Sri Guru Singh Sabha: Southall

Abstract

Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life with a deep structure of meaning, suggesting that conflict and change is built into the caste system. As a consequence cultural, religious and linguistic reaffirmation, deeply implanted in the religious and critical consciousness of the people, has been a prerequisite for all major movements of protest against the caste structure and for social and political change. Central to the religious revolutions of Gautama and Mahavira (563–482 B.C. and 522–480 B.C.) was the reality of social and racial conflict, for the fabric of society had to take into account ‘multiplicity of races, religions and languages’. (1) Both Buddhism and Jainism not only attacked the oppressive ritualism of the caste system but waged a sustained campaign against ‘racial prejudice and social discrimination’, (2) relentlessly focusing on the ‘individual rights cutting across caste divisions’. (3) A historical inventory of the Great Hindu Tradition dictates that the ideological content of all major religious movements must address itself to the creation of an open caste society and the religious revolutionaries emerge as mediators between the great tradition and the masses of people. The process of universalization and reaffirmation of cultural consciousness necessitates the creation of sacred centres, sacred institutions and sacred scriptures. The Punjab in the fourteenth century mirrors the great Hindu tradition of conflict, change and liberation, set in motion by the oppressive Muslim invasion in AD 1001, and even a casual analysis of the period will confirm Kosambi’s thesis that ‘Indian society seemed to develop more by successive religious transformation than by violence’. (4) The Hindu and the Islamic land of the five rivers were unable to launch any kind of protest movements for both Hinduism and Islam had abandoned the people and totally depended on ‘external authority and conventional ceremony’ (5) to control and to maintain their oppressive hold over the people. Towards the end of the fourteenth century Ramananda was the first to emerge in Northern India to challenge the Brahminical authority of the caste structure and the oppression of Islam, and attempted to bring men and women of any caste or any faith in direct personal relationship with God through love and ‘bhakti’ (devotion). But it was Kabir, a disciple of Ramananda, the mystic poet and weaver, who revolutionised the whole counter-movement of protest by insisting on using the language of the people and affirming that God is an experience and not a concept and the experience belongs to the people across caste, colour and country. Furthermore, it was the dominating and dogmatic superstructure of Islam and Hinduism which imprisoned the people in a vicious cycle of oppression and dependence on classical authorities. His syncristic appeal across caste and religion of 0 God, whether Allah or Rama, I live by thy name’ (6) was to have a deep political, structural and institutional effect on the rise of Sikhism. The upsurge of anti-caste religious consciousness for structural change with religious equality in the economy of God was an all-India phenomenon. But they failed to make any substantive impact in their offensive for change, and according to Cunningham ‘they perfected forms of dissent rather than planted germs of nations’. (7) In my view, they failed because the concept of ‘bhakti’ was too universal to be able to focus on the oppressive structure of society, and they centred on the charismatic power relationship of the Gurus without political objectives or institutional base to question existing social order.