Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

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this attempt, one Harnam Dass was very happy at the
publication. He calls it a good work of research by which he
was greately influenced, impressed, and thereby encouraged.
He writes that he was emboldened to persue the kind of
research made by G.B. Singh. The cat is out of bag when
Harnam Dass writes that Britishers, like Macauliffe, had their
own axe to grind and they wanted to create differences between
Hindus and Sikhs by preaching that there were two separate
communities and faiths. 94 We have seen that G.B.Singh’s views
are neither based on correct facts nor on good sense. Evidently,
a scholar who is neither willing to examine closely the available
material about which he was writing, nor was inclined to stick
to known facts, nor exhibited any regard for truth or reason,
and makes baseless attacks on the foundations of a religion,
could be motivated only by consideration, that were neither
academic, nor moral. The very fact that his views have been
found to be perverse and poisonous by a person like Jodh Singh,
and in contrast have been welcomed by persons like Harnam
Dass, who are not willing to accept even the independent
identity of the Sikh religion, makes very clear the destructive
direction of the work of G.B. Singh. The work of Jodh Singh
exposed not only the crude attempt of G.B. Singh but gave a
coup de grace to his views. It is not an accident that in 1975 we
find that Mcleod has tried to suggest or repeat the very
assertions made by G.B. Singh, namely, that there is no authentic
Adi-Granth, the Kartarpuri Bir is not the Adi-Granth got written
by the fifth Guru and that the Kartarpuri Bir is a copy of the
Banno Bir, or a copy of its copy; and that the additional hymns
found in the Banno Bir had been copied in the Kartarpuri Bir
but were later deleted by hartal. All we wish to state is that the
thesis propounded and the method used by Mcleod were
similar to those of G.B. Singh, since, without an attempt at
verification, incorrect suggestions were made about known
facts regarding