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Sikhism : A Religion for the Third Millennium
A Postmodernist Perspective
- Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia
Sikhism - one of the five major world religions - has the unique distinction of
being the only major religion that arose in the second millennium. Though a
religion of the second millennium, it is a religion for the third millennium.
Arnold Toynbee had observed that Sikh religion had the potential of ushering in
a new higher civilization qualitatively different from the earlier Indic and
Hindu civilizations. The potential of Sikh religion, its élan vital, can play a
dominant role in shaping the 21st century society and the third millennium
civilization that would be in its fundamental postulates different from the modern
Western civilization. Islam and Christianity also, in their prime times, had
brought about their respective civilizations; but these were uni-centric,
religiously, socially and politically.
For the uni-centricity of Christian civilization, the focal point was the
Christian faith that claimed to be the full and final revelation of reality and
truth, with the concomitant claim of being the exclusive path to God. Salvation
meant salvation through the Christian door. Similar was the contention of
Islamic civilization, Modern Western civilization, claiming to be secular, had
substituted 'reason' for 'faith'. Euro-centric in orientation, modern Western
civilization also postulated that reason, with its reductive-analytic method,
can fully and finally unravel the ultimate (material) reality in terms of
universally valid laws and theories which could be unified into a single
over-arching theory with other theories and laws logically getting deduced form
the central one. Such was the faith - both religious and scientific - in the
uni-centric monolithic conception of reality.
The uni-centricity of the Christian, Islamic and modern Western civilizations
implied homogenization on social level and unitarianism-totalitarianism on
political level. The new global civilization of the third millennium would,
hopeably, be pluri-centric. Sikhism, with its inherent religious, social,
cultural, economic and political pluralism, can provide ideological postulates
for the new pluralist world civilization.
Modern Western civilization was based on the grand narrative (in postmodernist
terminology) of reason; this meta-narrative was constituted by certain
'universals' which flowed out of 'reason' as the central supreme, absolute
'universal'. First, there was the universal belief that the constitution of
reality - whether material or social - was rational. Secondly, the rational
constitution of reality - reflected in its causative structure - was fully and
finally knowable through the reductive-analytic method of reason; a method that
for deciphering and de-coding the 'whole' reduced it into its parts.
Deterministic materialism, as such, was held to be the ultimate paradigm of
material reality.
The Hegelian postulate that 'the real is rational, the rational real' implied
another 'universal' that the rational has an inherent tendency, an inherent
directionality, to realize itself in time, in history. Deterministic
historicism, as such, was believed to be the ultimate paradigm of social
reality. Marxism contends that the dialectic of class struggle - rather than
any spiritual teleology - is the motor force of this deterministic historicism,
which it calls historical materialism. This deterministic historicism led to
another 'universal': that the linear directionality of history, with deterministic
inevitability, would lead to progress, to emancipation of humanity in a
rational socio-politico-economic structure wherein there would be no room for
irrational inequity and inequality, injustice and exploitation. History was
seen as progressing towards this kind of rational social dispensation;
technology was seen as the driving force of 'progress'.
But the latter half of the 20th century saw the collapse of this grand
narrative of modern Western civilization : the metanarrative of 'reason'. This
collapse came with the collapse of the once mighty reason that had since
enlightenment, reigned supreme in nature, history and thought.
Paradoxically reason was knocked off of its reigning supremacy by its own
egoistic claim of universal validity and capacity in knowing reality fully and
finally. Microphysical particles refused to behave in a rational (causative)
manner; they refused to reveal their simultaneous position and momentum at any
given point of time. W. Heisenberg, realizing the epistemic inadequacy of
reason - of its reductive-analytic method - in knowing reality objectively
(independently of the 'subject') propounded his famous principle of
indeterminacy. This was an impasse beyond which reason could not go in its
comprehension of reality. This impasse of reason was, in a sense, the impasse
of modern Western civilization necessitating a paradigm shift in thinking.
The illusion of 'progress' turned out to be a self-delusion. The myth of the
inevitability of (socialist) order of society stood exploded. The dream of
emancipation of humanity through social engineering came out to be a
nightmarish experience, thanks to the bulldozing totalitarian regimes. The
autonomy of the individual - the matrix of human rights - was eroded by the
overarching nation-state that refused to recognize allegiance of the individual
to any other principle - community, religion, ethnicity, etc. - counterpoised
as the Other, Human essence was reduced into existence, and existence was
digitized into dots. The cleavage between the poor and the rich, between the
elite and marginalized, among the countries as well as within most of the
countries, widened day after day. The dialectic of class contradictions gave
way to that of ethnic, ethno-religious and ethno-political contradictions in
the context of growing tensions between secular nationalism and religious
nationalism. The ideal of inter-community accommodation in a composite society
stood shattered under the over-bearing weight of the State-backed processes of
assimilation and homogenization; secular evangelism has proved itself to be
more subtle, more complex and hence more dangerous than its ancestral
'religious' varieties.
Western technology was based on the notion that lifeless, inanimate nature
existed for man to be discovered (through laws of nature) and exploited
(through ruthless use of natural resources) for his material progress. The
end-result appears to be not 'progress' percolating down to the lowest levels
of society but alarming depletion of natural resources in the absence of
sustainable models of growth, and disturbance of ecological balance of nature
to a point where even the very existence of life of this planet has become
problematic.
This scenario led to the postmodernist "incredulity toward metanarratives"
in the words of Jean Francois Lyotard and to a feeling of betrayal by the very
'universals' that had sustained mankind's hope for about three centuries. In
earlier civilizations, 'faith' had held promise of redemption of the soul in
otherworldly life: modern Western civilization postulated that deified 'reason'
would ensure amelioration of the conditions of man and society in this very
world.
The post-modernist disillusionment with the 'universals' swung the pendulum to
the other extreme: from the universal to the particular, the local, the
discrete; from centripetality to centrifugality; from unitarianism to
plurality; from unity to diversity; from the unificatory to the differential,
and from homogeneity to heterogeneity.
But the post-modernist differential (differmatic) view of reality had an
inherent epistemic weakness. Earlier, Buddhism with its atomistic conception of
time and reality could not, for want of an organizing, relational principle,
develop its concept of change into a coherent conception of evolution and
development; consequently change became synonymous with
"momentariness".
Despite its rejection of the schemata of grand narratives, the post-modernism's
differential view of reality in terms of heterogeneity, diversity, discreteness
is, in a sense, a grand narrative in itself, but with an epistemic weakness.
The epistemic weakness is the lack of an organizing principle necessary for
holding together the differentialities. The holding-together, the
inter-locking, of the differentialities is essential, for without such
networking, the differential can not attain the quality and character of
determinate concreteness which is at the centre of the post-modernist creed; it
is in a network of relations that the concrete becomes determinate reality: the
concrete as a distinctive part of the whole constituted by inter-related parts.
The new organizing principle is given by the epistemic concept of 'systems
thinking', a holistic cognition of reality.
Systems thinking cognizes reality in terms of 'wholes-within-wholes'; a whole
is a (non-static) configuration of the parts and, in turn, is a 'part' in
relation to another configuration. The holistic view in the sense of systems
thinking is contra distinguishable from both monistic and dualistic-dichotomous
view. An organismic whole is not a coalescent, monistic unity; nor is it an
aggregate of (dichotomous) parts. An organismic whole - 'whole' as an organism
-is of the nature of 'differentiated unity'.
The notion of 'spirit' in this sense would, it appears, be the foundational
principle of the global civilization of the third millennium analogous to the
way in which 'reason' was the foundational postulate of the modern Western
civilization. But this does not mean a regress from reason; not "going back"
from reason to the irrational but going to the supra-rational spirit in which
the rational would endure as the past endures in the present in an organism.
This means a quest for a new dynamic, creative principle in the sense of
spirit. It is not the spirit dogmatised in religion. It is the Self-realizing
Spirit which is the very creativity of the Divine, the dynamics of the cosmos;
the elan vital of history; the source of values for society and the very
essence of human spirit. The Spirit is not an incarnation of world soul; cosmic
consciousness; demiurge; nor is it a version of Platonic Idea, Aristotelian
From, Spinoza's Substance, Hegelian Geist or Bergsonian Duree. Spirit is not
something esoteric or mystical, inwardly felt in intution. Spirit is an
outflowing current, and outpouring of energy; it is becoming in which novelty
emerges in each new configuration; new qualities evolve that characterize the
new wholes.
Spirit is not an entity or a being requiring an external medium for its
Self-expression and Self-revelation; it, rather, instantiates itself in
inter-connections; relations; linkages patternizing and re-patternizing
themselves into organismic wholes-within-wholes, constituting, as such, a
holistic network of relations from the terrestrial to the transcendent. The
rigid boundaries of the traditional pairs of mind and matter; soul and body;
subject and object, noumenal and phenomenal, melt into fluid wholes of
inter-connections; the old dualistic as well as monistic conceptions dissolve
into a new "network conception" of reality in terms of organismic
wholes-within-wholes, of systems nesting in other systems, of relations
intertwined with other relations. This is how the epistemology of systems
thinking, of holistic cognition, has its ontological counterpart in the concept
of Spirit.
As religion is the realm of the revelations of Spirit from time to time,
mankind is looking upon religion in a new way: as a quest for the Spirit of
religion, flowing in different faiths, as distinct from dogma hardened in
different religiousities.
As I wrote elsewhere, in the process of ushering in a new holistic world view
for the post-modern global society of the 21st century, Sikhism can play a
vital role both on metaphysical and sociological levels. Sikhism is essentially
a religion of spirit with a holistic vision on epistemic level.
The basic category of Sikhism is spirit and not Vedantic being (Brahman).
The Absolute in Sikh religion is not only Sat (being), Chit
(consciousness) and Anand (bliss) - as in Vedanta - but also Karta
Purakh (Creator). The Absolute, aboriginally indeterminate abstract Being (Ik
Onkar), qua Creator (Karta Purakh) becomes the determinate Spirit.
God, as such, comes to have determinate relationship (Satnam) with His
creation (nature, man), which reveals Him. In the holistic vision of Sikhism
God, nature and man are integrally bound to each other.
A number of qualitatively new metaphysical points - with revolutionary
sociological implications - are involved in the Sikh concept of the Absolute as
the dynamic Spirit. For the first time in the history of Indian speculative
thought, Sikh metaphysics brought in the conception of historical time, of the
historicity of time. Guru Nanak, the first of the ten Prophets of Sikhism, used
a very significant expression: Aad Jugad, in his composition Japji.
To distinguish eternity of time from its createdness, Aad refers to
logical beginning and Jugad refers to temporal, historical beginning.
Spirit descends in time, in history, in historical time, which in technical
language, means the Self-determination of the Spirit (in and through the
created world) in time, in history, in historical time. The Self-manifesting
Spirit is revealed in different religions from time to time. Hence, no religion
can claim to be the full and final revelation. Guru Nanak stresses, in Japji,
the inexhaustability of the attributes of the Divine and the relativity of the
human modes of perception, and figuratively expresses this idea in this way:
The brave sees God in the form of Might; the intellectual comprehends Him in
the form of Light (of knowledge); the aesthete perceives the Divine in His
aspect of the Beauty; the moralist envisions Him as Goodness, etc.
Different revelations of the Spirit are like the variety of different seasons
which refer back to the same Sun:
Numerous are the seasons emanating form the one Sun
Numerous are the guises in which the Creator appears
For Sikh religion, all revelations of God are equally co-valid, having been
given to man relative to the variables of time and place. This rules out any
room for dogmatic assertion of fullness and finality of any single religion's
revelation as well as religious totalitarianism, which is not accepted in
Sikhism. Though Sikhism embraces the otherworldly concerns of man as well as
the this-worldly concerns of society and state, it is not a totalizing
ideology.
All revelations being relatively co-valid, no "ism" - religions or
secular - can claim to be the sole way to God, the exclusive path to salvation.
Guru Amar Das says:
The world is ablaze, O Lord! shower your benediction.
Through whichever door it can be delivered
Save it that way.
This accounts for the basis and significance of religious pluralism in Sikhism.
From here it follows that unity of different religions - or the global ethnic
-need not to be artificially conceptualized on the basis of the lowest
denominator common to all religions; it can rather be realized spontaneously on
the basis that different religions are different stages of the revelation of
the one and same divine Spirit manifest in different forms in different faiths.
The descent of the divine Spirit in time is, in a sense, the ascent of man in
his spiritual development.
The conception of religious pluralism, as envisaged in Sikhism, provides a
positive basis not only for co-validity and co-existence of different faiths in
dynamic interaction with each other, but also for co-equality and co-existence
of different religious and ethno-religious communities and their co-participation
in the national body-politic of their respective countries. Here
co-participation of the religious, ethno-religious or simply ethnic groups or
of the minorities-based on religion, region, ethnicity, culture etc., means
co-participation in their corporate capacities, through their own political
organizations, representing the social collectivities with their respective
self-identities which is no case should be diluted, homogenized or sublated
into an over-arching "secular" nationalism of the Western type
adopted and adapted in the third world countries.
Coming back to the question of the Sikh revelation of the Divine, the
Spirit-in-history realizes Itself in "peoplehood" the sociological
category of which, in the Sikh parlance, is known as the Khalsa.
This verily is the phenomenal form of the Timeless Who manifests Himself in
the corporate body of the Khalsa -Prehlad Rai, author of Sikh Rehatnama
The Khalsa is my determinate form
I am immanent in the Khalsa -Guru Gobind Singh
Spiritual aspect of the Divine sovereignty is revealed in the Holy Word (Guru
Granth) and the temporal aspect of the sovereign Spirit becomes diffused in the
body-politic of Guru Panth. (The Hegelian Spirit reaches its fullest
manifestation in the institution of the nation-State, which he identified with
the Prussian State; on the other hand, in Sikhism, it is the
"peoplehood" and not the nation-State which is the vehicle for
sovereign Self-realization of Spirit. Here is a new mode of the Divine
revelation on societal level.
The conception of the Absolute (God, Brahman, Idea, etc...) becoming
manifest in space (nature), or in the Word, or in the soul, has been recurring
in both Western and Indian philosophy. But the idea of the Spirit,
Self-determinating in history and then getting diffused in the Khalsa, in
peoplehood, appears for the first time, through Sikh metaphysics, in the
history of speculative thought of the world.
The Khalsa here does not mean a particular community in a particular form, in a
particular region; it rather means commonwealth of enlightened human beings at
a higher level of spiritual growth - a Divine Brotherhood of those who in the
language of Guru Nanak are sachiar (embodiment of Truth and truthful
living) and in the language of Guru Gobind Singh are jujhar (the
socially committed and active for righteous cause). Here was a new
revolutionary concept in the history of the world: the Divine in humanity and
humanity in the Divine.
The human spirit partakes of the divinity of the Absolute Spirit. That is how
the human spirit is sovereign in its inalienable dignity, worth and freedom.
This Sikh thought, in a sense, heralded the ideals enshrined in the preamble to
the United Nations Charter which, interalia, reaffirms "faith in the
fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the
equal rights of men and women and of nations, large and small."
We have celebrated in the year 1999 the 300th anniversary of that divine moment
in the flux of time, the creation of the Khalsa Panth in the year 1699 by Guru
Gobind Singh, that ushered in a new praxis, the full potential of which awaits
to be realized in the post-modern global society and civilization of the 21st
century.
For playing its historic role in the shaping of the 21st century society and
the third millennium civilization, Sikhism, first of all, would have to
re-discover its essential values - liberalism, humanism and universalism - and
to re-interpret them in the present-day context.
Liberalism is an integral, essential part of the Sikh value pattern. Says Guru
Arjun, the fifth Prophet of Sikh religion:
The fetters around the feet are sundered
The Guru has emancipated me.
Sikhism liberated man - his inner spirit that had become encrusted - from
dogma, ritual, abscurantist belief. What is more important is that though
Sikhism embraces man's this-worldly concerns as much as his other-worldly
salvic concerns, it is not a totalitarian ideology; it is not a totalizing
creed subjecting man to the bondage of ritualism from pre-natal to post-death
stage.
The Sikh doctrine has not prescribed canonized Sikh jurisprudence; formalized
Sikh economics, or dogmatised Sikh dress, or the clergy-determined prescriptive
behavior, eternally, valid for all times, in all places. Doctrinally the clergy
as a class is not accepted in Sikhism, which does not admit of any mediation
between the Sikh and his Guru and God. There is a direct bond, a direct
communion, between the faith-followers and his God. This is the cannotation of
the expression Waheguru ji ka Khalsa. There being no annointed clergy in
Sikh religion, there is no Church-like authority or institution with inherent
right to interpret the Scripture, to excommunicate a Sikh from the community
and to prescribe a code of conduct for a Sikh who is directly responsible for
his deeds to his Guru and God.
There is no theocrat, no clerico-cracy. The Akal Takht jathedar is not a
theocrat or a vice-deity presiding over the temporal affairs of this sacred
institution of Sikhism; he is a sewadar, or at best a spokesman of the
voice and will of the community articulated through intra-community
deliberations in different forums, particularly the democratically elected Sikh
institutions.
Sikhism is a humanistic religion which accords primacy to the innate human
spirit partaking of the divine Spirit; this is man's primary identity which in
sociological form was expressed by Guru Gobind Singh as such:
Recognize all humanity as one in spirit.
The secondary identities relating to country, region, creed, language,
ethnicity, etc., are also important as the human essence - the primary identity
- becomes determinate through such identity-relationships which, as such, need
to be well-recognized and respected in social and political reckoning.
The Sikh conception of humanism is distinguishable from the old, classical
concept that had made man the measure of all things, and not any outside
transcendental reality or principle, on the basis of the dichotomy of the human
(the terrestrial) and the transcendental. The new conception is based on the
holistic vision that recognizes an integral bond between the human and the
Divine. Man's worldly activities have their own autonomy and significance but
existence derives its meaning, its purpose, its sacredness, from its
relationship with the Divine.
Another pillar of Sikh value pattern is its universalism. Sikh religion is
universal in two senses of the term. First, Sikhism is not an
ethnicity-specific, region-specific religion. The different ethnicities of the
first five Sikhs initiated into the Order of the Khalsa, through the sacrament
of holy amrit by Guru Gobind Singh, mean that this religion is not bound
down to a particular ethnicity - Punjabiat. Guru Gobind Singh in his bani
(Akal Ustit) refers to different peoples, in terms of their ethnic identities,
co-worshiping God. Contemporary ethnicized (Punjabised) form of Sikhism is just
one of the possibly many more determinate forms of Sikh religion flowering out
in other ethnic contexts, new ethno-religious species, developing out of the
parental genus, would really make Sikhism a universal religion.
Sikhism is also not tied down to a particular region, though the Punjab is the
natural habitat of Sikhism where it has grown during the last five hundred
years. The whole of earth planet being revered as 'mother' in Guru Nanak's Japji,
there is no specific 'holy land' or 'promised land' conceived as such in
Sikhism.
Sikhism is 'universal' in an other sense also. Its essential concerns, daily
remembered in the Sikh prayer as "sarbat da bhala" are
universal, taking the entire humanity in their reckoning. Due to circumstantial
reasons, the existential-social, economic, political-concerns of the Sikhs in
the Punjab, since the first Sikh reformation originating in the last quarter of
the 19th century, have taken precedence over the universal concerns of Sikhism,
which now must come to the centric stage, particularly the concerns of ecology;
depletion of natural resources; sustainable models of growth; human rights;
gender equality, the empowerment of the lowest, suppressed, marginalized strata
of society, etc. This is the primary issue for the long over-due second Sikh reformation,
which has to address itself to the following internal problems.
First, the process of de-brahminization of Sikh society - started by the first
Sikh reformation - needs to be completed for liberation from
caste-discriminations; growing ritualism; individualistically oriented
'mystical' meditational forms, etc. Secondly, the gradual growth of the 'Sikh clergy'-
which has no doctrinal sanction or basis - and its increasing influence in
religious, political and academic matters must be uprooted, De-clericalization
is an essential imperative of the second Sikh reformation. The necessity for
de-regionalization and de-ethnicization of contemporary Sikhism has already
been highlighted above; without this two-fold process, Sikhism would be a
universal religion only as a religious rhetoric and not a reality.
The relationship between religion and politics in contemporary Sikh praxis also
needs to be re-defined. The miri-piri concept, which is traditionally
understood as the unity of religion and politics, does not mean coalescence or
merger of the two, or subordination of either of the two domains to the other;
this concept also does not mean manipulation of the secular institutions by the
ecclesiastical ones or vice-versa. In essence, this concept means that the
temporal concerns of society and state are doctrinally within the embrace of
Sikhism as much as the spiritual concerns of man. But the two domains are like
the two banks of a river; in other words the relationship between the two is of
the nature of 'differentiated unity', and not monistic unity. The relationship
between the secular and religious institutions should be coordinated afresh
after the principle of differentiated unity. In this context the nature of the
authority of Sri Akal Takht also needs to be properly comprehended.
Sri Akal Takht is a symbol - and not the seat - of the worldly authority, the
temporal sovereignty, vesting in the Khalsa Panth, Guru Panth. Guru Gobind
Singh, while vesting the spiritual aspect of the Divine sovereignty in the Adi
Granth, thereby institutionalizing it as Guru Granth, had bestowed the temporal
aspect of the Divine sovereignty upon the Khalsa Panth, making it Guru Panth.
Sri Akal Takht is a symbol of the temporal authority which vests in the Guru
Panth and is exercisable, on practical level, through democratically elected
institutions. The Panch Pradhani mode also does not mean that the so-called
Head or High priests, the Takht jathedars, can appropriate unto themselves the
power, the authority, the temporal sovereignty, vesting in the Guru Panth [When
there is no distinction between the high and the low in the Sikh doctrine,
then, how can there be a category of 'head priests', 'high priests' over and
above the other (low!) priests' In fact there is no priestly class in Sikhism].
At best the Panch Pradhani mode can have significance in the sense of the sangat,
attuned to the Divine in the holy presence of Guru Granth, spontaneously
choosing five gursikhs for deliberating upon or resolving some issue,
but without acting as theocrats.
The point is that the contemporary Sikh praxis has to be updated through the
second Sikh reformation, if the Sikh community has to play a participatory role
in evolving the 21st century global society and the third millennium
civilization.
Sikhism has still to realize its historical mission of ushering in a new,
higher civilization - a mission bequeathed to the community of faith-followers
by the Guru and God.
Copyright© Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia.
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