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12 / Bhai V"1T Singh
imbalance in the cultural life of the Punjab and proved a
hindranceto its growth. FortheSikhs therelegation ofPunjabi
was galling. Its installation in its rightful position became an
article offaith with them and a condition of their own cultural
autonomy and prosperity.
The challenge of Western science and Christian ethics
and humanitarianism provoked self-examination and
reinterpretation in Indian religions. The result was a wide
movement of reformation which took pronouncedly sectarian
forms in the Arya Samaj fundamentalism in Hinduism and
Ahmadiya heresyinIslam. The more liberal expressions were
theBrahmaSabha, laterknown as Brahmo Samaj, founded by
Rammohun Roy inBengalin 1828, thePrarthanaSamaj which
began in Bombay in 1867 and the teaching of Ramakrishna
Paramahansa (1834-86). The encounter in the Punjab was
marked by aggressiveness and acerbity and the last decades
of the nineteenth century were filled with abrasive religious
polemicinwhichChristians,Muslims andAryaSamajistsfreely
participated.
For Sikhism, strangely somnolent since the forfeiture of
political authority, this was a critical time. Challenged by the
religious and cultural forces around it, Sikhism was set on a
course of self-understanding. The formalism and ceremonial
whichhadaccumulated duringthe days ofcourtlypowerwere
recognized as accretions and adulterations contrary to the
teachingsoftheGurus. Survivalwaslinkedwiththeexpunction
of these abuses and the recovery of purity inbelief andusage.
Suchhadbeenthederelictionofthefaiththat, afteroccupation
of the Punjab, several of the British observers prognosticated
dismallyfor it. Some thoughtit wasalready dead: othersthatit
awaited an inevitable doom.
Aprotest against the rot that had set in was registered in
the time of the Sikh rule. Baba Dayal, a saintly man and
contemporary of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had cavilled at the
shortcomings of the mighty and assailed the rites and
observances subverting the Sikh way of life. His main target
was the worship of images against which he preached
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