Ethical responsibility towards others
By Gurbhagat Singh

TO understand the significance and legacy of Guru Gobind Singh’s Baisakhi of 1699 A.D. when he created the Khalsa and fired humankind with a new dream of life, we have to know where we are today. We have come a long way in self-understanding and organising the society for all-round growth. The end-of-century thought, or fin de siecle thought as it is called, can be summed up in three ideas.

One, after the brutal experiences of totalitarian regimes of imperialism, fascism, militant socialism, and McCarthy era capitalism, we have rejected such systems as totalize that obliterate local and personal identities. Two, we have lost faith in any single paradigm or philosophy that may promise and then impose the same way of emancipating for the entire humankind. Three, there is a conscious effort to develop not only political confederalism but also a psychological one that may enable human beings to see and feel from multiple perspectives. It means to minimise one’s personal and cultural ego and also perceive from the others’ viewpoints. The emphasis is shifting from exclusive or alienated living to the middle spaced, a dialogical one. In this kind of living and its associated consciousness, the important guiding idea is justice.

On the Baisakhi of 1699 A.D. when Guru Gobind Singh baptised the first five Singhs, also called Panj Piare, the act of the Guru was holistic. It was part of his total vision of a futuristic society based on justice. These Panj Piare came from five different regions and castes of the Indian subcontinent. The Guru dismantled their caste hierarchy and integrated them under the new Panth or way of life: the Khalsa. In his Bachittra Natak the Guru has written that he was commanded by God Himself to start this new Panth, as the earlier ways, had alienated people from the Divine, and thereby from their natural and creative potential.

In our age, the writings of Marx, Mao, Lenin, Gramsci, Fanon, Martin Luther King have all asserted the point that without justice full creative potential of a human being cannot be realised. This perspective was forcefully inaugurated and implemented by the French and American Revolutions. A hierarchical organisation of a society, whether with classes or castes, can block human possibilities, the Guru had fully understood.

Although the French sociologist Louis Dumont, the author of Homo Hierarchicus, considers the Indian caste system guided only by the idea of "honour," and not by "power," yet an analytical and clinical view of Indian society tells that the caste hierarchy had not only hampered the personal and cultural growth of the people it had also led to lack of initiative and developmental fire ending up in decadence. The system was fully used by the Brahmin-Kshatriya alliance to hold on to power.

The most vital aspect of the baptism ritual was the Guru’s own prayer to the Panj Piare to baptise him. By doing this, the Guru inaugurated a non-hierarchical and democratic society that would have no imperial human head with a looming threat to become a dictator or a fascist governor.

The baptised community was named as the Khalsa. "Khalsa" was literally a file dealt with by the Emperor directly. The Khalsa of the Guru was put in direct relationship with God without any human mediator. That is why the Khalsa is of Wahe guru, who is the Master of Wonder, awe-inspiring transcendence and infinity.

The Khalsa was to function as a society with its political and religious organisations, enjoying absolute sovereignty as a collective, subordinate only to God or the Divine Wonder of Life. The greatest 20th century philosopher of Germany, Martin Heidegger, realised very sensitively that modern thought had lost the sense of wonder which was the hallmark of the Greeks, but by giving his notion of totalitive being revealed in Time, he subordinated humankind and life to a superpower that led Heidegger, himself to support Hitler.

Guru Gobind Singh kept his Khalsa free from the idea of a totalitive being. It is important to understand the Guru’s idea of God to know the kind of human being that he shaped in the form of Khalsa. The Guru’s idea is revealed through his compositions that he recited at the time of baptising the Panj Piare. According to Rattan Singh Bhangus, Panth Parkash was written in 1841 A.D. The compositions recited at that moment were : Chandi di Var (The Ballad of Chandi), 32 Swaiyas, the invocation of Bachittar Natak (The Resplendent Drama,) and possibly the Mul Mantra.

There are two prominent aspects of the Guru’s God. One can be called "differential " by using an expression of very influential philosopher of our times, Jacques Derrida. By "differential" he means difference and deferment. The Guru defines God through constant deferment and infinite difference by using many perspectives. In 32 Swaiyas, the Guru exhausts the perspectives of Vedas, Puranas, Kuran, Siddhas, tribals, gypsies, roaming minstrels, ecstatics, and employs the technique of defining by constantly re-defining and delaying to accomplish his pluralistic or multi-paradigmatic God who defies to be frozen into any single metaphor or idea, finally pushing the seeker to silence.

The second vital aspect of this God is his militant intervention for justice in the form of sword. John Rawls, a Harvard professor, well known for his work A Theory of Justice defines justice as "fairness:" the right to the most extensive liberty. If the social and political institutions do not give fairness, and are enimical to saints: the model persons of the society, then the sword wielded by the Khalsa or "saint soldiers" is justified. The sword is God Himself both as creator and destroyer. In Bachittra Natak the Guru prays to God as Sri Kharag the Honourable Sword, that shatters false consciousness. It radiates light, comforts saints, and unblocks the evolution of the universe.

It is of vital significance that the Guru touched the Amrit (nectar) prepared out of water and sugar with a double edged sword or Khanda. His transforming ritual instilled into the whole being of the Khalsa the ideational fire for justice by creating a symbiosis of steel and baptism. In a way it was the baptism of fire, but the fire was ignited and directed by God - consciousness. The Guru did not separate God and the battlefield from "love." In his Swaiyas he says very clearly that God can be attained only through love. The use of sword, enlightenment, and love belong to the same holistic principle.

A court poet of the Guru Saintapati, writes in his work Sri Gur Sobha (1711 A.D.) that the Guru intended his Khalsa to be "compassionate" and "religious" with an "intensely spiritualised interior." The creation of the Khalsa, according to the poet, manifested dazzling suns and moons that pleased the people and promised an end to the prevalent "crisis."

Now, when we are just about to enter the 21st century with a passionate search for a multiparadigmatic weltanchaung and a non-hierarchical society free from exploitative class structures, leading to multi-dimensional human growth, Guru Gobind Singh’s way of defining God who could be owned by all despite cultural differences, and his message for committed intervention to create a society of justice, will remain with us as our guiding lights. By using a notion of the contemporary French Jewish philosopher, Emanuel Levinas, the futuristic message of Baisakhi 1699 is to think and act with the highest "ethical responsibility" towards the other.