The Source Book On Sikhism

Chapter Fifty-Three

EUROCENTRISM AND KHALSA-CENTRISM

Dr. S.S. Sodhi

Dr. J.S. Mann

The purpose of this article is two-fold. To introduce to the Sikh researchers the concepts of Eurocentrism and compare it with Khalsacentrism. Also an attempt will be made to apply these concepts to Dr. H. S. Oberoi’s recent anti-Sikh book entitled, "The Construction of Religious Boundaries - Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition” (1994).

Eurocentrism first raised its ugly head in Sikh research when E. Trumpp was invited by India office authorities in 1869, to produce a translation of Siri Guru Granth Sahib. This ignorant and arrogant, “historian in a hurry” is a good example of Eurocentric research. On many pages of his translation of Adi Granth (1877, 1970), Dr. Trumpp was as insulting as any European could ever be to the Sikh heritage and Sikh scriptures. Here are some examples:

1. The Sikh Granth is a very big volume, and couched at the same time in dark and perplexing language, in order to cover these defects. It is for us Occidentals a most painful and almost stupefying task, to read only a single Raga.

2. Sikhism is a wanting religion, that will soon belong to history.

3. Guru Nanak’s words as preserved in the Sikh Granth were so often dark and unintelligible to me.

4. Guru Nanak’s travel to Mecca is an invention from the beginning to the end.

5. The way in which Nanak used the disciples who attached themselves to his person, was not very conducive to impart to them any considerable knowledge. They were little more than his menial servants. The mass of Nanak’s disciples were ignorant Jats, who on an average could neither read nor write.

6. What Nanak looked chiefly for in his successor, were not scientific accomplishments, or a cultivated mind, but blind obedience to the commands of the Guru. These stories, which are told in Janam - Sakhis of the total “sacrificism intellects” of Lahana are therefore very significant.

7. Angad was altogether unlettered and could himself neither read nor write. The tradition, which makes him inventor of the gurmukhi letters is without any foundation.

8. The few verses of Angad, which are contained in the Granth, are but a poor repetition of the words of Nanak and shallow in the extreme.

9. Guru Amar Das performed all sorts of menial services to Angad, as Angad had done to Nanak.

10. Guru Amar Das was unlettered like his master Angad.

11. Sikh Gurus strictly observed the caste system of India.

12. Guru Ram Das was without any scientific education. His compositions were not original.

13. Guru Arjan was the first Guru who meddled in politics.

14. Guru Arjan collected verses of the preceding Gurus, to which he added his own very numerous but carelessly written verses.

15. To these verses he added the verses of the Bhagats to prove that the tenets of the Sikh Gurus were already entertained and proclaimed by the earlier popular saints.

16. Guru Arjan called this miscellaneous collections Granth (i.e.: the book). It was given the authority of Vedas and Puranas, which the unlettered people had never been able to read, whereas the Granth was composed in their mother tongue and intelligible to the vulgar.

17. Guru Arjan was the first Sikh Guru who laid aside the garb of a Faquir and kept an establishment like a grandee; he engaged also in trades in a grand style.

18. Guru Hargobind was addicted to hunting and entered the services of the Emperor Jahangir. After Jahangir's death, he entered the services of Shah Jahan. When Shah Jahan sent troops against him, he fled to Kartarpur and later to Kiratpur.

19. Guru Hargobind had no time nor task for meditation and opposition of religious poetry.

20. Guru Teg Bahadur like a madman, was given to deep silence.

21. Har Rai seemed to have neither inclination nor calling for poetry.

22. Guru Teg Bahadur while feeling unsafe in Panjab moved to Patna under the garb of a Hindu pilgrim.

23. Guru Teg Bahadur, who was not a learned man nor conversant with disputations, was thrown into prison because he refused to show miracles or embrace Musalman faith.

24. Guru Teg Bahadur ordered his Sikhs to cut off his head because he could not tolerate the pain inflicted on him in Delhi.

25. Moral views of Sikhs of Guru Teg Bahadur's time were confusing. Guru Teg Bahadur was outlawed by the Delhi government and captured as a criminal at Agra.

26. Guru Gobind Singh was surrounded on all sides by dangers, so he retreated to the mountains (Poanta Sahib). There he kept himself concealed.

27. Guru Gobind Singh never studied Sanskrit but tried to imitate it in his compositions, which on the whole are very different and intricate.

28. Guru Gobind Singh’s mind was deeply tinged with the superstitious notions of the Hindus. So he wanted to secure the aid of the Goddess Durga; who was the special object of his worship.

29. Guru Gobind Singh made a human head sacrifice to Maina-devi who then blessed him.

30. As Guru Gobind Singh offended the high caste people by abolishing the caste system, they left him. Hence, the Khalsa consisted of lower caste people such as Jats.

31. According to Guru Gobind Singh, Guru Granth Sahib in its present form produced a spirit of meekness and humbleness. So the Guru set to work and composed a big, heavy Granth. He completed it in 1696 A.D. and called it Granth of the Tenth Reign.

32. Guru Gobind Singh exaggerated the importance of his fights with Hill Rajas in Vichiter Natak.

33. When Guru Gobind Singh’s children were put under the foundation of a wall, the weeping of these children was heard for many days.

34. Guru Gobind Singh was again defeated at Muktsar by imperial forces.

35. After leaving Damdama, Guru Gobind Singh went to Sirhind where his sons have been buried alive. From Sirhind the Guru went back to Anandpur and settled there again, unmolested.

36. Guru Gobind Singh joined the imperial army of Emperor Bahadur Shah.

37. Guru Gobind Singh went to Deccan because he was appointed the commander of five thousand horses.

38. Even though the Guruís wounds were sew up and healed again, it seemed that the Guru was bent of dying. After appointing Guru Granth Sahib the Guru, he became senseless.

39. Guru Gobind Singh died broken-hearted, weary of life far from the scenes of his exploits.

For more detailed arrogance of E. Trumpp the readers are advised to read Preface, Introductory Essays from Pages 1-XCVI of Adi Granth (1877 & 1970).

After heaping Eurocentric insults on the Sikh Gurus and their Sikh scripture, E. Trumpp, in Chapter III of his book, says the following insulting things about Sikh religion:

1. Nanak himself was not a speculative philosopher, who built up a concise system on scientific principles. He had not received a regular school-training, and uttered therefore, his thoughts in a loose way, which are now scattered through the Granth, and must first be patiently searched out and collected into a whole, before we can form an idea of his tenets.

2. Nanak himself was by no means an independent thinker, neither had he any idea of starting a new religious sect. He followed all essential points, the common Hindu philosophy of those days especially the system laid down in Bhagavad Gita. He also followed Kabir who was already a popular man in India.

3. Kabir’s writings which were composed in the vulgar tongue were accessible to the unlearned masses.

4. The tenth Guru, Gobind Singh relapsed in many points again into Hinduism. He was special Votary of Durga.

5. Nanak remained a thorough Hindu according to all his views. We should be wrong in assuming that Nanak forbade the worship of other gods on the grounds of the unity of the supreme. He took over the whole Pantheon, with all the mythological background and subordinated it to the supreme Brahm.

6. Guru Granth denies the liberum arbitrium in man (Free will).

7. Buddhism like Sikhism is nothing but unrestricted pessimism unable to hold out to any solace except that of annihilation.

8. Guru gives salvation to the elect using principle of “Decretum Aeternum”. Those elects are chosen according to the pleasure of the Hari. It is Hari’s sport.

9. Sikhism is not moralizing deism.

10. Earlier Gurus deificated man into supreme himself.

11. Guru Gobind Singh took rude-and-ignorant Jats, kept them subservient by kindling in them the hatred against Muslims.

12. The sayings of Bhatts were composed for the occasion of abject flatteries, without any intrinsic value, and were added to Guru Granth by Guru Arjan himself.

13. The verses of the different Gurus have been distributed into 31 ragas apparently without any leading principle, as hardly any verse is internally connected with another.

14. By thus jumbling together whatever came to hand without any judicious selection, the Granth has become an extremely incoherent and wearisome book, the few thoughts and ideas, that it contains, being repeated in endless variations, which are for the greatest part nothing but a jungling of words.

15. As Guru Arjan and Guru Nanak did not understand Sanskrit, they were incapable of writing Shlokas.

16. Through the Granth, as regards its content, is perhaps the most shallow and empty book that exists in proportion to its size, it is on the other hand, linguistic point of view, of the greatest interest to us, as it is a real treasury of the “old Hindui” dialects.

17. Nanak and his successors employed in their writings purposely, the Hindui idiom, following the examples of Kabir and other Bhagats.

It must be pointed out that Trumpp has been a source of hidden inspiration to many “Occidental” historians such as Dr. McLeod, Oberoi, Pashaura Singh, J.S. Grewal and S.S. Hans. But the leader of the pack is Dr. McLeod, the rest of them are his role-dancing followers. Here are some examples of what McLeod has to say about Sikhism and Sikh Gurus while using his Western reality and his right to use Social Science Methods developed in Europe to understand an Eastern religion. Also his determined effort to convert somebody’s subjective faith to bring it objectivity is arrogantly evident. These examples are from his books such as, “Evolution of the Sikh Community” (1975), “The Sikh History, Religion, and Society” (1989), “Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity” (1989). The readers will notice that the Trumppian themes run in McLeod’s writings.

1. Guru Nanak was the founder of the Sikh religion in the organizational sense, and not in the religious sense.

2. Nath tradition was worked by Kabir; Guru Nanak provided the extension.

3. Guru Nanak in a way is a Sant Nanak.

4. Guru Nanak never went abroad.

5. Guru Gobind Singh lost all his battles.

6. Regression from Sikhism to Hindu religion took place at the time of Guru Amar Das.

7. Jat influence got Guruship to Guru Arjan Dev.

8. Guru Arjan corrected the Bani written by Guru Nanak (Pashaura Sing, 1991).

9. Compilation of Adi Granth was a process, it was not Dhur Ki Bani (Pashaura Singh, 1991).

10. Bhagat Bani was included in Guru Granth Sahib to please the minorities (Pashaura Singh, 1991).

11. Guru Arjan was murdered and not martyred in 1606 A.D. (Pashaura Singh, 1991).

12. Guru Granth is an anthology which is very amorphous (H.S. Oberoi, 1994).

Dr. James R. Lewis, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, while writing for Advanced Studies in Sikhism (1989), has exposed the behaviour of Eurocentric Historians in his famous article entitled, Misrepresentation of the Sikh Tradition in World Religious Books (1989).

Dr. Lewis feels that as India was under a colonial rule, the Eurocentric Historians such as W. I. McGregor (1846) and H.H. Wilson (1848) and E. Trumpp were reinforcing and legitimizing British imperialism by downgrading the religion of the Sikhs (it must be noted that J.D.Cunningham and Evans Bell did support Sikh aspirations in this period for which they were punished).

Mystified by the colonial and imperialistic scholars, some Sikh historians such as J.S. Grewal, S.S. Hans, Pashaura Singh, and Harjot Oberoi have produced errors of fact and interpretation in Sikh history. Many Western scholars have joined this pack.

For example the following misstatements were made by Eurocentric Sikh scholars in the recent past about Sikh history. They have been collected from various books used in the Department of Religious Studies in North America.

1. Sikhism is the outcome of the impact of Islam on Hinduism (Ellwood, Many People Many Faiths, 1987).

2. Guru Gobind Singh was killed in a battle (Robert Wellwood, 1987).

3. The tenth master slew a chicken rather than a goat on the occasion of the formation of the Khalsa (Robert Ellwood, Many People Many Faiths, 1987, P.101-102).

4. Guru Gobind Singh introduced into Sikhism the worship of the terrible Hindu Goddess of Death, Durga. (Lewis M. Hopfe, Religions of the World, 1987).

5. Guru Nanak was the disciple of Kabir (Ward J. Fellows, Religion East and West, 1979).

6. Guru Nanak accepted gods of Hindu pantheon (K.W. Morgan, The Religion of the Hindus, 1953, P. 41).

7. Guru Granth Sahib is not comprehensive to most Sikhs, despite the fact they hold it sacred. (David G. Bradley, A Guide to World Religions, 1963, P. 128).

8. The Sikhs, in their fight for survival against Islam, became instead a symbol of religious intransigence and hatred (Hyla s. Converse, The Religious World, 1988, P. 98).

9. Sikhism is more of a reformed Hindu religion (Wing-tsit cham et al. The Great Asian Religion, 1969, P. 5).

10. There is little doubt that in Sikhism, Muslim sources predominate (John Hutchison, Faith of Faith, 1969, P. 200).

11. Guru Nanak leaned rather more to Islam than to Hinduism (Ninian Smart, The Religious Experience of Mankind, 1976, P. 150).

12. Sikhism is an equal mixture of Islam and Hinduism (D.L. Carnody, The Story of World Religion, 1988, P. 253).

13. The Sikh religion is not in any absolute sense new (J.B. Noss & David Moss, Man’s Religion, 1984, P. 221).

14. Sikhism was grafted (syncretized) on foreign elements (Paul B. Courtright and Harbans Singh, Panjab Past and Present, 1976, P. 417).

15. Sikhs as the most militant of warriors (L.M. Hopfe, Religions of the World, 1987, P. 184).

16. Sikhs started believing in combativeness and even militarism (H. Stroup, The Founders of Living Religion, 1975, P. 104).

17. Sikhs like Muslims started believing that death was a passport to paradise (R. Cavendish, The Great Religions, 1980, P. 49).

The present author firmly believes that the “sloppy scholarship” of the Eurocentric, Colonial, Racist and Imperial Scholars is due to their hidden desire to show the superiority of Christianity, and Justification of colonization. These scholars represent the elite and elect behaviour of Calvinistic males.