By Gurnam Singh | Opinion |
The foundation of Sikh thought rests on a radical and deceptively simple assertion articulated by Guru Nanak Ji:
ਸਚਹੁ ਓਰੈ ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਉਪਰਿ ਸਚੁ ਆਚਾਰੁ ॥
Truth is the highest virtue, but higher still is truthful living. (Guru Granth Sahib, 62)
With this statement, Guru Nanak decisively reorients spirituality away from doctrinal assent and metaphysical speculation toward ethical practice. Truth is not merely something to be believed, proclaimed, or revered; it must be lived. Sikhi thus defines itself not as a system of belief aimed at securing salvation in a distant afterlife, but as a disciplined way of living oriented toward transforming the self and the world in the here and now.
This emphasis shifts the centre of spirituality from the transcendent to the behavioural. Salvation (mukti) is not postponed until death, nor outsourced to divine intervention. It unfolds through daily action: through labour, relationships, and social responsibility. Truthful living, therefore, is not a moment of insight but a sustained discipline requiring moral awareness, self critique, and the continual refinement of judgement.
This ethical orientation becomes even clearer when read alongside Karl Marx’s critique of religion and his broader theory of alienation. For Marx’s Alienation describes the condition in which human beings become estranged from their labour, from the products of their activity, from one another, and ultimately from their own creative and moral capacities. Under such conditions, personal agency diminishes individuals no longer recognise themselves as people capable of shaping the world. Religion, Marx argues, emerges within this fractured world as both a response to suffering and a veil that conceals its material causes: “the sigh of the oppressed creature,” yet also a form of false consolation.
Remarkably, Guru Nanak diagnoses a parallel condition centuries earlier, though articulated in ethical and spiritual rather than economic terms. In Sikhi, alienation arises from haumai or dangerously distorted and dysfunctional sense of agency. It is a state of ego consciousness which is understood not as selfhood itself, but as fixation on separateness, ownership, and self importance. Haumai fragments the self, distorts relationships, and substitutes accumulation, ritual, or status for ethical responsibility. The result is a dislocated human being: outwardly busy, inwardly estranged.
For Marx, the most dangerous role of religion is not belief in God as such, but religion’s ideological function, that is its capacity to normalise suffering and render injustice meaningful rather than intolerable. Guru Nanak, in a strikingly similar move, rejects any spirituality that pacifies the seeker or dulls ethical consciousness. Ritual, prayer, and ascetic withdrawal are repeatedly critiqued in the Guru Granth Sahib when they become substitutes for moral labour. In each case, any system, religious or secular, that immunises itself from critique and real world suffering is radically suspect.
Central to resisting this condition in Sikhi is ਬਿਬੇਕ ਬੁੱਧੀ (bibeik budhi), or the ‘discerning intellect’. It is the cultivated capacity to see through appearances: to recognise exploitation where it is normalised, ego where it is sanctified, and falsehood where it masquerades as truth. Without such discernment, individuals remain alienated not only from society, but from their own moral potential.
For a Sikh, prayer is neither a transaction nor a tranquiliser. It is not a bribe offered to God, nor a palliative for moral anxiety. Prayer is a mirror. If devotion leaves ego intact and exploitation unchallenged, the ritual has failed its purpose. Ethical transformation, not symbolic performance, is the measure of genuine spirituality.
Marx identifies alienated labour as labour performed under compulsion, divorced from creativity, and oriented toward accumulation rather than human flourishing. Guru Nanak’s response is not withdrawal from labour, but its ethical reintegration. Honest work (kirat) becomes dignified precisely because it is non exploitative and oriented toward collective wellbeing. Wealth, in turn, is relativised through sharing (vand chhakna), not spiritualised away.
Guru Nanak expresses this ethical materialism, were, spirituality and material reality is inseparable with characteristic clarity:
ਘਾਲਿ ਖਾਇ ਕਿਛੁ ਹਥਹੁ ਦੇਇ ॥ ਨਾਨਕ ਰਾਹੁ ਪਛਾਣਹਿ ਸੇਇ ॥
Those who work for what they eat, and give some of what they have earned to others—O Nanak, they alone recognise the true path. (Guru Granth Sahib, 1245)
The convergence between Guru Nanak and Karl Marx lies not in doctrine, but in ethical posture. Both identify alienation as a fundamental human problem. Both resist systems of oppression that legitimise suffering. Both were vehemently opposed to arbitrary systems of social divisions; Nanak articulates this in his opposition to the caste system in feudal India; Mark focusses his attention to the class system that emerged in Europe in the 18th Century following the Industrial Revolution. And both insisted that truth must be lived, not merely proclaimed.
As for Heaven on Earth, Gurbani refers to this as Begampura, which is the utopian society envisioned by Bhagat Ravidas as an inclusive class/caste less place devoid of sorrow, anxiety, taxes, inequality and disharmony. Though Marx resisted the temptation to define his utopian world, it is clear from his socialist vision, it was of a world where social, economic and political justice was afforded to all. This is captured in the slogan, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, meaning, people would contribute what they can in whatever way they are able to society and in return would receive financial and other support from the society intruder for them to live a rewarding life.
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Gurnam Singh is an academic activist dedicated to human rights, liberty, equality, social and environmental justice. He is a Professor of Sociology at University of Warwick, UK. He can be contacted at Gurnam.singh.1@warwick.ac.uk
* This is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily represent the views of Asia Samachar.
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