By Karminder Singh Dhillon | Opinion |
The sants descended into Sikhi beginning 1903. Throughout the period of the Gurus (1469 till 1708) — no Sikh was ever called a sant or referred to with the title of sant.
The history of Sikhs is replete with a wide variety of praiseworthy acts in the name of Sikhi – serving humanity, sacrificing themselves, fighting wars, getting themselves and their loved ones cut up limb by limb, and courageously spreading the messages of Sikhi far and wide — but not a SINGLE Sikh was ever referred to as “sant.”
The devoted Sikh who accompanied Guru Nanak for almost three decades is called Bhai Mardana. The one in whose hand the first version of the SGGS (Pothi Sahib) was written is called Bhai Gurdas. Sikhs who were boiled alive, sawn alive, burnt alive and cut up limb by limb are similarly called Bhai Dyala, Bhai Matee Daas, Bhai Satee Daas, and Bhai Mani Singh. All Panj Pyare who took and administered the baptism of Khande Di Pahul from and to Guru Gobind Singh ji – carried the title of Bhai.
Sikhs who had their scalps removed to save their Kesh and were crushed alive on the wheel are called Bhai Taru Singh and Bhai Subeg Singh.
Then there was Bhai Nand Lal the scholar, Bhai Bachitar Singh the brave, and Bhai Lachman Singh the shaheed. And scores of other luminary Sikhs who carried the title “Bhai,” to live up to the concept of equality within the brotherhood of Sikhi.
There is a philosophical reason why the word Bhai was the norm for addressing other human beings, and that reason is to preserve equality within mankind. When one human calls another Bhai, the notion of equivalence and brotherhood comes into play immediately. The response by the individual who is address as Bhai would be the same. When Guru Nanak referred to his companion as Bhai, it is expected that Mardana too addressed Guru Nanak as Bhai. In fact, there is no evidence that any of our Gurus wanted to be referred to as “Gurus” even if the lay Sikh today cannot imagine another way to refer to them.
It is clear therefore that the word ਸੰਤ sant could not have been used by the Guru for a class or group of human beings. No such class or group existed within Gurmat.
Right up till 1903, one does not find a SINGLE Sikh with the title of “sant.” Many Sikhs are surprised to know that the practice of conferring the title of “sant” on to ordinary mortals is the invention of the British while they acted as colonial masters of Punjab.
MEANING OF ਸੰਤ SANT IN GURBANI
The word Sant appears in the following FOUR contexts in the SGGS. First, for the Creator. Second, for the Guru. Third, for genuine seekers of the Creator. Fourth, for the critiqued class / group of people who either proclaim themselves ‘sant‘, add it to their names, use it as a title, or desire to be called such by others. [Read the book for the full arguments. They are also shared in the video].
CREATING THE SIKH SANTS
Nothing compares to the British strategy of creating and establishing a class of spiritual disruptors and infiltrating them onto the Sikh people. This class of people would destroy Sikhi to its core.
They would strip Sikhi of its last remaining shred of Godliness. They would transform Sikhi into a collection of worthless rituals. They would become the hijackers of Sikhi after the udasis and nirmlas.
Sikhi would never be the same again as a result of this class of people. The British labeled these hijacker group as “sant.”
Beginning 1903, the British government started conferring the title of “sant” onto the selected Sikhs from within the Indian British Army. The Army was chosen perhaps because it was an institution which had inculcated adequate loyalty towards the colonial masters.
The British expected the recipients of the award of “sant” to do the bidding of the government of the day — out of their sense of misplaced loyalty to the colonial masters. The first individual to be given the dubious honor of being declared a “sant” by his political masters was Attar Singh Mastuana (1866 – 1927). Four other Attar Singh’s were given the same title, but other than Attar Singh Reru (1867-1927), none of the others succeeded in obtaining the stature that they sought.[The others were Attar Singh Reru, Attar Singh Ghulsan Wala, Attar Singh Attley Wala and Attar Singh Jalalabad Wala.]
Other individuals to be bestowed “sant-ship” by the colonial powers included Nand Singh Kaleran Wala, Karam Singh Hoti Mardan, and Bishen Singh Kanjhla. They were all assigned to their respective villages as British certified “accomplished preachers of Sikhi”.
All sorts of miraculous stories were created about these “sants” and “affirmed” by the British. One regular lie about Attar Singh Mastuana was that “mysterious forces” signed him in for duty at the barracks every day for the many years that he was physically present in the countryside preaching his brand of Sikhi.
Such fake tales help establish the status of the British “sants” as “godly” people with “godly powers.”
Subsequently other British Army personnel (serving and retired) and sympathizers were awarded the title of sant. These include Bishen Singh Murala, Gurmukh Singh Kaar Sewa, Gurbachan Singh Bhindran, Bishen Singh Kaar Sewa Waala, Isher Singh Kaleran.
Most of them obtained their religious training from Hindu centers / nirmla Akharras (at Hardwaar, Rishikesh, Kashi (Benares). Tirveni (Allahabad), Mathura, Ayodhiya, Badrinath, and Rameshwaran Gaya. [Source: Dr Harjinder Singh Dilgeer, Sikh History, Vol 9, p164].
SERVING THE BRITISH COLONIAL INTERESTS
With active financial and logistical support of the British colonialists in the form of well-located and adequately equipped deras, this artificially created class of people would corrupt the Sikh spirit, weaken the Sikh mind, wean the Sikh away from the spirituality of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS), divide the Sikhs on the basis of their individually created multiple maryadas and ritualize Sikh practices to its core. These sants would create their own brand of panj pyares and administer the khande de pahul complete with self-created injunctions amongst the newly initiated – for the purposes of instilling loyalty to the respective deras. So starkly different were these injunctions that ordinary baptized Sikhs would identify themselves as having taken their khande de pahul vows from this or that particular dera or taksal; and refuse to fraternize with those who were initiated into the Khalsa fold by other deras.
The dera sants would place a rosary (mala) in the hand of a Sikh. The udasi and nirmla hijackers merely held rosaries in their own hands, or at worst put it into the hands of Guru Nanak in the fake portraits of the Guru that they created. The dera sants went further to make it an article of faith of a hijacked and distorted Sikhi.
A mala wielding Sikh was a lesser threat to the British than a kirpan wielding one.
The sant class would change the Basanti and deep blue color of vibrancy of the Sikh to white — a color of peace and tranquility as well as death. The British preferred Sikhs who were peaceful to the point of being spiritually dead.
The nirmlas had already smuggled in the Bippar color of saffron into the Sikh psyche during their two century control of Sikh Gurdwaras and institutions. Sikhs — with the exception of Nihangs – had forsaken blue already. Hence, adjusting to white was easily achieved.
The sant class would wean the Sikh away from the SGGS and thrust him into meaningless chants of this or that mantras. Sikhi according to the sant class was to sit for hours in the wee hours of the night chanting away one given word or two. To establish this falsehood, they concocted stories of the British appointed sants who “meditated for hours” and obtained “miraculous powers.”
A Sikh who had tired of chanting a few hours in the ambrosial hours was of a lesser threat to the British.
The spiritually elevating Gurbani in the SGGS — meant for understanding and becoming the messages within it — would be reduced to chanting too. Particular shabds were dished out by the sants to their devotees to be chanted to make the Creator accede to specific temporal requests or take away suffering, pain or ailments.
What was essentially a spirituality of the self, by the self, for the self as advocated by our Gurus was turned into a ‘Spirituality on behalf, spirituality for a fee and spirituality through human intermediaries” by the sant class.
In short the sant class would hollow out Sikhi from the inside out. The spiritually elevated and Creatorconnected Sikh would be turned into an outer form obsessed, ritual conducting, meaningless mantar chanting, and offerings-making slave of the dera sants.
The Sikh of the dera would be one who saw his spirituality in the display of his outward symbols, the color of his turban, the volume of his chants and loyalty to the sant who had become his true guru.
In a short span of about 50 years, the deras would come to represent main-stream Sikhi. Being supported by the British in terms of material and by nirmlas in terms of religious dogma; the deras would grow exponentially in terms of followers, financial clout and influence.
The dera sants would thus serve the objectives and goals of the British in severely undermining the Sikh spirit that was grounded and rooted in the SGGS — eventually subjugating their soul for purposes of subduing them.
The situation would not repair itself upon the departure of the British from India.
Successive governments of independent India and Punjab — including the Akali Dal and SGPC [Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee] would continue to use the deras for the purpose of winning elections — this because by now, Sikhs attending deras vastly outnumbered genuine Sikhs.
Support for the deras by the corrupt politicians translated into votes in the system of defective democracy of vote-buying that was the scheme of Punjab’s politics at least.
THE SANT SAMAJ
This is the name of the “organization” that is comprised of dera sants. It is headquartered in Chowk Mehta dera and functions as an interest group to collectively use its voice and position to apply appropriate pressure on Sikh institutions such as SGPC and Akal Takhat to accede to their demands. The sant samaj managed to twist the arm of Akal Takhat on the issue of forgiving convicted rapist Gurmit Ram Rahim of dera Sacha Sauda in 2015. The sant samaj also has a hand in getting Sikhs excommunicated – especially those who are bent on exposing the ugly realities of deras.
The sant samaj has also become vocal and abusive in the condemnation of parcharaks who have resolved to promote authentic Gurbani messages to the Sikh messages at large.
From its humble beginnings as agents of the British colonial masters created to corrupt Sikhi and weaken Sikhs, the sant class has come a long way to become the ultimate hijackers of Sikhi as it stands today. It would not be farfetched to say that the dera sants and babas are the cancer that has stricken Sikhi. This is a tumor that needs to be treated, it not excised altogether.
(Extracted from Chapter Four: The Dera Sants, from the writer’s book The Hijacking of Sikhi, published in 2020]
Sikh thinker, writer and parcharak Karminder Singh Dhillon, PhD (Boston), is a retired Malaysian civil servant. He is the joint-editor of The Sikh Bulletin and author of The Hijacking of Sikhi. He can be contacted at dhillon99@gmail.com.
* This is the opinion of the writer, organisation or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
LINKS TO VIDEOS AND LECTURE NOTES FOR ‘THE HIJACKING OF SIKHI’
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 1 (The Plot): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 2 (Udasis): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 3 (Udasis): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 4 (Nirmlas): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 5 (Nirmlas): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 6 (Nirmlas – Sooraj Parkash): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 7 (Distorting Gurbani: The Nirmalas): Video | Notes
Hijacking of Sikhi – Part 8 (Dera Sants & Taksali Babas): Video | Notes
RELATED STORY:
Hijacking Sikhi (Asia Samachar, 19 Dec 2020)
Sikhi Concepts: Complete links to videos and lecture notes (Asia Samachar, 3 July 2021)
The Hijacking of Sikhi: After releasing book, Dr Karminder starts 12-part video series (Asia Samachar, 18 July 2021)
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond.Facebook | WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 | Email: editor@asiasamachar.com | Twitter | Instagram | Obituary announcements, click here |
Karminder Singh did name Gurbachan Bhindrawala as a British sympathizer. Gurbachan Singh was a student of Sunder Singh, who is seen as the founder of the Jatha Bhindran that later evolved into being called the Damdami Taksal by Kartar Singh’s time. Can Karminder Singh give concrete cases where Gurbachan Singh supported British interests, so the Sangat can look them up.
There are two important issues to take notice of in this case. One, Sikhi is not based on personalities but on Sabad, the Divine word which Guru Nanak takes as the Guru. But these Sants are literally worshipped by their followers. Two, Guru Sahiban established many places but never put themselves as the owners thereof. The sixth and tenth guru Sahiban fought and won many battles, but never occupied an inch of space. On the other hand these Babas buy land with the Sangat’s money and register it in their own names. Sikhs need to beware of them.
Comments are closed.