Cel­e­brated oc­to­ge­nar­ian Sikh writer and scholar -Bhai Har­bans Lal re­views an­other well-known au­thor Gur­cha­ran­jit Singh Lam­ba’s painstak­ing work on the evolve­ment of the Sikh code of per­sonal and com­mu­nity con­duct, called the Sikh Re­hat Maryada in Sikh cir­cles, pub­lished with the re­mark­able Sikh his­toric nomen­cla­ture of Sakhi Sikh Re­hat Maryada Ji Ki and pub­lished in 2020 to co­in­cide with the 100 years of the apex Sikh body -the Sikh Par­lia­ment -Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee -SGPC. The World Sikh News en­cour­ages read­ers to buy and read the book for a bet­ter, co­gent and truth­ful un­der­stand­ing of the events pre­ced­ing and af­ter the adop­tion of the Sikh Re­hat Maryada by the Sikh Com­mon­wealth.

SAKHI RE­HAT MARYADA JI KI is a his­toric, per­ti­nent and on-the-dot nar­ra­tion, an ex­ten­sive com­men­tary and the day-by-day ac­count of how the pre­sent ver­sion of the Sikh Maryada – The Sikh Code of Con­duct was brought into ex­is­tence.

Gur­cha­ran­jit Singh has made a rad­i­cal de­par­ture to­wards stat­ing the real ad­vances of the processes used in con­struct­ing the cur­rent Re­hat Nama. This book, in con­trast to oth­ers, the Shi­ro­mani Gur­d­wara Par­band­hak Com­mit­tee (SGPC) Re­hat Maryada is not la­belled as the Re­hat of the Khalsa, but it is the Re­hat for the whole Sikh na­tion that in­cluded also oth­ers than Khalsa like Se­ha­jd­haris.

The writer, Sar­dar Gur­cha­ran­jit Singh Lamba is an at­tor­ney by train­ing but has been an ac­tivist on Sikh is­sues par­tic­u­larly re­lated to the evo­lu­tion of the Sikh mes­sage through the glo­ri­ous his­tory of the Sikhs.

I met Sar­dar Lamba dur­ing our youth days in In­dia when we were both ac­tivists in the All-In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion (AISSF). I found him very com­mit­ted to the Sikh causes and par­tic­u­larly the func­tion­ing of the SGPC and Akal Takhat.

To know why the Sikh lead­er­ship felt the ne­ces­sity of for­mu­lat­ing the Re­hat Maryada, you must go back to the days when its ne­ces­sity seems to have been felt.

In 1849, the British an­nexed the North­ern In­dian sub­con­ti­nent that was the Sikh king­dom and their home­land. This an­nex­a­tion be­came a vis­i­ble em­bar­rass­ment among Sikhs, and they tended to eas­ily suc­cumb to re­li­gios­ity avail­able else­where for their iden­tity. Hindu rad­i­cal­ism vis­i­bly be­gan to take ad­van­tage of the sit­u­a­tion by en­gag­ing in ex­ploita­tion of the Sikhs’ re­ces­sion. Hindu fa­nat­ics found the op­por­tu­nity to suck Sikhs into their re­li­gious prac­tices.

For il­lus­tra­tion, in 1897, in a large pub­lic meet­ing at La­hore, the Sanatanist Hin­dus passed a res­o­lu­tion that the Sikhs were a part of the Hindu com­mu­nity. The Bharat Dharm Ma­haman­dal took no­tice of this is­sue and passed a res­o­lu­tion in a meet­ing at Delhi, as­sert­ing that the ten Gu­rus of the Sikhs from Guru Nanak to Guru Gob­ind Singh were re­vival­ists of Hindu Dharma.

Hindu ac­tivists re­cruited Baba Khem Singh Bedi, a de­scen­dant of Guru Nanak, and Bawa Sumer Singh (Bhalla), a de­scen­dant of Guru Amar Das, to sub­scribe to the view that Sikhs were Hin­dus as their Gu­rus were re­vival­ists of Hin­duism.

Fur­ther, Hindu statutes in­clud­ing Shiv­ling and oth­ers be­gan to reap­pear in the cir­cum­am­bu­la­tory pas­sage -parikrama, of Dar­bar Sahib, pop­u­larly known as the Golden Tem­ple. Sim­i­larly, a paint­ing show­ing Guru Gob­ind Singh stand­ing with folded hands be­fore the Hindu God­dess ask­ing for Am­rit -the elixir of life, be­gan to ap­pear in the his­tor­i­cal Sikh Gur­d­waras.

The Sikh lead­er­ship of the time re­acted. They felt a ne­ces­sity to for­mu­late the Sikh re­li­gios­ity, of­ten con­trary to the Hindu re­li­gios­ity, as a wall be­tween the Sikhs and those who were not.

Sar­dar Lamba de­tails how the Sikh lead­er­ship took al­most a cen­tury to come up with the doc­u­ment, now known to be the Sikh Re­hat Maryada as au­thored by SGPC.

In the book un­der re­view, Sar­dar Lamba de­tails how the Sikh lead­er­ship took al­most a cen­tury to come up with the doc­u­ment, now known to be the Sikh Re­hat Maryada as au­thored by SGPC.

Mind you this is dif­fer­ent from re-writ­ing of the Sikh his­tory. That task is left to the schol­ars ap­pointed by the Sikh in­sti­tu­tion of higher ed­u­ca­tion. In con­trast, the Sikh Re­hat Maryada was for­mu­lated by the Sikh clergy with the help of Sikh aca­d­e­mi­cians.

I take pride in be­com­ing a part of its his­tory in that, when the Maryada was first printed as hard copies at Guru Ram Das Print­ing Press, in March 1945, late Prin­ci­pal Sat­bir Singh and I were asked to read and cor­rect the fi­nal proof to catch and cor­rect the type-set­ting er­rors. 

Sar­dar Lamba starts from Jan­u­ary Oc­to­ber 1910 when Chief Khalsa Di­wan asked a spe­cial com­mit­tee to for­mu­late a Sikh Re­hat. In March 1915, Chief Khalsa Di­wan pub­lished a de­scrip­tion of the Sikh re­li­gios­ity. How­ever, the for­mu­la­tion of the cur­rent Re­hat Maryada, then la­belled Roho Reeti, be­gan with a meet­ing on March 13-15, 1927, and ended with the re­port to SGPC on Feb­ru­ary 3, 1945. SGPC then ac­cepted the re­port in its gen­eral body meet­ing and gave it the ti­tle of Sikh Re­hat Maryada.

I take pride in be­com­ing a part of its his­tory in that, when the Maryada was first printed as hard copies at Guru Ram Das Print­ing Press, in March 1945, late Prin­ci­pal Sat­bir Singh and I were asked to read and cor­rect the fi­nal proof to catch and cor­rect the type-set­ting er­rors. It was the oc­ca­sion when AISSF was meet­ing in Am­rit­sar to for­mu­late its by­laws at its an­nual gen­eral body meet­ing.

Sar­dar Lamba nar­rates all Re­hat Maryada meet­ings con­cern­ing their at­ten­dees and the pro­ceed­ings. One may no­tice that all at­ten­dees were re­quired to be prac­tis­ing re­hat of the Khande-di-Pahul -the  Khalsa ini­ti­a­tion was prac­tised at that time. Only one Se­ha­jd­hari Sikh at­tended and that too only once.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the USA and Burma were among those who at­tended the meet­ings. All sug­ges­tions and amend­ments were recorded. There was the rule of 90% agree­ment be­fore any amend­ment was ac­cepted for in­cor­po­ra­tion.

The book gives 118 key­words at the end to search in the book of 465 pages. In the sec­ond part of the book, the au­thor nar­rates the re­li­gious pro­ce­dures to fol­low as they are de­rived from the lan­guage used in the fi­nal doc­u­ment.

The au­thor re­li­giously ad­hered to the hard ev­i­dence on the how, who and when of the evolve­ment of the Sikh Code of Con­duct. He does not miss any de­tail in­clud­ing the evo­lu­tion of the colour of the Sikh flag. 

The au­thor re­li­giously ad­hered to the hard ev­i­dence on the how, who and when of the evolve­ment of the Sikh Code of Con­duct. He does not miss any de­tail in­clud­ing the evo­lu­tion of the colour of the Sikh flag. I feel dis­turbed when I no­tice the ten­dency of us­ing the RSS ‘s bhagwa or saf­fron colour of the flag to­day be­ing hurled on some Gur­d­waras in the west or in the east. The au­thor has re­li­giously ob­served on the ba­sis of hard ev­i­dence on how and when the saf­fron colour of the flags hoisted on our Gur­d­waras turned saf­fron re­plac­ing Bas­anti as pre­scribed in the Re­hat.

While dis­cussing the fi­nal text, the au­thor em­pha­sizes that a Sikh in Re­hat Maryada was de­fined by one’s im­plicit and ex­plicit faith in the teach­ings of the Gu­rus as im­bibed in Sri Guru Granth Sahib. This was the only cri­te­rion not to be ever com­pro­mised.

I whole­heart­edly rec­om­mend the book, pub­lished by Singh Broth­ers Am­rit­sar, not only for gen­eral read­ing but for schol­ars and aca­d­e­mi­cians too.

I whole­heart­edly rec­om­mend the book, pub­lished by Singh Broth­ers Am­rit­sar, not only for gen­eral read­ing but for schol­ars and aca­d­e­mi­cians too. All those in­ter­ested in the im­plicit and ex­plicit re­li­gios­ity of a Sikh’s re­li­gious life will ben­e­fit. It will also serve as a re­source for those in­ter­ested in com­par­a­tive re­li­gion stud­ies, and those in­ter­ested in un­der­stand­ing the colo­nial in­flu­ences on the prac­tices of the Sikh re­li­gion. Grad­u­ate stu­dents and es­tab­lished schol­ars will equally ben­e­fit.

Dr Har­bans Lal, PhD from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, is Emer­i­tus Pro­fes­sor and Chair­man, De­part­ment of Phar­ma­col­ogy and Neu­ro­sciences, the Uni­ver­sity of North Texas Health Sci­ence Cen­ter. He is the first and only Se­ha­jd­hari for­mer Pres­i­dent of All In­dia Sikh Stu­dents Fed­er­a­tion. Guru Nanak Dev Uni­ver­sity awarded him the De­gree of Doc­tor of Lit­er­a­ture (hon­oris causa) in recog­ni­tion of his con­tri­bu­tions to Sikh Stud­ies. The Anand­pur Sahib Foun­da­tion awarded him the Or­der of Nis­han-e-Khalsa for ser­vices to the Khalsa Panth. He reg­u­larly con­tributes to var­i­ous Sikh jour­nals.