Survey of Sikh viewpoint
Reviewed by Dharmendra Goel

Sikhism: Continuity of Indian Culture
by Nirbhai Singh.
Kalpaz Publications. Pages 320. Rs 950

The book desires to interpret the Guru Granth Sahib as it has put together hymns of Guru Nanak, Kabir and several other bhagats and saints. The study wishes to review its religious, spiritual and ethical opinions.

The author affirms that the Sikh ethos simultaneously seeks to come to grips with historical trials and sufferings of the subaltern masses and encourages them to seek justice and courage. The sacrifices of gurus, including those by Guru Tegh Bahadur, set the paradigm of willed freedom. The bold struggle against the tyrant marks the crucial Sikh world-view. Guru Gobind Singh reconstructs the entire lexicon of old spiritual doctrines of Bhagavadagita, Karmayog and the eternal presence of the divine through historical imperatives of organising human society freed of tyrants and passions to exploit the poor and wretched of the earth. Guru Gobind Singh creates the Khalsa to deliver man from the anguish of death.

The writer’s agenda is to show the various principles of theology, Indian old canons, and various doctrines of liberation as interpreted in the context of medieval hermeneutics.

The book seeks to maintain that monism and individual will can both be equally stressed. Sikhism, according to this thesis, happily works with highest voluntarism. The stith-prajna of Hinduism is made to reinvent himself as maker of a just social fabric. The saint who envisions the aeons of the whole being and essence encompassing yesterday, today and unborn future puts himself to the duties of crusader of here and now striving for welfare of all or Sarbat ka Bhala. Thus quest of Mukti of yore, now, under the Granth Sahib canon is a pursuit of just distribution of goodies, between the humble Bhago and feudal Mallo. This is a radical departure from ancient Hindu ahistorical spiritualism. The author impressively highlights this novel reconstruction of ancient Hindu culture in Guru Granth Sahib. Finally, I must differ with the author's programme of incorporating dozens of contemporary philosophers ideas of West like, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer; others to the Granth Sahib. According to me this is going too far in seeking resemblances in texts so separated from different zeitgeist of medieval ethos as our contemporary rationalism. They don't tell. The honest and comprehensive survey of Indian moral tradition, and its novel re-emergence in Sikh moral point of view deserves recognition. The writer deserves a compliment, here.

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