This is the text of the Pres­i­den­tial ad­dress de­liv­ered at a sym­po­sium in Sep­tem­ber 1988 held at Pa­tiala un­der the aus­pices of the Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity, and is be­ing pub­lished with the Uni­ver­si­ty’s per­mis­sion with a view to wider dis­sem­i­na­tion.

The Na­ture of The­ol­ogy

The root dilemma of hu­man­ity through the ages has been the search and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the true Teacher or Prophet, who could res­cue mankind out of the quag­mire of sin and su­per­sti­tion and guide him into the realm of self-re­al­i­sa­tion and bliss. In the pre­sent age, the masses, in colos­sal ig­no­rance of the Cre­ator’s pur­pose, lan­guish in poverty, pain and mis­ery:

ja­gat ja­landc7 rakh lai apni kirpa dhc7r

fitu dweire ubhre titai lehu ubtir (P. 853)

“The world is aflame in sin, un­able to ac­com­plish its own re­demp­tion. Gu­ru’s in­ter­ven­tion and the sum­mon­ing of Di­vine Grace is the last des­per­ate in­stru­men­tal­ity for sal­va­tion.”

In this predica­ment, the Gospel of Guru Granth Sahib rep­re­sents the most com­pre­hen­sive, co­her­ent and com­pelling enun­ci­a­tion of the cre­ation’s moral and spir­i­tual pur­pose.  Its mes­sage in verse packs as­ton­ish­ing spir­i­tual power and majesty. In so far as its orig­i­nal text is set to in­ef­fa­ble sym­phonic mea­sures, its di­rect ap­peal is to the deep faith re­sid­ing in the heart, rather than to the in­tel­lect.  The holy word af­firms that man is ca­pa­ble of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing and re­al­is­ing God, how­so­ever sub­tle and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble He may be. For the true devo­tee, He is not Im­per­sonal:

sabh te parai parai te uchei

ga­her gamb­hir ath­ci­hio

ote pote milio bhag­tan kao

jan sio parchti lei­heo   (P. 1299)

Guru Granth Sahib is quin­tes­sen­tially the po­etry of pure de­vo­tion. It must be ap­proached with love, de­vo­tion and hu­mil­ity. The scrip­tural power, to il­lu­mine our dark­ened hearts like a thou­sand suns, to sweep away the cob­webs of doubt with the force of a tor­nado, to feel the ec­stasy like be­ing borne on the waves of a heav­ing sea needs to be im­bibed and ex­pe­ri­enced only in small doses. That is per­haps one rea­son why one must be wary of the rit­u­alised Ak­hand Path -the non-stop recita­tion that knows no pause nor de­lib­er­a­tion, pre­oc­cu­pied more with com­pul­sions of time than sub­lim­ity of thought.

In all con­science, this for­mal and of­ten com­mer­cial­ized use of the text of Guru Granth Sahib needs to be dis­cour­aged. The text of the holy scrip­tures is so suc­cinct and eco­nom­i­cal, al­le­gor­i­cal and in­spir­ing, pro­found and preg­nant with mean­ing that it is nec­es­sary to read, re­cite and sing the verses with rev­er­ence and pa­tience,  ab­sorb­ing the mean­ing and sat­u­rat­ing the soul with its beauty. It is in this spirit that the med­i­ta­tion on God’s Name ac­quires the power of heal­ing:

sarab rog kc7 aukhad nam      (P. 274)

The sa­cred text, in its myr­iad vari­a­tions, con­sti­tutes the in­tel­li­gent man’s guide to in­ner peace. Its over­whelm­ing lyri­cism cre­ates a groundswell of en­thu­si­asm which spurs one to a pure and eth­i­cal life:

sa­cho ure sabli ko

upar sack achdr           (P. 62)

Guru Granth Sahib teaches us that suc­cess in ma­te­r­ial terms is a trap; that at­tach­ment to worldly re­la­tion­ships is a hur­dle to spir­i­tual progress. The in­di­vid­ual loses per­spec­tive and pur­pose of self-re­al­i­sa­tion;

man tun jote sarup hai

apna mul pachan         (P. 441)

The Sikh The­ol­ogy is un­apolo­get­i­cally pre­scrip­tive.  lt does not claim to be value-free, or neu­tral, or non­com­mit­tal on the key is­sues of ex­is­tence. It com­forts, cas­ti­gates, ca­joles, warns, en­cour­ages, ex­horts, begs, threat­ens, guides.

In­sti­tu­tional Prac­tice of The­ol­ogy Ideals of Guru Granth Sahib: truth, com­pas­sion, ser­vice of hu­man­ity, equal­ity, lib­erty, hon­est liv­ing, tol­er­ance, ac­cep­tance of God’s will, op­ti­mism and re­jec­tion of su­per­sti­tion, idol­a­try and pan­the­ism—all these virtues and pre­cepts had to be em­bod­ied in a co­her­ent code of day to day liv­ing for the ben­e­fit of seek­ers of truth and, in­deed, for the hu­man race as a whole.

This was an evo­lu­tion­ary process. not an abrupt for­mu­la­tion. The­ol­ogy must teach peo­ple how to cope with worldly re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and con­duct them­selves from day to day and from place to place with­out com­pro­mis­ing the ba­sic ideals. The­ol­ogy must sat­isfy cer­tain deeper needs of the peo­ple and pro­vide them with com­mu­nity val­ues.

Aris­ing from these im­per­a­tives are the sym­bols of faith sanc­ti­fied by Guru Gob­ind Singh in the dra­matic cul­mi­na­tion of the Sikh ethos on the Baisakhi Day 1699. Those who ar­gue, in lev­ity or se­ri­ous­ness, that these sym­bols are a relic of the past, are only too will­ing to trade them for crass new fads and myths that are fickle and soon for­got­ten. The younger gen­er­a­tion who ques­tion the rel­e­vance of the dis­ci­pline of the sym­bols needs only to de­velop the pa­tience to re­flect on their psy­cho­log­i­cal and spir­i­tual ben­e­fits as an ex­plicit unit­ing force.

When Guru Tegh Ba­hadur gave his life for the fun­da­men­tal right of wor­ship, sym­bol­ized by the Tilak and sa­cred thread, it was in­trin­si­cally a uni­ver­sal act for all faiths, and not for a par­tic­u­lar peo­ple. The sym­bols of Sikhism spell faith and em­brace the whole hu­man race. Their mes­sage has mean­ing for all peo­ple every­where. It is the magic of sym­bols that, de­spite their small num­bers and mi­nor­ity sta­tus, the Sikhs have evolved a sense of peo­ple­hood and sol­i­dar­ity.

Like the Bud­dhist ex­hor­ta­tion, “Sang­ham Sha­ranam Gac­chami” –Sikh The­ol­ogy preaches con­gre­ga­tional par­tic­i­pa­tion and so­cial ac­tivism as an en­deav­our in col­lec­tive hu­man­ism and spir­i­tual up­lift

sat san­gat mile to dicta aweh har har nam nistare (P. 981)

The eth­i­cal prin­ci­ple in Guru Granth Sahib em­pha­sizes the ho­li­ness of life: The body is the tem­ple of God, every hu­man be­ing has the right and duty to strive for self-re­al­i­sa­tion to­wards achiev­ing this goal, the Guru sug­gests a spe­cific Code of Con­duct, that de­mands pro­tec­tion not penance of the body, in­clud­ing its crown­ing glory, the Ke­shas, ab­sti­nence from dele­te­ri­ous drugs and in­tox­i­cants, aus­ter­ity and early ris­ing.

Am­rit is meant as the cli­mac­tic bene­dic­tion to the ob­ser­vance of the Code. It is the com­mon bond of broth­er­hood in the ser­vice of hu­man­ity, a re­la­tion­ship that tran­scends dis­tinc­tions of caste, colour and so­cial sta­tus. Too of­ten we tend to fall into the trap of the pre­sent-day me­dia that re­li­gion is a strictly per­sonal mat­ter.

This is a coun­try dot­ted with places of col­lec­tive wor­ship. I In Guru Granth Sahib, there are as many ref­er­ences and metaphors un­der­lin­ing man’s re­la­tion with God that are plural, so­cial and dy­namic as there are for the de­liv­er­ance of the in­di­vid­ual. In this com­mon­al­ity of pur­pose, mu­tual hos­til­ity and dis­tances dis­solve and dis­ap­pear. To­tal aware­ness builds a sense of one­ness—of a world com­mu­nity for whom we daily pray: Sar­bat da Bhala.

The tol­er­ance or good­will for all is not weak­ness but strength. For fa­nat­ics of one kind or an­other, it is fool­ish to think they are God’s in­stru­ments for elim­i­nat­ing those who dis­agree with them. His­tory is re­plete with the tragic con­se­quences of fa­nat­i­cal in­tol­er­ance, from me­dieval cru­sades to the mod­ern Ghalugha­ras. Fire and brim­stone are in­stru­ments of de­struc­tion. Love and good­will are the means of preser­va­tion.

But why are we so in­se­cure and em­bat­tled? It is mainly be­cause we do not prac­tice the code and dis­ci­pline, but partly also be­cause we have used the­o­log­i­cal power and priv­i­lege as a po­lit­i­cal weapon. In­stead of en­gag­ing in re­solv­ing philo­soph­i­cal is­sues, lay­ing down moral guide­lines, or In­ter­pret­ing spir­i­tual val­ues, the priestly fra­ter­nity has been dragged into po­lit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies In­her­ent in the work­ing of his­tor­i­cal shrines and gur­d­waras.

At the lower lev­els of town and vil­lage gur­d­wara, the priest is among the low­est-paid work­ers piti­fully de­pen­dent on the char­ity and of­fer­ings of the de­vout mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion. Iron­i­cally, the cus­to­dian of the Gu­ru’s trea­sure of spir­i­tual truths is in­vari­ably a semi-lit­er­ate and im­pe­cu­nious in­di­vid­ual ek­ing out a lack-lus­tre ex­is­tence.

In a vi­cious cir­cle, the eco­nomic sta­tus and con­di­tion of the priest do not en­cour­age the younger men and women to study Sikh The­ol­ogy and Di­vin­ity as the sub­ject and even to a de­gree dis­cour­age the adop­tion of the priest­hood as a pro­fes­sion. The con­tri­bu­tion of Tak­sals in the past few decades has been the only sil­ver lin­ing. So also the en­deav­ours of mis­sion­ary col­leges con­tinue to make a dent in the prob­lem of Prachar. With all the af­fir­ma­tions of equal­ity be­tween men and women, we have a poor record in wom­en’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the in­sti­tu­tional setup of Sikh The­ol­ogy.

At­ti­tudes have to change and the anachro­nism of male dom­i­na­tion in the­o­log­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions must be dis­carded. The emer­gence of Fun­da­men­tal­ism Re­li­gious fun­da­men­tal­ism is a global phe­nom­e­non, rel­a­tively re­cent in ori­gin. In the case of Sikh doc­trine, it emerged as a con­scious coun­terblast to what may be called the creep­ing per­mis­sive­ness of mod­ern so­ci­ety. In­dis­ci­pline, al­co­holism, ad­dic­tion to drugs and in­tox­i­cants and apos­tasy trig­gered a re­asser­tion of moral and spir­i­tual val­ues that have elec­tri­fied the The­o­log­i­cal scene. This re­asser­tion of tra­di­tional re­li­gion is not a new im­plant com­ing from the in­tel­lec­tual cen­tres of learn­ing but arises from the very soil of Sikh sem­i­nar­ies, or Tak­sals. This re­nais­sance in re­li­gious faith and feel­ing was bound to have far-reach­ing so­cial and po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences. We are wit­ness to these reper­cus­sions.

What is re­quired is a rein­te­gra­tion of the hu­man, moral and spir­i­tual val­ues in­her­ent in the Sikh scrip­ture and tra­di­tion. Equally im­por­tant is the syn­the­sis of the Sikh The­ol­ogy with the sci­en­tific tem­per. A swing to­wards mil­i­tancy, or con­fronta­tion with po­lit­i­cal power which pre­cip­i­tates un­end­ing vi­o­lence, would be fa­tal to the the­o­log­i­cal im­per­a­tives of Sikhism. We can nei­ther dis­man­tle the mod­ern world nor desert it nor run away from it. What we can do is to re­dis­cover the dy­namic and ever­last­ing truths of Guru Granth Sahib to­wards a resur­gent Sikhism at home in the 21st cen­tury.

Sci­ence And The­ol­ogy

An em­i­nent Sikh jour­nal­ist and au­thor, who is never tired of pro­claim­ing his ag­nos­ti­cism, re­cently wrote about his di­a­logue with His Ho­li­ness the Dalai Lama. He asked the spir­i­tual head of Ma­hayana Bud­dhism what he thought of the ori­gin of life on our planet. Did he sub­scribe to the in­ter­me­di­ate the­ory put for­ward by Hin­duism ‘and its off­shoots—Jain­ism, Bud­dhism, Sikhism’—of or­der emerg­ing from chaos by the in­ter­ven­tion of di­vin­ity in the form of a cre­ator, pre­server and de­stroyer? The learned ques­tioner not only erred in bump­ing to­gether the Sikh re­li­gion with the amor­phous Hindu pan­the­ism but also ap­par­ently did not care to re­call what Guru Granth Sahib has to say about the ori­gin of life on earth, quite in­de­pen­dent of the mytho­log­i­cal ex­pla­na­tions of­fered by clas­si­cal Hin­duism:

sache te pawna bhia

paw­nai te jai hoi

jai te trib­hawan sajiti

ghat ghat jote samoe

Sikhism is no off­shoot, it is a sov­er­eign re­li­gion. Far from ac­cept­ing the pre­vail­ing heav­enly Tri­umvi­rate, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, Guru Nanak deeply re­flected on the na­ture of the Uni­verse. There is a clear refu­ta­tion of the Cre­ator-Pre­server De­stroyer trin­ity in the fol­low­ing verses:

ar­bad nar­bad dhand­hukara

dha­ran na gag­nti hukam aparc7

brah­m’d bisan makes na koi

awar na di­sai eko soi   (P. 1035)

In­deed, Gur­bani is not in con­flict with the sci­en­tific prin­ci­ple. It re­flects upon the na­ture of the cos­mos, the plan­e­tary sys­tem, the ori­gin of earth, bi­ol­ogy physics and chem­istry. But it goes far be­yond the phys­i­cal as­pects of the Uni­verse—to the mys­te­ri­ous fourth di­men­sion The mind and con­scious­ness. Sikhism does not have to de­fend it­self against the ex­pand­ing realm of sci­ence.

Gur­bani says there are im­mense spaces of the mind and spirit which re­main a mys­tery. It will be many mil­len­nia be­fore ma­te­r­ial sci­ence can un­ravel it. It is sig­nif­i­cant that Guru Nanak was the fore­run­ner of Galileo. As one of the most ex­ten­sively trav­elled lead­ers of his time, Guru Nanak was fully aware of the phys­i­cal as­pects of the uni­verse. What came to be known as the spirit of sci­en­tific en­quiry is writ large in the Gu­ru’s writ­ings.

tara charia lama
(P. 1110)

is not a fan­ci­ful flight of imag­i­na­tion but an ex­plicit ref­er­ence to the ap­pear­ance, in the year 1531, of what later came to be known as Hal­ley’s Comet. It is the sci­en­tific spirit that gave the edge to the Gu­ru’s ex­pla­na­tions of the so­lar and lu­nar eclipse and other nat­ural phe­nom­ena as well as his gen­tle ad­mo­ni­tion of those who were struck with the paral­y­sis of su­per­sti­tion re­lat­ing to lu­nar days and so­lar sea­sons.

The Sikh re­li­gion thus ac­quired enor­mous ad­van­tage over the pre­ced­ing faiths and be­liefs in adopt­ing the sci­en­tific tem­per as the sheet an­chor of man’s phys­i­cal ex­is­tence even as it re­fused to stay earth-bound. Myth and su­per­sti­tion were for­ever ban­ished from Sikh thought and the­ol­ogy. The fre­quent use of the id­iom per­tain­ing to the con­fig­u­ra­tion of plan­ets and heav­enly bod­ies in Guru Granth Sahib warns the com­mon man not to suc­cumb to su­per­sti­tion and tries to de­note the depth of ig­no­rance among the il­lit­er­ate then as now.

One is struck by the ref­er­ence to sci­ences other than phys­i­cal. Take, for in­stance, the fol­low­ing ut­ter­ance of Guru Ar­jan, the fifth Guru, on eco­nomic dis­par­ity be­ing the root cause of so­cial un­rest :

jis greh bahut ti­sai greh chinta”

jis greh thori so phi­rai bhar­manta

duhoo bi­wastha to Jo mukta

soi suhelci bhaliye

(P. 1019)

You could not find a more ap­pro­pri­ate motto for the World Bank!

En­ter the ra­tio­nal­ist, who de­cries re­li­gion as the vil­lain gen­er­at­ing in­ternecine ha­tred. This re­ac­tion arises from ig­no­rance of the sci­ence of the mind. Re­li­gious per­ver­sity, not re­li­gion or The­ol­ogy, is re­spon­si­ble for hate and vi­o­lence. This was not a case of con­flict be­tween re­li­gion and sci­ence, but be­tween re­li­gion and blind faith. The blind faith, by what­ever de­nom­i­na­tion is known, breeds ha­tred and vi­o­lence. The en­tire Guru Granth Sahib is a re­pu­di­a­tion of this false re­li­gion.

jia badho so dharam kar thapoh

ad­haram ka­hoh kat bhiii

tipas kao munwar kar thapoh

ka kao ka­hoh kasc7i    (P. 1103)

Fa­nati­cism is merely an­other face of this fal­sity. It is con­ta­gious. It tends to evoke a sim­i­lar re­sponse from the ad­ver­sary. Pas­cal said it more than three cen­turies ago: “Men never do evil so com­pletely and cheer­fully as when they do it from re­li­gious con­vic­tion.” This is true of any re­li­gion gone berserk—in­clud­ing Sikhism. It is also true of the nar­row na­tion­al­ism of the kind that in­duces wars, such as be­tween Iran and Iraq, ir­ra­tional ha­tred, as be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan.

Nar­row na­tion­al­ism, of­ten mas­querad­ing as pa­tri­o­tism, is as dan­ger­ous as blind faith bereft of the true sci­en­tific spirit of en­quiry which Guru Granth Sahib sanc­ti­fies in nu­mer­ous al­lu­sions Cyn­ics never fail to ar­gue: How can one speak of a benev­o­lent God in a world of war and mis­ery and ma­lig­nancy, lit­tle re­al­is­ing that the very ques­tion opens the door to the­o­log­i­cal en­light­en­ment, the truth about pain and plea­sure, life and death on the phys­i­cal plane, the suf­fer­ing of the right­eous, the cru­ci­fix­ion of a Christ or the ag­o­nis­ing mar­tyr­dom of Guru Ar­ian.

The Plural So­ci­ety in a Sec­u­lar State:

The twin dan­gers that Sikhism faces to­day are the ul­tra-lib­er­al­ism on the one hand, which seeks to dis­card the ba­sic dis­ci­pline and the fun­da­men­tal­ism which takes us into a blind al­ley, on the other.

To turn one’s back on the code of con­duct or re­hat Maryada is tan­ta­mount to mass hard­core Fun­da­men­tal­ism, on the other hand, is founded on the con­cept that the Re­hat Maryada must be in­ter­preted lit­er­ally and placed on an ab­solute pedestal, In one sense fun­da­men­tal­ism is the by-prod­uct of the trau­matic events of the last few years.  The me­dia widely pub­li­cized the new The­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non as fun­da­men­tal­ism. More de­plorable was the me­di­a’s on­slaught against es­tab­lished tra­di­tions, such as Am­rit Prachar and the reaf­fir­ma­tion of the ex­plicit sym­bols of Sikhism. The of­fi­cial me­dia gave it a sin­is­ter as­pect, un­der­min­ing its spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance and its im­por­tance as a bul­wark of In­dian de­fence and in­tegrity. This pro­duced dev­as­tat­ing re­sults.

To­day’s av­er­age, ur­ban, ed­u­cated Sikh is un­able to cor­re­late him­self. He wants to hunt with the hounds but finds him­self run­ning with the hares, He is half-worldly, half other-worldly, a wishy-washy ego­ist, oc­ca­sion­ally a ter­mi­nal schiz­o­phrenic. His thought process is at­ro­phied, his re­li­gios­ity skin deep. 1984, which was the wa­ter­shed year Cap­tains of in­dus­try, com­merce and

agri­cul­ture have re­arranged their lives around money and ma­te­ri­al­ism, not around the Gu­ru’s pur­pose. Even their ob­ser­vance of re­li­gious oc­ca­sions, whether happy or sad, re­volve around money and os­ten­ta­tion. The day may start with kir­tan, but it of­ten ends up with an evening cock­tail. God is con­ve­niently mar­gin­al­ized.

Partly,  this im­age is the re­sult of a ma­te­ri­al­ist plural so­ci­ety in which dif­fer­ent peo­ple pro­fess­ing dif­fer­ent re­li­gions come into daily con­tact. Di­ver­sity is an in­evitable fact of life in a shrink­ing world. Equal re­spect for all re­li­gions is the best way of peace­ful co-ex­is­tence. That is the rai­son d’e­tre of the pol­icy of sec­u­lar­ism en­shrined in the In­dian Con­sti­tu­tion. In sim­ple terms, it .means the State or Gov­ern­ment—must not get in­volved in any sin­gle re­li­gion or re­li­gion’s prac­tice, not even when that re­li­gion hap­pens to be the ma­jor­i­ty’s re­li­gion.

One could call it roughly a pol­icy of whole­some neu­tral­ity, But are the ground rules of such a pol­icy of neu­tral­ity be­ing fol­lowed in In­dia to­day? We find that the gov­ern­ment, as well as the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem, are deeply in­volved, not in the moral prin­ci­ples of re­li­gion, but in the trap­pings of it. At elec­tion time, can­di­dates are of­ten se­lected on the ba­sis of caste or com­mu­nity. The for­mal open­ing of de­vel­op­ment pro­jects is marked with re­li­gious rit­u­als like Bhoomi Pu­jii and the break­ing of co­conut. Lead­ers of gov­ern­ment are ever so anx­ious to be seen with tilak mark on the fore­head and an an­gavas­tram around the neck. po­tence of God. This dan­ger of the State power ap­prox­i­mat­ing to Di­vine power is as real as the dan­ger spelt by fa­nat­i­cal fun­da­men­tal­ism in re­li­gion.

Achieve­ment of re­li­gious tol­er­ance among peo­ple is all the more es­sen­tial in a plural so­ci­ety. Like­wise. the state has to be whole­somely neu­tral in or­der to be truly sec­u­lar. The Sikh the­ol­ogy and lore have it in its ge­nius to of­fer dy­namic par­tic­i­pa­tion in the na­tion’s life. Par­tic­i­pa­tion, how­ever, pre­sup­poses dig­nity, iden­tity and dis­ci­pline.

You sim­ply can­not build com­part­ments into life in a so­ci­ety where re­li­gion is a force to reckon with. If the lead­ers can­not prac­tise sec­u­lar­ism in the true sense of the term, why not con­cede the im­per­a­tives of equal re­spect for all re­li­gions? So ir­re­sistible is the mys­tique of re­li­gion that mod­ern na­tion­al­ism is tempted to adopt its sym­bol­ogy. The coun­try is sym­bol­ized by the fig­ure of a god­dess. Idols, samad­his, eter­nal flames, Vedic hymns as lo­gos and other para­pher­na­lia are elab­o­rately and freely dis­played and obei­sance de­manded.

The de­part­ment of Sci­ence & Tech­nol­ogy, Gov­ern­ment of In­dia, ac­tu­ally spon­sored a Br­ishti Vi­gyan Man­dal’s rain-pro­duc­ing pro­ject at Mathura in May 1988. Any de­vi­a­tion from the° norms pre­scribed by the state is met with the swift in­dict­ment. In­deed, the state has ar­ro­gated to it­self the Omni- A Glo­ri­ous Her­itage Pro­jected into the Fu­ture His­tory helps us to Iden­tify our­selves in time and space. To ig­nore the past or for­get the tra­di­tion is to be un­grate­ful to those who shaped our ethos and sac­ri­ficed their to­mor­rows for our to­day.

We can­not sleep­walk through our pre­sent, un­aware of our past and un­pre­pared for the fu­ture that our chil­dren are head­ing for. We can­not side­step the cru­cial mes­sage of Guru Granth Sahib, that God may be work­ing through these trau­matic events to ac­com­plish the Di­vine will in or­der to draw us closer to His pur­pose. In this un­cer­tain world, Guru Granth Sahib of­fers the only cer­tainty, the only firm moor­ings in the rag­ing tem­pest. This may sound sim­plis­tic but it is the heart of the Sikh doc­trine.

That doc­trine tells us that, notwith­stand­ing the chaos and tyranny God is in charge of the uni­verse: not God of the Sikhs or Hin­dus or Mus­lims, but God of all hu­man­ity. That is the most re­as­sur­ing fact of life. Not only does it pro­vide con­fi­dence, it also en­gen­ders a buoy­ant op­ti­mism—The Charhdi ola—which is the mys­ti­cal for­mula for suc­cess. To be God-ac­cepted and God-re­al­ized is our best rea­son for liv­ing a right­eous, char­i­ta­ble and com­pas­sion­ate life as demon­strated and de­manded by the suc­ces­sion of Great Teach­ers. Only such life can be mean­ing­ful for the in­di­vid­ual, the so­ci­ety, the coun­try and, in­deed, for all the hu­man race. We may be pass­ing through the age of tech­nol­ogy, of space ex­plo­ration of en­ergy cri­sis and en­vi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion. But noth­ing can save hu­man­ity with as much cer­ti­tude as the prin­ci­ples en­shrined in Guru Granth Sahib.

This ar­ti­cle was first pub­lished in The Sikh Re­view, De­cem­ber 1988. It is re­pro­duced here cour­tesy the archives of the Pan­jab Dig­i­tal Li­brary.