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

what it is." Dr. McLeod has for long years been a part of the Christian Mission at Batala
(India). Similarly, Oberoi's papers have also evoked comments which are by no means
complimentary, both about his knowledge of the Sikh religion and his academic
credibility, as commented upon by Dhillon in his published paper presented at Los
Angeles in 1988 :
"Oberoi while he gives irrelevant details of the miraculous powers attributed to
Sakhi Sarvar and lavishly quotes Rose as evidence, seems to have deliberately concealed
the above mentioned conclusion drawn by Rose and, instead has made the distortion that
Singh Sabha leaders were the first to object to such practices. Such clear misstatements
are generally made by partisan propagandists, but never, we believe, by any academician.
This indicates either a lack of indepth study or a conscious attempt to suppress facts with
a view to misrepresenting Sikhism."
Madan calls Oberoi a careful scholar. Dhillon's observations clearly suggest that
in order to draw a wrong inference he went to the extent of making a suppression of
known, important and relevant material. Apart from being selective in his secondary
sources, he hardly appears to be up-to-date in considering the material which he employs
for his assessment. For example, more than three papers commenting on the writings of
Oberoi, were read, and later published, at the Seminars, held at long Beach, and at
Vancouver in the University of British Columbia. Dr. Noel Q. King, Professor Emeritus,
University of Californis, Santa Cruz, read a paper "Fundamentalism, Modernity; Sikhism
: A Tertium Quid", in which he discussed Oberoi's views, and drew two emphatic
conclusions, namely, first, that Sikhism is not a Fundamentalism in any sense, but is a
third path with an identity of its own, and, second, that there is complete unity between
the thought of Guru Nanak and that of the later nine Gurus.
It would appear that in the assessment and views of Madan there are evident
faults of understanding and in the choice of material and method.
V. CONCLUSION
We have endeavoured to explain that the real problem today related to the failure
of Secularism to evolve a rational ethics. The whole-life religions have always felt that
Secularism alone can neither evolve a viable ethics, nor deliver goods in the empirical
field, because in the world of cause and effect, there is no element of freedom or
creativity, which can furnish societal cohesion, or be the base of moral life of man. On
the other hand, dichotomous religions and Secularism believe that religion should remain
aloof from the empirical life. Withdrawal, asceticism, sanyasa and monasticism are the
direct consequence of this approach. Like St. Augustine, these religious ideologies
virtually leave the earthy city of self-will to stew in its own juice. But whole-life or miripiri
religions clearly take up the challenge of evil in life. They stress that evil and
injustice, being facts of life, and being more so in the socio-political field, the man of
God should not run away from the challenge, but should accept the responsibility of
meeting it and removing inequity. For them God being Love, they have to be His
instruments in the expression of that Love and in battling with injustice and oppression,
wherever it be, and whatever be the cost. Although dichotomous religions are generally
pacificists and have a different view, yet we have seen that whether it is a Mahatma
Gandhi from Hinduism, or a Niebuhr, a Moltmann, a Cutierrez, a Father Torres, or the
Liberation theologians from Christianity, they are coming to the view that Godliness
must in practice involve both participation in the socio-political life and the use of