First draft of an introduction to for Brent teachers

This introduction to and Sikhism is going to be quite idiosyncratic in that it charts my introduction and later my involvement with Sikh communities. My hope is that along the way I will be able to share some useful information about Sikhism that will be of practical use in the classroom.

Between October 1982 and June 1984 I was a teacher representative of an agreed syllabus conference of the Inner London Education Authority. The meetings lasted throughout a full working day with coffee and tea breaks and a lunch. There were forty- two members of the conference plus eight or so advisers, observers, and clerks. In addition to a full one day meeting each term, there were weekend conferences and evening meetings so teachers and other interested parties could be kept informed of progress. The Sikh representative to this conference was a Mr Surinder Singh Attariwala from the Sikh Cultural Society of Great Britain, and after having a number of conversations with him about Sikhism he invited me to his home one Saturday morning so he could explain to me in more detail something of the history and beliefs of Sikhism.

In a quite small East London semi-detached house Mr Attariwala asked me whether I would like to see the Sikh holy book, the (also known as the Adi Granth). Having already taken off my shoes on entering the house I now needed to wash my hands before going to see the Adi Granth whose home was in a no-longer used bedroom. It was quite a surprise when an elderly cocker spaniel joined us in the room, sniffed my clothing and then lay down on the carpet. I asked Mr Attariwala whether it was generally acceptable for a dog to be in this room and his answer was, “What are we Sikhs? Farmers and soldiers! And farmers and soldiers know that a dog is good company as well as being sometimes very useful.”

I asked Mr Attariwala whether it was normal for Sikhs to have a copy of the Adi Granth in their home and he explained that there were lots of reasons why most sikhs do not have an Adi Granth at home but rather have a much smaller book called a Gutka which has the words of the Sikh daily prayers.

A copy of the Adi Granth is treated in many ways as if it is a living person. It needs to be woken up in the morning and put to sleep in the evening, and there is a short ceremony on each occasion. This means that someone with an Adi Granth in their home cannot, for example, go on holiday or away on business unless there is someone else in the home to attend to the necessary waking up and putting to sleep of the Adi Granth.

Mr Attariwala said that to have an Adi Granth in ones’s home the first criterion was that one had to be a Sikh which involved some study prior to a ceremony which involved making promises, for example not to use tobacco or alcohol, not to eat halal

1 meat (although I later learned that for many Sikhs the requirement is to eat only vegetarian food), not to commit adultery, and always to carry the ‘Five Ks’ (Panj Kakka) which are, in no particular order:

Kesh - uncut hair (not just on the head and equally applicable to men and women, Harnaam Kaur is an English sikh who suffers from a condition that causes excessive growth of facial hair. She is quoted as saying “I would never ever cut ... my facial hair because it’s the way God made me and I’m happy with the way I am.”

Kara - a steel bracelet. A Sikh I got to know said that whenever he was driving the kara would rattle against the steering wheel and it always seemed to him to be saying repeatedly ‘Wahe Guru’ which means “Wonderful Lord” (i.e God).

Kanga - a wooden comb. Khalsa Sikhs always wash their hair and comb it, unlike some Hindu holy men.

Kaccha - cotton underwear for men and women that look a bit like boxer shorts that are kept up by a knot at the front

Kirpan (steel knife or sword - the knife is always carried by a Khalsa sikh whilst the sword is only carried at ceremonies).

Mr Attariwala explained to me that Sikhs believe in one God without gender. Also he explained that men and women have equal status within Sikhism and also that there are no caste distinctions within Sikhism.

That morning I had had an extraordinarily interesting introduction to Sikhism but had no idea of the complexities that had been skated over.

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In the summer term of 1984 I was asked if I would be interested in changing schools for two years to take on the role of being acting head of RE in a girls’ school in Tooting. During my first term there I sought out the local places of worship, of which there were many, and organised visits for my students. Several visits to a in Tooting High Street called the ‘Khalsa Centre’ were organised.

Our host at the Khalsa Centre Gurdwara told us that marriages often took place there but they only held them early on Saturday or Sunday mornings because otherwise some of the guests would meet in the pub across the road and arrive at the Gurdwara smelling of alcohol. A Gurdwara trustee explained that none of their congregation was really knowledgeable about the Sikh religion so they had allowed themselves to be guided, both in setting up the Gurdwara and in arranging for worship and other functions, by an English language book: “The Sikhs, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices” by Owen Cole and Piara Singh Sambhi.

2 The Khalsa centre had a Granthi who is the person (male or female) who reads (chants) passages from the Guru Granth Sahib during religious services. The Granthi must be an Amritdhari Sikh, which is to say that s/he has undergone Amrit Sanchar, an initiation ceremony into the Khalsa. After going through the Amrit Sanchar ceremony a Sikh is then known as being ‘amritdhari’ which literally means “he/she for whom being beyond dying has been bestowed”1.

Beyond being a devout amritdhari Sikh, the Granthi needs to be able to play a pair of drums known as the tabla. Also the Granthi may be called on for moral or spiritual advice because of her/his very thorough knowledge of the text of the Adi Granth. However, people at the Khalsa Centre told us that this spiritual guidance role is not something that is very feasible in the UK as the people needing advice often are not fluent in Punjabi while the Granthi may not have much English. What needs to be understood about the role of the Granthi is that s/he is not to be regarded in any sense as a priest, there is no priesthood in Sikhism. The Granthi is paid for other work done in the Gurdwara that could, in principle, be done by any other Khalsa Sikh.

On one visit to the Khalsa Centre at which the Granthi played the tabla and chanted scripture for us, we were told that the following day he would be undergoing initiation into the Khalsa. This caused great surprise both to me and to those students who had been paying attention. Surely being a member of the Khalsa is a requirement for having the job? It was explained to us that the Granthi had recently had a fairly minor operation in hospital which had necessitated the shaving off of some body hair. Our host used this example to emphasise that Sikhism is a very practical and down to earth religion. Of course people who need to violate their promises for the cause of their own, or someone else’s, physical or mental well-being must do whatever needs to be done, but subsequently things can be put back to rights. He then further explained that when the violation of the Five Ks is willful then some time must pass, and genuine sorrow must be evident, before a person can be re-admitted to the Khalsa.

There is an expression worth knowing with respect to the Khalsa and that is ‘Guru Panth’ or sometimes just ‘Panth’ which means ‘the way of the Guru’. This is what all Sikhs should aim to follow.

In 1990 the Inner London Education Authority ceased to be and I took a job as an RE lecturer at a college of education in Winchester. I made contact with a Gurdwara in Southampton. Because the Gurdwara was quite small, ceremonies needed to be held in a variety of rented properties or sometimes in the homes of the more affluent members of the Sikh community. It was explained to my students that the place of the ceremony or meeting needed to meet the cleanliness and other purity requirements of a Gurdwara before and during the time in which the Adi Granth was in residence. It needs to be

1 According to an entry in Wikipedia.

3 emphasised here that there is nothing intrinsically holy or special about the physical book itself, it is the writings in the book that are important and holy.

The Guru Granth Sahib’s first edition was put together by the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Arjan and later had added to it the writings of other Sikh Gurus including those of the tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. There are one hundred and fifteen hymns of the father of Guru Gobind Singh, Guru Tegh Bahadur, and also writings of some Hindu Sants (Holy men) and a Muslim, Sheikh Farid.

At the beginning of 1991 I took up a job as General Schools Inspector in the London Borough of Ealing. I was very fortunate in that I was taken under the wing of an Anglican Priest who was also a Labour Party Councillor. He directed me to a Roman Catholic monk who lived in the borough and who knew pretty much everyone in the governing bodies of every Synagogue, Mosque, Gurdwara, and Church in Ealing generally but in Southall more particularly. At least as important to me was a work colleague, Kuldip, who was a non-Khalsa Sikh. During my first week in Ealing I asked him why there were so many in Southall and he replied that it was ‘mainly a caste thing’. This went against everything that I had previously learned about Sikhism. Kuldip explained that people from different Hindu low caste groups converted to Sikhism because they thought they would be treated as equals alongside all other Sikhs. Alas this has never entirely happened and whilst absolutely anyone can visit any Gurdwara, and participate in worship, those from lower caste backgrounds were (and probably still are) unlikely ever to be elected to a Gurdwara management committee of the Gurdara of a higher caste community. Hence, the proliferation of Gurdwaras in a single area.

Kuldip also suggested I make contact with a number of what might be called Sikh sectarian groups, and other offshoots of Sikhism active within Ealing. These included The Ravidas Panth which split from Sikhism and follows the teachings of a fourteenth century guru unsurprisingly named Ravidas.

Another Sikh Ealing colleague who was very helpful to me throughout my time in Ealing surprised me when she told me that there was going to be a family celebration because her mother and father had just gone through initiation to the khalsa panth. My friend explained to me that many Sikhs who would like to be initiated into the khalsa panth do not do it because it is quite difficult to get employment in England if you are too obviously a practicing Sikh. And when a practicing Sikh does find a suitable job s/he will often find the path to promotion is effectively blocked. Hearing this reminded me of something another Sikh colleague had told me. Having been a turban wearing qualified teacher before migrating to England he took a job in London as a bus conductor. After a while he was informally told that he would have a good chance of getting promotion to a bus inspector, but not unless he shaved his beard and lost his turban. He became a bus inspector, and began studying in his free time in order to work his way back into school teaching. From that he was able to apply successfully to be a local authority schools’ inspector in Ealing.

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So, what can we teach children in primary schools about Sikhism? An easy starting point for teachers would be to tell the story of the life of Guru Nanak, or better still, show them the freely available children’s video on the web, “The Life of Guru Nanak” by Hardeep Singh Chawla. This 14 minute animated video takes us from the birth of Guru Nanak to his death and includes the most famous stories about him including his dislike of boring lessons at school, the three days in which his friends and family believed he had been drowned, and his travels around India and as far away as Arabia and Persia.

Interesting though the lives and contributions of the next eight Gurus might be it is unlikely that time will be found to teach about any of them and their achievements.

However, the story of the founding of the Khalsa by the last of the ten gurus, Guru Gobind Singh, is both important and will keep Junior aged children fascinated for all of the three minutes or so that it takes to show the BBC animation (title Origins of the Khalsa). And it will be worth spending some time discussing the promise of Guru Gobind Singh: “Wherever there are five Sikhs assembled who abide by the Guru’s teaching, know that I am in the midst of them henceforth, the Guru is the Khalsa and the Khalsa is the Guru.”

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For anyone wanting to know more about Sikhism than is given in my short introduction above, an excellent next step would be to buy “Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction” by Eleanor Nesbitt MA (Cantab) M Phil PhD PGCE Professor Emeritus Centre for Education Studies University of Warwick Coventry. A pristine copy will cost the princely sum of £8.96 from Amazon, or £6.02 if you buy the Kindle edition. The author of this book knows more about the religions of India than anyone else I know. She also writes in a language that is comprehensible to those new to the study of religions. And she has experience of working with schoolteachers of all school age groups.

Roger Butler Monday 16th September 2019

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