A Short Note: Sikhs vs Hinduism and Muslims

  1. Sikhism displaces the Hindu pantheon of gods by one all-powerful unseen God [ and stresses this monotheism which disallows worship of all idols] ; and it displaces the Vedas by the Sri Guru Granth Sahib; and hits at the very root of the caste system, which too is central to Hindu belief.
  2. .It is true though that even Hinduism has in Brahma the one all powerful, unseen God, but it is equally true that the worship of Brahma is peripheral to the worship of lesser gods in the Hindu pantheon.
  3. When Sikhism changes the very concept of godhood as understood in Hinduism; displaces its most sacred books which are central to its core beliefs; and does away with the caste system, which is equally central to Hindu belief, Sikhism is no mere reform of Hinduism. It is a new religion. Indeed, it is a grouse with Sikhs that the Indian Constitution does not recognize them as a religion distinct from Hinduism.
  4. On a lesser note, Sikhism preached stridently against Sati; it allows Sikhs to eat cow meat; and allows no great sanctity to the Ganges beyond the respect which its spirit of accommodation may mandate.
  5. Baba Nanak’s core preaching was that it was ego which destroyed the human in humanity, and it was this ego which stood in the way of man “reaching” God. This was the central Sufi belief as well. This was the ” an- Al Haq” of Al-Hallaj. And this was the reason that according to some sects of Islam, Sufis were considered heretics i.e the sheer arrogance of ambition that a mere mortal should aspire to “reach” God was bad enough, but when Sufis dared to see God manifested in all of His creation, that become pantheism–and that of course diluted monotheism, and therefore had to be disallowed!
  6. The inclusion of Baba Farid’s entire Kalaam in Granth Sahib is therefore not a mere coincidence. It is actually the coincidence of a belief central to the Sufis, and to Baba Nanak.
  7. And yet the Sikhs ended up thirsting for Muslim blood. But this was a thirst which acquired a sharp edge begging to be assuaged, after Arjan Dev was tortured and then slain by Jehangir. And thereafter Muslim atrocities against the Sikhs, and Sikh retaliatory vengeance became a cycle, which gained a life of its own. Had the Sikhs surrendered to the violence visited on them by Muslim overlords, they would have become one of the many passing episodes of history. But unlike the Indian tradition, they, while being numerically hugely inferior, chose to fight back. And then they conquered and ruled both Punjab, the Frontier, and Northern reaches of Sindh.
  8. Theirs was a heroic fightback, engendered by gratuitous and wholly unjustified violence by Muslims. It was this violence which transformed an entirely peaceful movement into a militant one.