The ed­i­tor of The Sikh Re­view for 33 years -Saran Singh re­cently passed away. In this ar­ti­cle pub­lished in the his­toric Sikh mag­a­zine -The Sikh Re­view -around some time af­ter the In­dian army at­tack in June 1984, the cel­e­brated bu­reau­crat and au­thor talks about the vi­cious cam­paign in the In­dian me­dia about Dar­bar Sahib -Golden Tem­ple, Am­rit­sar traces the sig­nif­i­cance of the place for Sikhs and Sikhism. He also traces the roots of Sikhism in the erst­while USSR and the United States.

DE­SPITE THE ME­DI­A’S TU­TORED CHO­RUS TO MA­LIGN THE HOLI­EST OF HOLIES -DAR­BAR SAHIB, Am­rit­sar, shines with undi­min­ished splen­dour in the morn­ing light, hal­lowed by the med­i­ta­tions of count­less men of God, the blood of mar­tyrs de­fend­ing the faith against im­pe­r­ial op­pres­sion, a refuge for the sick, the weary and the sin­ful – 

“ਡਿਠੇ ਸਭੇ ਥਾਵ ਨਹੀ ਤੁਧੁ ਜੇਹਿਆ॥
                   ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਅੰਗ 1361

-In the wide world that I have seen, there is no place such as this!
                  Guru Granth Sahib, Page 1361

It is no co­in­ci­dence that the sa­cred Am­rit­sar Sarovar is held in es­teem by the Ma­hayana Bud­dhists. Ac­cord­ing to Dr Nir­man Chan­dra Sinha, a Pali scholar and one-time Di­rec­tor of the Nam­gyal In­sti­tute of Ti­betol­ogy in Gang­tok, pil­grims from all over Ti­bet, Bhutan, Sikkim and Mon­go­lia con­sider the holy pools at Am­rit­sar and Rawal­sar (the lat­ter in Hi­machal Pradesh), the most sa­cred next only to Bodh Gaya and Varanasi. In­deed, ac­cord­ing to Dr Sinha, Bud­dhist pil­grims from West­ern Ti­bet who come via the passes in West­ern Hi­malayas of­ten visit only Am­rit­sar and Rawal­sar. 

The Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Pra­band­hak Com­mit­tee would be well ad­vised to note this com­mon­al­ity of faith be­tween Sikhism and Bud­dhism and take spe­cial mea­sures for the fa­cil­ity of Bud­dhist pil­grims, in recog­ni­tion of this unique her­itage of ho­li­ness. 

Holy Texts in Strange Lands:
Be­lieve it or not, hand­writ­ten copies of Guru Granth Sahib, the Janam Sakhis and other sa­cred texts of the Sikhs have been found in the Bokhara and As­trakhan ar­eas of the So­viet Union and are cur­rently the trea­sured pos­ses­sions of the In­sti­tute of Ori­en­tal Stud­ies of the Acad­emy of Sci­ences, Leningrad. These man­u­scripts, be­long­ing to the first and sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tury, were copied in Cen­tral Asia, in­di­cat­ing that Sikhism had de­vel­oped in far-flung pock­ets among the key cities of So­viet Rus­sia, in the course of ex­ten­sive trade and com­merce. 

In one of the il­lus­tra­tions at­tached to the man­u­script of Gur­bilas, Guru Gob­ind Singh has been shown as prepar­ing for a hunt. 

Nearer at home, in pos­ses­sion of the Delhi Uni­ver­si­ty’s De­part­ment of Mod­ern In­dian Lan­guages, there is a minia­ture edi­tion of Guru Granth Sahib, all of its 1430 pages, which is the size of a postage stamp and which is said to have been printed in Ger­many nearly two hun­dred years ago. The let­ters are so small they can be read, only with the aid of a pow­er­ful mag­ni­fy­ing glass. 

Since the end of Sikh raj, the art of cal­lig­ra­phy has been on the de­cline for want of pa­tron­age. Sa­cred texts of the Sikhs not only of­fer a chal­lenge to trans­la­tors around the globe but also the op­por­tu­nity to artists and crafts­men to earn a mod­icum of im­mor­tal­ity by the em­bell­ish­ment and flo­ral dec­o­ra­tion of the holy scrip­tures in mar­ble, metal and pa­per. 

Free­dom of Faith in Amer­i­can Democ­racy:
My mind goes back to an­other heart­warm­ing rec­ol­lec­tion em­a­nat­ing from the As­so­ci­ated. Press. Date lined: Fort Mon­mouth in the USA the 8th Jan­u­ary 1974, the news item re­ported, how Wal­ter Mc­Nair, an Amer­i­can sol­dier who had em­braced Sikhism, was de­clared in­no­cent of break­ing mil­i­tary reg­u­la­tions be­cause of wear­ing long hair un­der a tur­ban and grow­ing a beard. “I am de­lighted,” he de­clared af­ter his ac­quit­tal. “I was sure I would be found guilty,” said the 19-year-old Pri­vate Mc­Nair who was dressed in full uni­form com­plete with a white tur­ban and a blonde beard! 

The As­so­ci­ated Press had then re­ported that Mc­Nair was the fourth Cau­casian con­vert to Sikhism to be tried by the Mil­i­tary Court and the first to be de­clared in­no­cent. Lt. Col. Robert Mor­ri­son,.the one man court-mar­tial, told re­porters, af­ter­wards, he could see no le­gal dif­fer­ence in this case be­tween an en­listed man and a draftee, for the Sikh draftees had al­ready been al­lowed to keep long hair and beards and wear a tur­ban. 

This, and other sim­i­lar in­stances of pro­tec­tion ac­corded to men of faith, stands in sharp con­trast with the open in­sti­ga­tion to apos­tasy and the aban­don­ment of the ke­shas, as a vi­tal char­ac­ter­is­tic among young re­cruits to In­di­a’s armed forces which used to be the bul­wark of courage and dis­ci­pline born of the faith in the Sikh’s dis­tinc­tive­ness.