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Doing One's Own Thing

by RAVINDER SINGH & I.J. SINGH

 

Shakespeare reminds us, "Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt."

So we thought it was time to take the challenge and plunge headlong into roiling waters: the turbulent - often acrimonious - debate that marks our public discourse around Sikhi.

Consider the major divide that holds center stage in our collective psyche: the rift between recognizable Sikhs and those who have chosen to discard the external markers of the Faith.

We know that a substantial number of the estimated 25 million Sikhs worldwide have shed the most visible identifier of Sikh identity: unshorn hair (kesh).

The justification for such a break usually rests on the argument that the Khalsa arose out of historical pressure and circumstance. Initiation into the Khalsa was (and remains) voluntary, not prescriptive. The presence of a number of important non-Khalsa Sikhs around Guru Gobind Singh, such as Bhai Nand Lal and Bhai Kanahiya is often cited to reinforce this position.

A second, but more subtle, argument is that the Guru Granth Sahib does not explicitly direct a Sikh to wear the 5K's. On the contrary, external religious marks are scoffed at as sure signs of hypocrisy. A Sikh of the Guru need only follow an interior discipline of simran.

A logical extension of this position is that given changing times - and circumstances - unshorn hair is quite unnecessary, a relic of a bygone era, not consonant with our times.

Ergo! Let's head to the nearest hair salon.

Another, perhaps even more serious, consequence extends beyond the argument of whether to wear or not to wear the external markers. It pertains to the actual practice of the Faith and it is this mindset that concerns us here: the position that a Sikh of the Guru need only follow an interior spiritual discipline as a personal and private practice. Many of these Sikhs are the more sensitive non-recognizable Sikhs who have walked away from gurdwaras in protest.

Then there is the other side of this divide: recognizable Sikhs. To them, the development of miri-piri and the Khalsa ideal of sant-sipahi reflect the historical culmination of a development that began with Guru Nanak through Guru Gobind Singh and continues under the auspices of the Guru Granth Sahib.

An authentic Sikh life, combining bani and bana is the flowering of this development. A Sikh embodies this amalgamation.

The differences play out loudly and often acrimoniously - even sanctimoniously - in the Sikh public space worldwide. The rancour often poisons the well in our institutions and social relations.

The insistence that Sikhi can be a private practice, if taken to its logical extreme, can take a surrealistic turn: it is divorced of community and sangat. Does the practice of religion equate just to a personal sense of spirituality, concerned with personal attainment but divorced from its social expression?

We wonder how realistic - or consistent with Sikh teachings - such a position is.

The proposition that man is a social animal is self evident: from the helplessness of a newborn to the vulnerability of the aged, all the rites of human passage require communal support. We are not an individual node but part of a network that extends into time in either direction. We are, no doubt, the central character in our own story, but the unfolding of our personal script requires a supporting cast.

No civilization was built by anyone toiling alone. Life is a social contract. One has to be a good citizen first so he can participate in creating a useful society. Without the first, the second cannot happen; without the second, life has little meaning and society makes no progress.

One need go no further than to recall the emphasis on sangat - a community of practice - in Sikh teaching. The personal odyssey of a Sikh must be anchored in sangat and grounded in the life of the community, because it is here that God and Guru pervade.

What if Guru Nanak had confined himself to the intensely personal, mystical expression we find in his bani? Couldn't he then have chosen to be satisfied as a store keeper and stayed put? What if he had not founded a commune on the banks of the Ravi? Or travelled across the known world, spreading his message?

After all, he would have been doing "his own thing!"

Sikhi, as we know it today, then could not have emerged historically and crystallized into a distinctly vibrant, dynamic and colourful society. Guru Nanak would have been seen (or ignored) as just another mystic, in the line of Kabir and other sants or bhagats.

The ideal of a gurmukh extends beyond a self reflective and retiring lifestyle. It requires an active engagement in this world as well.

This brings us to those who would pursue their own muse disengaged from the affairs of the Sikhs. There is no reason to suspect that they are unfamiliar with this line of thought. Many of them are exceedingly well versed with the Guru Granth Sahib, lead exemplary lives of personal piety. There is much merit in their position, but it remains only one dimension of existence.

This is akin to saying, "Why can't I do my own thing?"

One of us (IJS) has a daughter, now a mother in her thirties. She was no more than six or seven then and visiting her father for the weekend. After a full day of revelry, her tired old man's request that she turn off the TV and go to bed - it was almost 11 at night - was met with a quick retort, "Why can't I do my own thing?"

And when this nonsense was peremptorily brushed aside, she decided to parade around the room while declaiming "Power to the little people" with her little fist in the air.

Surely, we have all experienced, even practiced, such behaviour or variations on that theme.

It seems to us that those who reduce Sikhism to only its spiritual agenda deny fully half of the discipline and perhaps are practicing that little girl's immature urge for individual gratification by asking "Why can't I do my own thing?"

We have already alluded to our social reality. It takes a lifetime to place individual achievement in perspective and context of the society and the time. It is difficult to place one's own puny existence in context, but it is necessary. We inherit a world in which we reap the crop of achievements of many whose lives preceded ours. The civilization we enjoy is the product of many over many generations.

And, yes, the freedom to say, "I want to do my own thing" and do it has been made possible by others - over generations.

This brings us back to the concern we started with: the divide in our collective psyche over bani and bana, the inner and outer rehat and its consequences for the community.

What are we to make of it?

At a time when many Sikhs are questioning the wearing of external symbols, it is worth reminding ourselves that there is a deep symbiotic relationship between bani and bana, between the external rehat and the internal atam ki rehat.

The adoption of bana must be accompanied by the adoption and assimilation of bani.

The external rehat influences, instructs and sheds light on the inner dimension of the rehat, what gurbani calls "atam ki rehat." Without atam ki rehat, the external rehat is meaningless, even hypocritical.

The adoption of external insignia is a very public assertion of and commitment to a deeply private practice and way of life.

Equally important, bani without bana cuts us off from the nurturing source of our history and tradition - that ensured that we could practice bani securely in the first place. The sustenance of history, tradition and sangat keeps us from becoming isolated, self centered and narcissistic.

The sant-sipahi ideal is the expression of this close and interactive relationship, and a constant reminder that a Sikh marches to the beat of a different drummer. We should not - indeed, we cannot - cast it asunder.

How then, can we heal this divide? How do we reconcile the opposing pulls and tugs?

Vich sangat har prabh vassay jio, advises the Guru Granth. And it is in the sangat that we need to continue to resolve these differences.

Will they be settled overnight? Absolutely not.

Truly no one is an island unto oneself. "I want to do my own thing" is not much of an option.

　

rtaneja@insight.rr.com

ijsingh99@gmail.com

August 10, 2009

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