of saying, “the Hindus believe that
there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs,
no religion like theirs, no science like theirs”. The story of the Buddhists
has been an oft -repeated one. It was repeated in 1947: vivisection of
the country on religious basis was performed leading to the violent
death of atleast a million people. In 1984 every Sikh in the country was
clearly iden-tified. The Babri Masjid was pulled down in December
1993. The diffusion and overlapping of religious boundaries, which
Oberoi sees all around, in fact does not exist and has never existed in
history, as is borne out by the recurring communal holocausts.
From such baseless abstractions, he comes straight to his main
business of assailing Sikhs and Sikhism. He dwells at length on the
alleged pluralistic nature of Sikhism and the existence of more than
one Sikh identities. For pursuing the point he has to make two
mis-statements in the Sikh doctrinal and historical field, and he makes
them rather enthusiastically. It is the very basis of the Guru Granth
Sahib that all Gurus are one, have the same spirit, and merge spiritually
to form the Word, the Guru Granth Sahib, the eternal Guru and the only
Sikh canon. There is no justification for claiming differing identities in
Sikhism. It is pure ignorance and gross heresy to assert that Guru Nanak’s
religion was different from that of Guru Gobind Singh. Moghals were
very well acquainted with the fact that the Order of the Khalsa was the
direct result of Guru Nanak’s preachings. In the general order of
genocide, issued in the early eighteenth century, the Moghal Emperor
clearly asserted, ‘those who follow Guru Nanak (Nanakpras- tan), be
done to death wherever spotted’.
Historically, during the dark age of persecution, that is, from
1701 to 1760 CE, Hindus in the garb of Udasis became the custodians
of Sikh shrines. During the Sikh rule they emphasized their Sikh
appearance, and continued in office. During the British rule, we find
these people aligning themselves with the rulers and treating the
recently enriched shrines as their personal property. It is then that
they tried to desecrate the Gurdwaras by admitting images and un-Sikh practices in their functioning. Harjot Oberoi builds his thesis
mainly on his observations of this period. He conveniently forgets
that the corruption of the Gurdwaras was universally resented, people
rose in revolt, led a sustained agitation, made heavy sacrifices, and
finally succeeded in liberating Sikh shrines from the corrupt usurpers.
They completely rejected their jaundiced views of Sikhism. That all
this is of no consequence to the author, shows his bias. He, fcrr instance,
notes that caste prejudice had crept into the Gurdwaras but withholds
the fact that it was precisely this, which was the starting point of the
Akali movement for liberation of the shrines.
His use of the census figures is also defective, because he does
not note that they are often manipulated. Census figures in India are
always sensitive to the whims of the recording authority, and at best
have a formal relationship with reality. The categories under which
figures were returned, were decided upon by the Imperial masters in
accordance with their convenience. He very ably conjures up the figures
upto 1941 to show the diffusion of religious identities, and yet in 1947
every Sikh, Muslim and Hindu was precisely identified. Blood soaked
partition of the country on communal basis took place never-theless.
This is the concrete reality. So the communal situation con-tinues in
spite of the loudly proclaimed platitudes and swearing by secularism.
In November 1984 a section of the population was recog-nized as
Sikhs and killed most brutally. The murderers are equally well
recognized and roam free because they are on the right side of the
communal fence; the country’s written constitution not with standing.
His argument that, ‘there is no fixed Sikh identity in early Guru
period’ is an absolutely false statement. It is clear that the Sikh
personality had taken shape at the time of Guru Nanak himself, who
created Sikh Dharamshalas, and founded an urban centre to become
focal point of spreading his mission. Most of the Sikh pilgrim centres
had been established very early. By the time of the Third Guru, Sikh
religious identity was recognized by the Moghal emperor and tax
collectors alike. Guru Arjun became a martyr in 1604 AD. Mohsin Fani,
a contemporary of the Fifth Guru, saw Sikhs all over the Indian cities,
also in Afghanistan and Persia. He talked of their distinct path, and
could precisely define them. The Sixth and Tenth Gurus had fought all
but one of the wars of their careers before the creation of the Khalsa.
Evidence is that most people did not “move in and out of multiple
identities”, but had, on the contrary, shown eagerness to fight and die
for preserving their distinct path.
Professor Jagjit Singh has most convincingly demolished the
Jat theory of Or McLeod, but Oberoi clings to it. As is typical of the
group, he blacks out all the serious works which have recently appeared
to challenge such formulations. He does not even hint that the contrary
point of view exists.
It is preposterous to suggest that Guru Gobind Singh gave “new
theology”. He formalized the Sikh canon, which now ends at the Bani
of the Ninth Guru. He also formally invested it with the status of the
living Guru of the Sikhs. The Khalsa rahit is itself firmly grounded in
the Guru Granth Sahib. The nomenclature, too, has been borrowed
from there. The Tenth Guru codified some of the simplest rules, and
popularised them as the rahit or the code of conduct for the Khalsa
Order.
Oberoi’s division of the Sikhs into the Sanatan and the Tat Khalsa
is both ridiculous and mischievous. He believes that the so-called
Sanatan Sikhism “had ancient origins” and dates it to “when the
universe came into existence”. The reader may make whatever he can
of it! He talks of its having the so called Dasam Granth as its devotional
text. If we go along with him, we will end up believing that Sanatan
Sikhism ruled supreme from the middle of the nineteenth century to its
end, for the Dasam Granth came into existence only then. Completely
forgetting the historical context, he makes much of the “Sanatan
Sikh tradition” developed during the early British period. Hinduized
custodians of the Sikh shrines were eager to maintain their hold.
They were backed by the Hindu population of the state. Hindus
had always been at least suspicious of Sikh identity. Both were
tacitly supported by the British administration which was trying
to tame the volatile Sikhs and attempting to take them back to the
apolitical Hindu past. To take the
depraved mahants to be proponents of the ‘Sanatan tradition’ is
preposterous. Similarly it is strange that he is able to call every non
Sikh a Sahijdhari. He even defines the term negatively. It is excusable
that such a person does not know that Sahij connotes a state of mind
and cannot be a nomenclature for a sect.
The so-called Sanatan Sikhs, come out extremely intolerant and
rigid in their beliefs as compared to the ‘Tat Khalsa’ he disap-proves
of. They refuse to let Singh Sabha activists address the Sikhs from
Gurdwaras, they resort to the extreme measure of excommunicat-ing
them, arrange to beat them up physically, forcibly remove Kirpans
from their persons and refuse offerings made by their rivals at Sikh
shrines. He does not mention it, but reformist Sikhs also had to Court
martyrdom in large numbers in the bid to liberate their shrines. In
short, “Sanatan Sikhs behave as the worst enemies of the neo-Sikhs”.
How deeply convinced the reformists must have been to have persisted
in the face of all this!
Their strategy is also something worth singing about. They never
gave up the path of reason, education of masses, dependence on the
common man and the scripture. It is apparent also from this book that
they built schools and colleges; took pains to establish printing presses,
publish magazines, newspapers, books and pamphlets. What they
turned out is remarkable for clarity, authenticity and sincerity. The
sheer volume is mind-boggling. They worked like a people convinced
of the truth of their undertaking. One is at a loss to understand why
the so-called Sanatan Sikhs made no such effort. Why did they not hit
back with the same tools? Why were they content to pass docilely
into history? It is a sure sign that the construction placed upon the
struggle by the present author is grossly faulty.
One really does not know what to say of his uninformed belief in ‘popular religion’, for he does not define the term. He is exceedingly
harsh to a people who tried to retain enthusiasm for life at a time when
there were no doctors, no scientifically prepared reliable medicines, no
proper rules of hygiene, and epidemics dated the births and deaths in
the family. In such circumstances Europe succumbed to witchcraft,
black magic, belief in miracle-making saints and efficacy of shrouds
and images inspite of fifteth hundred years of Christianity. At such
times pagan beliefs made permanent niches into the Christian and even
Islamic traditions. By contrast, the Sikhs periodically purged themsel-ves
of the burden of the dark past. The pace of such purifications became
fast with the higher frequency of conversions. Neophytes are required
to undertake the exercise ever so often. There is enough evidence to
show that even in the darkest period, the Sarvarias, the Devi
worshippers and those of their ilk, had difficulty in finding recruits
amongst the Sikhs.
Oberoi has had to misquote to make his view seem plausible.
Had he tried to correlate his observations to the rapid growth rate of
Sikhs in that period, he would have admired the people. It is remark-able
how rude and untutored masses steeped in poverty, tried to lift
themselves by the boot strings into better spiritual life with the aid of
nothing else but their unflinching faith in the remarkable Sikh Gurus.
What a glorious struggle it was! That the self-helping new converts
took time to cast off their old beliefs, is entirely understandable. How
can their effort be construed to support the non-existent notions of
parallel religion?
His views about the activity of the Singh Sabha workers are
equally untenable. He conveniently forgets that they had received
unanimous support from the Sikh people. That would not have been
possible, unless they were perceived to be honestly striving for
restor-ing the pristine message of the Gurus. It is difficult to imagine
that the entire Sikh world would conspire to subvert its own true faith.
Employment of the term “Tat Khalsa” for the real and the only
Sikh identity, is a value-loaded use. The aim is to project it as something
distinct, extraneous and, therefore, undesirable. This identity has been
dreaded by rulers of all ages. They have unanimously resented its
tendency to ostensibly support what Oberoi calls “the powerful
separatist symbolism”. Since its very birth the current empire has been
in perpetual political cQnfrontation with the “surfacing of these
sentiments of Sikh separation”. The aim of the state-inspired academic
activity has been to isolate it, to establish it as a dispensable
superstructure on Sikhism, to deride it as the source of all public ills
and then to finally make a determined bid to dissolve it. Harjot Oberoi
and his companions led by McLeod, fit neatly into the larger scheme,
and have consistently tailored their formulations to suit the design of
the ruling classes of India. This is the end they are all serving. They
can judge for themselves how laudable their aim is, Obviously they
can’t be objective, when they plan to conform to such a pre-conceived
sinister design.
It is interesting that in the context of the Khalsa rahit, Harjot
Oberoi argues that, “the body was made a principal focus of symbolic
concern and central means of projecting ideological preoccupations”. (One is tempted to ask in what period of time and in which society it
was not so!). Very recently a high profile seminar was held by a body
of Sikhs close to government thinking on rahit. Primarily
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