Death is stalk­ing hu­mankind. The cre­ma­tion of promi­nent Ragi Bhai Nir­mal Singh and many other Sikh stal­warts across the world, along­side the bur­ial of thou­sands across the world in the midst of the all-per­va­sive Coro­n­avirus pan­demic; brings into sharp fo­cus the is­sue of cre­ma­tion ver­sus bur­ial or other forms of fi­nal­i­sa­tion of hu­man ‘death’. Fac­ing the mount­ing global death toll, hu­mankind is forced to con­sider, what is the proper, fair, eth­i­cal, rea­son­able, prac­ti­cal way of dis­pos­ing of the dead body. In this first part of a two-part se­ries, UK-based writer-ac­tivist Jagdeesh Singh takes a look at this ques­tion from a Sikh eth­i­cal per­spec­tive, and com­pares and con­trasts with some wider thoughts and per­spec­tives.

LET US BE­GIN WITH OUR PHYS­I­CAL FORM. HOW DID WE GET INTO THE PRE­SENT FORM?  Gur­bani tells us ex­ten­sively, over mul­ti­ple verses, that life is a gift to us; and not some­thing that we own and con­trol.  In Japji Sahib -the pre­am­ble of Guru Granth Sahib, Guru Nanak says,

ਕਰਮੀ ਆਵੈ ਕਪੜਾ ਨਦਰੀ ਮੋਖੁ ਦੁਆਰੁ ॥
By the karma of past ac­tions, the robe of this phys­i­cal body is ob­tained. By His Grace, the Gate of Lib­er­a­tion is found.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 2

Telling us the pur­pose of life, Guru Sahib says,

ਭਈ ਪਰਾਪਤਿ ਮਾਨੁਖ ਦੇਹੁਰੀਆ ॥
This hu­man body has been given to you to re­alise God.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 12

Ex­plain­ing the cy­cle of birth, Guru Sahib says,

ਸਚੁ ਕਰਣੀ ਦੇ ਪਾਈਐ ਦਰੁ ਘਰੁ ਮਹਲੁ ਪਿਆਰਿ ॥
By true ac­tions, this hu­man body is ob­tained, and the door within our­selves which leads to the Man­sion of the Beloved, is found.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 18

Akalpu­rakh cre­ated be­ings by in­still­ing his light and spirit unto them. Guru Sahib says,

ਕਹੈ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਸ੍ਰਿਸਟਿ ਕਾ ਮੂਲੁ ਰਚਿਆ ਜੋਤਿ ਰਾਖੀ ਤਾ ਤੂ ਜਗ ਮਹਿ ਆਇਆ ॥੩੩॥
Says Nanak, He laid the foun­da­tion of the Uni­verse and in­fused His Light, and then you came into the world. ||33||
Raag Ramkali Mo­halla 3, Pau­ree 33, Guru Amar Dass, Guru Granth Sahib  Page 917

ਕਹੈ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਸ੍ਰਿਸਟਿ ਕਾ ਮੂਲੁ ਰਚਿਆ ਜੋਤਿ ਰਾਖੀ ਤਾ ਤੂ ਜਗ ਮਹਿ ਆਇਆ ॥੩੩॥ Says Nanak, He laid the foun­da­tion of the Uni­verse and in­fused His Light, and then you came into the world. ||33|| Raag Ramkali Mo­halla 3, Pau­ree 33,

Guru Amar­dass, Guru Granth Sahib

Gur­bani very pro­foundly and pow­er­fully stresses upon us, not to treat life or death in a ca­sual and in­dif­fer­ent man­ner. But rather to be con­scious, aware and mind­ful of the in­ter­con­nec­tion of life and death, in every as­pect of our liv­ing in the here and now and to pre­pare for the next stage of ex­is­tence. Not to treat liv­ing as a mere phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence, but much more deeply and pro­foundly and spir­i­tu­ally. To be­come ‘dead’ to the dis­trac­tionary and di­ver­sion­ary things of the world, and alive within one­self.  The vast ma­jor­ity of hu­man be­ings are fear­ful of phys­i­cal death. Big heads of state, kings, pres­i­dents, prime min­is­ters, etc, will all die!

Death is stalk­ing hu­mans. More than 350,000 hu­mans have died in less than 50 days over the cur­rent pan­demic, with the most de­vel­oped coun­tries lead­ing the death toll. Man­ag­ing the dead has it­self be­come a huge chal­lenge for fam­i­lies, so­ci­eties, gov­ern­ments and fu­neral man­agers.

The prac­tice of cre­ma­tion has been main­stream­ing, nor­mal and on­go­ing in in­dige­nous Pan­jaabi-cum-Sikh cul­ture for cen­turies. Across the pre­pon­der­ant Hindu mass and civil­i­sa­tion spread over the map of South Asia, cre­ma­tion is the ex­clu­sive method of dis­pos­ing of the dead. In Hindu be­lief, cre­ma­tion is an act of re­leas­ing and sep­a­rat­ing the soul of the dead per­son from the ac­tual dead body and en­abling it to flow away to an­other place of rest.

Death is stalk­ing hu­mans. More than 350,000 hu­mans have died in less than 50 days over the cur­rent pan­demic, with the most de­vel­oped coun­tries lead­ing the death toll. Man­ag­ing the dead has it­self be­come a huge chal­lenge for fam­i­lies, so­ci­eties, gov­ern­ments and fu­neral man­agers.

Is cre­ma­tion a pre­scribed method of dis­pos­ing of the ‘dead’ body within Gur­bani and the Re­hat Maryada? Does cre­ma­tion have any Sikhi and Gur­bani-based val­i­da­tion? How many of the Gu­rus were cre­mated?

Is cre­ma­tion amongst the Pan­jaabis and Sikhs a sim­ple du­pli­ca­tion of big­ger, over­ar­ch­ing, dom­i­nant Hindu-In­dian cul­ture and prac­tices which have en­dured across South Asia for thou­sands of years? Are we Pan­jaabis and Sikhs blindly mim­ic­k­ing this, with­out thought or con­sid­er­a­tion about the pur­pose and im­pact of cre­mat­ing, bury­ing or other? What about throw­ing the corpse into the sea?

A glance through global hu­man his­tory in­di­cates that both cre­ma­tion and bur­ial have been pop­u­lar and cus­tom­ary meth­ods of dis­posal of dead bod­ies, in var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties and civil­i­sa­tions across the world map. Hindu ide­ol­ogy is one of the few, if not only, en­ti­ties in the world, which in­sists upon cre­ma­tion and has con­sis­tently prac­tised this through mil­len­nia.

Ac­cord­ing to hin­duism­to­day.com, “Hin­dus tra­di­tion­ally cre­mate their dead be­cause a fiery dis­so­lu­tion of the body brings the swifter, more com­plete re­lease of the soul than a bur­ial, which pre­serves the soul’s psy­chic con­nec­tion to its just-ended earthly life. Af­ter death, the de­parted soul hov­ers close to the earth plane in its as­tral body, emo­tion­ally at­tached to the phys­i­cal body and its old sur­round­ings, still able to see this ma­te­r­ial world. The fu­neral rites and burn­ing of the body sig­nify spir­i­tual re­lease, no­ti­fy­ing the soul that, in fact, death has come. Some of the fu­neral chants ad­dress the de­ceased, urg­ing the soul to re­lin­quish at­tach­ments and con­tinue its spir­i­tual jour­ney. The Gods and devas are in­voked to as­sist the soul in its tran­si­tion. The fire sev­ers ties to earthly life and gives mo­men­tum to the soul, grant­ing at least mo­men­tary ac­cess to re­fined, heav­enly realms.”

In ref­er­ence to a land­mark le­gal case brought by a Hindu cam­paigner to seek le­gal per­mis­sion for open-air cre­ma­tion in the UK, the In­de­pen­dent wrote: “The in­tri­cate rules and cer­e­monies gov­ern­ing the dis­posal of the dead in Hin­duism are more than 4,000 years old, but be­cause there is no cen­tral au­thor­ity, dif­fer­ent schools have dif­fer­ent cus­toms. Yet al­most all Hin­dus re­gard an open-air cre­ma­tion as the most aus­pi­cious way to re­lease the soul from the body. Hin­dus be­lieve that for the soul to be rein­car­nated prop­erly, it must be com­pletely de­tached from the body and the ma­te­r­ial world.”

The same case in the UK, also, refers to: “Dur­ing the First World War, scores of Hindu and Sikh sol­diers who were killed fight­ing for the British Em­pire were cre­mated in the open out­side Brighton,…”

Given the dom­i­nant Hindu ide­o­log­i­cal view on cre­ma­tion and its ob­vi­ous im­pact on ad­join­ing, smaller com­mu­ni­ties in South Asia; it is im­por­tant to step back and take a proper look at the prac­tice of cre­ma­tion and ask if there is any ‘spir­i­tu­al’ merit or other good in this prac­tice, and not be blinded by main­stream prac­tice nor dogma. Sikhism in­vites our minds to step out­side the bound­aries of cul­tural, re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal norms and prac­tises, and think and look more widely and mind­fully and con­sciously. The in­spir­ing lives of the Ten Gu­rus is an ex­act model of that eth­i­cal-cen­tric ap­proach.

Given the dom­i­nant Hindu ide­o­log­i­cal view on cre­ma­tion and its ob­vi­ous im­pact on ad­join­ing, smaller com­mu­ni­ties in South Asia; it is im­por­tant to step back and take a proper look at the prac­tice of cre­ma­tion and ask if there is any ‘spir­i­tu­al’ merit or other good in this prac­tice, and not be blinded by main­stream prac­tice nor dogma. Sikhism in­vites our minds to step out­side the bound­aries of cul­tural, re­li­gious and po­lit­i­cal norms and prac­tises, and think and look more widely and mind­fully and con­sciously. The in­spir­ing lives of the Ten Gu­rus is an ex­act model of that eth­i­cal-cen­tric ap­proach.

In con­trast with Hin­duism, cre­ma­tion is strictly for­bid­den in Is­lam. Bur­ial is the sole and ex­clu­sive form of dis­pos­ing of a corpse for a Mus­lim.

Across Sikhs, it is com­monly and in­stinc­tively thought that cre­ma­tion is a Gur­mat-based prac­tice. How­ever, in Gur­bani, cre­ma­tion has no such pre­scrip­tion or rec­om­men­da­tion. The prac­tice of cre­ma­tion may be cus­tom­ary and main­stream and prac­ti­cal but is not pre­scribed or val­i­dated by Gur­bani as right or wrong.

“I read that Sikhi does not re­strict us in which way we dis­pose of the body. We can bury it, throw it in wa­ter, cre­mate it, as long as it is in a re­spect­ful man­ner. Whichever method you choose does not help or harm the soul, be­cause the body was just a tem­po­rary shell for the soul. Once the soul de­parts, any treat­ment to the body does­n’t af­fect the soul. To cre­mate is a con­ve­nient way for Sikhs to dis­pose of the body.

Hum­ble Kaur

Ac­cord­ing to ‘Re­hat Maryada’ -Code of Con­duct -Per­sonal and Col­lec­tive, is­sued by the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Prab­hand­hak Com­mit­tee in 1931:

“Ar­ti­cle XIX – Fu­neral Cer­e­monies

1. How­ever young the de­ceased may be, the body should be cre­mated. How­ever, where arrange­ments for cre­ma­tion can­not be made, there should be no qualm about the body be­ing im­mersed in flow­ing wa­ter or dis­posed of in any other man­ner.”

Nonethe­less, a search through Gur­bani of­fers us no de­fin­i­tive or pre­scrip­tive in­struc­tions about how the dead body should be dealt with or dis­posed of. Like many sig­nif­i­cant as­pects of life, Gur­bani leaves this sub­ject open for thought­ful and eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tion by the hu­man, rather than blind, pre­scrip­tive, ro­botic in­struc­tions or dik­tats.

It is im­por­tant to ap­pre­ci­ate that Sikhism emerged in the 15th-17th cen­tury as a re­ac­tion and re­sponse to the pre-ex­ist­ing dom­i­nant prac­tices and sys­tems of life like Hin­duism and Is­lam.

Gur­bani makes the fol­low­ing less than pos­i­tive com­ments about ‘cre­ma­tion’ and ‘cre­ma­tion grounds’:

ਫਰੀਦਾ ਜਿਤੁ ਤਨਿ ਬਿਰਹੁ ਨ ਊਪਜੈ ਸੋ ਤਨੁ ਜਾਣੁ ਮਸਾਨੁ ॥36॥
Fa­reed, that body, within which love of the Lord does not well up – look upon that body as a cre­ma­tion ground.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1379

ਭੂਮਿ ਮਸਾਣ ਕੀ ਭਸਮ ਲਗਾਈ ਗੁਰ ਬਿਨੁ ਤਤੁ ਨ ਪਾਇਆ ॥2॥
You ap­ply the ashes of cre­ma­tion to your body, but with­out a Guru, you have not found the essence of re­al­ity.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 526

ਕਬੀਰ ਜਾ ਘਰ ਸਾਧ ਨ ਸੇਵੀਅਹਿ ਹਰਿ ਕੀ ਸੇਵਾ ਨਾਹਿ ॥ ਤੇ ਘਰ ਮਰਹਟ ਸਾਰਖੇ ਭੂਤ ਬਸਹਿ ਤਿਨ ਮਾਹਿ ॥192॥

Kabir, those houses in which nei­ther the Holy nor the Lord is served -those houses are like cre­ma­tion grounds; demons dwell within them.
Guru Granth Sahib, page 5

Like with a lot of hu­man prac­tises and cul­tural norms con­nected to groups of peo­ples and across peo­ples, cer­tain prac­tises are com­mon­place. For ex­am­ple, the type of food, method of cloth­ing, lan­guage and ac­cents, meth­ods of greet­ing and so­cial as­pi­ra­tions.

The pur­pose and prac­tice of cre­ma­tion or bur­ial, dif­fer across the globe, cul­tures, com­mu­ni­ties and civil­i­sa­tions. For ex­am­ple, whilst in Hin­duism, cre­ma­tion is em­phat­i­cally pre­scribed; in Is­lam, bur­ial is also em­phat­i­cally pre­scribed. Sig­nif­i­cantly, across Sikhism, Chris­tian­ity and Bud­dhism; there is no one pre­scrip­tion, for one or other. Cul­ture, re­li­gious be­lief, cus­tom and prac­tice: com­bine to­gether to in­flu­ence whether cre­ma­tion is cho­sen or bur­ial.

The pur­pose and prac­tice of cre­ma­tion or bur­ial, dif­fer across the globe, cul­tures, com­mu­ni­ties and civil­i­sa­tions.

Re­mark­ably, cre­ma­tion in west­ern so­ci­eties which have his­tor­i­cally prac­tised bur­ial of the dead has gone up sub­stan­tially in the last sev­eral decades. Maybe, be­cause space for bur­ial grounds is rapidly run­ning out, and sec­ondly be­cause cre­ma­tion is a quicker, sim­pler, more au­to­mated, ef­fi­cient and less-in­volved process. This is be­ing a lot more con­ducive to a city-based, densely pop­u­lated, fast-paced, mod­ern lifestyle.

In Sikhism, there is no sig­nif­i­cance at­tached to the act of cre­ma­tion. Quite the con­trary. Gur­bani refers to the dead body as a waste­ful item, which will merge back with the dust and soil of the earth from where it came.

ਖੇਹੂ ਖੇਹ ਰਲਾਈਐ ਤਾ ਜੀਉ ਕੇਹਾ ਹੋਇ ॥
When the body min­gles with dust, what hap­pens to the soul?
Guru Granth Sahib Page 17

ਸੁੰਞੀ ਦੇਹ ਡਰਾਵਣੀ ਜਾ ਜੀਉ ਵਿਚਹੁ ਜਾਇ ॥
The empty body is dread­ful when the soul goes out from within.
Guru Granth Sahib Page 19

ਦੇਹੀ ਭਸਮ ਰੁਲਾਇ ਨ ਜਾਪੀ ਕਹ ਗਇਆ ॥
When the body rolls in the dust, it is not known where the soul has gone.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 753

ਜੇ ਮਿਰਤਕ ਕਉ ਚੰਦਨੁ ਚੜਾਵੈ ॥ ਉਸ ਤੇ ਕਹਹੁ ਕਵਨ ਫਲ ਪਾਵੈ ॥
If a corpse is anointed with san­dal­wood oil, what good does it do?

ਜੇ ਮਿਰਤਕ ਕਉ ਬਿਸਟਾ ਮਾਹਿ ਰੁਲਾਈ ॥ ਤਾਂ ਮਿਰਤਕ ਕਾ ਕਿਆ ਘਟਿ ਜਾਈ ॥3॥
If a corpse is rolled in ma­nure, what does it lose from this?

ਕਹਤ ਕਬੀਰ ਹਉ ਕਹਉ ਪੁਕਾਰਿ ॥ ਸਮਝਿ ਦੇਖੁ ਸਾਕਤ ਗਾਵਾਰ ॥
Says Kabir, I pro­claim this out loud; be­hold, and un­der­stand, you ig­no­rant, faith­less cynic.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1160

ਕਬੀਰਾ ਧੂਰਿ ਸਕੇਲਿ ਕੈ ਪੁਰੀਆ ਬਾਂਧੀ ਦੇਹ ॥ ਦਿਵਸ ਚਾਰ ਕੋ ਪੇਖਨੋ ਅੰਤ ਖੇਹ ਕੀ ਖੇਹ ॥41॥
Kabir, the body is a pile of dust, col­lected and packed to­gether.
This is a show which lasts for only a few days, and then dust re­turns to dust.

ਕਬੀਰ ਸੂਰਜ ਚਾਂਦ ਕੈ ਉਦੈ ਭਈ ਸਭ ਦੇਹ ॥
Kabir, bod­ies are like the ris­ing and set­ting of the sun and the moon.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1374

In­deed, out of the 10 Gu­rus, the prophets and sem­i­nal fig­ures of our Pan­jaabi-Sikh civil­i­sa­tion; only 6 of the Gu­rus ap­pear to have been cre­mated. The fi­nal phys­i­cal con­clu­sions of Guru Nanak, Guru Ar­jan, Guru Tegh Ba­hadur and Guru Gob­ind Singh are de­scribed as be­ing with­out acts of cre­ma­tion.

Fur­ther­more, in Sikhi; im­por­tance, wor­ship or at­tach­ment to any phys­i­cal grave, cre­ma­tion ground or such like: is wholly and ex­pressly re­jected. Equally, no im­por­tance or at­tach­ment to ashes, to light­ing lamps and mark­ing death an­niver­saries.

Ac­cord­ing to Pheena, a con­trib­u­tor to an on­line Sikh dis­cus­sion site, sikhsan­gat.com: “The at­tach­ment of the body car­ries a great bur­den on the soul. As the body dies the at­tach­ment car­ries over for a quite a while with the soul. The burn­ing of the body is a sign to the soul to move on. In Hindu mat, there are even fur­ther rit­u­als where a vase is bro­ken by the head of the dead body to given an ex­am­ple to the soul that the shell is bro­ken, now you must leave, move on with your jour­ney. The body serves no pur­pose (ex­clud­ing or­gan do­na­tion) af­ter the soul has left it. The Chris­tians bury the dead be­cause of their be­liefs that one day Je­sus will come, they will rise from the dead.”

Hum­ble Kaur, an­other con­trib­u­tor to the dis­cus­sion, says: “I read that Sikhi does not re­strict us in which way we dis­pose of the body. We can bury it, throw it in wa­ter, cre­mate it, as long as it is in a re­spect­ful man­ner. Whichever method you choose does not help or harm the soul, be­cause the body was just a tem­po­rary shell for the soul. Once the soul de­parts, any treat­ment to the body does­n’t af­fect the soul. To cre­mate is a con­ve­nient way for Sikhs to dis­pose of the body. But, un­like Sikhi, other re­li­gions and the way they dis­pose of the body does have a re­li­gious as­pect to it and fol­low­ers only dis­pose of the body as per what their re­li­gion says. Chris­tians and Mus­lims bury their dead as it is against their re­li­gion to cre­mate them. Hin­du’s cre­mate their dead and dis­pose of the ashes in a sa­cred river. So, there is re­ally no pur­pose in why we cre­mate the body.”

ਨਾਂਗੇ ਆਵਨੁ ਨਾਂਗੇ ਜਾਨਾ ॥ ਕੋਇ ਨ ਰਹਿਹੈ ਰਾਜਾ ਰਾਨਾ ॥੧॥
“Naked we come, and naked we go. No one, not even the kings and queens, shall re­main.”
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1157

ਮਰਣੁ ਨ ਮੰਦਾ ਲੋਕਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਜੇ ਮਰਿ ਜਾਣੈ ਐਸਾ ਕੋਇ ॥
Death would not be called bad, O peo­ple, if one knew how to truly die.
Guru Granth Sahib, Page 579