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1 Lecture (revised) delivered by the author on Indian Sikhism in the series of ‘World religions as seen through national cultures’, on Sept. 23, 1996, at the University Unitarian Church, Adult Religious Exploration, 6556 35th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA 98115, USA. And on Feb. 22, 1998 at the West Seattle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 4736 40th Ave. SW, Alki Masonic Lodge, Seattle, WA 98126.

In the former existence, with the blessings of the Wonderful Lord, one qualifies for the gift of human life. The human life is to destroy the cycle of transmigration—to get liberation from the cycle of birth and death—by meditating on the name of the Lord—with love and devotion. It does not simply surpass salvation but seek spiritual ecstasy too. And human life is superior to other forms of life. Human body is a spiritual laboratory—a house of worship of the Lord. Everything as ultimate truth and reality are imprinted within us. The need is to self-discover and self-search this reality. The exclusive tool to search this reality and to achieve the objective of human existence is to worship the name of the Wonderful Lord, and to participate particularly in holy assemblage.

The dilemma of evil in a person is the difficulty of disconnection with the Creator. The problem is of moral separation—moral urgency—moral decline, and moral death. The obstacle is of not one being awakened to the reality of the cosmos. This world being in physical existence, still is not a reality absolute. Under the influence of passions, viz., lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride— individual are governed by moods. These passions, as robbers and thieves, provide temporary pleasures of life. There is no spiritual equipoise, in one’s life. A person in daily life encounters fear, anxiety, tension, and stress leading to pain. The passions develop a strong hold over our characterization, and one is said to be at the 'inferior' or 'lower' self.

In the middle of the 15th century in India, the decency and doctrine of truth disappeared because of distortion. The Hindu and Muslim priests lost their trust in the masses. The rulers instead of protecting the public, became butchers in the utter darkness of spiritual ignorance. At this time a true and perfect spiritual master Guru Nanak (April 14, 1469) came into this world to reveal the word of truth—"of one and only God. Almighty - a supreme truth, creator in spirit of all the creation, without fear, without hate, beyond term, beyond transmigration, and is self-existent. By the pleasure of the factual guru, spiritual merger with the Creator is realized".

A guru is a spiritual pathfinder wedded to the formless and immortal Creator—an endless source of spiritual ecstasy. A Sikh is a student or a follower of the Guru. When a person encounters evil, it has to be decided straightway what moral conduct to select. The temptations of life allow no time to think, and one fell victim to them. One can’t carry and consult any sacred scripture all the time. This state can only be level headed if evil has gotten no attraction to a person. One needs to have continuous instruction in insight, characterization, and practice spread over a long period of time. This is to make sure that a Sikh thus trained had acquired sufficient virtue in his or her identity. That is why there had been ten founders in Sikhism—instead of simply one. Thus, Guru Naanak yielded this spiritual continuation to the second Guru Angad and so forth in the following order:

The fifth Nanaak—Guru Arjan compiled the Adi Guru Granth (Aug. 14, 1604) including his own verses. He gave the command to the Sikhs to worship the word. The hymns of ninth Guru were added later. Accordingly, the Adi Guru Granth, consisting of 1,430 pages is worshipped as Guru’s word and consequently the Guru. The tenth Guru Gobind Singh formally declared Adi Granth to be the living embodiment of the Gurus, and ended the line of succession of gurus. He directed the Sikhs to turn to the Guru Granth for their guidance. Hence, the Guru Granth is the object of worship as word, in the Sikh Gurdwara—a doorway of the Guru where free boarding and lodging are provided to all the visitors. The holiest shrine of the Sikhs is the Golden Temple at Amritsar in Punjab, India.

One doesn’t start life as a blank character. One inherits personal past, family, race, possessed, acquired and open-minded tendencies, and divine nature. A human being, over and above, is also gifted with autonomous determination to discriminate between moral and immoral—good and evil. For this simple rationalism, either one is punished or rewarded.

The supreme truth is inactive in the human race. At this point the important inquiry is how to make this reality active? There is only one method to be productive. The Creator first filled the guru; and then through the guru, the word of the guru was made manifest. God’s spirit is incarnated in the guru’s word. Guru’s word is climax of all ways of worship. There may be countless names of the formless and timeless Creator. The best one is the recommended by the guru. Guru’s word and name are used interchangeably. The word is inherent of all creation. That is revival of a person through the guru’s word. In addition to the morning and the evening recitations, and prayers, to repeat and meditate on the guru’s word all the time, with love and devotion, is following a name way of life. This is priming the personality of a Sikh with that of the guru.

The human soul starts possessing the attributes of Almighty's personality. One is on its way to accomplish undistorted spiritual ecstasy—a total spiritual, moral, emotional and intellectual awakening. At this point lust no more dominates the characterization of a Sikh and sex is just restricted to as a need of the body. Anger starts vanishing and turns to pleasures; greed trends to contentment; attachment progresses to detached attachment; and pride deviates to humbleness. One start acquiring the mastery over the ‘inferior self’ —as the name way of life is enriched. The spirit of the ‘Superior self’ is alike to its origin. One gets achieving vast mental, moral and spiritual possibilities. That is bringing the soul back to what it primarily was—the representation of the Wonderful Lord. This is self-discovering man’s own divine nature. That is death to the ‘inferior self,' and total awakening. One realizes the peak of spiritual ecstasy as a result of spiritual intercourse, and union with the infinite. In the stillness of mind, a Sikh can furthermore actualize unsuspected spiritual worlds as such in pleasure. This self-realization is God-realization.

The knowledge, the formal and praiseworthy actions, the shortcuts and the mysteries are very powerful obstacles in the way of spiritual ecstasy and self-realization. When one is in love with the Wonderful Lord, doesn’t care for these dirty tricks on the cost of supreme bliss. Who would like to interfere in the sweetened will of the impersonal God?

The fifth Guru Arjan was tortured to death on May 30, 1606 by the Muslim Emperor Jahangir. He didn’t like the growing popularity of the guru among Hindus. The guru’s assassination was a very deep shock to the Sikhs. Guru Hargobind, son of Guru Arjan, at the age of 11, took charge of the ministry of the Sikhs. The Sikhs started meeting close to the sixth Guru Hargobind. Guru initiated two swords’—one to symbolize spiritual power—the otherworldly—secular—temporal. The guru announced to welcome offerings of arms and horses instead of cash or any other kind. He maintained army, and built a small castle. He also constructed the Akal Takhat—a royal seat of the immortal Wonderful Lord. The seventh Guru Har Rai continued to maintain an army. The ninth Guru Teg Bahadur was beheaded and executed on Nov. 11, 1675, by Emperor Aurangzeb.

Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth master was only nine years old at the time of the savage execution of his father Guru Teg Bahadur. For about 23 years he directed the Sikhs in military exercises to prepare the nation against repression. The guru ordered the Sikhs to support their untrimmed head hair and beard. In the middle of April 1699 (First of Vaisakh-a local month) he initiated the Sikhs in a new spiritual ceremony called Amrit Sanchar. The Guru named the initiated Sikhs as Khalsa—means purified. The Guru declared, " when all the other means of peace have failed, it is righteous to draw the sword." Thus, a nation of saint-soldiers was born to protect and bring the rule of righteousness—to uproot the very base of the evil commonalty.

Sikhism, being a whole life religion strongly advocates the practice of equality of race, humanity, gender, and cast. A non-initiated is considered as slow adopting Sikh, and is nicknamed as Sahajdhari. The Khalsas’ greet each other by sharing ‘Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji ki Fateh,’ —the one intends the Khalsa and his victory—both belong to God. The other widely used greeting among the Sikhs is Sat Sri Akal, means God is truth.

The five ID—identification symbols of a Khalsa are:

The four prohibitions (Kurahts) for the Khalsa are:

Before Guru Gobind Singh departed for his final spiritual journey, he asked Banda Singh Bahadur, at Nadair in South India, to lead the Sikhs in Punjab. Within a couple of years, Banda Singh and the Sikhs became masters of most of the then Punjab, and struck coins in the name of their gurus. The Muslim rulers were impressed by the fighting qualities of the Khalsa. They saw Khalsa horse riders emerging from the jungle; discharging their muskets and vanishing before their troops could even load their guns. At that time the homes of the Khalsa were determined to be in their seats on the horsebacks. In June 1716, Banda Singh Bahadur along with hundreds of Sikhs was executed in Delhi. It is estimated that during 1716 to 1765 (by the Muslim rulers-Bahadar Shah and Farukhseyar, Amzad-Samas Khan, Zakaria Khan, Yahia - Lakhpat, Shah Nawaz Khan, Mir Mannu, Adeen Baig, Ahmad Shah Abdali, and Nazib-ul-Daula) nearly two hundred thousand Sikhs sacrificed their lives for the cause of truth. The assessments also indicate thetances when half of the Sikh nation died fighting in a single day.

After the execution of Banda Singh Bahadur, the Sikhs were sub-divided into 12 militia—a military brotherhood of democratic type. Their fighting strength varied from 10 to 20 thousand horse riders. The Ahluwalia Misl—a confederation, captured the city of Lahore—now in Pakistan, and made it their capital. The power of the Sikhs spread from the banks of the Indus in the West, to the Ganges in the East. At the same time starting at the Himalayas in the North to the desert wastes of Sind in the South. The coins were struck in the name of the confederation. The inscription on the coin read:

By the Grace of God and the Sword to victory,

Thus was ordained by Nanaak and Guru Gobind.

Later on, Ranjit Singh, a most powerful Sikh chief of Sukarchakia Misl, became maharaja of greater Punjab and surrounding area, including Multan in Afghanistan. He gave grants to Muslim and Hindu religious places. There were no forced religious conversions, and no communal tensions were observed in his empire. Maharaja never gave a death sentence to any one in his tenure. For fifty years the Sikhs didn’t allow the British to occupy Punjab.

During the World War II, most of the soldiers who fought and killed by the side of the British, were the Sikhs. On the other hand in the Japanese sponsored Indian National Army, 60% were the Sikh troops. General Mohan Singh—a Sikh, founded the Indian National Army, and afterward the leadership was offered to Subash Chander Bose. During the struggle for Indian independence, the Sikhs formed about less than 2% of the Indian population. Their contribution to the struggle for independence was out numbered. Out of 121, 93 (77%) was the Sikhs hanged to death. The same percentage, out of 2,644 Indians, 2,047 (77%) Sikhs were life imprisoned. In the British Army, 35% Sikhs served in various ranks. The Punjab was constituted an autonomous province in1937.

In 1947, at the time of Independence, the Punjab was partitioned between India and Pakistan into East and West Punjab respectively. About 2.5 million Sikhs—mostly prosperous farmers, lost all their possessions, and had to flee to East Punjab. The various estimates that figure out that between sixty thousand to two hundred thousand people were killed in these communal riots on both sides. The most of them were the Sikhs. In 1984, on June 6th, to capture Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale and his armed associates fighting against repression and freedom for the Sikhs, the Govt. of India bombarded the Golden Temple complex, Amritsar, Punjab, and arrested, injured and killed the Sikhs in thousands. This incident wounded the feelings of the Sikhs in free India, and all over the world. In consequence, Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, who ordered the aggression bypassing her dummy Sikh President of India Gyani Zail Singh, was assassinated within five months on October 31, 1984, by two Sikhs. In revenge, more than 15 thousand Sikhs in Delhi, Kanpur and other places, according to one estimate, were burned alive or killed with the political backing of Rajiv Gandhi, a congress MP, and a son of Indira Gandhi, who was later sworn in as a Prime Minister of India. He yelled on the public TV as "when a big tree falls down, the earth shakes". All these circumstances gave rise to the demand of Khalistan—a separate Sikh homeland. Since then, more than a hundred and fifty thousand Sikhs are torched to death and countless had been harassed for their political ideology in this struggle.

Presently, the Punjab constitutes almost two percent of the total geographic area and population in India, and contributes a majority of wheat and rice to the federal pool. Vast majorities of the Sikhs are farmers in Punjab. The Sikhs have settled in all the advanced nations of the world. They are hard working, progressive, creative, and peaceful unless repeatedly provoked. They are simply famous for their hospitality.
 
 

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