Text as sword Sikh religious violence taken for wonder Balbinder Singh Bhogal Loving-devotion (bhagati) of Hari1 is the sword and armour of the True-Guru… (di Granth: 312 G.Ramdas) I bow with love (hit) and attention (cit) to the Holy Sword (sr )…2 (Dasam Granth: 39 G.Gobind) Sikh texts and traditions: love’s hidden violence Popular media representations of the Sikh tradition flash the image of a bearded, turbanwearing Sikh male with sword as a negative icon symbolizing religious violence and separatism. Although only a minority engaged in the struggle for an independent state (Khalistan) during the 1980s, the whole Sikh tradition was regularly depicted as a separatist movement comprised of ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’. This discursive formation, which reads Sikhs as a violent people, rises out of a complex process inflected by the power and politics of representation as well as the specific histories of particular leaders, rulers and events. Yet the causes of this recent and violent history are attributed to the past of the Sikh Gurus, particularly the ‘martyrdoms’ of Guru Arjan in 1606 and Guru Tegh Bahadur in 1675, and Gobind Singh’s establishment of the Khls (‘Pure Ones’)—a ‘military’ order in 1699.3 It is often argued that the change in policy of the Mughal rulers, from Akbar’s (1556–1605) tolerance to Jahangir’s (1605–1627) and Aurangzeb’s (1658– 1707) intolerance towards non-Muslims, necessitated a military response to safeguard Hindu and Sikh traditions from forced conversion, tyranny and obliteration. Scholarly discourse, via a particular reading of Sikh history, is somewhat complicit in the production of these media stereotypes. The historical narrative of a ‘break’ in the Guru Period (1469–1708) from ‘pacifism’ to ‘militancy’ that led to the transformation and/or displacement of ‘saints’ into ‘soldiers’ has been widely accepted by scholars— with the implication that there was a shift from ‘religion’ to ‘politics’. This break is seemingly evidenced by the change in attire, architecture and style of leadership of the Gurus. Little is made of the Sikh Guru’s own understanding of two principles that connect these pairs within a broader religious cosmology, symbolized most clearly by the sixth Guru’s donning of two-swords, representing worldly and spiritual (mr-pr) power simultaneously—and that violence is understood as a last resort, viable only after all other means have been exhausted (Zafaranmah, DG: 1389–1390, verse 22). This assumption of a break in Sikh tradition operates on a simplistic and modern dichotomy that ignores the constant innovation of the Sikh tradition as reflected in the vocabulary, metaphors and themes of its scriptures. This paper explores the discrepancies and misreadings of the transformation thesis, charting its relations to a modern polarized understanding of ‘love’ and contra ‘violence’, ‘religion’ and contra ‘politics’. The Sikh tradition stresses the loving praise of Akl Purakh ‘Timeless Being’, conceived as a nameless non-dual singular reality approached through a variety of personal names (Hari, Allah) with attributes Yet it also understands this Being impersonally without attributes as a becoming, a praxis and state (sahaj, sunnu-samdhi) of truthful living (sacu ). The central desire of Sikh bhagati is geared to a life lived in accordance with Akl’s Will, Order and Command (hukam) as it is ‘written’ in daily life and activity. A perception of hukam is seen as impossible without first sacrificing the ego (haumai). Like much of the (devotion to a Formless Being) teaching across north India, Sikh praxis is anti-ritual, anticaste, anti-scripture/ Sanskrit, but it is also a world-affirming householder (girah) tradition, promoting an egalitarian ethos, gender equality, social justice and welfare. The title of this chapter4 then requires explanation, for ‘text as sword’ signals the idea that Sikh scripture and practice, ostensibly about the love of Akl through relationships with others, simultaneously concerns violence. How can a ‘religion’ of love be violent? This is the peculiar predicament we find ourselves in assessing violence within the Sikh tradition; there seems to be a conflation between peace and war, compassion and justice, love and violence internal to the Sikh tradition itself. The concurrence is hard to countenance; a much easier, though inevitably superficial, reading is to separate them in time, as McLeod does (below), and postulate a ‘break’ or ‘transformation’ in the tradition—words which often function as pseudonyms for a ‘fall’. In contemporary scholarship the Sikh scriptures of the di Granth, ‘Original Book’ compiled in 1604 by the Fifth Guru, Arjan, and the Dasam Granth, ‘Book of the Tenth (Guru)’ collated by Mani Singh in the early eighteenth century, become iconic symbols of this ‘break’ in tradition. It would seem, as has been consistently interpreted by various scholars since the colonially inspired Sikh reform movements (1870s to 1920s), that there was and is a radical disjuncture between the obvious of the AG’s melodious though didactic lyrical praise and the battle cries of the DG’s ‘Hindu’ epic myths of gods defeating demons.5 Rather than read militarization after the sixth Guru’s martyrdom as a break in tradition (amounting to a loss of the ‘religious’) as ‘outsider interpreters’ do, or claiming a continuity of the same ‘Nanakian’ essence throughout Sikh history as ‘insider exegetes’ are wont to do, I argue for a ‘continuity-in-difference’. Here, a Buddhist logic is implied: the present is neither the same nor different from the past—with the implication that Religion and violence in south asia 102 conservation requires, rather than denies, innovation. That is to say, neither is Guru Nanak (as read in the AG) identical with Guru Gobind (as read in the DG), for this would deny the passing of time and context; nor is Guru Nanak (AG) different from Guru Gobind (DG) for this would deny obvious lineage and guruship between them. This continuity-in-difference does not signal a diachronic movement of some essence or its loss, but relates more a pattern, style, and creative resonance or echo related across the Gurus via different words and actions. The following consists of two parts: the first, reflects on the theoretical and methodological issues concerning the motif of love’s hidden violence and its key terms: ‘religion’ (dharam), ‘love’ (bhagati) and ‘violence’ These terms are re-evaluated and situated within their medieval contexts. The second part then focuses on the Sikh tradition as a continuation, conflation, and critique of strands charted earlier, especially those that figure bhagati as violent-devotion—thus upturning romantic and/or liberal constructions of ‘religion’ as pacifist and apolitical. It concludes with the suggestion that perhaps we do not know what violence is and underestimate our relation to it; and that likewise, our notion of love may not be devoid of inexplicable and harmful actions. PART 1: RE-UNDERSTANDING ‘RELIGION’ AND ‘BHAKTI’ The metaphors and practices found in the writings of the Sikh Gurus are inseparable from the rhetoric and practices of the wider socio-political contexts of foreign Rule. The ‘discursive formation’ of Sikh identity and tradition discloses a constant interaction that telescopes a minority movement struggling for survival in often hostile environments of various rulers (the Lodhi Sultanate, the Mughals Emperors, British and Hindu governance). A modern incapacity: polarized imaginations and the misreading of bhagati According to McLeod (1984, 1989, 1997), Madan (1994), and Fenech (2000), this ‘transformation’ is assumed to be from ‘pacifism’ to ‘militarism’, from interior ‘love’ to exterior ‘violence’. Such a view seems to have been inherited verbatim from the first orientalist observers of the tradition (see Singh, 1999:91). Even those opposed to British colonial rule espoused similar views. M.K. Gandhi perceives ‘Guru Govind Singh’ amongst others (Shivaji, Pratap, Ranjit) as ‘misguided and therefore, dangerous patriots’ (1967:487, 491) because he believes the Indian ‘masses, unlike those of Europe, were untouched by the warlike spirits’ since war ‘never was the normal course of Indian life’ (1967:488). Gandhi’s belief in literal non-violence led him to an ‘abhorrence of the method’; he states ‘I do not regard killing [war generally]…as good in any circumstances whatsoever’ (1967:489). However, the epigraphs opening this chapter suggest a different Indic history and a ‘continuity’ between the terms and ideas of the early and late Gurus, the AG and the DG, since both groups and texts equate love (bhagati, hit) with violence/sword The continuity within the Sikh tradition and its texts is best understood as a rhetoric of self-sacrifice—making Sikh bhagati a devotion of ‘violent’ love. This is hard Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 103 to comprehend and some balk at the conflation and ask, like McLeod, how can a ‘religion of interiority’ assume a martial politics of ‘an overtly exterior identity’? (1989:36). Yet the question reveals a peculiarly modern, secular standpoint that ‘religion’ and ‘politics’, ‘pacifism’ and ‘militarism’ entertain, and should entertain, contrary positions. This assumption leads to the ‘inevitable’ split in Sikh tradition and texts—predisposing McLeod to argue that the two texts are ‘in fact completely separate’ (1984:6). The complexity and continuity-in-difference of the ‘violence’ of the believer and the ‘affection’ of the warrior is therefore missed. An example of a recent work on martyrdom in the Sikh tradition continues McLeod’s misreading, sending the modern scholar in search of a text to bridge the supposed divide: We should note that within the martyr tradition, both forms of martyrdom, those in which violence is appropriated as a last resort and those in which the sword is withheld, are revered and that there seems to be no text attempting to discriminate between the two. (Fenech 2000:94) The classificatory and disciplinary desires to look for an explanatory text in the first place, something obviously foreign to the tradition itself, may reflect a suspect methodology as well as a certain modern, humanist incapacity to read religious violence otherwise than as corruption. According to Sikh tradition, the AG was transformed by the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, into the ‘living’ textual Guru shortly before his death in 1708. This is significant because the wonder of the ‘Word of Akl’ is synonymous for Sikhs with the ‘Word of the Guru’, but crucially the Sikh Gurus did not monopolize Akl’s Speech, given their belief that Akl speaks through a multiplicity of voices, including non-Sikh ones, many of which are incorporated into the AG. Yet these wonders of the Word are also communicated as a Sword, and in the DG Akl is also named All-Steel (sarab-loh), i.e. Sword and All-Death (sarab-kl)—continuing Guru Nanak’s vision of the absolute as having both personal and impersonal forms. It is argued here that the change in Mughal policy that metamorphoses the AG’s Hari into the DG’s Sword, does not by itself ‘create’ the Sikh response, ‘transforming’ them into violent warriors. There is a radical openness to the teachings of the Sikh Gurus contained within the AG that does not rule out the possibility of violent behaviour as ‘just’ and ‘pleasing to Hari’. It is the significance of these teachings which are central to Sikh thought that have been overlooked. I therefore chart and reflect upon the AG’s rhetoric of the Sword before the militarization of the Sikh panth (community), as well as the rhetoric of love that continues after the ‘break’ even during the dark hours of war, as evidenced in the DG. In other words, underpinning both texts is a constant, devotional but violent rhetoric of self-sacrifice, which continues differently throughout Sikh history. The milieu that predisposes modern scholars, like McLeod, to see a ‘break’ in tradition rather than a ‘continuity-in-difference’ dates back to British colonial rule and its orientalist legacy. Though this chapter does not directly disrupt the neat but problematic polarizations between religion-contra-secularism, and tradition-contra-modernity, it is quite clear that the identifications of religion with tradition as pre-modern, as well as reason with the secular as modern, are ones ill-suited to the worldview of the Sikh Gurus. Religion and violence in south asia 104 The complexity of contemporary discourses on the rise of ‘religious nationalisms’ with attendant discussion of the politics of translation and the problematics of postcolonial representation prohibit any simplistic discussion of the Sikh tradition.6 As van der Veer argues, ‘Nationalism has to be connected to secularism to be truly modern and enlightened. Therefore “politicized religions” threaten both reason and liberty’ (1996:256). This dichotomy between religion (as an apolitical spirituality) and violence is foreign to pre-colonial Sikh tradition and as such presents a misreading of both the AG and DG that is integral to colonial reconstructions of tradition as religion contra secular modernity.7 This is, in part, an effect of a ‘discursive construction of Western modernity, in which a modern construction of public and private makes religion a private matter of the individual’ (van der Veer 1996:269). From the perspective of modern colonial consciousness, co-opted but also co-created by Sikh reformers, this structural distortion brings into currency a chain of polarized pairs headed by a reflection on scripture where the AG (due to its ‘monotheism’) becomes a Western mimete and the DG (given its ‘polytheism’) remains the orientalist’s other: AG DG Religious Political Non-violent Violent Private Public Pacifism Militarism Love/Erotic Violence/Sword Moral Immoral Rational Mythic One Hari Avataras of Hari Sikh Hindu The Singh Sabha reformers (1870–1960), given their project of constructing a Sikh identity in contradistinction to the Hindu and in mimesis of the ruling British (and Protestant Christian) power, only managed to re-inscribe such dichotomies. Thus a firm wedge was placed between the religious and the political, private and public. The post-Enlightenment urge to define religion as an autonomous sphere, separate from politics and economy, is, of course, at the same time also a liberal political demand that religion ‘should’ be separate from politics…. The economic and political pieces constitute the real elements, while the religious is relegated to the unreal. (van der Veer 1996:256, 269) What is overlooked by such a modern, secular, liberal consciousness is the possibility that the ‘unreal’ can become a site for socio-political change. Van der Veer notes, ‘it is Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 105 precisely the effect of the normalizing and disciplining project of secular modernity that religion becomes so important as source of resistance’ (1996:256). That is to say, within the Sikh context, defending the self violently (if need be), as well as non-violently in acts of passive resistance, both conducted to the point of physical death, is not separated from ‘killing-the-ego-self’ metaphorically, emotionally and mentally through bhagati. This is because the pre-colonial Sikh context does not separate so neatly the religious from the political, the loving from the violent. It is incumbent upon us then to re-understand religions love and political violence as two moments of the same action that also speak a political love and religious ‘violence’.8 McLeod’s understanding of the difference between the AG and the DG as symbolic of the transformed tradition from early to late Gurus, then becomes a veiled critique of the tradition’s turn from ‘pacifism to militarism’ given his contemporary, secular perspective. McLeod expresses a sense of perplexity in his analysis if not disappointment and in so doing unknowingly plays out a modernist polemic of polarities (1997:111). McLeod reduces ‘religion’ to an internal, subjective space of the ‘mind/ spirit’, and limits politics to an external, objective realm of the ‘body’. He therefore assumes that Guru Nanak’s ‘interior religiosity’ is naturally opposed to Guru Gobind’s Akl army with their external uniform, disciplinary rituals and political ‘aspirations’. However, the Gurus themselves, as well as close observers of the tradition, were well aware of such changes, but saw them as innovations conserving tradition not displacing it. Navdeep Mandair writes: This conflation of quietism and militancy signals the inadequacy, indeed, the spuriousness, of conceiving (Sikh) religious identity in terms of a dichotomy between interiority and exteriority, but also puts into question the idea, written into this dichotomy, that the interior religious experience constitutes religion’s proper mode of expression. (2003:108) Both conceptions of a religious love and a political violence show themselves, in the literature on the Sikhs and their tradition, to be impositions, overwriting indigenous understandings within a modern secular frame that privatizes the religious and ‘secularizes’ the political. The task here is to ‘recover’, or at least re-think, notions of love and violence, religion and politics together, as a necessary response to the rewritings of the colonial reform period. This chapter therefore argues that, in order to comprehend McLeod’s orientalist quandary, a different set of questions, central to the textual tradition, have to be posed: is Guru Nanak’s scriptural Word itself violent as well as loving?9 Should the religious Text also be read as a Sword? Can violence in the AG and love in the DG be found? Furthermore, if the Guru’s Word is inherently quietistic and militant then the modern, humanist anxiety over the Sikh’s wonder over religious violence is misguided, and the supposed break in tradition a colonial misreading. If Sikh scripture and tradition point to a ‘conflictual ontology’10 representing a ‘thematization of the “divine” as violent presence’, then ‘to posit Sikhism as commensurable with the contours of a transcendental conception of religion, one which privileges a pacific engagement with the world, seems unjustifiable’, where ‘every announcement of its militant ontology is always already Religion and violence in south asia 106 informed by a whisper of regret, an inscrutable rhetoric of apology’ (Mandair, N. 2003:105–6). How then to read and hear Hari’s/Nanak’s Word as love and violence, without this modern whisper of regret? The rhetoric of self-sacrifice: bhagati as violent-love But what is a Sikh without sacrifice? (The Khalsa Advocate, 18 March 1910, p.2. [cited by Fenech 2000:210]) The foundational continuity that is differently expressed throughout the Sikh tradition is the idiom of sacrificing the self which implies a violent-love. It is commonplace to read Sikh bhagati as violent-love under the motif of the living martyr, whether in non-violent or violent resistance. C.F.Andrews (1871–1940), an Anglican missionary, wrote: It was a strangely new experience to these [Sikh] men, to receive blows dealt against them…and yet never to utter a word or strike a blow in return. The vow they had made to God [at the Akl Takht] was kept to the letter. I saw no act, nor look of defiance. It was a true martyrdom for them as they went forward, a true act of faith, a true deed of devotion to God. They remembered their Gurus how they had suffered, and they rejoiced to add their own sufferings to the treasury of their wonderful faith. (cited by Fenech 2000:270) It is clear from this witness and other similar accounts that the act of sacrifice is as much an act of ‘religion’ as it is a radical ‘political’ gesture. The fact that a tradition—which has supposedly transformed itself from ‘pacifism’ to ‘militarism’—would resist the warrior’s nature to fight, and adopt the mode of a non-violent saint, reveals the ‘break-intradition’ thesis to be at least suspect. Furthermore this violent/non-violent open attitude of self-sacrifice can be traced back before the supposed break in tradition occurs. Indeed, Guru Nanak saw each existential moment of life (even if not recognized as such) as one of terror and inevitable violence: ‘Behind, a terrifying tiger; ahead, a pool of fire’ (AG: 1410); from the perspective of the self-centered ego (haumai) life cannot be lived without violent encounters—which can make the everyday extraordinary. If every moment should be understood as an encounter with death, then one cannot avoid a narrative of violent-love, or a rhetoric of sacrifice (hau vr) which obviously implies a way of death, (pu mre). Guru Nanak’s statement that ‘there is no Hindu nor Muslim’ after his first mystical encounter with Hari already depicts a sacrifice of his Hindu identity, if not an identity crisis. This loss of a socially named and embedded self underlies the whole of Guru Nanak’s ‘religious’ ideas. ‘Loving-devotion’ to Hari then, simultaneously implies a violent encounter wherein the ego-self must be murdered if Hari is to be seen and His Way (bidhi) lived. Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 107 It seems, just from this brief overview, that this ‘violent-love’ is an unformulatable mode of becoming given in the moment of acting that can be expressed and released through a variety of means, ranging from the non-violent (prayer, meditation, service, singing, passive resistance) to the violent (self-denial, asceticism, ritually curtailed living, armed self-defence). In this respect no (moral) limit or calculation can prejudge what the (socio-political) moment demands. In other words the religiosity of Sikh bhagati always carries with it a socio-political content: the way (of ‘internal’ sacrifice) cannot be walked without an ‘external’ situated life-context, nor is it to be found by transcending the timebound context, but living that context through time without ‘I’. To substantiate the argument for a ‘continuity-in-difference’ of the existential notion of Sikh bhagati as a context-bound movement of violent-love, (i.e., self-sacrifice) it is argued that militarism, rather than arising out of the ‘martyrdoms’ of Gurus Arjan and Tegh Bahadur alone, existed not only in the language and actions of the early Gurus but within the wider medieval milieu they inherited. This simultaneously shows a different configuration of ‘religion’ vis-à-vis ‘polities’. Three aspects of this pre-Nanak milieu will be charted albeit in a cursory manner: first, the fact that even the most esoteric ‘religious’ language contains metaphors that express socio-political concerns; second, how the concept of violent-love pre-dates Guru Nanak; and third, how these metaphors become ambiguous within the context and phenomenon of ascetic-warriors. Medieval times: metaphor, violent-love and ambiguity Seekers of the Way…. Kill anything that you happen on. Kill a patriarch or an arhat [Enlightened/Worthy disciple of the Buddha] if you happen to meet him. Kill your parents or relatives if you happen to meet them. (I-Hsüan (d.866) in Chan 1973:447–448) This is a Buddhist metaphorical injunction relating the need to transcend attachment to names and forms. Yet the arresting style with its violent imagery is not uncommon throughout the classical and medieval periods. The Mahbharta’s Bhagavadgt and ntiparvan is a noteworthy example. In the epic war and violence are pursued, sometimes deceitfully and regardless of the human cost. The Bhagavadgt narrates the dialogue on dharma between and Arjuna on the eve of war in the middle of the battlefield not in a hermit’s cave. (the incarnation of ) engages in a pro-war dharmic (‘religious’) rhetoric that concludes with the paradigmatic expression of bhakti as a devotion constituted by ‘violent-love’: all actions, including violent ones, if sacrificed to through bhakti, are deemed not only acceptable and worthy but also liberating. Whilst the dialogue of the ‘Song of the Lord’ precedes the outbreak of war, the ‘Book of Peace’ comes after the war. It is delivered by a highly revered Warrior-Prince (Bhishma). Despite being sworn to the adharmic ‘evil/violent’ side of the Kauravas, Bhishma lectures the leader of the Pandavas, Yudhisthira (the son of God Dharma no less) about the intimate relationship between the dharma of kings (rjadharma) and Religion and violence in south asia 108 liberation The Mahbharta’s complex narrative reveals a fertile discourse that interweaves political governance with religious freedom awakening. Davidson (2002:2) argues that there are many examples of ‘the intersection of the religious and the socio-political realms in early medieval India’. Advancing a bold and ‘surprising’ thesis based on metaphor, he argues that the political can be seen in the most esoteric of religions in the early medieval period (c.500 to 1200 CE) in north India and the Deccan. Startlingly, he claims, ‘esoteric Buddhism is the most politicized form to evolve in India’, its defining metaphor being the monk as the ‘Supreme Overlord (rjdhirja) or the Universal Ruler (cakravartin)’. That is to say, even the most ‘interior’ of traditions makes ‘an attempt to sacralize the medieval world’ to ‘transform the political paradigm into vehicles of sanctification’ (Davidson 2002:4–5). Arguing for a ‘culture of military opportunism’, Davidson shows how metaphors of violence and rule permeate all levels and areas of the Buddhist socio-religious imaginary (2002:121). Citing examples of textual mimesis where Buddhist texts map the monk’s ‘ritual behaviour’ onto the king’s ‘royal behaviour’, Davidson reveals that for both this behaviour ‘varies from pacific to destructive’ (2002:122). One of the most conspicuous expressions of a ‘violent-love’ can be found in the metaphors of the (‘The Great Story’).11 This is a South Indian Tamil text composed in the twelfth century which explicitly relates extreme acts of violence performed by 63 saints of the Hindu god iva’ in the name of bhakti. A ‘child saint cuts off his father’s feet’, and another ‘gleefully kills and cooks his son at the request of a visiting aiva ascetic’ (Monius 2004:113–114). These heinous crimes of violence are presented as (radical) ‘expressions of love for iva’ (115). Commentators argue that the ‘violent-love’ (vannanpu) demonstrated by these saints mimic iva’s own propensity toward violence where death is crucial to regenerate life (2004:123). Another South Indian text, the (1178 CE) attributed to classifies the effort involved in bhakti as of two kinds, ‘gentle action and harsh action ’ and that both of these ‘are the dharma of iva’ (v.16. Monius 2004:124). Over time, with the spread of bhakti movements right across India, these metaphors became increasingly ambiguous. Davidson (2002:177) argues that the shift was instigated not by Buddhist but heterodox aivite groups who promoted ‘a discourse of the legitimization of otherwise illegitimate conduct’: The siddha traditions also imported a politics of dominion and control, but for the benefit of the single siddha and not necessarily for the betterment of the surrounding community. Buddhist siddhas both developed radical meditative techniques not seen before in the Buddhist world and wrapped them in language that was simultaneously playful and ferocious, erotic and destructive. (Davidson 2002:337) Sikhs, being householders, not ascetics, are less vulnerable to the individualism implied by Davidson. The householder base also grounds Sikhs more firmly within the sociopolitical context as ‘citizens’, rather than ascetics ‘dead to the world’. Yet both of these orientations contain the trace of this challenging love. Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 109 Contrary to Madan’s orientalist/modernist view, Pinch notes the absence of ‘tolerance’ and ‘pacifism’ in soldier-monk traditions of the eighteenth century: Let there be no mistake: the evolution of a powerful martial tradition within Indian monasticism was very real, the battles fought between monastic orders at the Kumbh were ferocious and deadly, and the mercenary service undertaken by soldier monks in the eighteenth century was extremely dangerous and lucrative. Tolerance and pacifism were ancillary to the world of the soldier monk. And indeed, as recent scholarship in intellectual and cultural history has demonstrated, neither pacifism nor tolerance was given in Indian religious traditions prior to the eighteenth century. Both were brought to the fore to respond to ideological needs in the colonial, nationalist era. (1996:141) Apart from the modern construction of what ‘religion’ should be, i.e., inherently tolerant, loving, increasingly private and pacifist, this desire of the colonial ‘ought’ also operated as a strategy of exclusion and containment. Van der Veer notes that during the nineteenth century the countryside was ‘demilitarized’ which led to ‘de-politicized’ roles for such militant Sadhus and Faqirs resulting in the ‘laicization of institutionalized religion’ (1996:260). Just as it is anachronistic to rewrite the past soldier-monks as purely ‘religious’ figures given their martial involvement in winning political battles, so is it wrong to see Gobind’s Khls as indicating a loss of past religiosity displaced by militarism. It could also be argued that just as one does not gain religiosity by mere fact of renunciation, nor does one simply lose it by donning arms. The move from the religious (read pacifist) AG to the political (read military) DG then operates within a modern construction of religion contra politics, and is further inscribed within the context of religious communalism and traditionalism as opposed to secular liberal modern democracies. Thus the devotee-cum-householder Sikh’s socio-political engagement does not displace his or her religious commitments. However, as we can see from the foregoing discussion, the medieval milieu out of which the Sikh tradition grows was already predisposed to view the divine as well as devotion as a double-edged sword, where religion spoke politics and politics courted religion, and where worship often came with weaponry. To establish and maintain dharam both, it seems, are required. PART 2: THE SIKH TRADITION: METAPHOR, AMBIGUITY AND REALITY Everything is under Your Power; You are the True King (sac shu). (AG:AG: 556 G.Nanak)
Those who realize the Truth, they alone are the true
kings (sacu rje).
(AG: 1088 G.Nanak)
Not only is Hari the True King but also those who realize Hari. It is clear that the master
metaphor that Davidson detects in esoteric Buddhism of the Ruler Supreme is widespread
and recurrent, not only throughout the DG but also within the AG—both of which
‘attempt to sacralize the medieval world’ and ‘transform the political paradigm into
vehicles of transformation’ (2002:4–5). The political metaphors inherent within the AG
are missed by McLeod, Madan, and Fenech—revealing a handicap to their reading of
Guru Nanak’s thought as a ‘pacifist religion’. Guru Nanak’s vocabulary alone
incorporates many words from the Persian, Arabic as well as Indic sources (Shackle
1981). This reveals a desire to appreciate, reconcile but also transcend the Hindu (ascetic,
dharmic) and Muslim juridico-political worldviews. For example he uses both Sanskritic
and Persian namings of heaven (surag, bhisat) and hell (narak, dojak). This compound
style leads Guru Nanak to make many similar and ingenious conflations (see Bhogal
2001). One such conflation that speaks to the present critique of the ‘interiorization’
of Guru Nanak’s ‘religion’ is his juxtaposition of the Hindu Yogi’s esoteric Tenth-Door
within (dasa-dur) with the Muslim divine Door (dar) of God’s Court (darabr) without.
Similarly he conjoins the ascetic (jog) with the sensualist (bhog), householder (girah),
and servant (sevak)—that is, the inner and asocial world with the ‘worldly’ and
socio-political world.
AG metaphors: violent and ambiguous
Guru Nanak’s phrase of the True King (sacce ptis), initially of Hari, gets mapped onto
the True-Guru, and through the Bhatts (panegyrists in the AG) mapped onto the Sikh
Gurus themselves.12 The metaphor of rulership is therefore an integral part of the AG and
the early Sikh Gurus’ vision of social reality. As kings had their court-poets so did the
Gurus, as reflected in the very structure of the AG’s compilation which contains the
writings of six of the Sikh Gurus (90.4 per cent), 15 Bhagats (8.2 per cent) as well as
17 Bhatts (1.4 per cent). These latter court-poets, writing before Guru Arjan’s
‘martyrdom’, eulogized the Gurus as the ‘warriors of the Word’ (sabad sra)
(AG: 1391), as kings whose rule is eternal (AG: 1390), and as warriors of truth, wielding
the power of humility (AG: 1393) fighting the battles of dharam:
Wearing the armour of (yogic) absorption,
(the Guru) has climbed and mounted (the horse) of wisdom.
Holding the bow of Dharma,
the fight of devotion and morality has started.
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 111
He is fearless in the Fear of the Permanent Hari;
He has thrust the spear of the Guru’s Word into the mind.
(AG: 1396 Sal)
The battle of love is superimposed on to the battle of warriors. The socio-political context
of these writings reveals a growing and increasingly wealthy Sikh community who
looked to the Guru for leadership in testing times. Unlike the Buddhist Siddhas, Jains,
and Tantrikas (be they aiva or akta), the Sikh root metaphors for social
virtue, righteousness and justice, as well as those of true rule and administration, are
enacted in the actual activities of the Sikh Gurus and their followers. They built wells,
wrestling grounds, sacred pools, temples; they founded cities, appointed representatives
to collect tithes, held assemblies in the style of Mughal courts, instituted free ‘kitchens’
(directly challenging caste boundaries and social constructions of impurity and pollution),
and voiced critiques of rulers in power. In short the Gurus began a project of social
innovation and organization that was provocatively independent of Mughal
administration (Grewal 1998:28–61; Fenech 2000:73–92). The early Gurus certainly did
not confine their vision to an inner, private domain; they were seen as pillars of ‘religion’
(dn) and increasingly the ‘world’ (duny) (Grewal 2001:39 fn.25).
In this wider perspective the presumed break in tradition ignores a wealth of social and
cultural growth. To reduce this multidimensional social movement to the category of
‘interior religion’ misreads early Sikh ‘religiosity’, which is so clearly orientated to a
qualified relationship with the social world as reflected in both metaphors and practices
of true royalty, heroism and rule, as well as welfare and charity.
On the theme of religious violence, the AG has much to say. The Sword is variously
visualized as the Word, Name, Hari, Guru, Wisdom, but also as the loving-devotion of
Hari as the opening quote indicated. The purpose of the Sword of Wisdom
is to slay duality, the false-self and its desires and delusions. Relating
bhagati through a deadly battle scene forces the reader to re-evaluate their notion of
divine love to include an unsparing rhetoric of violence. The DG’s re-reading of loving
the divine through weapons and warfare is first seen in the AG where Guru Nanak
portrays bhagati as a warrior’s arsenal and lifestyle, outlining an active battling rather
than a passive indifference:
The understanding of Your way (is) horses, war harnesses, girths, gold.
The appetite for virtue (is) bow, arrow, quiver, spear, sword belt.
With honour manifest (as) cavalry and military bands, Your action is my
caste.
O Baba, the pleasure of other rides is false.
(AG: 16)
Religion and violence in south asia 112
Bhagati is not only about a romantic love swooning to Hari’s flute, but also and always a
matter of life and death where to love ultimately is to sacrifice one’s life. A hugely
popular expression of this form of the idea of violent-love, of bhagati involving the
ultimate sacrifice of one’s head, is iconized and lionized in the narratives surrounding the
eighteenth-century figure of Baba Dp Singh.13
Within the AG life is framed by violence and love and these constitute the fabric of
one’s past karam. The ‘Sword of Death’ hangs over each head (AG: 1087
G.Amardas). Violence is sanctioned by Hari: ‘When it pleases You, they wield swords
cutting off heads [of their enemies] as they go’ (AG: 145 G.Nanak). Indeed, Hari Himself
is violent: ‘He Himself kills and rejuvenates’ (AG: 1034 G.Nanak). Justice is the violent
recompense of one’s ‘bad’ deeds. Each moment must be recognized as the possible
speaking of the Guru-Word, which includes, inevitably, the striking of the Sword of
Death.
The first Mughal ruler, Babur (1483–1530), invaded India in the 1520s. These violent
invasions were witnessed by Guru Nanak and commentated upon in four hymns. In one,
Guru Nanak rationalizes that ‘those whom the Creator would destroy—He (first) strips
them of virtue’ (AG: 417). Accepting Hari as all-powerful and violence integral to His
Will, Guru Nanak seems to justify his own powerlessness, later stating that those who
died were destined to die. He ends with a blunt tone of abject resignation that barely lifts
itself to praise, noting that pleasure and pain occur by His will and none can change this:
‘what is written [by Hari], is to be received’ (AG: 418). It is this ‘resigned’ tone that
changes in the later Gurus—though not the teaching itself for in the wider context of his
hymns it is clear that for Guru Nanak love is itself a form of violence. The death of the
mental ego is actively sought in all interaction. In other words the discipline of true
devotion has to demonstrate a ‘path along a double-edged sword’ (AG: 918 G. whatever
that path happens to be.
Contrary to the break-in-tradition thesis, the ‘external’ and ‘royal’ nature of the early
Gurus is attested by the third Mughal emperor, Jahangir (1605–1627) himself. He notes
that the fifth Guru, Arjan, ‘had noised himself about as a religious and worldly leader’
(in Madra and Singh 2004:4). Indeed Guru Arjan’s stature is not as a passive saint,
locked away in the interiority of divine contemplation, but rather as a figure of dynamic
social presence and power.14 Furthermore Grewal argues that all the Gurus, not only the
later ones, were referred to as True Kings (2001:8 fn.25). Indeed, Guru Nanak’s verses
are read as barely veiled critiques of these ‘earthly kings’ (Lodhi Sultanate and Emperor
Babur) who should not be praised since they will depart, for only Hari the eternal is
worthy of praise (AG: 1088). Within this context of religious authority the works of some
influential commentators explicitly reflect the political crossings between Mughals and
Sikhs. For example, Bhai Gurdas Bhalla (1558–1636), who was Guru Arjan’s
amanuensis for the AG and intimate with the early Gurus, writes in his influential and
authoritative Vrs (historical and exegetical reflections in verse):
The True-Guru is the True King (ptah);
all other worldly kings (bdah) are fake ones…
The True-Guru is the real banker; other rich persons cannot be believed.
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 113
The True-Guru is the true physician…
(Vr 15.1. tr. Singh, Jodh 1998:367)
Notice here that Gurdas contrasts the Punjabi vernacular for true king (ptah) with the
Persian courtly language of the Mughals for false king (bdah)—making his point
politically relevant and cutting. In addition, he frames the Sikh Gurus as trust-worthy
bankers revealing an independent and growing economic structure of wealth and power.
Furthermore, Gurdas’s witness bridges the apparent chasm between the AG’s love
(prem) and the DG’s violence, symbolized by the Sword —even whilst
observing an apparent change in style of leadership between the early and later Gurus:
The earlier Gurus sat peacefully in dharamsalas; this one roams the land.
Emperors visited their homes with reverence; this one they cast in gaol.
No rest for his followers, ever active; their restless Master has fear of
none.
The earlier Gurus sat graciously blessing; this one goes hunting with dogs.
They had servants who harboured no malice; this one encourages
scoundrels.
Yet none of these changes conceals the truth; the Sikhs are still drawn as
bees to the lotus.
The truth stands firm, eternal, changeless; and pride still lies subdued.
(Vr 26.24, tr. McLeod 1984:31)
Whether this constitutes a ‘fundamental change in policy and practice’ as McLeod argues
(1984:30), however, is debatable. It is significant that whilst Gurdas finds the changes
surprising he nonetheless concludes by ‘re-understanding’ the notion of the ‘religious’
(dharamslas, blessings, sitting) to include those of ‘secular-state’ activities (roaming,
hunting, ever-active, gaol). In other words he sees a continuity-in-difference. Given the
foregoing discussion it is hard not to think that this re-understanding was largely
informed by his acute awareness of the Gurus and the contents of the AG rather than in
spite of that knowledge. As we have seen the mr (King)—pr (Saint) formulation may
be relatively new but the idea is certainly not; the underlying ambiguity of a violent-love
is present even before Guru Nanak and Guru Hargobind’s mr (violent) pr (love).
Love and real violence in the DG
Reverently I salute the Sword with affection and devotion…
Thee I invoke, All-conquering Sword, Destroyer of evil, Ornament of the
brave.
Religion and violence in south asia 114
Powerful your arm and radiant your glory, your splendour as dazzling as
the brightness of the sun.
Joy of the Saints and Scourge of the wicked, Vanquisher of vice,
I seek your protection.
Hail to the world’s Creator and Sustainer, my invincible Protector the
Sword!
(DG: 39 Bacitra G.Gobind, tr. McLeod 1984:58, adapted)
As martial imagery and metaphors of the sword abound in the AG, so too is there blissful
devotionalism in the DG, as the above hymn titled the ‘Wonderful Drama’ shows. The
key difference, however, is that in the DG the sword is granted an original and
ontological status as another epithet of Hari:
(Akl) first created the Double-Edged Sword then the whole
world.
Having created Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh, He made the entire play of
Nature.
(DG: 119 G.Gobind)
From the preceding scriptural quotes it becomes clear that for the Sikh tradition the
Sword is not simply a metaphor but an icon of Sikh faith, a sign to act in the name of
Akl and a symbol indicating a reality to participate in.15 Indeed, the icon partakes in the
reality it represents. The existential engagement Guru Gobind Singh (Lion) himself
relates in the DG, in a number of biographical reflections, mixes metaphorical violence
with real violence of actual battles:
There I hunted and killed many lions, antelopes and bears.
Fateh Shah, the local ruler, angered by my presence, attacked me without
cause…[60]
When [Harichand’s] arrow struck me it roused me to anger.
Seizing the bow I returned the fire, loosing a hail of arrows.
The enemy turned and ran as the arrows showered upon them.
Taking aim I shot again, despatching another of their number…
And so they fled from the field of battle, running in fear of their lives.
Victory was mine, the enemy crushed by the grace of the Lord [Kl]…
…the saints sustained and the evil destroyed.
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 115
The wicked were slain, rended limb from limb,
dying like dogs the death they deserved.16
(DG: 60, 62–63 tr. McLeod 1984:62–63, adapted)
A Saint that angers, kills and presents his violence as just retribution is worth pondering.
According to Guru Gobind Singh, such details occur within a grander scheme of Akl’s
cycles of violence and death where all arise from and return back into Akl (DG: 19–20).
In the DG Guru Gobind’s conception of Akl Purakh is filled with both violent and
loving aspects (mirroring Shaivite and Muslim namings):
Salutations to the Death of all; Salutations to the Ever-Benevolent….
Salutations to the Annihilator of all; Salutations to the Nurturer of all.
(DG: 2)
The violent-love of Akl is clear: the Annihilator is the Nurturer, creating and destroying
is His mode of becoming. Akl is not only the ‘bliss of the devout’ and ‘vanquisher of
vice’ but more importantly the ‘Scourge of the wicked’, the ‘Destroyer of Evil’. The
‘field of battle’, which had always been the struggle with every day psycho-social world,
during the later Gurus’ times becomes an actual fight in a real battlefield. It is undeniable,
however, that there is a ‘shift’ towards overt militarism, although this occurs not at the
expense or displacement of the earlier Gurus’ ‘religious’ ethos but precisely because and
out of it. It is however certainly not a shift from inner subjective to outer objective realm.
Guru Gobind’s battle combines the ascetic death of the mind with the warrior’s bloody
death of the body, slaying the demons of the passions as well as the ‘demonized’
Muslims and their ‘injustices’.
Jeevan Deol argues that within the DG, dharam is reinterpreted and understood within
a puranic metanarrative where the endless cycles of good versus evil take on
cosmological proportions. At the centre of this culture of loving-violence is ‘the worship
of weapons and the perception of partaking in the Guru’s mission to re-establish dharma’
(Deol 2001:33). However the puranic scene is not unfamiliar to the AG, especially when
we consider that before Gobind’s time Bhai Gurdas, whose Vrs are seen as the key to
comprehend the AG, also framed the AG and its authors in a similar puranic fashion;
Guru Nanak, like Guru Gobind, was also divinely commissioned to restore dharam
(Vr 1.22–24). Furthermore the puranic conception of the four degenerating ages (yugas)
is one accepted by the early Gurus and is internal to the AG. There are also retellings of
puranic myths in the AG. Kabir (AG: 1194, Basantu) and Guru Amardas (AG: 1133,
Bhairau) both relate the story of the prideful King, who threatens to kill his
own son Prahild if he does not stop thinking of ‘Hari’. The king, however, is brutally
devoured by Hari who responds to the boy’s prayer—relating all-too graphically a
violent-love.
Religion and violence in south asia 116
The Sikh ‘saint-soldier’ (sant-siph) is a working householder who has social
responsibilities to others. The Khls’s spiritual regime is not performed in private
isolation on the fringes of society, but actually dramatizes daily life as the locus of
spiritual growth; the ascetic’s silent cave and warrior’s battlefield co-inhere with the
responsibilities of the householder’s social realm. The divine is re-understood within the
heat of historical action, and is no longer defined in the cool ascetic denial and
transcendence of time.
Sikhs therefore continue the Bhagavad Gt’s argument that inaction cannot be
achieved by attempting to refrain from action. Inaction-within-action only occurs when
one acts in accordance with a cosmic, though unwritten, Command (hukam). That which
creates karam is instrumental will; that which creates dharam is sacrificing action in
accordance with Akl’s Will (hukam, ). The Sikhs therefore read violence
otherwise than pain; the Guru martyrs Arjan and Tegh Bahadur, as well as a whole legion
of martyrs that follow (Fenech 2000), are depicted as welcoming their torture and
suffering (as they would pleasure) with equanimity, demonstrating their adherence to
Hari’s Will over their personal desires. One would assume that this violence could only
be accepted if one was immersed in the sacrificial love of the divine.
The violent-love of the AG is re-understood as loving-violence of the DG—both
understood as a part of Akl’s Will, both lending expression to bhagati as self-sacrifice
or the art of dying. Sikh religious violence is taken for wonder because there is an
unavoidable violence to ‘religious’ (dharmic) knowledge and action. This is the ‘sword’
of love: to love one’s self as Akl, one has to kill the self that resists that love, for the ego
cannot love, because it always loves another (duja bhu). Time as event is gift and
judgement (otherwise known as the law of karam, reaping what one sows). Thus the Sikh
way (of violent-love, mrpr) is not to transcend the event of time, but hear and learn
from its teaching. Celebrating time’s (‘good-and-bad’) events as gifts requires a
paradoxical logic wherein a song can become a battlecry and a melody a march.
Chandi as Sword and Flute
Salutations to the Wielder of Weapons…
Salutation to the Mother of the world.
(DG: 3 G.Gobind)
At places in the DG, God becomes Goddess: the Great Mother is the ‘bringer of Death’,
‘Hurler of Missiles’ Annihilator, as well as the ‘giver of Life’, ‘Nurturer’, and the most
‘Beautiful’. According to Sikh male imaginings the Goddess is ‘Beauty incarnate’, and is
wholly seductive (DG: 81–82). Even the blood dripping from her mouth is compared to a
‘beautiful maiden spitting after chewing betel-leaves’ (DG: 94, v.194. tr. Singh, Jodh
1999:265). In the climax of Chapter 6 of the Caritra, the demon Nisumbh
is slain:
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 117
At that time Chandi, in a fit of rage, held firmly her sword. She charged it
with full strength at the head of Nisumbh and it went through his body—
from head to toe. Who can truly appreciate that moment? The two pieces
of his body fell down on the ground as pieces of soap fall down when the
maker of soap cuts it into pieces with iron-wire.
(DG: 95, v.202. tr. Singh, Jodh 1999:269)
This violent-love aesthetic and rhetoric, however, must be set in a wider Indic context to
make sense. This Sikh violent-love arises from the conflation of and akta
traditions, that is, the love of Krishna’s flute and the violence of Kli’s blood-dripping
sword:
wearing a garland of wild flowers with a flute
in hand becomes Kl with a sword…
(Ramprasad in Kinsley 2000:151)
I see my Mother…now taking up the flute instead
of the sword,
or again seizing the sword instead of the flute.
(Avalon 1960:600)
As Ramprasad (1718–75) shows it matters little whether one starts with or Kl
for each implies the other. The AG reflects the Flute, with names (Hari, Ram),
and the DG invokes the Sword, with akta names (Sri Bhagauti, Sarab-loh). Guru Gobind
names his Sword after the Goddess, (Skt. ‘vicious, fierce, violent’). Whilst the
and Kl-as-Sword reveal ‘many central truths’ to Hindu mythology,
Kinsley is intrigued by their juxtaposition and ponders whether ‘there is an ultimate truth
of the tradition that lies somewhere in an unimaginable combination of the two’ (2000:x).
It is clear that the Sikh texts and traditions conjoin Hari (flute) with the Sri Bhagauti
(the sword), compassion (lotus) with wisdom (thunderbolt and sword), just as in Tantra
Shiva (spirit) is united with Shakti (matter).
Guru Gobind’s saint-soldiers and Guru Hargobind’s two-swords, are not inventions
alone but innovations that conserve Guru Nanak’s own ideas. For example they play out
Nanak’s own use of the Tantric compound of iva and akti (siva-sakat)—which
connects to the wider categories of and (puraku and
kudarati)—denoting a passive spirit (love) and active material power (violence). Both
elements constitute the reality of creation (AG: 1096 G.Arjan; AG: 1056 G.Amardas).
Hari as the ‘One’ is a constant interplay of two opposite but complimentary forces.
Conjointly both express Hari’s Order and Will (AG: 920 G.Amardas; AG: 1027; 1037
Religion and violence in south asia 118
G.Nanak). Trying to contain ‘religion/bhagati’ within the realm of a passive and
subjective iva (de-linked from akti and her often violent action) is the mistake of a
modern prejudice.
The Sikh Gurus, following Guru Nanak’s masterful lead, communicated a very broad
understanding of the truth; accepting and conflating its plurality led them to an
intercultural ethic of reconciliation that manoeuvred across polarized traditions and their
ideas. Their insight was to be at the border-crossing, at the confluence of and
akta (not to mention Nath-Jogi) and Sufi rivers. The Sikh Gurus were determined to
innovate a pragmatic religio-political (nondual) movement from the bifurcated traditions
of the Vaishnava and Shakta, Sheikh and Sant, priest and warrior, ascetic and
householder, ruler and ruled. Whilst Guru Gobind employs the puranic myths in the DG,
he not only ‘invokes’ the Goddess, he does so as a real sword, and thus maps the myth of
goddesses defeating demons onto a real battlefield occurring in his life. This enables him
to demonstrate a ‘religiosity’ otherwise than Religion as non-violence is
something Guru Nanak also rejects. The Sikh re-reading of is closely related to
their re-reading of renunciation and the whole world of ascetic extremism. For Sikhs
physical violence is sublimated as a mental violence, as physical ascetic practices and
renunciation are re-read as an internal struggle. It is a nondual re-reading:
If one accepts (the concept of) impurity (stak), then there is impurity
everywhere [in cow dung, wood has worms, in grains of corn, in water by
which everything comes]… O Nanak, impurity cannot be removed this
[physical] way; it is washed away only by [mental] gnosis (gin).
(AG: 472 G.Nanak)
The impurities of the mind cannot be cleansed by ritualizing physical acts. What follows
from this is that ‘true’ or mental may actually require ‘compassionate-violence’
to promote less suffering overall; gangrene of the foot requires the violence of
amputation in order to save the whole body. Similarly the death of one tyrant in society
may save a whole community (a form of reasoning prevalent in other traditions,
especially Mahyna Buddhism; see Gethin pp. 228, 230, 264.17 As renunciation cannot
be attained by simply removing oneself from society, so too physical restraining not to
cause harm may not always guarantee non-injury.
Those following McLeod, Madan and Fenech read the melody of Guru Nanak’s flute
of ‘pacifism’ as interrupted, displaced, and usurped by Guru Gobind’s violent ‘storm of
swords’—rather than as an intensification of an Indic continuity-in-difference.18 The
strong suspicion is, of course, that the Sword will split the flute, that violence will corrupt
love. In other words such scholars can not, and for very good reason, ‘wipe out the forms
and think of her sword as his flute’ (Ramprasad in Kripal, 1998:45). To think both
together would be to postulate a ‘Janus-faced ontology’ of loving-violence.
Understanding the Sword of the DG’s ‘tough’ bhagati as also the Flute of the AG’s
‘mild’ bhagati, yields an aesthetics of war.
By overlaying the gruesome violence of real battle scenes with well-known mythic
narratives as seen in the Caritra, Guru Gobind was able to ‘re-vision’ the
slaughter of war. The horror of war was not seen for what it was but for its re-enactment
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 119
of a universal mythic narrative of Good versus Evil. Through this ‘scriptural
superimposition’ the dreadfulness of violence is mollified and may even elicit aesthetic
appreciation. The mythic episodes, that express martial valour,
skill and strength, were used by Guru Gobind to inspire Sikhs to fight. Not merely to
fight nor take pride in the righteousness of the dharmic cause, but to appreciate the
violence of battle as a martial art of divine love. Yet the early Gurus in the AG educe a
similar chill:
Humility is my spiked club.
My double-edged Sword is the dust of all men’s feet.
No Sinner can withstand these weapons.
The Perfect Guru has given me this understanding.
(AG: 628 G.Arjan)
This chapter has sought to question the general assumption that violence should always
be negatively construed within the context of an ethical and disciplined religious praxis
which is ostensibly about loving-devotion (bhagati). McLeod’s totalizations of the Sikh
tradition into Guru Nanak’s ‘eirenic aspect’ of ‘rapt devotion’ of the Name, to a ‘second
variety’ of Guru Gobind’s military ‘heroism’, and finally to Dp Singh’s ‘martyrdom’,
makes an unwarranted move from inner to outer, saint to soldier, love to violence—
which the tradition itself rejects. The above has also questioned the totalizing leaps that
polarize war and peace, sword and flute into mutually exclusive realities. Yet the
question retains an urgency, how can bhagati be about the sword and the flute? That love
and violence are mutually constituted requires careful reflection, for who can truly
appreciate the poisoned dart in the flute, the music of the sword?
The only violence there is: forgetting the name
The above discussion of ‘violent-love’ must be understood within the wider context of
Guru Nanak’s major claim that there is really only one violent act. This is a crucial point
because it brings into view two orders of violence, one false and one true:
Saying it, I live; forgetting it, I die.
(AG: 9 G.Nanak)
Forgetting the Name-Word-Guru produces mental death; only those who ‘remember’ the
Name-Word-Guru are truly alive. All suffering, delusion and desire arise from this
forgetting (visri). Simply put, one commits violence against oneself and others in
forgetting the Divine/Truth, which is synonymous with forgetting to be true. This
forgetting is a violence that constructs a/the world in all its layers and
Religion and violence in south asia 120
diversity. Those who forget Hari have to suffer the pain of physical death repeatedly. The
duality (dubidh) of Hari and ‘me’ is the primal and only violence. There is no violence
apart from this separation; ‘forgetting’ (to love the) Name, to be true, constructs a world
of violence. Sikh religious violence is taken for wonder when it destroys this world/self
that exists without the Word (i.e., false being).
I would cut myself into pieces for the Blessed Vision of Your Darshan;
I am a sacrifice to Your Name.
(AG: 557 G.Nanak)
At the core of Sikh bhagati love, is the concept of a serious and violently imagined
sacrifice. To remember the Name is to kill the self ‘moment by moment, bit by bit’
(AG: 660 G.Nanak). The purview of the True-Guru then is to kill you or help you kill
yourself (AG: 183 G.Arjan). But why kill the self? Guru Nanak answers: ‘I am a sacrifice
to the Embodiment of Bliss (nand-rp)’ (AG: 1342). Simply put, killing the
ego-self produces the cognitive bliss of sahaj (effortless becoming without I) that reveals
one’s true nature: ‘He kills the self (pu mre), then finds the Name’ (AG: 153 G.Nanak).
This whole complex, is repeated and intensified by Guru Gobind Singh, and the rare bliss
it promotes can be felt over and above physical torture. This yogic state (of sahaj) is one
that allows extraordinary transcendence of pain and brutality: even joy (born out of love
of Hari) has been expressed in the midst of horrific violence. This is what links the
violent-love of the AG with the loving-violence of the DG: a mystic state of devotional
bliss—violence and love envisioned otherwise.
Guru Nanak’s non-dual thought often turns our world upside down revealing our
‘knowledge’ to be ignorance, our pleasure to be pain, our physical sufferings to be divine
blessings. He places a ‘spiritual’ scale over events that we simply cannot fathom and
which turns our human scale into a form of blindness:
If my body was to suffer in agony and
come under the influence of the two evil planets;
(if) blood-thirsty kings were to stand over my head and rule and
(if) I were to remain in this state, still I would continue to chant your
praises.
(AG: 142 G.Nanak)
Look what is sweet [sugar cane] is cut down, slicing and cutting its feet
are bound.
Having placed them between the rollers (strong) farmers give that
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 121
(bundle) (due) punishment.
Its juice and marrow is put into a large iron cauldron heated and weeps
bitterly.
Even the left-over cane is taken care of; given to the fire (and) burnt.
Nanak (says), ‘come, O people, see (how) the Sweet are ill-treated’.
(AG: 143 G.Nanak)
Guru Nanak’s prophetic verse seems to outline the historical scenarios that plagued later
tradition.19 For example during the eighteenth century many Sikhs were forced into exile
by government persecution. Taru Singh (1720–1745) was one of those who risked their
lives to secretly feed and clothe these Sikh warriors in hiding. The governor of Lahore,
Zakariya Khan, having caught Taru via his spies, ordered the scalping and execution of
Taru Singh were he to refuse conversion to Islam. Taru’s martyrdom, having chosen
death over losing his hair (symbolic of a Sikh’s faith), turns Nanak’s metaphors into
reality:
The more the Turks tortured [Taru] Singh the rosier a hue did the Singh’s
face take on. The more they starved him and kept him thirsty the more did
he display contentment…. In contentment and composure he bowed his
head joyfully to the Guru’s will.
(Ratan S.Bhangu’s Prchn Panth Prak 1841:287
cited in Fenech 2000:195)
For contemporary Sikhs, such verses cannot help but remind them of past and recent
memories; Guru Arjan’s torture and martyrdom in the first year of Jahangir’s reign
(1605) marking a dramatic turn of fate for the Sikh panth, and the atrocities executed by
Indian police after 1984—with their tactics of rolling heavy wooden and/or iron logs over
the legs of Sikh ‘separatists/terrorists’, mangling them beyond use and recognition.20 But
they may also point out an uncommon, if not wondrous, logic: the more one is violated,
tortured, the more content and composed one becomes; the severer the violence, the
sweeter the love. There are many accounts of this logic throughout Sikh history
summarized by the popular eighteenth-century couplet: ‘Mir Mannu [governor of Lahore]
is our sickle and we the fodder for him to mow. The more Mir Mannu harvests, the more
the Sikhs will grow’ (Fenech 2000:41). This phenomenon carries on right up to
contemporary testimonies of Sikhs tortured at the hands of the Indian security forces
(Pettigrew 1995; Mahmood 1996). Yet it is grounded first and foremost in the religious
teachings of the AG:
A fish is caught, cut and cooked in many different ways.
Bit by bit it is eaten, but still, it does not forget the water.
(AG: 658 Bhagat Ravidas)
Religion and violence in south asia 122
Guru Nanak demands violence from those who seek love: ‘If you want to play the game
of love (prem) approach me with your head on the palm of your hand’ (AG: 1412). It is
this theme of self-sacrifice that Guru Gobind strategically plays upon in his call to
establish the Khls (Singh 1997:283). The Birth of the Khls is predicated on the full
cognizance of the love inherent in this violence; if no one stood up to sacrifice
themselves, there would be no real army. The real army is composed of those already
dead (the point of Nanak’s ‘religious’ quest), which is why the Khls are so formidable,
there being nothing more to lose. The movement from Guru Nanak’s prophetic
metaphors, via Guru Gobind’s ambiguous performative re-staging to the real Khls
Army, through to the contemporary Sikhs (Aklis) who fought non-violently in India’s
Independence struggle, and the Gurdwara Reform Movement, reveals a continuity-indifference
of violent-love.21
However Guru Nanak holds the final s/word: ‘If the ego does not die then the heroic
death of the warrior is not approved by God’ (AG: 579). As with any activity then,
dharamic or adharamic, religious or political, violent or loving, ‘without the Name’
(which simultaneously implies the death of ego) it becomes futile and empty; certainly no
singular activity can always secure Hari’s pleasure:
One is not steeped in Hari/Truth
by fighting and dying a brave warrior in battle.
(AG: 1237 G.Nanak)
It should be clear then that throughout Sikh scripture no particular action is legislated into
a principle, always being true regardless of the context in which it occurs—except, of
course, the wholly open-ended ‘law’ to remember Hari by losing the ego. Just as the
soldier chastises the saint that does not act in the world, so too does the saint condemn the
soldier’s instrumental violence. Just as the renouncer criticizes the householder for his
worldly attachments, so does the latter censure the ascetic for selfishly neglecting his
duty to society. Rather than doctrinal laws, the Gurus leave us with a questioning
dialectic that seeks to confront all ideologically based thinking (duramati, lit. dualistic,
false thinking). Neither militarism nor pacifism were taught by the Gurus, nor asceticism
or pleasure-seeking. Their task was to pass on a cultivation of the in-between, a mode of
living-in-the-Way (jugati-sami, hukam raji calañ). The aim was to be led by an
understanding, always incomplete, context-based and provisional, (more of an
unknowing than a knowing) that spontaneously arose from an immersion in the Way.
True action (loving or violent, dharamic or not) cannot be guided by rules and codes, but
only by the unbroken rapture of devoted self-loss.
Conclusion: Guru Gobind’s martial art of love
From the foregoing discussion it seems clear that the break-in-tradition thesis should be
reassessed—a new interpretive frame is needed. The framework of martial arts is a far
better paradigm to comprehend the fighting art (gatka), and strategic ‘dance’
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 123
of the Khls than merely reading Sikhs as ‘soldiers’. Given the centrality of bhagati,
self-sacrifice, self-defence, nonduality, and an ‘ever-rising spirit’ it seems
much more fitting to think about Guru Gobind’s ‘saint-soldier’ in terms of a
‘martialization’ rather than a ‘militarization’, where the former carries the discipline,
devotion and ethics of a martial art. The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, writes:
In true budo [Way of enlightened activity] there are no opponents. In true
budo we seek to be one with all things, to return to the heart of creation.
In real budo, there are no enemies. Real budo is a function of love. The
way of a Warrior is not to destroy and kill life but to 3 life, to continually
create.
(Stevens 2002:72)
The shift from the military to the martial provides the conceptual framework in which to
read violent-love as not destructive but restorative of dharam: the Wielder of Weapons is
the Mother of the World; Guru Nanak’s Flute is Guru Gobind’s Sword. The ideal Sikh
warrior was no mere soldier, subservient to the command of secular rulers, but a slave to
the martial art of love:
The lover enjoys King Rm;
within the battlefield he fights having killed the mind.
(AG: 931 G.Nanak)
When the continuity that underpins the ‘break’ is seen, then the Sikh tradition is
understood as an ongoing experiment with love that is simultaneously a politics of social
duty, welfare and transformation. As religion is often viewed as the nemesis of
modernity, so too has mysticism been figured alien to politics. From the continuity-indifference
argued for here this polarized separation seems fetishistic. There seems to be a
non-dual relation between love and violence which signifies a new hermeneutic wherein
the Sikh tradition’s violent-love can be read as a political mysticism. This is why the
Sikhs are constantly misperceived as either exclusively religious or militant by a secular,
rational, modern consciousness. The ambiguity of a text-as-sword is not seen as a
wonder, but only strikes terror and fear. This seems to be a missed opportunity.
Notes
1 The Sikh Gurus use many personal and impersonal names for ‘God/Absolute/ Truth’, ranging
across traditions. Nanak’s most frequent is the Vaishnava name ‘Hari’ whereas later tradition
assumes ‘Akl-Purakh’. Punjabi spellings are used for common Indic terms: karam not
karma; dharam not dharma; bhagati not bhakti etc. In addition to the Guru Granth
Sahib/after the di Granth (hereafter AG) and the Dasam Granth (hereafter DG), there is a
third Sikh scripture, that directly substantiates the Sikh ‘Text as Sword’, and that is the
Sarab-loh Granth (The ‘All-Steel Book’, or ‘All-Sword Book’). This text is popular among
Religion and violence in south asia 124
contemporary Nihangs (Sikh warriors) and claimed by them to be the work of the tenth Sikh
Guru, Gobind Singh. The work is, however, almost certainly after Gobind’s time (see
McLeod 2003:139) and for this reason will not be consulted here. Translations are mine,
though Trumpp (1989) and Sant Singh Khalsa’s (2003) translations of the AG, and Jodh
Singh’s (1999) and S.S. Kohli’s translations (2003) of the DG have been consulted and
sometimes adapted. In addition to the editors, I would like to thank Sophie Hawkins for
reading a draft of this chapter and making many sound suggestions.
2 Of course there is nothing unique, from a comparative perspective, in seeing the divine Word
or God as a Sword, nor in seeing the spread of God’s message by the physical Sword of
judgement as part of the same idea. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition alone compare:
‘Indeed the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword’ (Hebrews
4:12), and ‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matthew 10:34), and Jeremiah to
Judas ‘Take this holy sword, a gift from God, with which you will strike down your
adversaries’ (2 Maccabees 15:15). The Word/Text has often been understood as both a
spiritual and physical sword, one that carries God’s love and violent justice simultaneously
(Holy Bible 1989).
3 The Sikh initiated into the Khls has to wear and keep five items as a part of his or her
military regalia: uncut hair (ke), steel bracelet sword or dagger (kirpn), shorts
(kach) and comb
4 The title consciously echoes Homi Bhabha’s (1997) title, ‘Signs Taken for Wonder’.
5 We must note that the coherence and continuity between these texts have been and still are
disputed; see Oberoi (1994) and Harbans Singh (1992). It is clear that the DG shared a
greater standing in the past than it has done since the Singh Sabha reforms. Yet both are seen
as scriptures by orthodoxy, and hymns from both form the selected set of prayers each Sikh
has to recite morning and evening.
6 The 1870s onwards saw the rise of various reform movements. Through a process of
intercultural mimesis, ‘Hindus’, ‘Sikhs’ and ‘Muslims’ re-constructed their ‘ways of life’
into mutually exclusive religious communities (Ludden 1996).
7 Modernity has a variety of readings of ‘religion’, and of course there have been many ‘violent
religions’. The modern definition implied here disciplines ‘religion’ as that which opposes
the present in its backward gaze to tradition, and is essentially superstitious in comparison to
secular science. It is a modern desire and demand that religious traditions put down their
arms and stop behaving like ‘savages’. For similar arguments see A.Mandair (Ch. 6), and
N.Mandair (Ch. 7) in Goodchild 2003.
8 However, discussing ‘religious violence’ must obviously be done with care marking a clear
distinction from ‘terrorist violence’ that often employs and/or usurps an overt ‘religious’
rhetoric to legitimize its murderous crimes. None of what is argued for here could nor should
be construed as supporting such terrorist violence or ideology. Similarly, any discussion
about ‘violent-love’ must be clear to distinguish itself from the obvious reading of it as rape.
9 Madan (1994:613) misses this question and provides a common misreading with this claim:
‘there can be no denying that Guru Hargobind made a radical departure from past practice….
The first Guru’s teaching that a true Sikh’s only weapon should be the holy word had thus
been set aside.’
10 Private communication with Arvind Mandair.
11 Full title is the the ‘Ancient Story of the Holy Servants’.
12 Although it is clear that Akl does not incarnate in any one particular form, given the
orientation towards a Formless and Attributeless Being Akl is also
identified with the True-Guru (satiguru) given that ‘there is no Other’. Those that realize
this, and see Hari as Satiguru everywhere, are known as Gurus. There is then an easy
identification between Guru, Satiguru, and Akl. Such non-dual identifications justify the
‘slippage’ from Akl as the True-King to Guru as the True-King.
Text as sword: Sikh religious violence taken for wonder 125
13 See Fenech (2000:95–102) for details of Dp Singh, who supernaturally carries his own
decapitated head for 15 kilometres en route to Amritsar to fulfil his ‘religious’ vow.
14 The missionary and later Persian scholar Father Jerome Xavier, who spent 20 years in the
Mughal court of Akbar and Jahangir, notes: ‘Guru [Arjan], who amongst the gentiles
(i.e. non-Muslims) is like the Pope amongst us’ (in Madra and Singh 2004:7).
15 Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that metaphors are not simply ornamental—decorating
what essentially could be said in literal fashion—but are cognitive models and structures that
shape the way we think and live.
16 This is a description of the battle of Bhagani in 1688.
17 For example in the Skill-In-Means (Upyakaualya) Sutra the captain of a ship of 500
merchants, after gaining insight decides to murder a thief who was bent on killing all the
merchants: ‘the captain Great Compassionate protected those merchants by deliberately
slaying that person (who was a robber) with a spear, with great compassion and skill in
means’ (Katz 1994:74)
18 ‘The root of Muslim rule has decayed,’ he declared, ‘but the tree will not fall unless it is cut
down or unless it is shaken by a mighty storm. A storm of swords will now assail it and thus
it shall be felled.’ Ratan Singh Bhangu’s (Prchn Panth Prak, McLeod 1984:72–73)
19 See Fenech (2000) who details many accounts and testimonies of Sikh violent and nonviolent
martyrs.
20 From personal testimonies of close friends. An Amnesty International report corroborates
these testimonies:
Reports of torture by Punjab Police continue, although they are less
frequent than during the period of violent political opposition. The
methods are similar. They often include kicks and blows with sticks
and leather belts. Detainees have been strung up, usually with their
hands behind their back or their head down. They have been subjected
to the roller, a wooden pole or iron rod rolled over their legs by several
police officers leaning on it with their full weight, which leads to a
crushing of muscle tissue and subsequent kidney complaints. Detainees
have been tortured with electric shocks to the genitals and other
sensitive areas such as ear lobes and fingers. They have been beaten on
the soles of their feet (falanga), burned with a hot iron or boiling water,
and had chilli peppers applied to their anus or eyes. Police officers
have threatened to kill them. As a result of torture, victims have
suffered serious physical disabilities, deep states of depression,
disturbed sleep and nightmares.
(Amnesty International January 2003:18)
I would like to thank Prabhsharandeep Singh for this information. There are
many independent agencies that have charted the human rights abuses Sikhs
have suffered, see Mahmood (1996:277) for a comprehensive list. There
have also been more recent reports (Kumar et al. 2003; Kaur 2004)—the
latter analyses impunity and over 600 specific cases of ‘extrajudicial
execution and disappearances by Indian security forces’.
21 Of course this high ideal is not always achieved and must be sharply distinguished from its
total opposite in the terrorist acts of the 1980s—the assassination of the Nirankari Guru,
Baba Gurbachan Singh on April 1980, in retaliation to those murdered in the ‘orthodox’
Religion and violence in south asia 126
confrontation in April 1978; the killings in the early 1980s of Lala Jagat
Narain, chief editor of Punjab Kesari and his son Ramesh Chander, amongst many others,
show this all too clearly. Furthermore, it is significant that there seemed to be no
condemnation issued by the Akali (Sikh political) leadership of these cold-blooded
killings—nor did any denounce Bhindranwale. However reading the Government of India’s
White Paper on Punjab Agitation one would get the impression that ‘Sikh Extremists’ are
solely to blame for the violence in its black and white depiction of the events in the recent
history of Sikhs (Kaur, Amarjit et al. 2004:197–217).
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