Dear all,
Gurpurab is being celebrated today to commemorate the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, whose relevance has grown more than ever. Guru Nanak preached against religious prejudices and founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
Guru Nanak’s relevance has grown more than ever before as he preached against religious prejudices and founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
In August 2019, tensions escalated between India and Pakistan when New Delhi stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status to take full control of the Himalayan region. The two countries have claimed the region in full since the end of British colonial rule in 1947 and fought four wars over it.
Islamabad reacted to the change in the Muslim-majority region’s constitutional status. It downgraded diplomatic ties with India amid a lockdown and a communications blackout in Kashmir to prevent protests over the sweeping changes and restrictions.
The ties between the two countries deteriorated months after they were on the verge of another war. Islamabad retaliated against an Indian airstrike in Pakistan following a car bomb attack in Jammu and Kashmir‘s Pulwama in February 2019.
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Meanwhile, the construction of a corridor to provide visa-free access for Indian pilgrims to Gurdwara Darbar Sahib built at the last resting place of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, in Pakistan continued unhindered. It was finished and inaugurated within a year ahead of Guru Nanak’s birth anniversary in November 2019.
Common Ground
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, participated in the inauguration ceremonies of the corridor on either side of the border as the two countries found a rare common ground amid fraught relations.
Guru Nanak remained a unifier even as ties between India and Pakistan were at their lowest ebb. High-ranking officials of the two countries, who had been avoiding each other like the plague, rubbed shoulders with each other at the inauguration of the corridor on the premises of the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib on the Pakistani side.
Centuries after he passed away, Guru Nanak remained a uniter. Nothing symbolises it more than the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib. The gurdwara stands at the place where Hindus and Muslims are believed to have found flowers under a white sheet when they arrived for Nanak’s last rites.
Muslims buried a part of the sheet and flowers and built a mausoleum in Nanak’s memory. Hindus put their share in an urn and interred it. Both communities revered Guru Nanak equally. Guru Nanak’s relevance has grown more than ever before as he preached against religious prejudices. He founded Sikhism as a monotheistic religion and a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism.
Torn Apart
The composite culture Guru Nanak contributed significantly to is being torn apart with Muslims at the receiving end of bigotry passed off as nationalism for their erasure with full state patronage. Guru Nanak’s family was Hindu. But his association with Muslims was much deeper than is widely known. His teacher was a Muslim. He was the first to understand his spiritual prowess. The teacher called Guru Nanak a blessed and gifted child and attributed his superior intelligence to it.
Rai Bular, a Muslim landlord, was the one to prevail upon Nanak’s father and his employee, Mehta Kalu, to allow Guru Nanak’s otherworldly pursuits. While Guru Nanak wandered with holy men, Kalu wanted him to focus on his education. Bular was also the first to report miracles which indicated Nanak’s holiness.
Bular became Guru Nanak’s first devotee outside his family. He is said to have witnessed a hooded cobra shielding the Guru from the sun while he was sleeping under the open sky. Bular saw this as a sign of Nanak’s spiritualism. Bular also reported how the shade of a tree remained on Guru Nanak even when the position of the sun changed while he slept. He rushed to tell Kalu Nanak was an exalted person upon seeing this.
Bular was totally devoted to Guru Nanak and convinced Kalu that his son was a man of God. He dedicated much of his land to the Guru. Gurdwara Janam Asthan, which stands at the place of Nanak’s birth, and much of the city around it is located on the land Bular bequeathed to Sikhism’s founder.
Rai Hadayat, a 17th-generation descendant of Bular, led Guru Nanak’s 500th birth celebration. Bular’s family has continued a tradition of leading annual processions to celebrate Guru Nanak’s anniversaries in Nankana Sahib in what is now Pakistan.
Bular’s descendants are the custodians of the bequeathed land, whose revenues are spent on the welfare of the Sikh community and the maintenance of their places of worship in Nankana Sahib. Sikh emperor Maharaja Ranjit Singh bestowed the Rai Bahadur title on Bular’s descendant, Rai Issa Khan, a fellow Bhatti Rajput, and made him a revenue collector in recognition of his family’s contributions to Sikhism.
In May 2018, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), which manages Sikh places of worship, acknowledged Bular’s ‘immense contribution’ to Sikh history and erected his portrait at Amritsar’s Central Sikh Museum. The SGPC unveiled another Muslim Nawab Rai Kahla’s portrait at the museum in July 2017 for sheltering Guru Nanak’s spiritual successor, Guru Gobind Singh, in 1705. Kahla ruled a small principality in Punjab when he offered Guru Gobind refuge in defiance of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb’s decree.
Guru Gobind gave Kahla a holy pitcher known as Ganga Sagar, which holds water despite its asymmetrical holes, and a sword as a token of gratitude. Kahla’s descendants have preserved the relic, which they took to Pakistan in 1947 after they were uprooted from the Indian side of Punjab at the time of the Partition in 1947. It has remained in the custody of Rai Azizullah Khan, a former Pakistani lawmaker, since 1975.
The courage Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan, the ruler of Malerkotla in what is now the Indian side of Punjab, showed in speaking out against the execution of Guru Gobind’s sons, Zorawar and Fateh, in 1705, ensured his kingdom remained untouched in 1947 when the subcontinent’s division triggered violence.
Centuries-old Coexistence
The violence left around a million dead and triggered a virtual exchange of populations between the Indian and Pakistani sides of Punjab. It damaged the centuries-old coexistence and continues to cast a long shadow.
But Malerkotla has remained untouched by the upheavals. It remained the Indian Punjab’s only Muslim pocket while the rest of the region was emptied of Muslims in 1947. Malerkotla continues to be an exception even amid the fresh wave of violence against Muslims thanks to what is seen as Guru Gobind’s blessings to Malerkotla.
Guru Gobind is believed to have blessed the nawab that ‘his roots shall forever remain green’ when he learnt about his stand against Zorawar and Fateh’s execution. Baba Bulleh Shah, a Muslim saint and direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, also spoke out against the Mughal highhandedness. He was a friend of the ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur and hailed Tegh Bahadur as a ‘holy warrior’ when he was executed.
The saint earlier dissuaded the guru from seeking revenge on Muslims for Aurangzeb’s attitude towards the Sikhs. He followed in Guru Nanak’s footsteps and promoted inter-religious harmony. Nanak travelled to Arabia in the 16th century with his Muslim companion, Mardana, for inter-religious dialogue, which provided him with deep insights into Islam. In Baghdad, Guru Nanak stayed with a Muslim saint. A courtyard at the tomb of the saint in Baghdad commemorates Nanak’s stay in the city.
The Muslim descendants of Mardana, known as rubabis, performed kirtans or devotional songs at Amritsar’s Golden Temple for generations before partition ended the tradition. They began the practice at the instance of the ninth Sikh Guru Guru Tegh Bahadur as Mardana played a musical instrument called rubab as Guru Nanak sang his poetry.
Baptized Sikhs alone have since 1947 been doing kirtans as partition tore apart Punjab’s syncretic culture. But syncretism remains integral to Sikhism, whose scripture Guru Granth Sahib includes the writing of Muslims including Baba Farid.
Guru Arjan, who compiled the first edition of the scripture and had it installed in 1604 at the Golden Temple, is widely believed to have invited Mian Mir, a Muslim saint, to lay the shrine’s foundation in Amritsar. Muslim holy men such as Farid, whose picture adorns the entrance of Gurdwara Janamasthan and is among revered Muslim figures in Sikhism, also made vital literary contributions.
Waris Shah gave full shape to Heer-Ranjha and contributed to Punjab’s syncretic culture until the revivalism in the 19th century weakened it. But Guru Nanak has remained a guiding light, who in poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s words ‘awakened India from a deep slumber.’ Iqbal hailed Nanak as ‘mard-e kaamil [perfect]’ in a poem about him.
Iqbal lamented that ‘our people paid no heed to the message of Gautam [Buddha]’; and did not recognise the worth of that ‘jewel of supreme wisdom’. In another poem, Iqbal paired Guru Nanak with Muslim saint Moinuddin Chishti and wrote: ‘The land [India] in which Chishti delivered the message of truth; the garden in which Nanak sang the song of oneness that homeland is mine, that homeland is mine.’
Sameer Arshad Khatlani is a journalist and the author of The Other Side of the Divide.