36 Human Values in Sikhism

1.      Learning Outcome

2.      Introduction

3.      Teachings of Gurus

4.      Major values in Sikhism

5.      Summary

1.      Learning objectives

After completing this module, the students will be able to learn about the following:

• Teachings of Gurus
• Major values in Sikhism

2.    Introduction

In Sikhism, the human values and ethics are taught by all the Gurus in one form or the other. In this module we would study the teachings and preaching’s of all the ten Gurus and the major values preached by them. Nanak not only founded a new religion and started a new pattern of living; he also set in motion an agrarian movement whose impact was felt all over the country. Nanak was a strict monotheist. He refused to accept any compromise on the concept of the unity of God. Nanak was of the view that the God was infinite and he could not die to be reincarnated nor could He assume human form which was subject to decay and death. Nanak disapproved the worship of idols because people tended to look upon them as God instead of symbolic representations. The Hindus had advocated three alternative paths to salvation: that of action, of knowledge and of devotion. Guru Nanak accepted the path of Bhakti laying emphasis on the concept of Name. Nanak believed that by repetition of the naam one conquered the greatest of all evils, the ego because the ego also carries in it the seed of salvation which can be nurtured by the fullness of naam. Once the power of the ego is properly canalised the conquest of other five sins- lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride-follows a matter of course. Angad opened more centres and organised a regular system of collecting offerings to meet their expenses. He had copies made of Nanak’s hymns and supplied them to each centre. These copies were made of script which until then had no precise alphabet of his own. Angad took the thirty five letters of the acrostic composed by Nanak, selected the appropriate letters from other scripts and called the new script Gurmukhi. Amar Das had been a devout Hindu enjoying the reputation for kindliness and piety long before his conversion to Sikhism. He showed great devotion in forwarding the work that Nanak and Angad had begun. He made the langar an integral institution of the Sikh church by insisting that anyone who eanted to see him had first to accept his hospitality by eating with the disciples. Amar Das introduced many innovations which intended to break the close affiliations of the Sikhs with the Hindus. He tried to do away the practice of Purdah, advocated monogamy, encouraged inter caste alliances and remarriages of widows. Har Rai had seventeen years of ministry. Although he had inherited a militant tradition and a small army, he was a man of peace. He loved to hunt, but only to bring the wild animals for his private zoo in Kiratpur. He hated to hurt any living being. He said, ‘You can repair or rebuild a temple or a mosque but not a broken heart’. He adhered strictly to the routine of a life of a prayer exhorted by Nanak. Let us study them all in detail.

3.      Teachings of Gurus

3.1 Teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji

Nanak not only founded a new religion and started a new pattern of living; he also set in motion an agrarian movement whose impact was felt all over the country. To get a comprehensive picture of his achievements, it is necessary to know the religious and secular aspects of his teachings. Following are some of the salient points of his faith:

Conception  of  God:  Nanak  was  a  strict  monotheist.  He  refused  to  accept  any compromise on the concept of the unity of God. Nanak was of the view that the God was infinite and he could not die to be reincarnated nor could He assume human form which  was  subject  to  decay  and  death.  Nanak  disapproved  the  worship  of idols because people tended to look upon them as God instead of symbolic representations. Nanak believed that God was both truth and reality as opposed to falsehood and illusion. He not only made God a spiritual concept but also based principles of social behaviour on the concept. If God is truth, to speak an untruth is to be ungodly. Untruthful conduct not only hurts one’s neighbours; it is also unreligious. A good sikh must not only believe that God is only one, but also conduct himself in such a manner towards his fellow beings that he does not harm them. Nanak believed that the power of God cannot be defined because God was Nirankar (formless).

The ideal of life: Nanak did not approved of ascetic isolation or torturing of the flesh as a step to enlightenment. His ideal was to have the detachment of the yogi while living among one’s fellow beings. Nanak had often to leave his family to propagate his mission, always came back to his home and lived among the common people as one of them.

Casteless society: The Bhaktas had paid only lip service to the ideal casteless society. Nanak took practical steps to break the vicious hold of caste by starting free community kitchens in all centres and persuading his followers, irrespective of their castes, to eat together. Nanak’s writings abound with the passage deploring the system and other practices which grew out of caste concepts, particularly the notion held by Brahmins that even the shadow of a lower caste man on the place where the food was being cooked made it impure.

Gentle path of Nam and Sahaj: The Hindus had advocated three alternative paths to salvation: that of action, of knowledge and of devotion. Guru Nanak accepted the path of Bhakti laying emphasis on the concept of Name. Nanak believed that by repetition of the naam one conquered the greatest of all evils, the ego because the ego also carries in it the seed of salvation which can be nurtured by the fullness of naam. Once the power of the ego is properly canalised the conquest of other five sins- lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride- follows a matter of course. The wanderings of the restless mind are stilled and it attains a state of divine bliss. It is in that state of super consciousness one receives a vision of God and merges one’s light with the light eternal. He believed that all human beings have a basic fund of goodness which like the pearl in the oyster only awaits the opening of the shell to emerge and enrich them.

3.2 Guru Angad Dev ji

In his own quiet way he filled in the brickwork of the creation whose scaffolding had been erected be Nanak. As the number of disciples increased, the expenses of the langar went up. Angad opened more centres and organised a regular system of collecting offerings to meet their expenses. He had copies made of Nanak’s hymns and supplied them to each centre. These copies were made of script which until then had no precise alphabet of his own. Angad took the thirty five letters of the acrostic composed by Nanak, selected the appropriate letters from other scripts and called the new script Gurmukhi.

3.3 Guru Amar Das Ji

Amar Das had been a devout Hindu enjoying the reputation for kindliness and piety long before his conversion to Sikhism. He showed great devotion in forwarding the work that Nanak and Angad had begun. He made the langar an integral institution of the Sikh church by insisting that anyone who eanted to see him had first to accept his hospitality by eating with the disciples. Amar Das introduced many innovations which intended to break the close affiliations of the Sikhs with the Hindus. He tried to do away the practice of Purdah, advocated monogamy, encouraged inter caste alliances and remarriages of widows. He strictly forbade the practice of Sati, the burning of widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

3.4 Guru Ram Das Ji

Ram Das had spent the better part of his forty years in the service of the community when he was called upon to become its leader. He had looked after the administration of the parishes and had represented Amar Das in the mughal court. When he became Guru, he moved from Goindwal to the neighbourhood of the tank and started building a town around it. He invited tradesman to set up their business in the town and with the revenues so obtained he was able to expand his activities to distant parts of India.

3.5 Guru Arjun Dev Ji

Arjun’s path was full of pitfalls. Arjun’s first task was to complete the building of a temple. He invited the Muslim divine, Mian Mir of Lahore to lay the foundation stone of the Harimandir, te temple of God. Instead of building the shrine on a high plinth as was of the Hindu custom, Arjun had built it on a level lower than the surrounding land, so that worshippers would have to go down the steps to enter it. And unlike the Hindu temples, which had only one entrance, Arjun had the Harimandir open on all four sides. Arjun had to raise money for building the temple. All Sikhs were asked to donate the tenth of their income in the name of the Guru. In August 1604, the work was completed and the Granth Sahib, the holy volume, was formally installed in the temple at Amritsar. Bhai Buddha was appointed as the first reader or granthi. The Granth reflected the faith of Nanak in its entirety. Apart from the writings of the Gurus, it contained the selection of the compositions of the poet saints from all parts of the northern India, both Hindus and Muslims of all castes. Its hymns were of high poetic order its language intelligible to the illiterate peasant, its ethics simple and direct. The Granth became the most powerful factor in spreading the teachings of the gurus among the masses.

3.6 Guru Hargobind Ji

After the murder of the saintly Arjun, the Sikhs gathered round around the eleven year old Hargobind. The young Hargobind took the seat of his father with two swords girded round his waist, one to symbolise spiritual power and other temporal. He made it known to his Sikhs that thereafter he would welcome offerings of arms and horses instead of money. He trained a body of soldiers and spent much time in martial exercise and hunting. Across the Harimandir, he built Akal Takht where instead of chanting hymns of peace, the listening to religious discourses were discussed and the plans of military conquest were made.

3.7 Guru Har Rai Ji

Har Rai had seventeen years of ministry. Although he had inherited a militant tradition and a small army, he was a man of peace. He loved to hunt , but only to bring the wild animals for his private zoo in Kiratpur. He hated to hurt any living being. He said, ‘You can repair or rebuild a temple or a mosque but not a broken heart’. He adhered strictly to the routine of a life of a prayer exhorted by Nanak.

3.8 Guru Hari Krishen Ji

Hari Krishen was stricken to small pox. Before he died, he indicated that the next guru was not to be either Ram Rai or Dhirmal, but an older man living in the village of Bakala.

3.9 Guru Teg Bahadur ji

Hari Krishen meant his granduncle Teg Bahadur to be the next guru. When Teg Bahadur returned to Punjab from Patna, he found Hindus and Sikhs of the Punjab in the state of nervous agitation. There were stories of the demolition of the temples and forcible conversions, taxes had been imposed on Hindus visiting their pilgrimage, Teg Bahadur’s rivals had discreetly disappeared from the scene. It left to him to instil the confidence among his own people and the Hindus begun to look to Sikhs to protect them from the tyranny of the officials. Teg Bahadur undertook an extensive tour of Punjab. Wherever he went, he attracted great crowds and was given handsome donations by his admirers. His exhortation to the people to stand firm could not have been palatable to the government. He was summoned to Delhi. He was sentenced to death and Guru’s body was cremated a few miles from the place of execution.

3.10 Guru Gobind Singh Ji

Gobind was only nine when his father’s sacred head was bought to Anandpur for cremation. Gobind spent many years of his childhood in Himalayan town on the banks of Yamuna. He was taught Sanskrit and Persian along with Hindi and Punjabi. He learnt to ride and shoot and he spent a great deal of time hunting. He learnt the peaceful mission of Nanak and his four successors. He was also told of the martyrdom of Arjun and Hargobind’s arms taking its revenge. His mission in life became clear to him, it became the dharmayudh, the battle for the sake of righteousness. He baptised five men in new manner. He mixed sugar in plain water and churned it with double edged dagger to the recitation of hymns. The five who had until then belonged to different Hindu castes were made to drink out of one bowl to signify their initation into the casteless fraternity of Khalsa. Five emblems of khalsa were kes, kangha, kach, kara and kirpan.

4.    Major values followed in Sikhism

The major values that are followed in Sikhism are as follows:

• One god
• Gender equality Race equality Remember god Honest work
• Share with others Do sewa
• Respect for rights of others Right to defend
• Fear none but God
• Sewa and Support of Weak Live to highest spiritual level
• Don’t use force

5.   Summary

In Sikhism, the human values and ethics are taught by all the Gurus in one form or the other. Nanak not only founded a new religion and started a new pattern of living; he also set in motion an agrarian movement whose impact was felt all over the country. Nanak was a strict monotheist. He refused to accept any compromise on the concept of the unity of God. Nanak was of the view that the God was infinite and he could not die to be reincarnated nor could He assume human form which was subject to decay and death. Nanak disapproved the worship of idols because people tended to look upon them as God instead of symbolic representations. The Hindus had advocated three alternative paths to salvation: that of action, of knowledge and of devotion. Guru Nanak accepted the path of Bhakti laying emphasis on the concept of Name. Nanak believed that by repetition of the naam one conquered the greatest of all evils, the ego because the ego also carries in it the seed of salvation which can be nurtured by the fullness of naam. Once the power of the ego is properly canalised the conquest of other five sins- lust, anger, greed, attachment and pride- follows a matter of course. Amar Das had been a devout Hindu enjoying the reputation for kindliness and piety long before his conversion to Sikhism. He showed great devotion in forwarding the work that Nanak and Angad had begun. He made the langar an integral institution of the Sikh church by insisting that anyone who eanted to see him had first to accept his hospitality by eating with the disciples. Amar Das introduced many innovations which intended to break the close affiliations of the Sikhs with the Hindus. He tried to do away the practice of Purdah, advocated monogamy, encouraged inter caste alliances and remarriages of widows. Har Rai had seventeen years of ministry. Although he had inherited a militant tradition and a small army, he was a man of peace. He loved to hunt, but only to bring the wild animals for his private zoo in Kiratpur. He hated to hurt any living being. He said, ‘You can repair or rebuild a temple or a mosque but not a broken heart’. He adhered strictly to the routine of a life of a prayer exhorted by Nanak. When Teg Bahadur returned to Punjab from Patna, he found Hindus and Sikhs of the Punjab in the state of nervous agitation. There were stories of the demolition of the temples and forcible conversions, taxes had been imposed on Hindus visiting their pilgrimage, Teg Bahadur’s rivals had discreetly disappeared from the scene. It left to him to instil the confidence among his own people and the Hindus begun to look to Sikhs to protect them from the tyranny of the officials. Teg Bahadur undertook an extensive tour of Punjab. . He was summoned to Delhi. He was sentenced to death and Guru’s body was cremated a few miles from the place of execution. Gobind was only nine when his father’s sacred head was bought to Anandpur for cremation. He was taught Sanskrit and Persian along with Hindi and Punjabi. He learnt to ride and shoot and he spent a great deal of time hunting. He learnt the peaceful mission of Nanak and his four successors. He baptised five men in new manner. He mixed sugar in plain water and churned it with double edged dagger to the recitation of hymns. The five who had until then belonged to different Hindu castes were made to drink out of one bowl to signify their initation into the casteless fraternity of Khalsa. Five emblems of khalsa were kes, kangha, kach, kara and kirpan.

Suggested readings and references

• Pramod Sharma, “Business Ethics and Corporate Values: An Indian Perspective”,Ravintanaya Publications, Shimla
• S.K. Bhatia, “Business Ethics and Corporate Governance” Deep & Deep Publications,New Delhi
• A.C. Fernando, “Business Ethics and Corporate Governance” Pearson Publications
• SB Gogate, “Human Values & Professional Ethics”, Vikas Publishing House, NewDelhi.
• Harris & Hartman, “Organizational Behavior” Jaico Publication House, 2002