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Christian missionaries had discovered quite early in their evangelical endeavours that the strength of Hindu society and culture lay ultimately in the mainstream of Hindu spirituality as expounded in the Vedas, the Puranas and the Dharmashastras. It was this spirituality which had served Hindu society in meeting and defeating several foreign invaders. The missionaries had, therefore, subjected this spirituality to a sustained attack by misnaming it as Brahminism and misrepresenting it as a system of Polytheistie and idolatorous Paganism leading to sin in this world and perdition in the next.
At a later stage, Western Indologists had joined forces with Christian missionaries, sometimes inadvertently due to their ignorance of Indian culture and sometimes deliberately due to mischievous political motives. According to the "scientific studies" carried out by the Indologists,'Brahmanism was an alien imposition on India brought in by "Aryan invaders" who had driven the "native Dravidians" to the South around 1500 B.C. Their "higher criticism" had "revealed" that the core Brahminism consisted of "primitive animism, puerile priestcraft and caste oppression of the enslaved aborigines.- They Presented Buddhism and Jainism as "revolts" against the social system created by Brahminism. The "revolt" was stated to have been continued and carried forward by some schools of the medieval Bhakti Movement of which Sikhism was supposed to be the foremost.
It was now relatively easy for some Sikh theologians and scholars to prove that Sikhism was closer to Christianily and Islam than to Hinduism. They forced Sikhisim into the moulds of Semitic theologies. Sikhism, they pronounced, was monotheistic while Hinduism was Polytheistic. Sikhism had a Book in the Adi Granth like the Bible and the Quran, while Hinduism had no Book. Sikhisim, like Christianity and Islam, had an apostolic tradition in its ten Gurus, while Hinduisim knew no Prophets. Sikhism frowned upon idolatory while Hinduism was full of it. Sikhism had no use for the Vedas, the Puranas and the social system of the Dharmashastras which formed cornerstones of Hinduism. And so on, this exercise in alienating Sikhism from its parent Hinduism has been painstaking as well as perisitent.
No wonder that this perverted version of Sikhism should start showing signs of fanaticism and bigotry which have all along characterised monotheistic creeds like Islam and Christianity. Monotheism is the mother of all closed societies and closed cultures. It always divides mankind into believers and non- believers, momims and kafirs, and sets the one against the other. Sikh Gurus had struggled indefatiguably to rid this country of this ideological barbarism brought in by Islamic invaders. They had stood squarely for humanism, universalism and pluralism which have always been the hallmarks of Hindu spiri- tuality. By forcing Sikhism into monotheistic moulds Sikh scholars have betrayed the Gurus. Sooner this scholarship is disowned by the Sikh society at large, the better it will be for its spiritual and cultural welfare.
There is no dearth of Sikh scholars who continue to see Sikh spirituality in the larger and older spiritual tradition of the Upanishads and the Puranas. But the dominant Sikh politicians who control the SGPC purse have progressively extended their patronage to the misinterpreters of Sikh scriptures. Let us hope that it is a passing phase and that truth will triumph in the long run. The Sikh scholars who cherish the spirituality bequeathed by the Gurus should come forward and make themselves heard more and more. Their voice is bound to ring true in the heart of the Sikh masses--a heart which is still tuned to Sabad- Kirtan, singing the ancient strains of Sanatana Dharma.
To fulfill a certain need of the hour, Guru Govind,Singh preached the gospel of the Khalsa, the pure or the elect. Those who joined his group passed through a ceremony known as pahul, and to emphasize the martial nature of 'their new voca- tion, they were given the title of Singh or "lion". Thus began a sect not based on birth but which drew its recruits from those who were not Khalsa by birth. It was wholly manned by the Hindus.
Military organisation has taken different forms in different countries at different times. The Khalsa was one such form thrown up by a tyrannized people, weak in arms but strong in determination. This form worked and the people of the Punjab threw away the Mughal tyranny. But fortunes change; in 1849, the British took over the Punjab. The old-style Khalsa was no longer possible and the recruitment to it almost ceased. The Punjab Ad- ministration Report of 1851-52 observes: "The sacred tank at Am- ritsur is less thronged than formerly, and the attendance at the annual festival is diminishing yearly. The initiatory ceremony for adult is now rarely performed." Not only did the fresh re- cruitment stop, but also a new exodus began. The same Report says that people leave the Khalsa and "join the ranks of Hinduism whence they originally came, and bring up their children as Hindus."
The phenomenon continued unabted. The Administration Report of 1854-55 and 1855-56 finds that "now that the Sikh commonwealth is broken up, people cease to be initiated into Sikhism and re- vert to Hinduism." At about this time, a census was taken. It revealed that the Lahore division which included Manjha, the ori- ginal home of the Sikhs, had only 200,000 Sikhs in a population of three million. This exodus may account at least partly for this small number.
The development raised no question. To those who were in- volved, this was perfectly in order and natural. Nobody was conscious of violation of any code. Hindus were Sikhs and Sikhs were Hindus. The distinction between them was functional, not fundamental. A Sikh was a Hindu in a particular role. When under the changed circumstances, he could not play that role, he reverted to his original status. The Government of the day ad- mitted that "modern Sikhism was little more than a political as- sociation, formed exclusively from among Hindus, which men would join or quit according to the circumstances of the day."
This development, perfectly in accord with Indian reality, was not liked by the British. They considered it as something "to be deeply deplored, as destroying a bulwark of our rule."
Imperialism thrives on divisions and it sows them even where they do not exist. The British Government invited one Dr. E. Trumpp, a German Indologist and missionary, to look at Sikh scriptures and prove that their theology and cosmology were dif- ferent from those of the Vedas and the Upanishads. But he found nothing in them to support this view. He found Nanak a "thorough Hindu," his religion "a pantheism, derived directly from Hindu sources." In fact, the influence of Islam on subsequent Sikhism was, according to him, negative. "It is not improbable that the Islam had a great share in working silently these changes, which are directly opposed to the teachings of the Gurus," he says. However, to please his clients, he said that the external marks of the Sikhs separated them from the Hindus and once these were lost, they relapsed into Hinduism. Hence, Hinduism was a danger to Sikhism and the external marks must be preserved by the Sikhs at all costs. Precisely because there was a fun- damental unity, the accidental difference had to be pushed to the utmost and made much of. From then onwards, "Sikhism in danger" became the cry of many British scholar- administrators.
