Sikhs seek­ing their civil and po­lit­i­cal rights across the world, in­clud­ing in the USA have gen­er­ated keen in­ter­est among the com­mu­ni­ty’s younger gen­er­a­tion as well as oth­ers about Sikhs and their re­li­gion. Har­vard Uni­ver­sity launched an on­line course Sikhism Through Its Scrip­tures course in 2018, which has so far seen 50,000 reg­is­trants, of which a good 30 per cent are non-Sikhs. With barely a few months left and while we are still un­der a lock­down mode, World Sikh News in­vites read­ers to know more about Sikhs and Sikhi by en­rolling to this at-home study. 

As part of the Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Re­li­gious Lit­er­acy Pro­gram ini­tia­tive to make the world’s faith tra­di­tions known the gen­eral pub­lic on its edX plat­form, the Har­vard Uni­ver­sity launched an in­tro­duc­tory, on­line course ti­tled, Sikhism Through Its Scrip­tures in Au­gust 2018.

De­vel­oped by a team led by Dr Harpreet Singh, a scholar of Sikhism and South Asian tra­di­tions and lan­guages at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, with con­tent de­vel­op­ment by Ravin­der Singh -a blog­ger on mat­ters Sikhi and mod­er­a­tor of on­line fo­rums on Gur­bani. The re­search, se­lec­tion of free ac­cess me­dia con­tent in text, au­dio and video sec­tions into holis­tic ses­sions was the do­main of Daman­preet Singh -a grad­u­ate stu­dent of Re­li­gious stud­ies at Har­vard. 

The course con­sists of eight mod­ules, is self-paced, and re­quires a com­mit­ment of 4-10 hours a week to com­plete in 4 weeks. 

Vi­sual and Me­dia Arts wiz­ard Ryann Tagle is the video ed­i­tor for World Re­li­gions Through Their Scrip­tures with In­ter­na­tional Re­la­tions and Phi­los­o­phy ma­jor Zachary Davis work­ing at Har­vardX where he fo­cuses on build­ing open on­line courses in the hu­man­i­ties. Har­vard grad­u­ate Eu­nice Mc­Mur­ray has worked for sev­eral years as a faith-based com­mu­nity or­ga­nizer in Boston and is par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in the in­ter­sec­tion of race and re­li­gion. 

The on­line course is free and open to any­one. Since the course was launched, an es­ti­mated 50,000 reg­is­trants from 128 coun­tries have en­rolled and the break­down be­tween Sikh and non-Sikh reg­is­trants be­ing roughly 70/​30. 

I have learnt so much about the Sikh re­li­gion, about their brav­ery, about their for­giv­ing na­ture, about their sac­ri­fices just to help and save oth­ers, and Sikhs fac­ing dis­crim­i­na­tions and bad ex­pe­ri­ences in Di­as­po­ras af­ter which they still walked on the path of their Sikh be­liefs and served oth­ers with food by fol­low­ing the Lan­gar sys­tem in their home­land as well as in for­eign coun­tries- I have gained so much knowl­edge of Sikhism through this course of which I was al­ways un­aware about, even af­ter be­ing born in the Sikh fam­ily.

Ac­cord­ing to the feed­back re­ceived, Sikhs have en­rolled for the course to ei­ther re-dis­cover their roots or deepen their un­der­stand­ing of Sikhi. For non-Sikhs, it is an ex­plo­ration into a re­li­gion and faith tra­di­tion they don’t know much about. 

Thank you to all who worked to­gether to pro­duce this course! This was my first real look into Sikhism and I re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate schol­ars of your depth tak­ing the time to cre­ate a free course for every­one. The course left me with a lot of ques­tions (as it should!) and I’ll con­tinue to delve into the con­cepts of Sikhism. Many thanks! 

Dave Prins, USA

Al­though Sikhi is the world’s fifth-largest re­li­gion in terms of fol­low­ers, it is rel­a­tively un­known and of­ten mis­un­der­stood. Sikhi also re­mains largely un­rep­re­sented in uni­ver­si­ties in the West, de­spite the fact that Sikhs are a highly vis­i­ble global mi­nor­ity.

Al­low me to ex­press my grat­i­tude to you per­son­ally and to Har­vard Uni­ver­sity for al­low­ing me to have the honor to par­tic­i­pate in this course, and to thank you for the deep dive in Sikhism with a trusted source and pure aca­d­e­mic con­cept. As I men­tioned in my self-in­tro­duc­tory that I was in­spired by many Sikh friends (male and fe­male) sur­rounded my pro­fes­sional and per­sonal lives with amaz­ing fea­tures that cre­ated my ul­ti­mate com­fort zone among them and their fam­i­lies.

Galal el dien, Al­ge­ria

While ma­jor uni­ver­si­ties across North Amer­ica have fac­ulty ded­i­cated to Chris­tian­ity, Ju­daism, Is­lam, Hin­duism and Bud­dhism, Sikhi is taught, with a few ex­cep­tions, on a part-time ba­sis. 

I, from the bot­tom of my heart, re­ally ap­pre­ci­ate and thank the teach­ers who are part of this teach­ing team, es­pe­cially to our pro­fes­sor Mr. Harpreet Singh. Af­ter com­plet­ing this course I feel re­ally proud that I be­long to this brave Sikh com­mu­nity. 

Navneet Gill, In­dia.

The course con­sists of eight mod­ules, is self-paced, and re­quires a com­mit­ment of 4-10 hours a week to com­plete in 4 weeks. No prior knowl­edge of Sikhi is re­quired. Each mod­ule com­bines text, au­dio and video to ex­am­ine Sikhi from a doc­tri­nal, his­tor­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural per­spec­tive. 

Thank you for this course, I did­n’t know any­thing about Sikhism be­fore this and I feel like an im­proved hu­man be­ing by know­ing. 

Hope Spicer

Each stu­dent can ex­pect to come away from the course with the fol­low­ing: 

• An ex­plo­ration and en­gage­ment with the foun­da­tional Sikh text, the Japji: its struc­ture, recita­tion and study of its core mes­sage.
• An un­der­stand­ing of the Sikh scrip­ture, the Guru Granth Sahib: its his­tory, com­pi­la­tion and struc­ture, its place and im­pact on the po­lit­i­cal and cul­tural evo­lu­tion of the Sikh com­mu­nity
• In­ter­pre­ta­tive skills to en­gage in a nu­anced read­ing of cen­tral Sikh con­cepts like Hukam, Hau­mai, Naam, Guru/​Sabad.  
• An ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Gur­mat Sangeet, the Sikh mu­si­cal tra­di­tion, as rep­re­sented in the Sikh scrip­ture and its cul­tural con­text
• A look at Sikh aes­thet­ics that in­cludes lit­er­a­ture, art, and mu­sic

I re­ally en­joyed learn­ing the in­ter­nal mean­ing of Japji Sahib, which I used to re­cite most fre­quently on a daily ba­sis, with­out know­ing its ac­tual and deep mean­ing of the philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts in­cluded in it.

The im­por­tance of this ini­tia­tive, given the vast un­der­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Sikhi in re­li­gious stud­ies, can­not be over­es­ti­mated. As you can see, the tes­ti­mo­ni­als are en­cour­ag­ing, to say the least. Sikhs are en­cour­aged to ac­cess the course, which re­mains open to all. 

Ravin­der Singh spent his for­ma­tive years in Sin­ga­pore and Delhi and has lived in the U.S. since 1976. He is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Rochester, New York. His con­sum­ing pas­sion is Sikhs and Sikhi – in all its fla­vors and di­men­sions. He has served as Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Sikh Re­search In­sti­tute. He has also served on the World Sikh Coun­cil, the Ohio In­ter­faith As­so­ci­a­tion and is the past Pres­i­dent of the Guru Nanak Re­li­gious So­ci­ety of Cen­tral Ohio. He is Ed­i­tor of Kho­jGur­bani.org.