Why I am a Sikh… and Why I’m Not
This essay is part of a series where I look at various faiths and explore where they have inspired me and where I have issues. Although I am a Christian, I believe that God wants us to explore and learn from other traditions as part of our spiritual journey. This is my journey, no one else’s, and the articles merely record how I see things. They are not intended to offend or convert, nor do I expect you to agree with me. I do however, appreciate feedback, friendship and further learning.
Other essays in the series:
Why I Am A Sufi… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am A Catholic… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am An Orthodox Christian… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am A Pagan… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am A Hindu… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am A Buddhist… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am A Jew… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am an Atheist… and Why I’m Not
Why I Am an Anglican… and Why I’m Not
Unlike many journeys of exploration, I can pinpoint exactly when this one began. It was on a September morning in 2006 and I was doing a course on comparative religions at Edge Hill University.[1] We’d started off with ways to look at religion and then spent a day on each of the major world faiths, before having a field trip and then assignments. It was the final day of looking at specific faiths and the religion of the day was Sikhism. I was not that excited. I knew next to nothing about Sikhism (it’s Indian and they wear turbans) and I didn’t think it would be particularly to my tastes, but I kept an open mind and sat down ready to pay attention.
The presenter was a high school teacher who wasn’t a Sikh. He came armed with lots of artefacts. There was a kirpan (a type of dagger), a kara (a type of bracelet) and a framed picture of the Golden Temple at Amritsar (looked cool — mentally I started to plan a trip to India). He told us about the 5 Ks and turbans but then he began to talk about the religion itself and, in particular, its founder, Guru Nanak.
And, in an instant, everything changed.
In short, the man who was described was basically the most inspirational religious figure I had ever heard of. He spoke to me in such a powerful way that I just wanted to learn more about him. I was so inspired that I chose Guru Nanak as the topic for my assignment.
Guru Nanak was born in the Punjab on the 15th of April 1469 to a Hindu family. When he was a young man, he went to live in the city of Lodhi and there he used to bathe every day in the River Beas. Then, one day, he went missing. When he reappeared three days later, his face was radiant and the only answer that he would give to any of the questions asked of him was, “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. We are all disciples of God.”[2]
After this conversion experience, Guru Nanak left his wife and family and set off on a series of udasis (pilgrimages), north, south, east and west, to famous holy sites. As he travelled, he always questioned and ridiculed established rituals and norms. For example, when in Haridwar, when the Brahmins were throwing water to reach the dead in the other world, Guru Nanak tossed some over his shoulder to water his fields in the Punjab, whilst when he went to Mecca, he was told off for lying with his feet pointing to the Kaaba, the House of God. “Well then,” he wisely replied, “you show me where Allah is not, and I shall point my feet there!”[3]
Following his travels, he returned to the Punjab and his family where he built a community based on the ideal of equality. He instituted the langar — the communal kitchen — where castes and sexes sat and ate together in equality, and he preached against gender inequality and caste segregation.
In short, I found Guru Nanak so inspirational, that he stayed with me. I am someone who has always loved travel and have explored faith through travelling the world. I felt this immediate kinship with Guru Nanak wandering from holy place to holy place, followed by two disciples (one Hindu and one Muslim), learning from every faith and tradition but not being blinkered by any of them. In 2013 I travelled to India to visit Amritsar and other famous gurdwaras and over the years I have read numerous books about him and Sikhism to deepen my understanding of his message. Some, like Kamla K. Kapur’s ‘The Singing Guru’ and Harish Dhillon’s retellings of the Jamansakhis and the lives of the Sikh Gurus, I found inspirational and powerful. In others, like Khushwant Singh’s ‘A History of the Sikhs’, I found my brain overloaded by a miserable litany of constant warfare and politicking.
I also got to know members of my local Sikh community in Stoke and, in 2023, I fulfilled a long-term ambition to pay my respects properly to the Guru when I journeyed to Pakistan where I visited Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace.
All of which explains the appeal of Sikhism to me. Nanak’s message, essentially building upon the twin traditions of Hinduism and Islam to create something unique, open to all, granting equality to all, with a healthy dash of pilgrimage, resonated with me.
So, did I become a Sikh?
Erm… no.
One reason is that Sikhs do not seek converts. When I asked what they would say to someone looking to convert, Gurmeet at my local gurdwara replied, “I would ask you what your religion is. And then I would say, ‘So, you are Christian, go away and be a better Christian’. There is no need to convert, and the gurdwara is open to all, regardless of your faith.”
I liked that. No, I really liked it. Conversion-focussed faith appals me in its intolerance and ignorance. My own religion can be awful in this regard. Not my particular tradition perhaps, but the faith as a whole has a shameful track record. So too can be the case with Islam, Mormonism and certain strains of Buddhism and Hinduism. Indeed, when I spoke to Muslims and Hindus about Sikhism, they would both stress that it isn’t even a proper religion because either Guru Nanak was actually a Muslim, but they are hiding it (the Muslims), or that Guru Nanak was born a Hindu and stayed a Hindu and so the Sikhs are Hindus without realising it (the Hindus). Both replies stuck in my throat.
However, the lack of seeking converts, was not the only barrier for me. Another was that Sikhism is culturally very alien to me. Whilst there are Sikhs all over the world, from numerous races, in Britain at least, it is steeped in a cultural milieu that, whilst intriguing and interesting, is not my own. From the language of the prayers to the food served in the langar, it is saturated in Punjabi tradition which is why it has done so well there. But I am not a Punjabi and so I feel a cultural, if not a spiritual distance. And that, to me, matters. Some say that culture is not important, only the faith, but culture is the lens through which we view the world, whether we like it or not and I often see people who adopt a foreign faith and customs as coming across as a little bit lost. I respect Sikh culture and history, but I also adhere to the principal chiselled above the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ — “Know Thyself”. I may not always want to be a white guy with a Christian heritage from the middle of England, but I am, and those factors will always shape me. Denial of this reality is simply unhealthy.
That though, was not the main sticking point. Instead, the thing is, what I learned slowly was that whilst I had fallen in love with Guru Nanak, Sikhism as a whole is something subtly different. For Nanak was but the first of ten gurus, culminating in Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708) who announced that, following his death, instead of a living guru, the holy book the Adi Granth would become the eternal guru, the Guru Granth Sahib.
The official Sikh line is that the ten gurus preached the same message as Nanak, but as I read more about them, I began to struggle.
The early gurus — Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das and Arjan — were quite similar to Guru Nanak. Each was chosen by the guru before them due to their standing within the community as opposed to any familial ties to his predecessor. But whilst they stayed constant, the world around changed, becoming more and more hostile to the faith, so much so that Arjan was tortured and then put to death by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in Lahore aged but 43. I visited the site of his martyrdom in 2023 and found it moving, not just for what happened there, but for what happened afterwards. Knowing he was about to die, Arjan hurriedly nominated, not an elder, but his son, Hargobind, as the Sixth Guru. Hargobind was only eleven years old when he attained the guruship.
Was it the trauma of having his father murdered or was it that he was put under the influence of certain people at an impressionable age, or was it just that he followed the logical course of Nanak’s path? Who can say, but Hargobind was very different as Guru to his predecessors. He introduced the process of militarisation to Sikhism and symbolised it by wearing two swords, representing the dual concept of mīrī and pīrī (temporal power and spiritual authority). He also created the first Sikh parliament, the Akal Takht, and, when he died, nominated his grandson to follow him as the Seventh Guru. Afterwards, the guruship always stayed within the family and militarism was a central feature of the faith.
Which I struggle with. I am no fighter and much prefer to be a peacemaker. Plus, one’s early childhood colours how one thinks, and my childhood example of a holy man was the Nazarene who, even when attacked, refused to fight and bravely declared to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. Nanak would have got on well with Jesus I feel; they could have trodden the path together and learnt from each other’s parables. As for Guru Hargobind and those that followed him (with the notable exception of Guru Tegh Bahadur who accepted martyrdom in 1675 for the sake Kashmiri Hindus, not even Sikhs) I suspect the relationship would have been less close.
I’ve talked about this with many Sikhs, and some say that they struggle with the militarism too, whereas others stress that it was necessary for the time and place. One friend pointed out that as well as his military exploits, Guru Gobind Singh was also an accomplished poet, and that he coated all his arrows in gold so that the family of the people they killed would not be impoverished. Which is laudable and inspirational. And they have also pointed out, quite accurately, that whilst I might think of myself as a person in the mould of Guru Nanak when I am walking the pilgrim path, when I am doing my day-to-day work with the trade unions, fighting to protect those most vulnerable in society, I am perhaps more like Guru Gobind Singh. And perhaps they are right, but it doesn’t sit right with me which is where my issues lie. The influence of my childhood indoctrination into the cult of Jesus Christ runs deep I suppose.
And so, I am not a Sikh, yet at the same time, in a sense, I am. I am not a Sikh because it is not my faith and I rarely worship in any gurdwara. I do not wear any of the Five Ks and, on the census, I still write down ‘Christian’.
Conversely, on my udasi with Sikhism, I have learnt a lot. The importance of pilgrimage, the power of eating together as one, gender equality in a very segregated culture and an openness and tolerance unmatched in many other faiths. And I do like to go down to the gurdwara to sit and meditate (as well as eat), and I have been on pilgrimages to many great Sikh sites.
Nor too is my udasi over. Not only Guru Nanak, but the entire Sikh faith continues to intrigue me. I wish to explore more my relationship with the later gurus and fully understand why they took a more militaristic tack. Was it from necessity or choice? Plus, I wish to truly enter into the Punjabi culture more to see how Sikhism affects the everyday lives of those who adhere to it, how it functions in the landscape that spawned it. So, yes, I am planning further trips to both India and Pakistan, and I aim to do as I have with Christianity, and complete a walking pilgrimage between some of the major gurdwaras. After all, that approach has always served me well thus far.
And so, I guess I am now a friend of the Sikhs, and in one crucial sense, one with them. For it was Guru Nanak himself who said, “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. We are all disciples of God.”
And on that account, I am in full agreement.
Thanks to Rupinder Panesar with the conversations and suggestions when writing this piece.
Written 14/06/2023 Smallthorne, UK
Copyright © 2023, Matthew E. Pointon
[1] The course was a two-week PGCE Subject Knowledge Booster Course, put on to boost subject knowledge for people wanting to become RE teachers. I never did become an RE teacher, but I found it the most incredible and enlightening course of my life and I am still in touch with the tutor, the inspirational Dr. Francis Farrell.
[2] The Punjabi word for disciple is ‘Sikh’.
[3] There are different versions of this tale told in the Jamansakhis (tales of Guru Nanak’s life). In some versions, it is said that Guru Nanak shifted his feet away from the Kaaba so as not to offend the man, and then the Kaaba itself moved so that it was where his feet were pointing, and this miracle convinced the shrine keeper of the wisdom of Guru Nanak’s words.