Fundamentalism and the Sikh Religious Tradition by T.N. Madan

Madan's ignorance about the Sikh ideology and Guru Granth is evident, it is not
understood why instead of attributing Fundamentalism to the Tenth Master he does not
mention its roots in the Torah, the Bible and the Qoran, because both Judaism and Islam
sanction the use of force for political objectives.
So far as Sikhs are concerned, it is because of their religious ideology that they
not only suffered extreme persecution in the eighteenth century, but also achieved some
unparalled objectives, first, of stopping, once for all, a thousand year wave of invasion
that the Indian socio-politcal life had been unable to challenge, much less repel. Of this,
Gupta, the doyen of Punjab history writes; "We now close the narrative of the Sikhs, who
placed themselves at the head of the nation; who showed themselves as the interpreters of
the rights of the people; who maintained the struggle between .good and evil, between
sovereign will of the people and the divine right of kings, and the opposition of liberty to
despotism; who avenged the insults, the outrages and the slavery of many generations
past; who delivered their mother country from the yoke of the foreign oppressor; who
displayed all that was great and noble; who left to the children of this province a heritage
unsullied by the presence of any foreign solider; who won for the Punjab the envied title
of 'the land of soldiers'; who alone can boast of having erected a 'bulwark of defence
against foreign aggression', the tide of which had run its prosperous course for the
preceding eight hundred years; and to whom all other people of Northern India in
general, and of the Punjab in particular, owe a deep debt of gratitude."
The second achievement of the Sikh Religious Revolution, has been the raising
of the level of the lowest classes and enabling them to stand level with the highest classes
in all fields of life." It is the dichotomy in other Indian religions, that has enabled the
inequitous system of caste and pollution to survive in Indian society for thousands of
years without any serious socio-political or organised protest. The sanction is so strong,
that even in modern India, the statue of a Brahmin Chief Minister, unveiled by the
Deputy Prime Minister of India, Shri Jagjiwan Ram from a Scheduled caste, had to be
purified with holy water from the Ganges, because it was considered to have been defiled
by the touch of one belonging to a Scheduled caste. For like ideological reasons Indira
Gandhi was not allowed entry in a sacred temple in the South.
Madan has attributed fundamentalism to Guru Gobind Singh and also to Banda
Bahadur. But, is it not remarkable that, while theologian Niebuhr has, after the Christian
experience of two millenia, suggested only now the giving of political power to the
down-trodden classes, Banda Bahadur accomplished it two hundred years earlier, by
elevating the lowest strata of Indian Society, so that they could stand up with dignity and
strength against the upper castes and the elite ? For the first time in history, as Qazi Nur
Mohammad wrote, Kalals, Mazhbis, Ramdasias, Ramgarhias and Jats became feared
soliders and leaders whom the ruling elites, both Muslims and Hindus, faced with respect.
It is the same whole-life system that made significant achievements in the time of Ranjit
Singh, who not only once for all stopped the wave of invasions and tyranny in the North
of India, but also gave peace and equality of treatment to all communities. It is significant
that it was because of the Sikh ethos, that despite the persecution of Sikhs at the hands of
the earlier Moghal Empire, thew was never any expression of bitterness against the
Muslims or any attempt to convert persons of other communities to Sikhism. Although it
was a part of the Sikh tradition, his armies had soldiers from all religions and castes,