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Caste Retains Its Grip
As Guru’s Word Burns Across Punjab

S P Singh

Chandigarh:

Worthless is caste and worthless an exalted name, For all mankind there is but a single refuge. (Guru Nanak, Adi Granth p 83)

It was the quest for salvation which above all else concerned Guru Nanak and in this quest caste status provided no assistance, but then over 500 years down the line, the leaders of the community are more interested in quest for votes and vote banks, salvation can wait.

Therefore, when the antics of self-styled godman Baba Piara Singh Bhaniara, have sent the tempers soaring among a community where religion and politics have come to be inextricably intertwined, the Baba's caste mattered as despite the lofty ideals of the Sikh gurus and the philosophy of Guru Granth Sahib, caste as article of identity matters in the state in a phenomena that underlines the failure of institutions like the Akali Dals, clergy and the SGPC to weed it out of the social and political space.

Baba Bhaniara's  dera in Nurpur Bedi in Ropar  -- it nestles ironically not very far from Anandpur Sahib where tenth Sikh guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa panth obliterating for ever the distinctions of caste and birth --  has an instant appeal among the lower caste Sikhs, often referred to as Mazhabis and Dalits, and hardly any among his followers belonged to higher castes.

When the Baba was catapulted into media limelight after incidents of burning of holy Sikh scriptures, Guru Granth Sahib, at some places in Punjab, the community opinion leaders railed against the charlatan, baying for the heretic's head. His followers were attacked in many villages during the agitation, and Akali leaders publicly praised a jail inmate who threw acid on fellow inmates who were Baba's followers.

In this scenario where political opponents of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal found common cause with the moderate Sant Samaj of Sikh holy men, radicals fringe voices and residual militant elements, the target immediately became Badal. The political idiom of the day triggered off demands for a dead or alive Baba, but since vote politics was the bottom line and at stake are the next assembly results, the crucial question of what made thousands to flock to Baba was conveniently sidelined.

The Akal Takht, reduced to a shadow of the temporal authority it once signified, chastised the ruling Akali Dal leaders including a minister for allegedly having links with Baba. But it is important to note that all these leaders, including state agriculture minister Gurdev Singh Badal and his son, a senior SGPC functionary, are lower caste representatives. Even former Union Home Minister Buta Singh, who has admitted laying foundation stone of the dera and his links with Baba, is a dalit leader.

In fact, Baba Bhaniara is reported to have undertaken the exercise to write his parallel granth only when his dalit followers were refused birs of Guru Granth Sahib by village gurdwaras.

"Caste continues to mar the lofty ideal of a society envisioned by the Sikh gurus. There is no place for caste in Sikhism, but political leaders of all hues continue to play caste cards. In fact, most of the challenges that the Sikh community faces today are because of our failure to stick to the benchmarks set by the Gurus and fall to the ones set up by leaders of today," said renowned Sikh scholar Patwant Singh.

Notwithstanding the innumerable instances of Gurus' pronouncements on the irrationality of caste, the community has not been able to shun the practice. While earlier, lower castes used to flock to Sikhism, which preached a casteless society, to escape the ignominy of belonging to a lower rung of social ladder, they have found to their dismay that the caste has followed them.

Sikh scholars point out to the gurdwaras clearly named as Ramdasia gurdwara and as Mazhabi gurdwara.

Sikhism scholar W H McLeod, widely acclaimed across both sides of the Atlantic as an authority on the community's affairs, wrote in his treatise on Caste in Sikh Panth of the three levels among the rural Sikhs: "The massive Jat constituency commands the heights. Beneath them and spilling into the urban heirarchy are ranged the Ramgarhias. At the base and like wise extending across to the urban section, are the Mazhabis and Ramdasias."

Few would argue that while theoretically, the Sikhs are regarded as a uniform religious grouping, the Panth does contain a heterogenous caste diversity and notions of status based on caste are by no means extinct within it. The Sikh insistence on equality is far from being a pious myth. And the sooner the clergy and the SGPC as well as politicians of all Akali hues realize it, the better. Otherwise, Baba Bhaniara's success is written into the sub-text of caste discrimination, and vested interests would always be backing such elements for vote bank politics.■

October 18, 2001

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