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The Nirankari Sikhs (John C.B 1 ! .1 i S'» ■ f - The Nirankari Sikhs (John C.B. Webster) ; John C. B. W ebster THE NIRANKARI SIKHS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Study of History and College History Teaching (Editor) History for College Students (Editor) History and Contemporary India (Editor) Popular Religion in the Punjab Today (Editc.' The Christian Community and Change in Nineteenth Century North India An Introduction to History THE NIRANKARI SIKHS John C. B. W ebster On behalf of THE CHRISTIAN INSTITUTE OF SIKH STUDIES BATALA © John C. B. Webster, 1979 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF INDIA LIMITED Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Associated companies throughout the world on behalf o f The Christian Institute of Sikh Studies, Batala SBN 33390 317 X Published by S. G. Wasani for The Macmillan Company of India Limited and printed by T. K. Sengupta at Macmillan India Press, Madras 600002 To the colleagues, students, and friends with whom I have been associated through Baring Union Christian College and The Christian Institute of Sikh Studies 1963-1976 ! T •f i I i Contents < f Preface ix i 1 Introduction 1 i f 2 The N ineteenth Century 9 } Baba Dayal and the Origin of the Nirankaris 9 j Developments under Baba Darbara Singh and j Sahib Rattaji 11 | The Nirankaris and the Anand Marriage Act 16 j Conclusion IS I 3 The Consolidation of Tradition, 1909-1947 22 Nirankari Balak Jatha and Nirankari Bhujangi Sevak Jatha 23 The Recording of Nirankari History 24 Defining a Theological Position 30 Internal Tensions and the Origins of the Sant Nirankaris 32 Conclusion 35 ! 4 The Partition Crisis and A fter, 1947-1976 39 I Reconstruction 40 1 Nirankaris and Sikh History 43 ! Conclusion 49 | i 5 The N irankaris Today 52 Description 52 Challenges 56 7 A ppendices 65 A Journal of the Rev. J. H. Morrison, 1853 67 B Annual Report of the Lodiana Mission, 1854 73 C Report of the Rev. J. H. Orbison, 1861 75 D Punjab Census Report, 1881 78 I V lll Contents E Punjab Census Report, 1891 79 F Tribes and Castes of the Punjab, 1914 81 G Hukumnama of Baba Darbara Singh 83 H Will of Sahib Rattaji, 1903 100 I Anand Marriage Act Correspondence 103 Preface The Nirankaris have been a small, and until this year, little known, group within Sikhism. Recent events in the Punjab have both brought them to public attention and created considerable confusion about them in the public mind. Actually, there are two separate and very different groups who use the name ‘Nirankari’. The first are Nirankari Sikhs founded by Baba Dayal in the nineteenth century and presently under the leader­ ship of Baba Gurbakhsh Singh with headquarters at the Sn Nirankari Darbar, Sector 21, Chandigarh. They are the subject of this book. The second are Sant Nirankans founded in the twentieth century by Baba Avtar Singh and presently under t e leadership of his son, Baba Gurbachan Singh, with headquarters at the Sant Nirankari Mandal in New Delhi. Only their origins and certain aspects of their present conflict with the Sikhs are described here. 1 r . Timely as it is, this book is not a product of recent events but of a request from Professor Harbans Singh, editor of the Encyclopaedia o f Sikhism, back in 1973 when I was Director o the Christian Institute of Sikh Studies, to contnbute an article to the Encyclopaedia on the Nirankaris. This I agreed to do, although I did not begin work on it until 1975 when Mr Parveen Paul joined the Institute staff and the Institute made this project part of its research programme, which was started to increase understanding of the Punjabi religious scene. I wrote the first two chapters in 1976 and then, after a two-year break, completed it only this past summer. The study of the Nirankari tracts in the third chapter is based, for the most part, upon t e research of Mr Parveen Paul, now Research Assistant in the Department of History, Guru Nanak Dev University, who was unable to complete work on this project due to his responsibil­ ities there. The interpretation, however, is largely my own and I must accept responsibility for it. I have sought to apply modern critical methods to the study of Nirankari history and to adopt a perspective which will x Preface highlight certain developments • in that history which have hitherto been neglected. I have paid less attention to the Niran­ kari gurus than to the Nirankari cult; to nineteenth than to twentieth century developments. I have sought to pay special attention to the developing self-understanding of the Nirankaris and to their wider Sikh context. I should also mention that I have made no attempt to be comprehensive or exhaustive, but have concentrated upon those events or developments which I consider will stand the test of time and, therefore, be of histo- rical significance. In the appendices are reproduced the most important sources of early Nirankari history; some of them appear in print for the first time. I have tried to follow cur­ rent conventions concerning Indian words in my text, but have retained the author’s spellings and usages in quotations. At points where this may cause confusion I have inserted clarifications. I wish to acknowledge the great debt of gratitude I owe to Baba Gurbakhsh Singh and Dr Man Singh Nirankari, both of whom welcomed a critical study of this kind and gave me every assistance in carrying it out. At the end, they went through the completed manuscript and corrected some of my mistakes. Without their help this study would have been of little value and, indeed, would never have been carried out. I have also benefited greatly from the suggestions of Dr W. H. McLeod and Dr Mark Juergensmeyer. However, neither they nor Baba Gurbakhsh Singh and Dr Man Singh Nirankari can be held responsible for the errors which remain, as they are mine alone. I wish to thank Mr Parveen Paul and Mr Vinod Khiyale for their assistance in research and Mr Clarence McMullen, Director of the Christian Institute of Sikh Studies, for arranging publication of this book. The Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia provided photocopies of the excerpts found in Appendices A and C. The material in Appendix I was found in the National Archives of India, New Delhi. The translation of the Hukumnama in Appendix G was done by Major Gur- mukh Singh (Retd) and Professor Harbans Singh of Punjabi University. The translation of the will in Appendix H is the work of Miss Nina Chander, Mr I. Bhatti, Mr N. S. Duggal, Baba Gurbakhsh Singh and Mr Jagdarshan Singh Nirankari. Both translations were finalized by Dr W. H. McLeod and Preface xi myself. My wife, Ellen, and daughters, Elizabeth and Marilyn, deserve my thanks for putting up with yet another one of my writing projects. Finally, now that we have moved away from the Punjab, I want to thank all those people there who have given me their friendship and taught me so much. To them T have dedicated this book. United Theological College J o h n C. B . W e b st e r Bangalore ' August 1978 Chapter 1 Introduction Two difficult problems face the historian of the Nirankaris. The first is that there are very few source materials available on which to base a history. It is probable that a few written sources were produced during the early years of Nirankari history and that some of those which were produced have been lost or were destroyed at the time of Partition in 1947. In addition to those sources which have already been compiled and published by the Nirankaris themselves, some new ones have been discovered and added here (in Appendices A, C and I). However, because the sources are still so few in number, the question of how they are to be evaluated and interpreted becomes extremely import­ ant. Hence, it seems appropriate to begin this history with a discussion of the available sources and of how they will be used. This study is based upon primary sources, i.e., sources of evidence produced by people close in time and space to the events and persons they describe. When evidence from primary sources conflicts with that found in later secondary sources, the former is invariably preferred. Since the Nirankaris began to collect and record their traditions only in the late 1920s and 1930s, almost all of the primary source material for the nine­ teenth century ‘foundation period’ of their history comes from non-Nirankari sources. It is for this reason that, while Nirankari writers have based their histories of their ‘founding fathers’ upon these traditions and supplemented them with references from non-Nirankari sources, the opposite procedure will be employed in this study. The traditions will be used more to analyze twentieth century developments in Nirankari tradition and self-understanding than to describe events in their earlier history. This procedure has two advantages. First, it is more safe and sound from a scholarly point of view because second­ ary sources in general, and oral traditions of this kind in particular, must be suspect. Second, it gives greater importance to the twentieth century when the traditions were recorded, a 2 The Nirankari Sikhs period generally underestimated and even overlooked by Nirankari writers. Since our treatment of the sources is so important to our understanding of the Nirankaris, a word about each of our sources would seem to be in order.
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