ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R.  NARAYANAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF INDIA AT THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL INTERFAITH CONCLAVE

CHANDIGARH, DECEMBER 15, 1995

Hon'ble Chief Minister, Sardar Harcharan Singh Brar, Dr. Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia, Hon'ble Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal, Rev.  Marcus Braybrooke and friends, I consider it a great honour to have been asked to inaugurate the celebrations connected with the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singhji.  This is a very important landmark in history.  In 1999, we will be standing almost tip toe at the door of the 21st century.  It would be a good omen for the new century that it would be beginning with the 300th anniversary of the creation of the Khalsa. It was the summit of achievement of the Sikh religion and the power of the Sikhs in India.  Sikhism is the latest of the great religions of the world and it has summed up all the best that is in all the religions of the world. 

It is a religion of the future, if I may say so, though it has a glorious history in the past.  It was born at a very critical time in our country.  The interaction and the clash between the cultures of the great religions of Hinduism and Islam and at the same time, the synthesis between the two were going on in India at that time.  It was really a period of hope and a period of confusion and during this period, the religion of Sikhism was conceived and it was born.  Guru Nanak Dev in one of the hymns has said about the times which bears evidence to the critical nature of history at that time.  The Guruji said, "The age if like a knife, Kings are butchers, religion has taken wings and flown in the dark night of falsehood, I cannot see where the moon of truth is rising." In such a confused time, the Guruji did see and point out to the people the moon of truth rising. 

All religions have emphasised truth. But Sikhism and Guru Nanak Dev himself give an additional dimension to truth. In one of the hymns he says, "Before time itself there was the truth" and then he ends "truth above all, but above truth truthful conduct." I think this is a most remarkable statement.  Truth is not considered as an abstract virtue which all religions and everybody has preached in the past.  But Guru Nanak Dev was the one who put truthful conduct above truth itself.  It was a very philosophical, spiritiual and at the same time a pragmatic religion for the world that he preached. 

He said that religion cannot be divorced from the activities of life.  One could be religious while laughing, playing, eating and doing the ordinary acts of life.  Therefore, it was conceived as part and parcel of the texture of human life and human activities.  It was inseparable from the daily behaviour of the human being.  This coherent concept of religion is what Sikhism has presented to the world.  Now Guru Gobind Singhji has carried it to its ultimate development.  While founding the Khalsa, the Guruji exhorted his disciples and this exhortation is a wonderful statement. It is a testament and could be an ideal testament for the 21st century. 

I am sure you are all very familiar with that statement but I would like to read it out in order to point out how it contains in a very modern secular form almost every glorious element of what you consider as religious life, religious ideal.  The Guruji said, "From now on you have become casteless.  In your new order, the lowest will rank equal with the highest and each will be to the other a 'Bhai'." Of course here, equality has been put forward in a most revolutionary form.  All the great gurus have condemned the caste system.  But here it has been presented in its ultimate form.  I need not tell you that even today we are fighting this curse in our country.  Therefore, the extraordinary emphasis that Guruji had given to the idea of equality and the idea of a casteless society has relevance today, tomorrow and day after in this country and in the world because the world is divided by inequalities, may be different from castes, but nevertheless glaring inequalities. 

Then in his advice to his disciples, he said "Women shall be the equal of men in every way." The movement for women's liberation is still going on and in India it is gathering strength today.  But in 1699 to have said this and to have pointed out that women should have freedom was something revolutionary which was not given sufficient attention to people at that time.  Not only that, no purdahs for them anymore, nor the burning alive of the widows on the pyre of her spouse the Guruji goes further, "He who kills his daughter, the Khalsa shall not deal with him." Now we know the dowry problem in India, we know about the dowry deaths, we know about the killings of female infants which is going in our country and in other countries too.  Therefore, the progressive revolutionary nature of his teachings at that time is something we should appreciate at least today.  We know the British abolished 'Sati' but here Guru Gobind Singhji much earlier had fulminated against it so clearly.  Then the quality he established not generally, not in a abstract manner, but he applied it to himself and he told his followers, "It is a new order I have evolved from this day where there shall be no high and no low. 

I want to establish this fraternity on the basis of utter equality by asking to become your disciple now." He submitted himself to his followers as their disciple.  He was not merely preaching he was practising himself what he preached to be observed in relation to his followers and to his disciples.  Then, of course, between Hindus and the Muslims you will act as a bridge and serve the poor without distinction of caste, colour, country or creed.  This is what Mahatma Gandhi had told us innumerable times.  This is what is put down in our Constitution and in every sense therefore Guru Gobind's creation of the Khalsa and on the principles on which this new order was created can well be the basis of the new order of the society in the world in the 21st century.  How he fulminated about superstitions, "My Sikhs will never be a prey to superstitions.  For them one moment is as good as another.  He who has faith in God will not like to divine his secrets through astrology or such like superstitions." Is it not desperately needed in our country today when everybody is running to astrologers?  How this great Guruji could have defined the basic problems of even ordinary life of today is something which is wonderful, which shows divine insight.  Here again the world problem and India's problem he has seen when he talked about the quarrels among the human beings.  This is all well‑known to you but I would like to put it in the modern context.  Therefore I am reading them out to you.  "Men quarrel over diet, dress and ritual and over caste, community and creed and have thus torn man from man.

My mission is to restore mankind to a single brotherhood.  So how can I love one kind of man and hate another." This is the universal brotherhood.  The walls that has been set up between man and man by diet, dress and ritual and by caste and community.  This is one which is preventing the world becoming one.  But Guruji's greatest statement was that the whole mankind, the human race is one in spirit.  This is a distilled truth of centuries, preached by great founders of religion and all great men in the world.  This truth is today becoming, the human race is not only one in spirit today it has been brought together as one in a concrete material sense.  The world has shrunk, communications have destroyed all the walls erected by nations and peoples and there is in our hands the methods of reaching out to people everywhere.  In a material sense the world has become almost one today and at this time we need desperately the oneness in spirit in order to make one material world throb with spiritual meaning with the emotional sense of oneness of mankind.

The interfaith event which this anniversary is marking is a very important event indeed.  We all know that all religions are ......                     We know that the Catholics and the Protestants fought one of the bitterest religious wars for thirty years in Europe.  Its remnants is being wound up today in Ireland.  You see ethnic in Bosnia and other places. Mahatma Gandhi once observed that some of the most heinous and cruelest crimes have been committed in the name of religion.  It is a fact that such crimes have been committed by the abuse of religion by unscrupulous interests and people.                                

We have had also our problems in India.  But we can be proud of one thing.  Unlike most of the countries in the world we in India have sizeable numbers of every religion in the world in India.  In our history we have given shelter and refuge to the Jews, almost at the same time the Romans destroyed their temples in Jerusalem.  We gave shelter and refuge to Zorastrians who even flourished as a very prosperous community in India. Muslims who came here became Indians, interacted with the Hinduism.  Sikhism itself is one of the glorious products of this synthesis and interaction.  We had communal troubles no doubt.  We had fundamentalist problems and conflicts but we never fought a sustained war for years as had been fought between religions in Europe.  Our troubles were momentary.  We might have got angry and attacked and killed our neighbours and brothers who belonged to other religions.  But they never lasted very long.  We never waged a war in the name of religion in this vast country and that is fact of which we can be proud. We can be proud that while such eruptions of communal conflict take place, the vast number of different religions in India live normally as good neighbours and peacefully and harmoniously in our country. 
                               
This is a rich heritage we should see is not thrown away.  We have a philosophy and an example of practice in the Sikh religion how to preserve this communal harmony, inter‑religious harmony and create an inter‑religious faith not only in India but in the world.  Therefore I applaud the effort of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation to celebrate this anniversary of the founding of Khalsa in a worldwide manner with a world significance with celebrations in India, in South East Asia, in Europe and in America and again in India, the country which gave birth to this great religion.  I am sure that these celebrations will cement inter‑religious faith which has been our heritage and project it into the international field, into the wider world as a contribution of India and as a contribution of the Sikhs to world culture, to world understanding and harmony.  I have great pleasure to inaugurate this anniversary celebrations.  I wish it every success in the five years over which you have planned this important celebrations. 

Thank you