Selected Editorials - The Sikh Bulletin

Guru Nanak also planted the seeds of the future successes to come in the field of science, such as:
the Big Bang theory, EMC 2 , origin of life in water, Evolution of Species and from the point of view
of nurturing the body, no difference between meat and vegetables. These were world changing
pronouncements and yet the world never heard about them; not then, not now.
First article in this issue is “Origin of Universe’, Chapter 15 of Dr Devinder Singh Chahal’s book,
‘Nanakian Philosophy’. It is worth repeating here the first two paragraphs in his introduction to this
chapter to illustrate the above point:
“I would like to quote the following statement of Carl Sagan before describing the origin of universe
according to Nanakian Philosophy: “A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the
universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe
hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge”. Carl Sagan, Pale
Blue Dot (1995) [17].
“I was wonder-struck when I came across the above statement of
Carl Sagan. I immediately went back to the 15 th century, when the science was just emerging as a
powerful tool to find the truth; Guru Nanak was describing the origin of universe, which appears to be
very close to scientific version of today. And he laid the foundation of a new religion, Sikhi (Sikhism),
which is now being envisioned by Carl Sagan as above”.
Magnificence of the universe described with reverence and awe and that too through poetry is what
Carl Sagan wanted a religion to stress; how sad that we who claim to be the lawful recipients of this
priceless gift have it hidden from every Carl Sagan of this world.
Born as baby Nanak, because he was born at his mother’s paternal house, he died known as Guru Nanak.
He gave a priceless gift to mankind but it was not a religion. Advocate Surinder Singh Kanwar, in his
article in this issue, ‘sikh-di-pehchaan’ makes the same point that Guru Nanak wanted to rid the masses
of conflicts in the name of religion rather than introduce still another religion. What Guru Nanak gave
was what S. Parminder Singh Parmar in his article in this issue calls jeevan-jaach. His philosophy got
distorted and ritualized into a traditional religion by lesser people who came to inherit it.
Since Nanak himself rejected the concept of Second Coming, the corner stone of the world’s largest ritual
filled religion, we just have to hope and wish that the world will produce, sometime down into the future,
another personality like him, to implement what he started, a universal concept of mankind living in a
righteous, peaceful and prosperous world as one family, marked by brotherly love, tolerant of our petty
differences, enlightened citizenry conscious of its responsibility towards the animal and vegetation
kingdom as the highest form of life on this little speck of star dust that we call planet Earth. That just
might delay the eventual oblivion of life on this planet that the cosmic law is speeding us towards.
In a random email exchanges on the internet, among many, the following had caught my attention: “Do
the Sikhs really know who the Nanak is Is he Guru or mystic or reformer or philosopher or scientist
or something else” The person who wrote that was Dr. Devinder Singh Chahal, and that triggered our
serialization of his book ‘Nanakian Philosophy’ in The Sikh Bulletin.
I humbly submit, and beseech discerning minds among us, to consider that Guru Nanak was all of
these. As Principal Sawan Singh Gogia aptly states in his article in this issue, ‘Guru Nanak Dev about
Muslims’: “His tenets preach liberation of humanity from social, political, religious and economic
exploitation.”
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