No freshness in this historical account
B. S. Thaur

India’s Guru Martyr Guru Teg Bahadur
by Dr Hakam Singh and Jaswinder Singh. Creative Graphics. Rs 500. Pages 300.

THIS paperback 300-page book in bold and spacious print on Guru Teg Bahadur, ninth Guru of the Sikhs, is by two authors. The first 82 pages of the book, containing a condensed biographical sketch of the Guru, have been authored by Dr Hakam Singh. The second part done by Jaswinder Singh has all the 59 shabads and 57 shaloks of the Guru put into Gurmukhi, Devnagri and Roman scripts and translated into English.

Though the biographical part is engaging and the translation of the shabads and Shaloks into English is simple and intelligible, this hardly breaks new ground. The book only joins the slew of extant productions on the subject with some differences here and there. The translations of the Guru Granth Sahib had long been done, first by foreign scholars like Trump, Macaulf and later by our own luminaries like Manmohan Singh, Gopal Singh Pardi and Gurbachan Singh Talib et al, while this book contains a translation of only Guru Teg Bahadur’s bani.

Guru Teg Bahadur’s life history and martyrdom is a subject so vast and inexhaustible that academicians will continue to explore it through the ages to find something new every time.

A glimpse:

"He gave up his life for protecting the frontal mark and sacred thread (of the Hindus);

In the age of Kali, he performed a supremely heroic act.

He gave up his head but did not give up his conviction."

The whole bani (compositions) of Guru Teg Bahadur exuberantly depict vairag (indifference to worldly pleasures), nashmanta (ephemeral character of the world), mukati sankalp (enancipation) jiwan jugati (art of living) and each shabad and shloka offers a fund of material to the scholars to write about and derive the meaning for life from it.

What one would generally expect from an author is that he would reflect clarity of thought, an offbeat subject and sharp and precise analysis, besides giving the readers new insights into the subject. The easy and understandable language in sequential narrative, of course, comes next. The first browsing through the book is sufficient to infer that it has a targeted readership-Sikhs in general and their younger generation in particular. This has also been stated under the head "Comments".

Also, the book has been written with devotion and dedication to the Guru and to the Sikh faith. It could be one reason why scholarly diagnostic and prognostic interpretations have been kept at bay. This is also clear from the observations made by Gurmukh Singh, retired Principal, UK Civil Service, under the head ‘comments" quoting Prof Arthur Arberry’s comment in the introduction to The Koran Interpreted: "`85 critics ambitious to measure the ocean of prophetic eloquence with the thimble of pedestrian analysis." Translation of the Guru’s word from the source of Ultimate Reality is not within the scope of human intellect.

This apart, the authors have boldly and unbiasedly brought certain features that modern scholars skip over to reckon with (just as, under introduction to the Shabdavali, Guru Teg Bahadur draws heavily from the religious traditions of Hinduism to emphasise the importance of contemplation.

Similarly, in the Preface, authors have a word of appreciation for the Hindu scriptures, which the fanatics may not swallow: "Much wisdom has been accumulated in the Hindu scriptures over the centuries. There was a need to propagate it to the layman. The Brahmin class could have done well to bring the wisdom of the Sikh Gurus to the Indian masses, but have instead concentrated in opposing the Sikh Gurus right from the beginning`85 there are many wise and thoughtful Brahmins whose voice needs to be heard."

The authors have taken notice of the difference of opinion among scholars on who authored the shlokas 53 and 54 (whether Guru Teg Bahadur or Guru Gobind Singh, who ultimately compiled Guru Granth Sahib). The authors have admirably explained the position as settled. The heading Shabadavali seems inappropriate and not in consonance with the sanctity of the Guru’s words. It could have been titled Shabadanjali, according to noted Sikh scholar Giani Gurdit Singh.

The word "contemplation" given for Simran does not give its true and full meaning as enshrined in the Sikh faith. Simran is more than meditation and much more than contemplation. It is the remembrance of God all the time. The book, on the whole, is informative and educative, especially to the students of history and the new generation of Sikhs, particularly the ones living abroad.

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