The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society: A Study in Social Analysis

The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society essays to present a social analysis of the facts, factors and forces that attended the origin and evolution of the Sikh society in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Originating as a protestant faith within the broader framework of contemporary Hinduism and more or less in a line with other earlier and contemporary protestant faiths and cults of northern India, the Nanak-panth achieved nevertheless and in less than half-a-century, an integrity and identity of its own and provided for itself a solid secular base, which other contemporary protestant sects and cults could not do. It also confronted contemporary Islam in Indian and despite violent political conflicts with contemporary Muslim rulers, sought consciously to work out a socio-cultural synthesis of the two cultures without allowing any sufferance to their basic tenets derived from Hinduism. The monograph provides a skilful analysis of the medieval socio-religious, economic and political situation to show how the Sikh Gurus and the expanding community of their sishyas (=Sikhs) responded actively and creatively to the contemporary situation and became stronger and more well-knit. In the process of this analysis many new insights have been presented, many new suggestions and interpretations offered and many new questions raised. Of the two long appendices one is given to an academic analysis of the historical antecedents and of the nature and character of sahaj which is the highest mystical experience in Guru Nanak's faith; another brings the story of Sikhism and the Sikh society uptodate, that is, from the death of Guru Gobind Singh to the beginning of the twentieth century.