| SLIDE 20: His chosen successor Guru Angad was more difficult to stereotype. He is shown at the right age (he became guru at the age of 35) but shown in the wrong context…. |
| SLIDE 21: as if he was a cousin of the Chamba Raja, Raj Singh. It was almost as if the artist fell back on repetition when he ran out inspiration. |
| SLIDE 22: Guru Amar Dass is closer to reality. A guru at the mature age of 73, he composed over 900 verses which today form part of the Granth sahib. Here he is seen in the act of such a composition. |
| SLIDE 23: Guru Arjun, the fifth guru, is shown understandably with the Granth Sahib that he had compiled. As if to emphasise the connection with the recorded word, a disciple-cum-scribe sits near Guru Arjun with a pen box tucked in his armpit. |
| It is ironical that Guru Arjun should be shown dressed in a Mughal jama, for despite his closeness to the Muslim divine Hazrat Mian Mir whom he invited to lay the foundation stone at the site of the Golden Temple at Amritsar, Guru Arjun eventually suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Mughal emperor Jahangir. He died exactly four hundred years ago, in May 1606, at Lahore. |
| SLIDE 24: There is nothing to suggest in this painting of Guru Har Govind the duality of Miri and Piri – royalty and saintliness – symbolized in the person of the sixth guru, unless one was to interpret the falcon and the partridge as being allegories of mortal combat. |
| SLIDE 25: Guru Har Rai succeeded his grandfather Guru Har Govind at the age of 14, and then spent many years of his comparatively short life in the hills of Nadaun. Had he been shown this painting during his lifetime, he might not have recognised his own likeness, but he would certainly have been familiar with the flowering bushes in the background. |
| SLIDE 26: Guru Har Krishen died before he could have lived. A guru at the age of 5, he was dead before his ninth birthday. He symbolised unfulfilled youth, the tragic promise of something that might have been. |
| SLIDE 27: The reluctant guru, Guru Tegh Bahadur never sought the call but answered it when it came. His travels took him eastwards as far as Dhaka, and when he did finally return to the Punjab, he found it in disarray. He mobilised the Sikh community against Aurangzeb and paid the price for such insurrection with his life. Had Aurangzeb been more of a humanist Muslim and less of a bigot, he might not have had the blood of the ninth Guru on his hands. |
| SLIDE 28: The end can always justify the means, provided the end is itself justified, and to Guru Govind Singh, the end was what mattered. “When all other means have failed,” he told Aurangzeb in a letter once, “it is permissible to draw the sword.” Guru Govind Singh is recalled as the warrior Guru, a man of action, the poet who could wield a sword. |
| One has often wondered why the Gurus were portrayed in paintings but rarely in sculpture. Was it because of Guru Nanak’s aversion to idols, or Guru Govind Singh’s reputation as ‘a breaker of idols’? |
| SLIDE 29: Guru Nanak’s poem against idolatry might almost have been addressed to the Ancient Egyptians: |
| ‘The stone which man calls God, |
| Takes him and drowns him along with it; |
| O sinful and disloyal creature, understand you not |
| That a boat of stone cannot carry you ashore?’ |
| Contd. / 4 |
