Sikhism: Futurist Vision of a Classless Social Order
Dr. N. Muthu Mohan*
* Reader and Head, Guru Nanak Devji Chair, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai-625 021 Tamil Nadu.
The theme of classless social order is largely a Marxist concept. Although the terms such as class and classless society were in vogue in the pre Marxian political economic works, the terms became rigorous concepts in the Marxian theory. An entire corpus of concepts and a systematic theory emerged out of the Marxist concepts of class and class struggle. No sociologist can ignore the contribution of the Marxist theory of classes to social and historical studies.
Equally, one can not shun the fact that the Marxian theory was overwhelmingly Euro-specific and capitalism-specific. A large amount of Marx’s writings is dedicated to the analysis of European capitalist economic structure. Present day Marxists indicate the shortcomings of the Marxian theory of Classes. Anthony Giddens brings to focus at least two forms of reductionism involved in the Marxist theory. "First, he (Anthony Giddens) insists that only in capitalism can class be viewed as the central structural principle of the society as a whole. Therefore, in general, class structure provides an inadequate basis for specifying the differences between social forms. Second, he argues that societies are characterized by multiple forms of domination and exploitation which can not be reduced to a single principle, class"
1The post-modern critique of Marxism makes the case more intensive in that it accuses the latter with two modernist prejudices, (1) essentialism or transcendentalism and (2) historicism. The post-modernists indicate that reducing the multiple foms of domination and exploitation to the one - economic, involves essentialism or transcendentalism of non-religious type. They also maintain that historicism presupposes a unilinear pattern of consistently progressive course of history. Consequently, the post-modernists suggest to discard the economic essentialism and the ‘progress – development’ paradigm of the Marxist school.
Postmodernism does not stop with the critique of sociological theories but it identifies the sources of oppression and exploitation in the entire metaphysical tradition of the West. It develops the Heideggerean theme of onto-theological bias as characteristic of the Western Philosophy in all its various dimensions. Once the logocentric and essentialist foundations of Western culture are kept under suspension, post-modernism becomes capable of seeing the episodes of oppression in every microform of human existence. Linguistic acts, gestures, space distribution, behavioural patterns and every other form of human living gain utmost significance in identifying and eradicating oppression and exploitation.
Thus in place of the reductionist one (such as the economic one), we acquire a wide and comprehensive framework in which the multiple forms of oppression and exploitation become deeply recognised. The later one also gives adequate space for indigenous forms of understanding and resistance to oppression.
It is in such a broad framework that, interestingly, one locates the Sikh thought. An appreciation of Sikhism as the religion of Third Millennium, above all, thus involves its holistic and comprehensive framework in which it situates the entire gamut of the oppressive forms without giving priority or essentiality to any one of them. The present article deals with the above problematics.
The Return of Holism and its Social Implications:
Many scholars of Sikhism start their appreciation of the relevance of Sikhism from the principle of Meeri-piri, that is, the unity of spirituality and temporality. This is how James Massey enunciates the unity : "Guru Nanak’s basic concern in life was the human need, which he expressed at the beginning of his most important work, Japu, in the form of a question "How can one be true, how can the veil of false illusion be torn?" This was the concern with which Nanak was engaged in all his hymns; and it was in the course of dealing with this concern that all his thoughts, including those on Ika Oamkaru or the Ultimate Reality took form".
2 Here the Sikh concern of social or human existence finds its inalienable place in the Sikh experience of Ultimate Reality itself. Dharam Singh visualises the same in the following manner: "The Social phenomenon is considered (in Sikhism) an inseparable aspect of the spiritual continuum… Sikhism attempts at the spiritualisation of the social on the one hand, and socialisation of the spiritual on the other".3 The holistic philosophical input of Sikhism is that it criticises the dichotomy of spirituality and temporality not only for religious reason but also for social reasons. Both the realms go together. Human interests on both operate inseparably.It is necessary here to indicate how the principle of Meeri-piri is related with the classless social order, with which we started discussion. The dichotomy of the spirit and the object is, in a sense, a reflection or registration or articulation of the class-divide that occurred in human history. Non-communication of the spirit and body is another expression of the non-communication that occurred between the social divides, for example, between the touchable and untouchable communities in Indian context. By isolating the spirit from the world and by making it to be in itself man ‘despiritualises’ the society and thus makes it a mere object. An object here means a raw material, an instruments, a thing which could be possessed, manipulated, exploited and oppressed. We mean that by ‘despiritualising ‘the world, even the most part of the human beings, we make them available for exploitation and oppression. Despiritualisation or objectification, thus, forms the philosophical or cultural justification for oppression, exploitation and hierarchy. Dichotomy of the spirit and body is the starting point of hatred, alienation and master-slave relationship.
Talking in terms of the Western tradition, Alasdair MacIntyre says: "The division of human life into the sacred and secular is one that comes naturally to Western thought. It is a division which at one and the same time bears the marks of Christian origin and witnesses to the death of a properly religious culture. Only a religion which is a way of living in every sphere either deserves to - or can hope to - survive. For the task of religion is to help see the secular as the sacred, the world as under God. To divide the sacred from the secular is to recognise God’s action only within the narrowest limits. A religion which recognises such a division is one on the point of dying".
4On the other hand, the Sikh principle of the unity of Meeri-piri is a grand return to the philosophical holism which simultaneously means the vision of a social order devoid of oppression, dominance, exploitation and hierarchy.
The Sikh critique of the dichotomy of spiritual and temporal, the body and the soul, the transcendent and immanent opens up two major "post-modern horizons: The first horizon is the post-metaphysical, and the second is ethical, a new ethics, an ethics of ethics, an analysis of love,… the concern with the other". 5
The second horizon, that is the ethical one, ,is significant because without it a raw and uncritical unity of whatever called religious and whatever earthly might get their justification. Otherwise put, the pseudo-religious and the pseudo-temporal must be discriminated and discarded as unreal. The Gurus distinctly enumerate in their hymns both the pseudo-religious and the pseudo-temporal. The Asceticism of the Nath Yogis, or the Jains, the corpus of literature which goes with the name vedas and puranas, or the casteism and ritualism advocated by them, are rejected as unreal. Similarly, the wealth and luxury of the rich and the kings, the political oppression exercised by the rulers are, again, evaluated as unreal. The falsity or inauthenticity of such things both in the religious and temporal realms is often named as out of Haumain, sometimes as Maya. The ethical in Sikhism serves as the yardstick to measure how real is the reality6 in its unified form of spirituality and temporality. Sirdar Kapur Singh formulates the priority of ethics in Sikhism in the following words: "Sikhism raises ethical conduct to a higher, and more independent, absolute status and makes it the true expression of the harmony of human personality with the will of God" 7
As such, we can summarize that the unity of spirituality and temporality opens up atleast three great realms of Sikh dialectics. They are, (1) the ethical realm where the ethical conduct acquires independent and absolute status, (2) the pragmatic realm in which Sikh ethics achieves a social dimension; thus the struggle for social justice becomes one of the essential aspects of Sikh living, and (3) the aesthetic realm where the reality of God as well as the world is seen as wonder and beauty (Wismad, WaheGuru).
A Non-Essentialist Paradigm and the Social Vision:
Formulating thus the philosophical foundation of Sikhism for its social vision, now we can safely pass over to the various means by which the Sikh Gurus aimed to realise their vision.
As it has been mentioned in the first part of the present paper, the Sikh Gurus do not reduce the sources of inequality and oppression to the economic one. They prefer a broader and comprehensive framework in which the multiple forms of inequality and hierarchy exhibit themselves.
The Sikh programme of a new social order, probably, starts with the Gurus’ criticism of the caste order specific to Hindu India. Each and every defensive strategy of the caste system finds vehement criticism by the Sikh Gurus. The saints from the Islamic and depressed communities acquire the status of co-authors of Sikh tradition. The sacredness of the Vedas and Puranas is challenged. The Guru Granth Sahib emerges as the alternative scripture in Sikh history. Along with that the authority of Sanskrit language is questioned. The Sikh Gurus freely use the Persian and Arabian terms and metaphors to express their spiritual experience. The food taboos established by the Brahmanic orthodoxy are dethroned by the new order of Langar and Pangat.
The Tenth Guru radicalises the initial spirit of Sikhsim in so many obvious ways. The establishment of Khalsa order witnesses the above. The uniformal external appearance of Sikhs, adorned with the five ‘Kays’, and the common naming of the Sikhs into Singhs and Kaurs are meant to abolish the caste distinctions of the Sikhs in unequivocal manner. Guru Gobind Singh conscientised the people and weaponised them for relentless struggles against tyranny and oppression. The passivity, social inertia and slave mentality of the people about which the German philosopher Nietzsche later wrote, were abolished and an entirely new value of fearlessness was invested in the minds of the oppressed people. The theme of fearlessness (Nirbhai) operates in Sikhism in the existential plane, as well as it transforms the traditional theme of abolition of Avidya (ignorance) into the more fundamental theme of elimination of fear. An alternative communitarian value of love was awarded to the people. An ever-living attitude of optimism and cheerfulness (Chardi Kala) was made part of the Sikh character.
Niharranjan Ray focuses on the significance of the values of dignity of labour and a negative attitude towards begging that have been developed in the Sikh culture. "The Sikh Gurus had, from the outset, the vision of a different kind of society, different from what they had known hithertofore, and different from what they saw before their eyes. It was the vision of a society in which no one should be obliged to beg for one’s barest needs and in which one must do some amount of manual labour".8 Langar and the concept of Sewa complement the above arrangement. Alleviation of poverty and achievement of earthly success by just means become a cardinal value of Sikhism. The theme of Sewa as a social commitment reaches its intensive practical form in the Sikh anthropology of Sant-Sipahi. Sikhism discards the earlier Indian ideals of man; Sanyasin and mere Grahasta. The symbolism of sword, along with the Nash doctrine, means uncompromising negation of accumulated and crystallised forms of oppression, inertia and exploitation. The history of Sikhism clearly evidences that there is an anti-establishment spirit in the Sikhs all along in their history, whether it is the Moghul establishment, the British, the caste-system or the totalitarian Hindu-Indian.
The quoted author8 indicates how, besides being merely humanitarian in attitude, the Sikh values are directed towards a new kind of consideration of the ordinary people and that too in a social sense. 9 The abolition of Masand system was yet another revolutionary act of the Tenth Guru as it was aimed to avert the emergence of priestly class in the folds of Sikhism.
Thus the Guru’s vision of an egalitarian and non-oppressive communitarian way of living does not aim at analysing and discovering any essentialist single cause for oppression and exploitation. On the other hand, it aims at the abolition of oppression at the micro and macro levels, in the linguistic and behavioural discourses. It represents a fundamental transformation in and out, in the individual as well as in the collective, in the spiritual and in the temporal. Thus Sikhism provides a conscienteous model, more a methodology and a non-essentialist paradigm of a classless social order which can withstand the needs of the Third Millennium.
References
1. Erik Olin Wright, Andrew Levine and Elliott Sober, Reconstrucing Marxism, Verso, L., 1992, p.68.
2. James Messey, The Doctrine of Ultimate Reality in Sikh Religion, Manohar, Delhi, 1991, p.144.
3. Dharam Singh. Sikh Theology of Liberation, Harman Publ. House, N.D., 1991, p.110, 9.
4. Alasdair MacIntyre, Marxism: An interpretation. SCM Press. L., 1953, pp.9-10.
5. Phillip Blond (Ed.). Post-Secular Philosophy. Routledge. L., p.229.
6. Paulos Mar Gregorios. Enlightenment: East and West. IIAS. Simla, 1989, p.125.
7. Kapur Singh. Sikhism – An Ecumenical Religion. IOSS. Candhigarh, 1993. P.129.
8. Niharranjan Ray. The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society, Munshiram Manoharal, N.D., 1975, pp.71-72.
9. Ibid., p.71.
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