CHAPTER VII
SIKHISM AND
THE WORLD SOCIETY
I may say that there are, broadly speaking five categories of
religions from the point of view of societal outlook and institutional action,
that is, their scope of prevailment.
(1)
Religions that are ethnic, grounded in the conviction that entitlement to and
direct benefits of the, or their religion are divinely and irrevocably reserved
for a particular ethnic tribe constituting the God-ordained elites of Religion,
“the Chosen People”, in special covenant with God. Judaism is the well-known
instance of this category of religions.
(2)
Those who claim that entitlement to and direct benefits of their religion are
freely open to the Jew and the Gentile, that is, all the peoples of the world
if and only if they accept the religion in question and its verbal formulations
as the exclusive repository of Truth. The oecumenical religions of Christianity
and Islam belong to this category.
(3)
Religion that insists that since penultimate and highest religious experience
is essentially obtainable as the end-result of a long series of births and rebirths
of a soul within the context of a particular geographic and cultural milieu
through the process of metampsychosis, the path and benefits of the true
religion are accessible exclusively to a genetic, racial .group confined to a specified
geographic habitat. By understanding thus alone can the Hindu claim that “it is an exclusive privilege and
grace of God that enables man to be born a Hindu in the sacred land called,
Bharat, that is, India; a birth in other lands, no matter of how excellent a
condition and however frequently, in no better than a repetitious frustration
and wearisome waste.” 1 The basic postulate of this doctrine is that
the multitudinous personal experiences of the present as well as the characteristics
of the body holding the experiencing self are the expression of the past acts
in some residual and seminal form by a transmigrating entity or principle. A
Hindu would explain that the fundamental convictions of the votaries of
religions (1) and (2) arise out of prolonged and laborious studies of obscure
phenomenon and mysterious human faculties, that can be understood properly
only if the aforementioned basic postulate of Hinduism is conceded and accepted
which provides the rationale of Hindu claim regarding birth in a genetic Hindu
family in India.
(4) Religions that postulate that
the fact of religious experience being non-intellectual and non cognitive implicates that
operative level of the religion must be the upaya, the provisional
means, and; not doctrines and
concepts, beliefs and dogmas and these upaya have to be as variable as
the beings whose spiritual foods they are meant to supply. Buddhism, as the
export-form of Hinduism, is a religion of this category with its
numerous expressions ranging from Hinayana, the original ethico-philosophical
religion, to Mahayana, Vajrayana, Tantrayana, Mantrayana, Tibetan Buddhism and
the Zen, to mention only the major manifestations of Buddhism.
(5) The Religion
that aims at transcending all particularism in religion
and points towards a religious experience realized as the All-Ground of all
particular religious experiences and which, therefore, does not confront dogma
with dogma and belief with belief and which does not aim at religious
conversion so much as authentic religious life and is thus primarily a
bridge-maker and not a universal conqueror or all-leveller, such as oecumenical
religions, like Islam and Christianity tend to be. Sikhism, being a religion of
this category does not out rightly reject or oppose other doctrines or dogmas
but demands true dialogue rather than conversion as the goal transcending
particularisms of other religions, as it preaches that beyond lies, not a
universal concept, not synthesis or syncretic amalgam, but deeper penetration
of one’s own religion in thought, devotion and action. It upholds that in the
depth of every religion, a living religion, there is a point at which religion
itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its
particularity, elevating it to spiritual freedom and with it to a vision of
the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meanings of existence.
In the Sikh scripture, the epiphany of Sikhism is alluded to as “the bursting
of the seamless egg shell of superstition, enlightening the human mind” and “cutting
asunder the chains that find the feet and hinder movement” and “full freedom
for spiritual evolution of man is thus assured,” 2
2. The religions of the category (1)
are of elitic exclusivity, engrossed in and pre-Occupied with the maintenance
and preservation of their own identity and their status, of a spiritual
privilegentia through political and social viability.
3. The religions of category (2), in the case of Christianity,
believing that, the nature of things is divine love for the created world, aim
at a will to create through suffering and movement of such ·wills that is expected to lead to
establishment of a new kingdom and state of affairs in human history in which
God’s Will is “done on earth as it in Heaven.”
4. The other variety of category (2) of which Islam is an expression,
par-excellence, aims at and, strives for, al-jihad, a universal or
dominant monolithic, close Muslim world-society in which the laws of personal conduct
and social organisation revealed unambiguously and finally by God through
Prophet Mohammed are obeyed and enforced — this being the ultimate purpose of
God in creating the world and man-and which Muslim society is to be enlarged and
strengthened progressively through the policy of enforcement of Islamic laws
through sword,” ahshara’ tahatus-saif.
5. The category (3) religions are insular, self-sufficient and
self-engrossed, concerned only with ensuring external non-interference and the internal
purity.
6. The
religions of category (4) are a — social, catholic and concerned exclusively with awakening in the individual-in his personal capacity and not
in his position as a limb of the society-transcendental consciousness, prajna,
the wisdom that liberates from the limitations of all names and forms.
7. The religions of
the category (5), that is Sikhism, freely recognizes that search for a fundamental
unity of religions or the attempts at the religious rapprochement have their limitations, for, there are
fundamental differences in the conceptions of reality and attitudes towards the
world, permanently impeding a real and lasting synthesis between basically
incompatible elements, preaches frank and unreserved dialogue between various
religions and the human groups that owe allegiance to these religions, so as
to arrive at the experience that transcends religious
particularism and realizes a base of identity underneath all modes of religious
expression. “Through whatever the road a man takes or the mode of worship he
adopts to achieve nearness to God, Verily God receives and accepts him,” says
the Sikh Scripture. 3 As a corollary thereof, Sikhism favours a
plural, free, open and progressive human society, God-oriented, non-aggressive
but firm and ever-ready to confront and combat rise and growth of evil through
organized resistance, and forward-looking yet non-ambitious. For facilitating
emergence of this state of affairs it has conceived of and recommends organized
and co-operative efforts of men of good will,
indicating the true sources of dynamism available to man for this purpose, the
details of which, however, are outside the scope of this short Note. 
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