Sikhism- An Introduction Page 6
taking alcohol.
A new name
Members of the Khalsa took a new name. In the case of women it was Kaur (princess), while men adopted the name Singh (lion). Thus, Guru Gobind Rai became Guru Gobind Singh, and his wife Mata Sahib is known in history as Mata Sahib Kaur.
There were two reasons for the Guru’s decision to adopt this method of naming. ‘Rai’ indicated that the Guru was a khatri. All family names inform other Sikhs of the got to which a person belongs. It is a constant reminder of the importance of caste and a potential source of discrimination because we learn a person’s name first and draw conclusions before getting to know them at a personal level. Kaur and Singh were intended to nullify the influence of caste in the Khalsa. The Guru also told the Khalsa that they were now members of one family; one name endorsed this. By choosing Rajput names he was elevating them to the status of kshatriyas – warriors!
* * *
Insight
Sikh names can confuse the unwary. For example, Teja Singh will identify a man as a Sikh and so will Teja Singh Dhillon, but they will not necessarily signify that he has been initiated. Only seeing the five Ks on his person will enable you to know that.
* * *
The amrit ceremony today
The tradition of 1699 is followed by Sikhs whenever someone takes amrit today. One difference is the emphasis upon maturity. In 1699 everyone who came forward was an adult; nowadays a request might be made for a whole family to be initiated together. The Rahit Maryada (the Khalsa Code of Discipline) stresses that age is not a consideration but that initiates should be mature enough to understand the implications of the vows that they take. This usually means that men and women, rather than teenagers, form the bulk of any group of people taking amrit, but I have seen it administered to a boy aged about ten. Clearly the ceremony was little more than a formality; his mother wiped away the amrit with a towel to prevent it spoiling his suit! Sikh friends protested to me afterwards and condemned the whole proceeding. This was clearly an exception. More often than not one hears of Sikhs who are in their middle years or older taking amrit for the first time. They will say that they have deferred initiation until then because of the seriousness of the vows and their concern that they should be able to live up to the spiritual demands that being an amritdhari Sikh makes upon them.
Amrit pahul, amritpan karna, or khande-da amrit, which are Sikh names for the initiation ceremony, must take place in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib. A copy will be taken to the room that has been prepared. It cannot be held in the main hall of the gurdwara during a service because public worship is open to anyone, including non-Sikhs, and at the amrit ceremony only amritdhari Sikhs and candidates for initiation may be present. Everyone will be wearing the five Ks. Seven people are needed to perform the ceremony – one to act as granthi, sitting behind the Guru Granth Sahib, and five to be the panj piare. The seventh person is there as a guard to make sure that there are no interruptions. Of course, women as well as men may conduct amrit pahul. The people who are going to become Khalsa Sikhs are asked if they wish to be initiated. When they have made their affirmation of intent they are told what it means to be a member of the Khalsa by being reminded what Guru Gobind Singh told his followers in 1699. Then the ceremony begins.
THE CEREMONY
The Guru Granth Sahib is opened at random and a passage is read out. Then comes the prayer, Ardas, after which the panj piare pour water into a steel bowl and keep adding sugar crystals to it. This is the amrit. They stir the liquid and recite some hymns at the same time. The hymns are:
the Japji of Guru Nanak
the Jap of Guru Gobind Singh
ten verses (swayyas) by Guru Gobind Singh
Chaupai, another collection of verses by Guru Gobind Singh
six verses from the Anand, which was composed by Guru Amar Das.
These are hymns that Sikhs should use every day in meditation, so the panj piare and the initiates should know them well.
Here are a few verses from each of the passages used in amrit pahul:
When the hands, feet and body are covered with dust the dirt is removed by washing them with water. Filthy clothes can be washed clean with soap. But the mind that has been soiled by evil thoughts can only be made clean by loving God’s Name. Virtue and vice are not mere words. We carry the effects of our deeds with us. Whatever seed is sown, the same fruit is reaped. Birth and death are decided by God. (Japji AG 4)
God has no marks or symbols, no colour or caste, no family line. No one can describe God’s form, hue, features or attire. God is eternal, self-enlightened and of infinite power. (Jap, verse one, Dasam Granth)
Mighty elephants in gorgeous array, magnificently decked out in gold; thousands of horses nimbler than deer, swifter than the wind; their masters are powerful emperors before whom countless people bow. In the end such greatness crumbles to nothing as they go on their way. (Swayya 3)
God knows how everyone feels in their heart, what troubles good people and bad. From the ant to the elephant, we are all under God’s kind eye. (Chaupai 11)
O my mind, concentrate on God, stick to God! Your sufferings will vanish. If God accepts you, you will succeed. God is almighty and can do anything for you, so why forget God? O my mind, keep fixed on God always. (Anand AG 917)
When the amrit is ready, some of it is poured into the cupped hands of each initiate for them to drink. This is done five times. Then it is sprinkled on their eyes and hair, again five times. Each time they say ‘Vahiguru ji ka Khalsa, Vahiguru ji ki fateh!’ ‘Hail to the Khalsa, victory belongs to God!’ If there is any amrit left, the initiates all drink it from the bowl. The final part of the service is the recitation of the Mul Mantra, and the giving of Sikh names to any converts. Then everyone in the room shares karah parshad from the same dish.
The meaning of initiation
A child brought up in a Sikh family according to the tenets of Sikhism is a Sikh. Initiation signifies a personal commitment to carry out all Sikh religious and social obligations in word and deed. Any sincere convert, regardless of background, may become a Sikh, though Sikhism has ceased to become an overtly missionary religion.
Not all Sikhs are Khalsa members. As no central record of initiated Sikhs exists, and many gurdwaras do not even keep figures, it is impossible to say what proportion of Sikhs are amritdhari. Some sant groups (see Chapter 16), some sangats and some families hold it to be of fundamental importance and therefore encourage members to take amrit; others give it far less priority, though Sikh writers and the Panth in general, one feels, stress it as the ideal to which all Sikhs should aspire.
Here may be the appropriate place to mention the names used to describe Sikhs who are not amritdhari.
sahajdhari: This is a Sikh who has not accepted initiation into the Khalsa for any of several reasons including, perhaps, disagreement with the Khalsa code. Such a Sikh will not keep the Rahit Maryada (the Khalsa Code of Discipline) fully. Sometimes the phrase ‘slow-adopter’ is used. This is incorrect and insensitive. There may well be no intention by the sahajdhari Sikh ever to become an ‘adopter’, i.e. be initiated.
keshdhari: A non-initiated Sikh who keeps the uncut hair and, inevitably, the turban.
mona: This term is sometimes used of a Sikh who is clean-shaven, cuts the hair and does not wear a turban. It would probably be unwise for non-Sikhs to use it.
patit: A lapsed Khalsa member.
Gurdwara management
Each gurdwara in the dispersion and many in India outside the control of the Shromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee or Delhi SGPC (see Chapter 14) is autonomous in terms of management unless it is a sant gurdwara. It may or may not have a constitution and elected committee. Those which do usually have a rule that any registered member of the sangat may vote at elections but only keshdhari (and sometimes only amritdhari) Sikhs may stand for election. Not all gurdwaras allow women to serve on the committee, though usually they seem to have voting rights. Some years ago, in the 197
0s, a gurdwara in middle England elected a committee entirely of women, save for one ‘statutory male’! This was not so much to promote the cause of feminism as to show disapproval of the arguments and schisms within the sangat. At the end of the year they relented and gave control back to the men! Gurdwaras that exclude women from voting or serving on committees are going against Sikh principles.
* * *
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Besides amritdhari (Khalsa) Sikhs, there are also sahajdhari, Keshdhari, mona and Patit Sikhs.
Khalsa Sikhs may constitute only 20 per cent of the Panth but the influence of their Code of Discipline is out of all proportion to their numbers.
The five Ks are important religious symbols.
A lapsed Khalsa member should not be expelled from the Panth or local sangat but encouraged to reform his/her ways.
Re-initiation is permitted but only on clear evidence of reformation.
Amrit pahul is unlikely to become a mere formality but today Sikhs are no different from members of other communities and may be only nominal in their allegiance.
The use of the names Kaur or Singh continues but today many Sikhs retain their family names and often use the two together, e.g. Jaswant Singh Gill or Jaswant Kaur Sodhi.
* * *
4
The family
In this chapter you will learn:
that Sikhism is a family religion
about the nature of a Sikh family
about the extended family.
Sikhism is a family religion. This sentence can be understood in two ways. First, great emphasis is laid upon being a member of a human family. There is no place for celibacy and asceticism in the tradition. Secondly, it might be said that Sikhs regard themselves as one large extended family, at least ideally. In practice there may be tensions and disagreements but passages from the Guru Granth Sahib regularly remind Sikhs that humanity is one. Being part of that humanity, the Sikh community and individual families within it should also be united! The last Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, declared:
The mandir [Hindu temple] and the mosque are the same, puja and namaaz are the same. Human beings are one, it is through error that they appear different.
Their eyes are the same, their ears are the same, they are of one body, one build, a compound of earth, air, fire, and water. Allah and Abekh [a name used by some yogis] are the same, the Puranas and Qur’an are the same. All alike are the creation of the One. (Akal Ustat)
All the Gurus, with the exception of Guru Har Krishan who died at the age of eight, were married men. They affirmed positively the worth of family life and repudiated that of the hermit in such words as these:
The One who created the world pervades it. Do not look for the True One far away. Recognize the Word [the Divine Spirit] dwelling in every heart. (AG 581)
There was no need, therefore, as ascetics did, to go to the forest in search of God. God could be found at home.
Guru Amar Das argued that the householder life was actually better than that of those who had renounced the world:
Family life is superior to the ascetic life because it is from householders that ascetics meet their needs [i.e. by begging]! (AG 586)
But, of course, the householder’s life must be characterized by certain qualities. Guru Nanak said:
He alone is a householder’s who checks his passions and begs from God meditation, hard work and self-restraint.
The householder who gives all he can to the poor is as pure as the river Ganges. (AG 952)
Finding God in the home can be taken as referring spiritually to the teaching that God is immanent, within each human being. There is, therefore, no need to search elsewhere, but it is also understood by Sikhs to refer to family life. It is within the daily round of domestic life and responsibility that God is to be experienced. Hence passages in the Guru Granth Sahib which describe God as ‘father and mother’.
The Hindu tradition speaks of four stages of life that a man passes through in journeying towards spiritual liberation – moksha. These are:
student of Vedic knowledge, brahmacarya
married family man, householder, grihasthi (Punjabi form)
a third stage which might be described as that of retirement. The family business, if there is one, and responsibilities, will be handed over to the eldest son, and the father will give his time increasingly to religious pursuits, reading the scriptures, going on pilgrimage, meditating. This stage of vanaprastha should be entered when a man sees his son’s son – that is, when the family’s future is secure and all domestic responsibilities have been met. His wife may share this stage with him.
in the fourth stage of sannyasin all worldly attachments are laid aside. Wife and home are left behind, even the name that a man has used throughout his life is discarded. He may symbolically become dead to the world by cremating a clay effigy of himself as he passes into his new life of isolation save, perhaps, for listening to his guru’s teaching. When he dies his body will be buried as he has no family to conduct the cremation rites. Not all Hindu men follow the path of the four stages or ashramas of life, especially the final one, but many do tend to see life as a progression in which the otherworldly concerns of life are given increasing priority.
Sikhs reject the ashramas but retain this notion of progression. The Gurus taught that every Sikh should be a householder, grihasthi. In this stage they should realize all the other stages.
As Guru Nanak taught:
Contemplation of the True One brings enlightenment which enables one to live detached even in the midst of life’s hurly-burly. Such is the greatness of the True Guru that through divine grace and guidance one can attain liberation even while surrounded by sons and wife. (AG 661)
This is not to be understood as a sexist remark or to suggest that families can be a nuisance! It is a realistic recognition that the Indian peasant with many mouths to feed might find little time for spiritual development. The Guru is saying that it can be done and that the Sikh should not try to find excuses for deferring the cultivation of meditation and service, as well as the hard work which is a necessity, but which Sikhism makes into a virtue.
Consequently, once sons and daughters have completed their education, the family might begin to discuss their marriage. Undergraduates in their final year at college will frequently tell of family discussions and meetings being arranged with prospective partners. Among one group in Britain, the Bhatras (see Chapter 16), it has become fairly customary for daughters to marry upon leaving school at 16. In this way, it is hoped that, by being kept within the close family circle, they will be protected from the kinds of relationships that many young people enter. The attempt has met with some measure of success but recently there have been divorces among young Bhatras as among other Sikhs.
Sikh marriages, in common with most marriages in India, including Christian ones, are usually arranged by the family. One reason for this is perfectly obvious. Friendships across the sexes are not part of Indian life. Attend a social gathering there, or among Indians who have settled abroad, and you will usually see the men and women sitting separately. Enter the canteen on a college campus and you will see male and female students at separate tables, unless a tutor is with them, almost as chaperone. In class, in gurdwaras and in churches in rural areas, men and women do not sit together. If a tutor needs to converse with a student of the opposite sex it will be in a public area or the study door will be left open. Changes are taking place in Indian life and the pattern outlined above may be in process of being modified; you may, for example, see a young couple walking hand in hand in Delhi, but you are likely to be told that they are newly-weds who are expected to desist within a few weeks and immediately if, after the rarity of a middle-class Western-style honeymoon, they are going back to the provinces!
* * *
Insight
In a country where there is apparently not a word in its many languages to describe a friendship free from sexual content between man and woman, it is no
t surprising that marriages are arranged. Were it not so, in traditional society a couple would never meet and celibacy would be the rule!
* * *
The nature of family life is the other reason for arranged marriages. The extended family or joint family is the norm in India (Figure 4.1). Someone once described a Hindu village with 600 inhabitants as all being members of one family. It had its own temple, school and medical facilities. Everyone belonged to the same occupational group. When a boy married it would be to a girl from a neighbouring village who belonged to the same occupational group. She would join him in the village. Girls, likewise, would marry men from other villages and go to live with their families.
Figure 4.1 Extended families may sometimes live together. Usually, however, they will live in the same neighbourhood and meet regularly. Note the paintings of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, which are to be found in most homes.
When a family of grandparents, the sons and wives, their grandsons who may also be married, live together, perhaps under the same roof and sharing the same hearth and kitchen, it is important that its members should be compatible to the greatest possible degree. Suppose a young man from a rural area went to agricultural college in Ludhiana and somehow met a medical student who, it may be adduced, came from a well-to-do urban family with servants who did the cooking and cleaning. They fall in love and marry. She gives up her training, as would normally be expected, to live with her husband’s family where she is expected to cook, clean, help on the farm and perhaps even lay a cow dung floor. This may be an extreme example but hopefully it demonstrates the importance of arranged marriages in an extended family culture and the sense of marrying within the occupational group. Even in a less contrasting situation a girl has to fit in with her mother-in-law who rules the kitchen, and with existing and therefore senior sisters-in-law. Guru Nanak was well aware of the power of the bride’s mother-in-law. He wrote: