IB World Religions 1.4.1. Sikhism in Context: Guru Nanak, the Ten Gurus and the Panth Notes

1.4.1. Sikhism in Context: Guru Nanak, the Ten Gurus and the Panth

Guru Nanak and his message

1. Sikhs trace their tradition to Guru Nanak, born in 1469 at Talwandi in the Punjab, now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan. He worked as a storekeeper at Sultanpur and lived as a married householder with two sons.
2. The founding event is told in the Janam Sakhis, the accounts of his life. At about the age of thirty he disappeared while bathing in the Kali Bein river, and returned after three days saying that there is no Hindu and no Musalman.
3. Sikhs read that experience as revelation rather than as invention. The tradition holds that Guru Nanak was taken into the presence of God and sent back with the message he then spent his life teaching.
4. The message opens the Sikh scripture as the Mool Mantar, the seed verse. It states that God is one (Ik Onkar), true by name, creator, without fear, without hatred, timeless, unborn, self-existent and known by the Guru's grace.
5. Sikhs call God Akal Purukh, the timeless being, and describe God as nirguna, one and without form. Because God has no image, Sikhs use no idols or statues in worship.
6. Guru Nanak travelled on long journeys called udasis, remembered as reaching Mecca, Baghdad and Sri Lanka, teaching through kirtan, the singing of God's word. He settled at Kartarpur and built a working community there, so household life rather than renunciation became the Sikh pattern.

The ten human Gurus

1. Guru Nanak did not pass the community to his sons. He chose a disciple, renamed him Guru Angad, and set the pattern that succession follows spiritual fitness rather than family.
2. Sikhs describe the succession as one light in ten bodies. The same divine light is held to have passed from Guru to Guru, so all ten teach with a single authority.
3. Guru Angad gave the community the Gurmukhi script in which the scripture is written. Guru Amar Das required every visitor to eat in the free kitchen before seeing him, which pressed the point that caste rank stops at the door.
4. Guru Ram Das founded the city of Amritsar. His successor Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Granth in 1604, installed it in the Harmandir Sahib, and was executed in 1606 under the Mughal emperor Jahangir, becoming the first Sikh martyr.
5. Guru Hargobind responded by wearing two swords, for miri and piri, temporal and spiritual authority. Sikhs cite this as the moment the community accepted responsibility for defending itself as well as for prayer.
6. Guru Tegh Bahadur was executed in Delhi in 1675 after defending the right of Kashmiri Hindus to practise their own religion, which Sikhs remember as martyrdom for another faith's freedom. His son Guru Gobind Singh ended the line of human Gurus in 1708 by conferring guruship on the scripture.

The Khalsa and Vaisakhi

1. In 1699 at Anandpur, Guru Gobind Singh asked the assembled Sikhs which of them would give their head. Five came forward from different castes and regions, and Sikhs honour them as the Panj Piare, the five beloved ones.
2. He initiated them with amrit, sweetened water stirred with a double-edged sword, and then asked them to initiate him in turn. The ceremony is the amrit sanskar, and those who take it enter the Khalsa.
3. Khalsa Sikhs take the name Singh, meaning lion, for men and Kaur, meaning princess, for women. Dropping caste surnames was a deliberate attack on caste ranking within the community.
4. They wear the five Ks, the panj kakke, as a uniform of commitment. The kirpan in particular is explained as the duty to protect the weak rather than as a weapon of aggression.
5. The Khalsa lives by the Rahit Maryada, the code of conduct that a committee of Sikhs compiled and published in the twentieth century. A Khalsa Sikh who breaks one of its major prohibitions admits the fault before the Panj Piare and accepts a penance.
6. Vaisakhi in April is kept as the anniversary of that founding. Sikhs mark it with services and with nagar kirtan, street processions carrying the Guru Granth Sahib, in Punjab, Britain, Canada and elsewhere.

The Panth and the sangat

1. Panth means path, and Sikhs use it for the worldwide community that walks the Gurus' way. The local congregation is the sangat, and Sikhs hold that keeping company with it is itself a spiritual practice.
2. A gurdwara is the doorway of the Guru, meaning any place where the Guru Granth Sahib is installed. The book is treated as a living Guru, opened ceremonially before dawn and laid to rest at night.
3. Gurdwaras are open to anyone who covers their head and removes their shoes, and many are built with doors on four sides. Sikhs explain the four doors as a sign that people may come from any direction and any background.
4. Langar, the free kitchen, is served to everyone sitting together in rows on the floor. Sikhs cite it as the practical form of the equality the Gurus taught, and the kitchen at Amritsar feeds tens of thousands of people every day.
5. Authority in the Panth is divided. Spiritual questions are settled by consulting the Guru Granth Sahib, and temporal questions by the Khalsa, understood by some Sikhs as the committee at Amritsar that oversees Punjab gurdwaras and by others as their own local management committee.
6. The Guru Granth Sahib and the Rahit Maryada both state the equality of birth and gender, and every gurdwara role including that of granthi, the reader of the scripture, is formally open to women. Sikhs themselves debate how far that principle is carried out in practice.

Sikhs today and the diaspora

1. There are roughly twenty-five to thirty million Sikhs, most of them in the Indian state of Punjab. Large communities live in Britain, Canada, the United States, East Africa, Malaysia and Australia.
2. Migration built those communities through service in the British Empire, labour recruitment after the Second World War and later family settlement. Gurdwaras abroad serve at once as places of worship, langar, Punjabi teaching and welfare.
3. Sikhs vary in how they carry the tradition. Amritdhari Sikhs have taken amrit and keep the full Khalsa discipline, keshdhari Sikhs keep uncut hair without initiation, and sahajdhari Sikhs follow the teaching without the outward forms.
4. That difference does not divide the Panth into denominations. All three regard the Guru Granth Sahib as Guru and share the same gurdwaras, and Sikhs describe initiation as a step some take when they are ready.
5. The turban has repeatedly become a legal question outside India, with cases in Britain and Canada about helmets, uniforms and school dress. Sikhs are also frequently misidentified as Muslims, which has exposed them to attacks meant for others.
6. Recent history still shapes the community. The 1947 partition of the Punjab uprooted millions of Sikhs from what became Pakistan, and the events of 1984 in India remain painful and contested among Sikhs and their neighbours.