Authenticity of Kartarpuri Bir - Global Sikh Studies

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his University scholars that Banno Bir was a Granth written
thirty-eight years after the Kartarpuri Bir, he has raised the ghost
of another B 1 which no one has ever seen, much less
examined. In short, whatever be the objective of this move, in
effect it will just cloud the issues and tend to destroy the work
of the fifth Guru, who with his singular fore-sight and vision
once for all authenticated the scripture so that persons like
G.B. Singh do not create any confusion. In fact, the attack of
Pritam Singh on the critics of G.B. Singh and Mcleod was
perhaps only an act to raise an academic smoke screen since
as a wide awake scholar he could not be quite unconscious of
the role the Mcleod group was playing. For this is what even
an outsider like Dr. Noel King of the university of California
writes about the books of Dr. Mcleod. “Whatever Dr. Mcleod
intended many readers will ask his books the wrong questions
and get the wrong answers. The books to an uninitiated reader
seem to reiterate the notion that a great amount of Sikh belief
appears to be based on uncritical religiosity. The reader seeking
the well-springs of what Sikhism is will not be assisted. The
only successful opponent to thousands of years of passing
conquerors must have something that ‘makes him tick’.
Nowhere in these books is there an attempt to tell us what it
is.” 97 And now finding that not many persons have welcomed
their moves or come forward to support unfounded suggestions,
Prof. Pritam Singh is exhorting foreign scholars to join the
demolition squad by saying: “If the Sikhs fail to do their duty
towards Guru Arjan’s monumental work, there is no reason
why the wide awake internitional scholarship should not take
the work into its own hands.” 98
Our anaiysis and examination of the available materials
on the subject and the statements of various authors leads us
to the conclusion that the Kartarpuri Bir is the authentic Adi-
Granth prepared by the fifth Guru and, that the views