On the oc­ca­sion of the Birth An­niver­sary of the Sec­ond Mas­ter -Guru An­gad Sahib, WSN colum­nist Jagdeesh Singh nar­rates the re­mark­able con­tri­bu­tion of Sikhs through Lan­gar dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­demic across the world. He tells us that Lan­gar is more than food, it is a foun­da­tion for an in­clu­sive way of life en­com­pass­ing all cre­ations of God. He bliss­fully won­ders at this great in­sti­tu­tion started by the Gu­rus, con­grat­u­lates every Sikh who is self­lessly serv­ing hu­mankind in this hour of dis­tress and hopes that this will con­tinue till eter­nity -in good and bad times.

THE EVER-EN­ER­GIS­ING AND DE­LI­CIOUS GURU KA LAN­GAR is an en­dur­ing and in­te­gral part of Sikh com­mu­ni­ties across the globe. It is as in­sep­a­ra­ble and in­te­gral to our vis­i­ble be­ing as our das­taars –tur­bans and kesh –un­shorn hair.

With the coro­n­avirus pan­demic, Sikhs in Pan­jaab, Delhi, New York, Lon­don, Aus­tralia, United King­dom and many other global lo­ca­tions, have sprung into Lan­gar ac­tion all over! Sikhs, small in num­ber, but enor­mously big in their hearts, have gone into di­rect pub­lic ac­tion with ei­ther open­ing up their gur­d­waras to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties or tak­ing Lan­gar di­rectly to the homes of the needy and vul­ner­a­ble or tak­ing Lan­gar out into the pub­lic streets and feed­ing peo­ple there. Sikh com­mu­ni­ties and char­i­ties have taken to fund­ing, or­gan­is­ing and de­liv­er­ing pack­ages of food di­rectly to the poor and des­ti­tute com­mu­ni­ties across Pan­jaab.

As many pub­lic fig­ures have ac­knowl­edged, what a pow­er­ful force this Lan­gar is, and the vig­or­ous and mighty spirit of benev­o­lence that un­der­lies it! In­deed, the sim­ple, veg­e­tar­ian, rus­tic lan­gar of Guru Nanak re­mains and will re­main, like all that He did and taught -an ever­last­ing, eter­nal truth and the good­ness of liv­ing.

It is through such gi­gan­tic ef­forts, that Sikhs and Sikhi and what these rep­re­sents be­comes known. Sikhi and Sikhs are es­sen­tially and at the core, a force of prac­ti­cal ac­tion. Prac­ti­cal ac­tion is what de­fines Sikhi and by be­ing a per­son of ac­tion is what gives a com­mit­ted Sikh a true mean­ing, pur­pose and edge. That self­less, eth­i­cal spirit is man­i­fest in Lan­gar ac­tion across the world, in the midst of the cur­rent global pan­demic!

Lan­gar is not ‘re­li­gious food’. Not even ‘holy food’. It is much more than that. Re­li­gion, pol­i­tics has no part or pur­pose in this down-to-earth, straight-for­ward act of shar­ing, benev­o­lence, in­clu­sion, equal­ity and so much more.

The won­der of Guru Ka Lan­gar is from the key ideals of equal­ity, shar­ing and jus­tice. The thought­ful­ness of un­der­pin­ning this is more than just about food and eat­ing.

The whole Guru Ka Lan­gar ide­al­ism, phi­los­o­phy, mind­ful­ness and at­ti­tude, is more than just shar­ing food. In­deed, it is more than just about food! It ex­tends to a great deal more about our shared lives, col­lec­tive hu­man so­ci­ety and the earthly world in which we live and op­er­ate.

Lan­gar is not ‘re­li­gious food’. Not even ‘holy food’. It is much more than that. Re­li­gion, pol­i­tics has no part or pur­pose in this down-to-earth, straight-for­ward act of shar­ing, benev­o­lence, in­clu­sion, equal­ity and so much more.

The prac­tice of Lan­gar pre­dates the com­ing of Guru Nanak to this earth. It can be traced to Bud­dhists and Sufi prac­tises. Like all things eth­i­cal and pos­i­tive, Guru Nanak em­braced and en­gaged the good and re­jected the not-so-good. It is from Guru Nanak, the sec­ond Guru -Guru An­gad and the sub­se­quent Gu­rus, that the Sikh tra­di­tion and en­dur­ing prac­tise of Lan­gar have be­come an em­bed­ded and main­stream prac­tice across Sikh com­mu­ni­ties and Gur­d­waras.

How­ever, the prac­tice of cook­ing to­gether, eat­ing to­gether and shar­ing to­gether: is more than just a rit­ual or for­mal­ism, or keep­ing up a cher­ished tra­di­tion.

For those, who have the good for­tune to un­der­stand and em­brace the prin­ci­ples and pur­pose of Lan­gar; it is the most promi­nent and prac­ti­cal fea­ture of the great fortresses of eth­i­cal Guru-in­spired liv­ing -our ‘Guru-dwaras’. The Lan­gar spirit is deeply and pro­foundly about a so­ci­ety which op­er­ates as a car­ing and shar­ing unit, at the vil­lage level, com­mu­nity level, lo­cal level and global level.

It is car­ing and shar­ing in a con­tigu­ous way, in shared union and prox­im­ity. It is about the eth­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­ity and prac­tices of shar­ing, with no sin­gle or in­di­vid­ual own­er­ship. It is a pow­er­ful prin­ci­ple, that later Karl Marx and Friedrich En­gels in the 1800s would be so in­spired by, that they would ex­press in their fa­mous rad­i­cal writ­ings as ‘com­mon own­er­ship’ and that ‘prop­erty is theft’.

The in­deli­ble Guru Ka Lan­gar is about the com­mon and col­lec­tive shar­ing of re­sources, phys­i­cal and mon­e­tary -land, homes, wa­ter, air, soil, food and more. It is equally about shared re­spon­si­bil­ity in a non-self­ish, non-usurp­ing and non-prof­i­teer­ing man­ner. The Lan­gar spirit is eth­i­cally gath­er­ing, man­ag­ing and hold­ing those re­sources for com­mon use and ben­e­fit. It is the op­po­site of per­sonal for­tune, profit, greed and self-ac­cu­mu­la­tion.

ਧਰਤੀ ਦੇਗ ਮਿਲੈ ਇਕ ਵੇਰਾ ਭਾਗੁ ਤੇਰਾ ਭੰਡਾਰੀ ॥੨॥
The earth is Your great cook­ing pot; Your be­ings re­ceive their por­tions only once. Des­tiny is Your gate-keeper. ||2||

Guru Granth Sahib

It ex­tends deeply and pow­er­fully to our use of the earth’s re­sources. Lan­gar is about sen­si­tiv­ity, care, con­cern, ap­pre­ci­a­tion, re­spon­si­bil­ity, in­put and out­put.  In Gur­bani, the earth is re­ferred won­drously as a ‘Degh’ from which we re­ceive end­less out­puts.

ਧਰਤੀ ਦੇਗ ਮਿਲੈ ਇਕ ਵੇਰਾ ਭਾਗੁ ਤੇਰਾ ਭੰਡਾਰੀ ॥੨॥
The earth is Your great cook­ing pot; Your be­ings re­ceive their por­tions only once. Des­tiny is Your gate-keeper. ||2||

Lan­gar is an all-in­clu­sive, to­talised ap­proach to life. It is the foun­da­tion of an eth­i­cal eco­nomic sys­tem for hu­man liv­ing. It is about car­ing for the earth, whilst tak­ing care­fully and con­sid­er­ately from the earth.

Lan­gar in­te­grates all the above prin­ci­ples into one whole cycli­cal and in­clu­sive ac­tion. It is about re­ceiv­ing and giv­ing back into the earth. It is about feed­ing the an­i­mals and all forms of life on the earth be­yond hu­man.  It is about nour­ish­ing and en­abling the earth.

The en­tire Guru Ka Lan­gar is about an equalised sys­tem of life, in mind, body and spirit. It is about a non-ex­ploita­tive, earth-cen­tric, shared econ­omy. It is about us­ing the earth and the foun­da­tions of ex­is­tence that it pro­vides in a thought­ful and mind­ful way.

It is about a just and eth­i­cal sys­tem of liv­ing -hu­man-con­scious and earth-con­scious. “Noth­ing is mine, not even my body, mind or con­scious­ness. These are all prod­ucts of a much wider ex­is­tence.”

So, when I re­ceive my next sweet ‘Karah par­shad’ -sweet pud­ding served at the end of a ser­vice in a Gur­d­wara, roti, –Wheat flour bread, dal –lentils and sabji –veg­eta­bles: let me re­mem­ber, un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the source from where these have come and how I should be part of the great cy­cle of benev­o­lence. Let me con­tribute and add to that en­tire spec­trum.

The Guru has given us the ex­am­ple of Sacha Sauda -the ‘truth­ful deal’, the anec­do­tal teach­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween leg­endary char­ac­ters Bhai Lalo -the poor and the hum­ble as against Malik Bhago -the rich ex­ploit­ing the poor, the gen­eros­ity, supreme and in­fi­nite benev­o­lence of the earth which so dif­fuse and wide­spread,

-ਪਵਣੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਪਾਣੀ ਪਿਤਾ ਮਾਤਾ ਧਰਤਿ ਮਹਤੁ ॥
Air is the Guru, Wa­ter is the Fa­ther, and Earth is the Great Mother of all.

The Lan­gar ethos and spirit is beau­ti­fully epit­o­mised in the great na­tional, up­lift­ing, em­pow­er­ing, trans­form­ing slo­gan of ‘DEGH O TEGH O FATEH!’ Vic­tory to the cook­ing pot -the source of life en­ergy and nour­ish­ment and vic­tory to the sword -the source of pro­tec­tion and jus­tice!

Guru Ka Lan­gar is about food, feed­ing, shar­ing, equal­ity. It is about lov­ing and em­brac­ing the earth from where all comes. It is about jus­tice and non-ex­ploita­tion. It is about shared and equal gov­er­nance. It is about re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen­ship, con­tribut­ing, shar­ing and ben­e­fit­ing to­gether. It is about com­mon­al­ity and col­lec­tivism. It is about hu­mil­ity. It about at­ti­tude. It is about mak­ing the cor­rect choices -to drive and forge slowly and surely to­wards a just and benev­o­lent world -so­cially, eco­log­i­cally, eco­nom­i­cally, po­lit­i­cally.

This is beau­ti­fully epit­o­mised in the great na­tional, up­lift­ing, em­pow­er­ing, trans­form­ing slo­gan of ‘DEGH O TEGH O FATEH!’ Vic­tory to the cook­ing pot -the source of life en­ergy and nour­ish­ment and vic­tory to the sword -the source of pro­tec­tion and jus­tice!

May the won­ders of Guru Ka Lan­gar spread and send out a soar­ing and in­spir­ing mes­sage across world con­sci­en­tious­ness about life, re­spon­si­bil­ity, na­ture, an­i­mals and hu­mans -one gi­gan­tic fam­ily with so many in­ter­de­pen­dent parts!

May the force of Wa­he­gu­ru’s in­spi­ra­tion and ac­tivism be with us! May the Sikh rev­o­lu­tion of kind­ness, jus­tice and good pro­ceed on­wards and for­wards!