| SLIDE 10: It would be tempting to include images of the various incidents associated with Guru Nanak, but I will choose those which have a meaning that lies deeper than the obvious. |
| In his search for the immutable Truth, Guru Nanak also visited Makkah. In those halcyon days, you did not need a Saudi visa. He lay one night with his feet inadvertently pointing in the direction of the Holy Ka’aba. He was reprimanded, upon which he asked where did God not exist. Some extremists maintain that when the Guru’s feet shifted, the Holy Ka’aba shifted accordingly. That is conjectural. What has greater authenticity to my ears is a verse of Guru Nanak’s in which, according to the Granth sahib, he gives this advice to Muslims: |
| ‘Thou sayest thy prayers five times, giving them five names. |
| Let Truth be thy First; Honest living the Second; and the good of all, thy third. |
| Let the Fourth prayer be the honest mind, and the Fifth the praise of the Lord.’ |
| SLIDE 11: After Makkah, Guru Nanak visited Madina and other holy places in Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan before returning to the Punjab. Continuing his investigations into Islam, Guru Nanak also visited Uch Sharif, a center of Islamic theological studies. |
| A Janamsakhi done in Guler during the late 18th century depicts him in earnest dialogue with two Muslim divines or pirs at Uch – Pir Sayyad Ahmad Hasan and Pir Jalaluddin. Guru Nanak sits in the centre – a bearded primus amongst equally hirsute pares. |
| SLIDE 12: If I had to source out one painting that would symbolise the common thread between Sikhism and its monotheistic sibling Islam, it would have to be this illustration of Guru Nanak, deep in meditation and telling his beads. Look closely at his figure, though, and the garment beneath his patterned cloak, symbolic of the mantle God had placed around his shoulders. |
| SLIDE 13: The garment worn by the Guru is inscribed with Naskh script calligraphy. They are in fact the verses from the Holy Quran, starting with the opening lines: Bismillah ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. And on the sleeves of the garment are more verses, this time from the Guru’s own Japji - which Dr Brijen Goswamy has translated movingly as: ‘God as truth was in the beginning, at the very beginning of Time; Truth it is that exists, and nothing will survive but the Truth, says Nanak.’ |
| SLIDE 14: Such expressions of interfaith unity, though, were not always appreciated nor reciprocated by the Guru’s Muslim counterparts. On one occasion, Guru Nanak stopped near Hassan Abdal (close to modern Rawalpindi). There, he was almost killed by a boulder hurled at him from a nearby hilltop by a jealous Muslim hermit called Wali Kandhari. |
| Guru Nanak stopped the boulder with one hand, leaving an impression on the boulder itself and hopefully also on the unsuccessful Muslim divine. Poor Wali Kandhari has been punished. His shrine is visited only by those few who have the stamina to climb a steep hill, whereas millions come to pay homage at Panja sahib. |
| SLIDE 15: The handprint of Guru Nanak in the stone there has become a symbol of communal unity – the five fingers representing the five Ks, and the impress of a hand deepening imperceptibly with the touch of every reverent pilgrim. |
| SLIDE 16: That symbolic palm appears in this latter portrait of Guru Nanak done by Sobha Singh, except that in this image, it is not so much the hand itself as the lines on the hand to which our attention is drawn by the artist. |
| In his notes to the painting, Sobha Singh recorded that for added authenticity, he had consulted a Pandit Agnihotri of Hamirpur who prepared a palm print of the Guru based on his janam-kundli or horoscope. |
| SLIDE 17: Over the centuries, the image of Guru Nanak became itself almost atrophied into an immutable icon. He would be shown accompanied by Mardana and Bala, often with devotees, as he is in this painting done at the Sikh state of Patiala in the 19th century. He is a composite figure - a Mughal prince, a religious figure and an object of veneration all in one. |
| SLIDE 18: The inspiration for such standard motifs was derived from Pahari paintings where one sees, for example, the same sort of royal canopy over the votive image of Ganesha, attended here by his consorts Buddhi (wisdom) and Siddhi (accomplishment). |
| SLIDE 19: By the beginning of the 19th century, when the Punjab Hill states had been overrun by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, piety took a new turn. The individual was replaced by the multiple, the janamsakhi by a chronology of Sikhism itself. A good example is a set of the ten Gurus painted in Guler between 1810-15. All were once in the Lahore Museum, but after 1947, three were sent to East Punjab and seven remained behind. What their enemies could not achieve over three hundred years, a British bureaucrat called Radcliffe did. He partitioned the Punjab in 1947, and divided the gurus. |
| Guru Nanak is shown as the epitome of wisdom and sublimity, but he cannot prevent the artist from hinting at his extra-regal spirituality with the peacock feather fan. |
| Contd./ 3 |
