Selected Editorials - The Sikh Bulletin

Two questions arise:
1. Why the distinction between daughter and son when Gurbani gives both sexes an equal
status
2. If the entire humanity is child of one God then why discriminate in the name of religion
which is man made
It is logical to assume from the above quotes that a Sikh can be recognized by his appearance alone. A
key determinant of that is unshorn hair. Yet there is no mention of the requirement for a Sikh to keep
unshorn hair in Guru Granth Sahib. If anything, it says that it makes no difference to the creator whether
we keep long hair or a bald head; what counts are our deeds, our conduct in our daily lives.
kbIr pRIiq eyk isAuN kIey afn duibDf jfie]
BfvY lFby kys kru BfvY Grir muzfie] GGS p. 1365.
If the Gurus kept unshorn hair, covered with a turban, they were simply following one of the then
prevalent Indian customs that also included completely shorn and partially shorn hair. It were Hindus and
Muslims, in various forms of appearance, who came to listen to the Gurus and none was barred based on
their appearance or for any other reason.
Mardana, a Muslim, perhaps should be considered first among Guru Nanak’s Sikhs because he spent his
entire adult life in Guru’s company and provided music for Guru’s hymns. Today his descendants are not
allowed to perform kirtan at Darbar Sahib or any other Gurdwara.
The requirement of keeping unshorn hair started with the tenth Nanak, Guru Gobind Singh, but only for
those who volunteered to partake ‘khande-di-pahul’ and alongwith unshorn hair they were also required
to carry four more articles of faith. At no time were the non-pahuldhari Sikhs considered any lesser.
In time the children of pahuldhari Sikhs, and many others, started keeping long hair without taking pahul,
and now we are at a point where non-kesadhari Sikh is not just looked down upon but not even
considered a Sikh. There is one kesadhari and pahuldhari sect among us that does not consider as Sikhs
even those kesadhari and pahuldhari Sikhs who have not been baptized by their ritual and do not agree
with their interpretation of Gurbani. Members of this group have resorted to violence in UK, Canada and
USA to stop missionaries trained in Gurmat Gian Colleges from performing katha in our gurdwaras.
It is an interesting coincidence that both terms, Sikh and Taliban, literally mean the same thing, ‘the
student’. Unfortunately, we have seen the emergence of Sikh Taliban in the Diaspora. We should never
forget that a Sikh is one who lives by the teachings enshrined in Guru Granth Sahib that embodies
the philosophy of Guru Nanak. Gurus lived their lives as they preached. There was no difference in
their kathani and karni and they did not expect anything less from their Sikhs.
It would be appropriate here to quote from my May-June 2012 Sikh Bulletin editorial:
“Here I would like to confess to my personal belief that might be considered a blasphemy and offend
most people, even those who know me well. That is that Guru Nanak did not initiate another religion.
There were too many religions and divisions among them in his time as is the case today. Today he will
surely say that ‘I am neither a Hindu nor a Muslim; neither a Sikh nor a Christian’. He showed
mankind a path to life and living. The tragedy is that ‘well meaning people’, which would be 99.9% of
us all, have turned it into yet another divisive and suffocating faith.”
Several days after this issue of the Sikh Bulletin was released on the internet, Dr. Harbans Lal sent me an
article for publications about the findings of Syed Mushtaq Hussain Mirpuri, a Kashmiri Muslim,
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