The Threat From Within

[sewak sikh]

Sikhs may be just 2 per cent of the population but in their self- image and deportment, it is as if they constitute 200 per cent of India’s one billion. As the saying goes: “Ek Sikh barabar sava lakh.” Even during the worst days of the Partition, Sikhs never felt insecure about their religion as their Hindu counterparts did, and continue to do.

Why then does a small, insignificant sect like the Dera Sacha Sauda, that does not even claim to be Sikh, get mainstream Akalis and a large number of everyday Sikhs so hot and bothered? This Baba is no medieval tyrant and martyrdom of any kind would be thoroughly wasted on him. He is a minor figure whose demonising by the Akalis raised his stature and downgraded their gurus who gave up their lives in far more glorious battlefields.

The question then is: How did the Sikhs suddenly turn so insecure? When did it happen and where were we all looking? Or did the lights suddenly go off in the changing room?

The original Panthic Party, which later morphed into the Akali Dal after 1947, never evinced such worries either, and those were very difficult times. They regularly participated with the Congress before Independence. The party even supplied the Congress with a stable of leaders from Pratap Singh Kairon to Swaran Singh. On election campaigns in undivided Punjab, the Panthic Party frequently displayed the Congress symbol along with its own. On no occasion did any of this to-and-fro movement from Panthic Party and back threaten Sikhism. Nor did the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee declare Kairon or Swaran Singh, or any of the others who took their political blood lines to the Congress, apostates or ‘tankhaiyas’. Sikhism had that much confidence.

In 1899, when Sardar Kahn Singh Nabha wrote “Hum Hindu Nahin (We are not Hindus),” he did not castigate any other religion but just said the plain truth. The Sikhs were not Hindus and let the record state the facts. It was not as if he was prompted to write this tract because of the perceived fear that Hinduism was eating up Sikhism. In this sense he was not the mirror opposite of Swami Dayanand who took every other religion, including Sikhism, as a threat to the Hindu faith.

Nabha’s interjection was to remind his readers of the symbolic energies at the heart of his faith without deriding non-Sikhs, nor, even for a moment, hoping to proselytise other religions to his own. Even the Singh Sabhas and Chief Khalsa Diwan of that period were intent on crafting a separate Sikh identity and not in impressing their own thought prints on their immediate religious neighbours.

Interestingly, in the 60 years after Independence, the Akali Dal has never used the Partition to evoke partisanship the way Hindu parties, and sadly, the Congress even, have done from time to time. This is indeed quite remarkable. Sikhs too had suffered along with Hindus in their migration to east Punjab and beyond. And yet, unlike Hindus, the Partition is history for Sikhs, and not a source of political energies.

When I was working with re-settled rural Sikh refugees in Punjab and Haryana, what struck me the most was that they found my questions, which recalled the Partition, quite stupid. So many of these Sikhs told me to move on and not keep looking over my shoulder for monsters and chimeras of the past.

That was such a relief. Hindu refugees, in general, were still agonising over the Partition and related stirring tales of their experiences during those times. Most of this recall was highly adorned as my Hindu respondents in the early 1990s were either babies or playing in the mud in knickers when 1947 happened. Some post-Partition Hindu families even held prayer meetings to solemnly remember the day they were ousted from their homes. I found none of this among Sikh refugees. It is no surprise then that even a sectarian party like the Akali Dal has no use for the Partition as a leavening political agent.

Later, during the bad days of Khalistan, a large number of Sikhs felt that they were humiliated by the Indian state, but on no account did they believe that their religion was under threat. Khalistanis were, of course, baying to the contrary from the margins, but an overwhelming majority of Sikhs did not politically side with these secessionists though they were widely admired for giving the hated agents of the government a tough time. This is not an ‘a-ha’ moment for, in spite of the trauma post-Bluestar, Sikhs were willing to look ahead the moment Prime Minister V.P. Singh visited Punjab with a healing balm.

The Khalistani years, if one may call them that, however demonstrated that in times of crisis, it was not as if there were Sikhs and Sikhs. Regardless of caste and origin, all Sikhs came together. This is where the difference lies when we come to the Sikh over-reaction to Dera Sacha Sauda. There are now Sikhs and Sikhs and the lines are drawn along the grooves of caste.

Most of the animus against Baba Ram Rahim came from the Malwa region of Punjab where Jat Sikhs are politically dominant. It does not matter really if Jats vote Congress today and Akali tomorrow, it would always be a fight between ‘lions’. Dera Sacha Sauda trampled on this territory by bringing in non-Jats to kick up dust and spoil the Jat versus Jat slugfest.

This is why Baba Ram Rahim was so profoundly despised in Jat-dominated Akali circles. It was not because he was undermining Sikhism so much as using his “low caste” followers to defeat Jats in their own lair that made Baba Ram Rahim such a hated poster-boy for the Akalis. If the Congress had won without his support, that would still have been acceptable.

It is not true, as the Akalis allege, that in the advertisement put out by Baba Ram Rahim he dressed like Guru Gobind. His turban did not have a ‘kalgi (or plume)’, he was stirring Rooh Afza (or something pink) with a ladle and not with a sword (which is Khalsa tradition), and further, he was wearing pink and not blue, not even white. No icon of Guru Gobind can ever be depicted in that colour. Chhatrapati Shivaji’s popular imagery looks closer to Guru Gobind than this pink spectacle.

And yet many Sikhs blindly believed the Akalis when they said that Baba Ram Rahim was imitating Guru Gobind and thus mocking Sikhism. The majority of such Sikhs did not bother to verify the facts as they were primed to believe anything against him. It was their Jatness, not their Sikhness, that Baba Ram Rahim deeply hurt. In the 1980s, Hindus too eagerly believed the tale that the Anandpur Sahib Resolution was secessionist. The drive to hate always numbs the better senses.

At the end of the day what is most depressing is that Sikhs are becoming caste-ridden, and more and more like Hindus. If this trend continues then Sikhism will probably find its greatest threat from within and not from figures clad in baby pink.

Dipankar Gupta is professor, social sciences, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

[Mutheeaa]

Well that shud shut up the most ppl here and there who speak that our sikhism is in danger....we need prachar..............Blaah Blaah!

[Guest Dancing Warrior]

Interesting article, thank you for the heads up sewak singh

[proactive]

It's amusing when those who claim to know Sikhs and Sikhism usually turn out to be the most ignorant.

The thesis presented by Dipankar Gupta is that Sikhs nowadays are more prone to be insecure and more ready to perceive dangers to Sikhism where there are none. This article amongst many others are the products of Hindus who now feel insecure that even though the Indian state has repressed Sikhs for the last two decades that there still remain a significant number of Sikhs still prepared to take to the streets in defence of Sikhism. Nothing has given the Hindus both common and the governmental variety sleepless nights than seeing Sikhs armed with Kirpans marching in the streets, the Hindus paranoia being heightened even more by the occasional shouts of the word 'Khalistan'

If your intent is to destroy a nation or a community then you first lull them into a false sense of security, if it is easiers to lull them by appealing to their ego then more the easier.

Mr Gupta is wrong when he says that Sikhs in previous generation were not prone to take on threats to Sikhism. What was the Akali movement if it wasn't an attempt to fight the manace of Mahants with pro-Hindu allegences and removing them from the centre of powers, in the Gurdwaras?

What of the Kuka Kufr Torh agitation of the early 1940s in which conferences similar to the recent anti-DSS ones were held and the Kuka 'guru' threatened? What also of the anti-Nirankari morcha?

As for Kairon, the only reason that the Akal Takht Jathedar did not take action against him was because the Jathedar at the time was the nominee of the Congressi Sikhs who were in control of the SGPC at that time. This is like claiming that Sikhs have no problem with Badal's shenighans because the present Jathedar has not taken any action against him!

[akitosforever]

Makes a ponit actually...

Why do Sikhs have a feel of Insecurity with such a brave background.....just goes to show that nyone can rattle our community if they plan to do so.....

[dalsingh101]

What about corrupt leadership in the panth who use scare tactics to mobilise us for their own ends.

[proactive]

What about corrupt leadership in the panth who use scare tactics to mobilise us for their own ends.

I don't think you can blame the corrupt leadership for this, Badal, Sarna and Akal Takht Jathedar have already backed off, it is the masses that are taking the agitation forward. The current agitation isn't just about some fool dressing up like Guru Gobind Singh, it is about the encroachment of deras into Sikhi. The fool's act has been the catalyst but now it is about something bigger.

Already the fall out has been that DSS has lost a lot of followers in Malwa, other deras like Nurmahalias are walking on eggshells because they know any untoward act from them will probably result in an agitation against them as well. The Nurmahalias have just cancelled their annual convention and this from a dera that would waste no opportunity to bait Sikhs. There are signs that even well established deras like Radha Swamis are also in for some heat. Badal recently gave them some acres of land in Mohali and whereas in previous years he would have got away without a murmur from Sikhs, this time around the Spokesman newspaper has started a campaign with the Sikhs of Mohali taking a lead. Chances are Badal will have to rescind his gift.

A few days ago the dera at Talwandi Kalan village near Dakha was attacked on a allegation that the dera head had had slapped a woman who had parked her car inside the dera. I've visited the dera previously and it is a hotch potch of udasi and kabirpanthi beliefs and the head calls himself Baba Bhuriwala. The dera wields a great deal of influence in the villages around the area and the fact that it was attacked not by people involved in the DSS agitation but local villagers shows that there is a sea change towards how people view deras in the state. Hence the panic reaction from people like Mr Gupta and other Hindus.

[lsingh]

It's amusing when those who claim to know Sikhs and Sikhism usually turn out to be the most ignorant.

The thesis presented by Dipankar Gupta is that Sikhs nowadays are more prone to be insecure and more ready to perceive dangers to Sikhism where there are none. This article amongst many others are the products of Hindus who now feel insecure that even though the Indian state has repressed Sikhs for the last two decades that there still remain a significant number of Sikhs still prepared to take to the streets in defence of Sikhism. Nothing has given the Hindus both common and the governmental variety sleepless nights than seeing Sikhs armed with Kirpans marching in the streets, the Hindus paranoia being heightened even more by the occasional shouts of the word 'Khalistan'

If your intent is to destroy a nation or a community then you first lull them into a false sense of security, if it is easiers to lull them by appealing to their ego then more the easier.

Mr Gupta is wrong when he says that Sikhs in previous generation were not prone to take on threats to Sikhism. What was the Akali movement if it wasn't an attempt to fight the manace of Mahants with pro-Hindu allegences and removing them from the centre of powers, in the Gurdwaras?

What of the Kuka Kufr Torh agitation of the early 1940s in which conferences similar to the recent anti-DSS ones were held and the Kuka 'guru' threatened? What also of the anti-Nirankari morcha?

As for Kairon, the only reason that the Akal Takht Jathedar did not take action against him was because the Jathedar at the time was the nominee of the Congressi Sikhs who were in control of the SGPC at that time. This is like claiming that Sikhs have no problem with Badal's shenighans because the present Jathedar has not taken any action against him!

Good points , the demos against DSS really surprised people that there was still self respect, that is why Mann and Bittu have been imprisoned and the the Jathedars and Badal/Dal have been trying to confuse things ever since

[Guest Dancing Warrior]

It’s a pity that similar sentiments were not shown when the likes of Maan Singh who for years has behaved in a most perverse way, who even went as far as to have his picture depicted similar to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the other accusations against him we all know yet he remains free and above justice. I do agree with a point the author of the article makes about social class and caste system, it’s a known fact that too many Jattifications hamper Sikhi today and are totally contradicting our Gurus way, yet they go unchecked and unchallenged.

[Prem]

it’s a known fact that too many Jattifications hamper Sikhi today and are totally contradicting our Gurus way, yet they go unchecked and unchallenged.

They would change the name of our religion to 'Jatt Panth' if they thought they could get away with it.