The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, Volume 1

by R. V. Russell

[38] Hughes, Dictionary of Islām, s.v. Fitrah.

[39] Bomb. Gaz. Muh. Guj. pp. 143, 144.

[40] Hughes, Dictionary of Islām, s.v. Whistling.

[41] C.P. Census Report, 1911, p. 66.

Nānakpanthi

1. Account of the sect.

Nānakpanthi[1] Sect, Nānakshahi, Udāsi, Suthra Shahi.—The Nānakpanthi sect was founded by the well-known Bāba Nānak, a Khatri of the Lahore District, who lived between 1469 and 1538–39. He is the real founder of Sikhism, but this development of his followers into a military and political organisation was the work of his successors, Har Govind and Govind Singh. Nānak himself was a religious reformer of the same type as Kabīr and others, who tried to abolish the worship of idols and all the body of Hindu superstition, and substitute a belief in a single unseen deity without form or special name. As with most of the other Vaishnava reformers, Nānak’s creed was largely an outcome of his observation of Islām. “There is nothing in his doctrine,” Sir E.D. Maclagan says, “to distinguish it in any marked way from that of the other saints who taught the higher forms of Hinduism in northern India. The unity of God, the absence of any real distinction between Hindus and Musalmans, the uselessness of ceremonial, the vanity of earthly wishes, even the equality of castes, are topics common to Nānak and the Bhagats; and the Adi-Granth or sacred book compiled by Nānak is full of quotations from elder or contemporary teachers, who taught essentially the same doctrine as Nānak himself.” It was partly, he explains, because Nānak was the first reformer in the Punjab, and thus had the field practically to himself, and partly in consequence of the subsequent development of Sikhism, that his movement has been so successful and his adherents now outnumber those of any other reformer of the same period. Nānak’s doctrines were also of a very liberal character. The burden of his teaching was that there is no Hindu and no Muhammadan. He believed in transmigration, but held that the successive stages were but purifications, and that at last the soul, cleansed from sin, went to dwell with its maker. He prescribed no caste rules or ceremonial observances, and indeed condemned them as unnecessary and even harmful; but he made no violent attack on them, he insisted on no alteration in existing civil and social institutions, and was content to leave the doctrine of the equality of all men in the sight of God to work in the minds of his followers. He respected the Hindu veneration of the cow and the Muhammadan abhorrence of the hog, but recommended as a higher rule than either total abstinence from flesh. Nothing could have been gentler or less aggressive than his doctrine, nothing more unlike the teaching of his great successor Govind.[2] Two other causes contributed to swell the numbers of the Nānakpanthis. The first of these was that during the late Mughal Empire the Hindus of the frontier tracts of the Punjab were debarred by the fanaticism of their Muhammadan neighbours from the worship of idols; and they therefore found it convenient to profess the faith of Nānak which permitted them to declare themselves as worshippers of one God, while not forcing them definitely to break with caste and Hinduism. The second was that Guru Govind Singh required the absolute abandonment of caste as a condition of the initiation of a Sikh; and hence many who would not consent to this remained Nānakpanthis without adopting Sikhism. The Nānakpanthis of the present day are roughly classified as Sikhs who have not adopted the term Singh, which is attached to the names of all true Sikhs; they also do not forbid smoking or insist on the adoption of the five Kakkas or K’s which are in theory the distinguishing marks of the Sikh; the Kes or uncut hair and unshaven beard; the Kachh or short drawers ending above the knee; the Kara or iron bangle; the Khanda or steel knife; and the Kanga or comb. The Nānakpanthi retains the Hindu custom of shaving the whole head except the choti or scalp-lock, and hence is often known as a Munda or shaven Sikh.[3] The sect do not prohibit the consumption of meat and liquor, but some of them eat only the flesh of animals killed by the Sikh method of Jatka, or cutting off the head by a blow on the back of the neck. Their only form of initiation is the ordinary Hindu practice of drinking the foot-nectar or sugar and water in which the toe of the guru has been dipped, and this is not very common. It is known as the Charan ka pāhul or foot-baptism, as opposed to the Khande ka pāhul or sword-baptism of the Govindi Sikhs.[4] Bāba Nānak himself, Sir E. Maclagan states, is a very favourite object of veneration among Sikhs of all kinds, and the picture of the guru with his long white beard and benevolent countenance is constantly met with in the sacred places of the Punjab.

2. Nānakpanthis in the Central Provinces.

In 1901 about 13,000 persons returned themselves as Nānakpanthis in the Central Provinces, of whom 7000 were Banjāras and the remainder principally Kunbis, Ahīrs and Telis. The Banjāras generally revere Nānak, as shown in the article on that caste. A certain number of Mehtars or sweepers also profess the sect, being attached to it, as to the Sikh religion, by the abolition of caste restrictions and prejudices advocated by their founders; but this tolerance has not been perpetuated, and the unclean classes, such as the Mazbi or scavenger Sikhs, are as scrupulously avoided and kept at a distance by the Sikh as by the Hindu, and are even excluded from communion, and from the rites and holy places of their religion.[5]