Khalistanis are NOT Sikhs: Indians Should Know

In the wake of recent news that speaks about the so-called ‘Khalistanis’ trying to create a separate state for themselves, I decided to put together the teachings that Sikhs were actually passed on by Guru Nanak Ji, the pioneer of Sikhism.

Guru Nanak Ji

Guru Nanak Ji, as he walked on earth, was a being with an infinite consciousness and I am sure that you will also agree with me once you read his teachings and the changes that he brought about in the world.

Guru Nanak Ji was way ahead of his time. The changes that he propounded have left the world in awe even after 500 years of his physical existence on Earth.

Dharma & Wars

In all the religions, the Saints that have come, have taught us only to fight for our Dharma.
But today most of us make this mistake of understanding Dharma as Religion.

NO. Religion is called Mazhab while Dharma means one’s responsibility or duty.

Dharma word has become famous and entered the lives of Indians mostly from Mahabharat or the Kurukshetra War, which was a Dharmic War.

Kurukshetra war was NOT a war of religion. It was a war of Dharma. Though the fight was for the throne of Hastinapur, the war really took shape only after the King and the ministers in the court had forgotten their Dharma(responsibility) towards their Kul-Vadhu aka Draupadi.

Draupadi was almost raped in a court full of pandits, sadhus, rishi-munis, and a King sitting on his throne. 

This was not a normal court; it was a court that existed in a time when the consciousness of people was very high.

The greater consciousness meant a more significant burden of Dharma on these people. 

But rather than fulfilling their Dharma or their duty as a King or as Ministers, they sit quietly in that court letting the evil Duryodhana try to rape their daughter Draupadi in front of all of the elders on the pretext of winning the game of dice or Chopat.

Thus, when the king and the ministers forgot their duty toward what was right, it was then said that everyone had forgotten their Dharma.

Thus, it gave birth to the Kurukshetra War: A War of Dharma.
Mind here, this was not a war of Religion. It took place at a time when the prevalent religion in India was Hinduism. 
So the Kauravas & Pandavas did not fight with each other because a Hindu Man (Duryodhana) had tried to rape another Hindu woman (Draupadi)!
It was clearly a war of DHARMA.

Therefore, we can conclude that,
Dharma is the responsibility or the duty of a human being towards his fellow beings. For example-
* Dharma is the duty of a father to take care of his children.
* Dharma is the duty of a teacher to educate children.
* Dharma is the duty of a government towards its citizens to protect their citizens and to provide them with all the basic necessities of life.

So coming back to Dharma in Sikhism, understand it this way.

Many great Saints including Guru Nanak Ji also taught us, Dharma. 

The Gurus (the Spiritual teachers) in Sikhism taught us to fight for one’s dharma or one’s duty as a King or as a Father or as a Citizen.

For eg., Guru Tegh Bahadur considered it his Dharma to fight for protecting the Hindus when they were being exploited by the then-Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, who was forcing conversions of Hindus to Muslims.

The Sikh Guru could have easily stepped back saying that Hinduism was not his religion.

But DHARMA is not restricted to religion, Guru Ji taught us. 
Guru Ji considered it His’ Dharma to fight for the rights of his innocent countrymen and happily gave away his life in order to protect his people.

His sacrifice was so great that even after hundreds of years, people from all walks of life remember His greatness.

The Introduction of the Langar System 

The Langar system has saved millions of Indians from dying of hunger. 

The Langar system involves voluntarily serving vegetarian food to any person irrespective of their nationality, color, religion, race, etc. Anybody who comes to the Gurudwara (the holy place of Sikhs) is free to have Langar without any restrictions. 

There are Gurudwaras in Dubai too (where a majority of the population is Muslim) and the Muslims go to the Gurudwara and have langar too. 

The Many Religions: GOD IS ONE

If you have read my blogs, you would know my story. You would know that I was born into a Hindu family. My grandparents used to worship 
Sri Krishna, Hanuman Ji, and Sri Ram. They believed in and worshipped all the gods & goddesses and I loved Sri Krishna & Sri Ram a lot. However, I got my education from a Christian school because my parents wanted that I learn the English language. I used to worship at a Gurudwara every evening; the only holy place in my area at that time. 

The exposure to so many different religions made me question the whereabouts of God when I was just 10 years old.

When I started going to Gurudwara, I observed that people from all religions used to come and spent time in meditation. I understood intuitively that the teacher of the Sikh religion must be a highly conscious one because all religions were teaching that God is ONE and of course, I knew that God, whom we call father, could never be biased towards some of his children so as to give them birth in a religion if they could never find God in that religion.

None of us came with any stamp of religion on our bodies. Religion was an automatic transfer from our parents. Our parents were following a certain religion; mostly the one that was dominant in the country that they were living in. 

This meant that if I were born in a country where the dominant religion was Christianity (such as America), then I would probably have been a Christian and not a Hindu.

Using this logical perspective, the religion problem was solved for me. 
However, true faith & assurance in the existence of ONE God came to me only after many mystical experiences, which was a blessing from the Divine and the grace of my Spiritual Teacher.

Giving Equal Rights to Women

Guru Nanak Ji was really 1000 years ahead of his time. Thanks to his work on his consciousness.

During the times when women were kept indoors and wore chunnis over their faces, Guru Nanak Ji taught society to respect and treat women as equals.

A very famous quote from Guru Nanak Ji ~

So kyu manda aakhiye, jit janme rajan

~Guru Nanak Ji

Translation~
Why call that Being (woman) bad, the one who gives birth to the Kings?

Such were the great thoughts of the great Sikh Guru.

Introduction to Vegetarianism

Guru Nanak Ji advocated that nobody should hurt any living being as all beings had ‘souls’ and all feel ‘pain’. 

He taught that one should restrict oneself to a plant-based diet. 

That’s another thing that today, many Sikhs are non-vegetarians. 
But not all children in a class read books and listen to the teachings of their teacher, do they?
Then how can we expect all to be vegetarians really?

Today, all Gurudwaras serve vegetarian food to anybody and everybody that comes for Langar to the Gurudwara.

Guru Nanak Ji once said-

Jīa janṯ sabẖ māsahu hoe jīe laiā vāserā ||
Abẖakẖ bẖakẖėh bẖakẖ ṯaj cẖẖodėh anḏẖ gurū jin kerā ||

~ Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Guru Nanak, Ang 1290

Translation~
All beings are simply souls residing in different bodies (such as humans, animals, and birds who have feelings and can feel pain)
Those whose Guru is blind, eat the uneatable; they reject and abandon what they could eat (the plant-based diet).

Equality Of All Human Beings

Guru Nanak Ji taught that everyone is equal irrespective of their religion, color, caste, gender, etc., hence his teaching was also applied to the concept of Langar. 

Also read: WHO IS A GURU? – NOT A HUMAN BEING

Also read: THINGS WE DID NOT KNOW | WAKING UP AT 3AM

Khalsa & Khalistan

A Guru who established the Langar System for all and the one who taught the Sikhs to treat everybody as equals and love & serve everyone irrespective of their religion would never support the concept of a separate state based on Religion, the concept that could eventually burn all of Guru’s teachings in one shot. 

Such a concept can only be proposed by someone who has never understood Guru Nanak Ji’s teachings in totality and has never gone into the depths of understanding how the teachings of Sikhs Gurus are evident from the lives that they lived and the concepts that they implemented in the world (langar, equal rights, etc.)

These were probably the people who never read or implemented their Guru’s teachings or the ones who never understood how the creation of a separate Sikh state would eventually bring disgrace to their own Gurus and the immense sacrifices that were made by their Gurus.

The term Khalsa first came into the picture after Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded by Aurangzeb. Guru Tegh Babahur sacrificed his life for saving Hindus from conversion to Islam by Aurangzeb. He considered it His’ Dharma (Read ‘What Is Dharma : Not Religion) as a warrior to save innocent people from the wrath of the cruel ruler.

‘Khalsa’ word means ‘to be pure’, ‘to be liberated from the 5 vices of anger, lust, greed, attachment, ego’.

After Guru Tegh Bahadur was beheaded while in his endeavor to protect the Hindus and the people of India, Guru Gobind Singh Ji coined the term Khalsa and initiated the Khalsa term for a ‘warrior’ with a duty to protect the innocent (belonging to any religion) from religious persecution. Guru Ji wanted the ‘Khalsa people’ or ‘the ones pure of the heart’ to rule the world and protect others from greed and anger.

On the contrary, the Khalistan movement was started by Jagjit Singh Chohan who established the Council of Khalistan at Anandpur Sahib on 12 April 1980. This movement that demands a separate state of Khalistan which is carried out on the foundation of anger and wars, is NOT based on the teachings of the Sikhs Gurus. These separatists are not free from the 5 vices and therefore, are not the pure ones or the true people of Khalsa, as taught by Guru Gobind Singh Ji.

Therefore, we can conclude that these people demanding a separate Sikh state and calling themselves Khalistanis are not true Sikhs – NOT the Sikhs of Guru Nanak Ji.

The Reason Religious Wars Are Happening

It is very much a case of misinterpretation of teachings that have actually happened in almost every religion. 

The Real Interpretation:
Khalistan actually meant the world of the pure. The pure do not belong to any specific religion or nationality.

The Khalsa were the ones that were the ‘pure of the heart’ and were free of ego, lust, anger, attachment & greed.

Misinterpretation of teachings has also happened in other religions. for eg. let’s say in Christianity…

Just try to comprehend this — why is it that ‘Jesus Christ’ was One but today we have landed up having different faiths within Christianity? 

The root cause of this is the translation of the book — — this is mainly because the interpretations are different which has led to different faiths within Christianity. 

The best way to tell if a translation has been approved or not is to look for the words ‘Catholic Edition’ on the cover.

-Source: Restford.org.uk

Also read: ASTRAL PROJECTION: MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Why Does the Difference in the Interpretation Come? Well, there are several reasons for it. While I will list them down in a separate blog but will surely mention the main reason.

The teachings as mentioned in the Holy Books were given by the Spiritual Teachers or Saints whose Consciousness was highly expanded. Therefore, the teachings can correctly be interpreted only by a teacher whose own consciousness is highly expanded. 

However, the scholars who, although had knowledge but had not worked on their consciousness (Chetna), gave interpretations to these teachings from the Holy Books according to their level of understanding or ‘knowledge’ but ‘knowledge is not same as wisdom’.

‘Knowledge is NOT wisdom’

This led to a change in the meaning of the teachings as were initially mentioned in these Holy Books.

for eg. The Bible mentioned –

‘If thy eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light’
-Mattthew 6:22

The scholars, in order to simplify this line — today have translated it and many have rewritten it to –

If thy eyes be healthy, your whole body shall be healthy. 

Now this is absolutely unacceptable to any Spiritual teacher whose consciousness is highly expanded. An enlightened Spiritual teacher would interpret it using his own expanded consciousness and will explain the true meaning behind these lines, which is –

‘If thy eye be single’ means if the Third Eye (the Single Eye) is opened,

‘thy whole body shall be full of light’ means the whole being of the person will radiate the light of wisdom. 

Now there’s a Sky & Earth difference between these two interpretations. 

If a person has learned from a Spiritual teacher who has not worked on his own consciousness or from a Scholar who is translating from his level of comprehension (while he hasn’t worked on his’ consciousness), then he will teach you only what he has himself learned.

And like I always say, 
‘A teacher can only give you what he himself has. If a teacher has only 10$ with him, he cannot give you 100$’!

I will conclude this article by saying that the many religious wars happening are majorly because of the Misinterpretation of the teachings of Saints or the translation of the teachings in holy books by different teachers, who each are working from different levels of consciousness.

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