By Matt Pointon
This blog is part of a series where I look at various faiths and explore where they have inspired me and where I have questions/struggles.
Although I am Christian, I believe that God wants us to explore and learn from other traditions as part of our spiritual journey.
This is my journey, no one else’s, and this series of blogs merely record how I see things. They are not intended to offend or convert, nor do I expect you to agree with me.
I do however, appreciate feedback, friendship and further learning. Thank you!
Unlike many journeys of exploration, I can pinpoint exactly when this one began.
It was on a September morning in 2006 and I was doing a course on comparative religions at Edge Hill University.
We’d started off with ways to look at religion and then spent a day on each of the major world faiths, before having a field trip and then assignments.
It was the final day of looking at specific faiths and the religion of the day was Sikhism.
I was not that excited. I knew next to nothing about Sikhism and I didn’t think it would be particularly to my tastes. But, I kept an open mind and sat down ready to pay attention.
The presenter was a high school teacher who wasn’t a Sikh. He came armed with lots of artefacts. There was a kirpan (a type of dagger), a kara (a type of bracelet) and a framed picture of the Golden Temple at Amritsar (looked cool — mentally I started to plan a trip to India).
He told us about the 5Ks and turbans. Then, he began to talk about the religion itself and, in particular, its founder, Guru Nanak.
And, in an instant, everything changed.
In short, the man who was described was basically the most inspirational religious figure I had ever heard of.
He spoke to me in such a powerful way that I just wanted to learn more about him. I was so inspired that I chose Guru Nanak as the topic for my assignment.
Guru Nanak was born in the Punjab on the 15th of April 1469 to a Hindu family.
When he was a young man, he went to live in the city of Lodhi and there he used to bathe every day in the River Beas. Then, one day, he went missing.
When he reappeared three days later, his face was radiant and the only answer that he would give to any of the questions asked of him was: “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. We are all disciples [Sikh] of God“.
After this conversion experience, Guru Nanak left his wife and family and set off on a series of udasis (pilgrimages), north, south, east and west, to famous holy sites.
As he travelled, he always questioned and challenged established rituals and norms.
For example, when in Haridwar, when the Brahmins were throwing water to reach the dead in the other world, Guru Nanak tossed some over his shoulder to water his fields in the Punjab,.
Likewise, when he went to Mecca, he was told off for lying with his feet pointing to the Kaaba, the House of God. “Well then,” he wisely replied, “you show me where Allah is not, and I shall point my feet there!”
Following his travels, he returned to the Punjab and his family where he built a community based on the ideal of equality.
He instituted the langar — the communal kitchen — where castes and sexes sat and ate together in equality. He openly preached against gender inequality and caste segregation.
In short, I found Guru Nanak so inspirational, that he stayed with me.
I am someone who has always loved travel and have explored faith through travelling the world. And I felt this immediate kinship with Guru Nanak wandering from holy place to holy place, followed by two disciples (one Hindu and one Muslim), learning from every faith and tradition but not being blinkered by any of them.
In 2013, I later travelled to India to visit Amritsar and other famous gurdwaras. Over the years, I have also read numerous books about Guru Nanak and Sikhism to deepen my understanding of his message.
I found books such as Kamla K. Kapur’s “The Singing Guru”, and Harish Dhillon’s retellings of the Jamansakhis (biographies of Guru Nanak) and the lives of the Sikh Gurus, inspirational and powerful.
Others however, not so much. When reading Khushwant Singh’s “A History of the Sikhs”, I found my brain overloaded by a litany of warfare and politicking.
Outside of reading, I also got to know members of my local Sikh community in Stoke.
In 2023, I then fulfilled a long-term ambition to pay my respects properly to the Guru. I journeyed to Pakistan where I visited Nankana Sahib, Guru Nanak’s birthplace.
All of which explains the appeal of Sikhism to me.
Nanak’s message, essentially building upon the twin traditions of Hinduism and Islam to create something unique, open to all, granting equality to all, with a healthy dash of pilgrimage, resonated with me.
So, did I become a Sikh?
Erm… no.
One reason is that Sikhs do not seek converts.
When I asked what they would say to someone looking to convert, Gurmeet at my local gurdwara replied:
“I would ask you what your religion is. And then I would say: ‘So, you are Christian, go away and be a better Christian’. There is no need to convert, and the gurdwara is open to all, regardless of your faith.”
I liked that. No, I really liked it.
Conversion-focussed faiths do not appeal to me. I find the practise of proselytising intolerant towards other faiths and ignorant in assuming one is on “the right path”.
My own religion is guilty as charged in this regard. Not my particular tradition perhaps, but the faith as a whole has a long track record. So too can be the case with Islam, Mormonism and certain strains of Buddhism and Hinduism.
Indeed, when I spoke to Muslims and Hindus about Sikhism, they would stress that:
- “Sikhism isn’t a proper religion because Guru Nanak was Muslim — people just don’t know” (Muslim response)
- “Guru Nanak was born a Hindu and stayed a Hindu and so Sikhs are Hindus— they just don’t realise” (Hindu response
Both replies stuck in my throat.
However, the lack of seeking converts, was not the only barrier for me. Another challenge for me was that Sikhism is culturally very distant to me.
Whilst there are Sikhs all over the world, from numerous ethnic backgrounds, in Britain at least, it is steeped in a cultural milieu that, whilst intriguing and interesting, is not my own.
From the language of the prayers to the food served in the langar, it is embedded in Punjabi tradition. I am not a Punjabi and so I feel a cultural, if not a spiritual distance. And that, to me, matters.
Some say that culture is not important, only the faith. However, culture is the lens through which we view the world, whether we like it or not.
I personally often see people who adopt a faith traditionally linked within another cultural tradition and its customs as appearing “a little bit lost”.
I respect Sikh culture and history, but I also adhere to the principal chiselled above the Temple of Apollo in Delphi: ΓΝΩΘΙ ΣΑΥΤΟΝ — “Know Thyself”.
I may not always want to be a “white guy with a Christian heritage” from the middle of England, but I am.
These factors will always shape me. Denial of this reality is simply unhealthy.
That however, was not the main sticking point.
What I learned slowly throughout my interfaith Sikh journey was that whilst I had fallen in love with Guru Nanak, Sikhism as a whole is something subtly different.
Nanak was but the first of ten gurus.
The final guru was Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708).
This guru announced that following his death, instead of a living guru, the holy book the Adi Granth would become the eternal guru, the Guru Granth Sahib.
Sikhism teaches that the ten gurus preached the same message as Nanak. But, as I read more about them, I began to struggle with this idea.
The early gurus — Angad, Amar Das, Ram Das and Arjan — were quite similar to Guru Nanak.
Each was chosen by the guru before them due to their standing within the community as opposed to any familial ties to his predecessor.
But, whilst they stayed constant, the world around changed, becoming more and more hostile to the faith.
As a result, Arjan was tortured and then put to death by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in Lahore aged just 43.
I visited the site of his martyrdom in 2023 and found it moving, not just for what happened there, but for what happened afterwards.
Knowing he was about to die, Arjan hurriedly nominated, not an elder, but his son, Hargobind, as the Sixth Guru. Hargobind was only eleven years old when he attained the guruship.
Was it the trauma of having his father murdered? Was it that he was put under the influence of certain people at an impressionable age? Or was it just that he followed the logical course of Nanak’s path?
Who can say. But, Hargobind was very different as Guru to his predecessors.
He introduced the process of militarisation to Sikhism and symbolised it by wearing two swords, representing the dual concept of mīrī and pīrī (temporal power and spiritual authority).
He also created the first Sikh parliament, the Akal Takht, and, when he died, nominated his grandson to follow him as the Seventh Guru.
Afterwards, the guruship always stayed within the family and militarism was a central feature of the faith.
This, I struggle with. I am no fighter and much prefer to be a peacemaker.
Plus, one’s early childhood colours how one thinks. My childhood example of a holy man was the Nazarene who, even when attacked, refused to fight and declared to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world.
Nanak would have got on well with Jesus I feel. They could have trodden the path together and learnt from each other’s parables.
As for Guru Hargobind and those that followed him (with the notable exception of Guru Tegh Bahadur who accepted martyrdom in 1675 for the sake Kashmiri Hindus, not even Sikhs), I suspect the relationship would have been less close.
I’ve talked about this with many Sikhs. Some say that they struggle with the militarism too, whereas others stress that it was necessary for the time and place.
One friend pointed out that as well as his military exploits, Guru Gobind Singh was also an accomplished poet. He coated all his arrows in gold so that the family of the people they killed would not be impoverished.
This is both laudable and inspirational.
Likewise, they have also pointed out, quite accurately, that whilst I might think of myself as a person in the mould of Guru Nanak when I am walking the pilgrim path, when I am doing my day-to-day work with the trade unions, fighting to protect those most vulnerable in society, I am perhaps more like Guru Gobind Singh.
And perhaps they are right. But, it doesn’t sit right with me. Which is where my issues lie.
The influence of my childhood immersion into Christianity and the life of Jesus Christ runs deep I suppose.
And so, I am not a Sikh, yet at the same time, in a sense, I am.
I am not a Sikh because it is not my faith and I rarely worship in any gurdwara. I do not wear any of the Five Ks and, on the census, I still write down “Christian”.
Conversely, on my udasi with Sikhism, I have however learnt a lot.
I’ve learnt about the importance of pilgrimage, the power of eating together as one, gender equality in a very segregated culture, and a strong sense of openness and tolerance.
I continue to enjoy visiting the gurdwara to sit and meditate (as well as eat). And, I have also been on pilgrimages to many great Sikh sites.
Nor too is my udasi over.
Not only Guru Nanak, but the entire Sikh faith continues to intrigue me.
I wish to explore more my relationship with the later gurus and fully understand why they took a more militaristic tack. Was it from necessity or choice?
Plus, I wish to truly enter into the Punjabi culture more to see how Sikhism affects the everyday lives of those who adhere to it and how it functions in the landscape that spawned it.
So, yes, I am planning further trips to both India and Pakistan. I aim to do as I have with Christianity, and complete a walking pilgrimage between some of the major gurdwaras.
After all, that approach has always served me well thus far.
And so, I guess I am now a friend of the Sikhs, and in one crucial sense, one with them.
For it was Guru Nanak himself who said: “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. We are all disciples of God.”
And on that account, I am in full agreement.
Credits and thanks:
Thanks to Rupinder Panesar for the conversations and suggestions when writing this piece.
Read more of Matt’s work and discover his interfaith journey here.
Images:
Matthew Pointon (C) and Laurentiu Morariu / Varun Gaba (Unsplash)
