Guru Nanak

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Wherever Guru Nanak went, the locals could not tell whether he was a Hindu or a Muslim. He wore clothing associated with both Muslim fakirs and Hindu sadhus. Guru Nanak was an Indian spiritual teacher, mystic and poet. Today he is honoured as the founder of Sikhism and the first of its ten Gurus.

  He was born in a village called Rai Bhoi di Talvandi, in the Lahore province of the Delhi Sultanate. That village is now the city of Nankana Sahib in Pakistan. The boy who grew up there would eventually be known to his followers by a tender title, Baba Nanak, meaning Father Nanak.

  Three questions run through his story. When was he really born, given that his community celebrates his birthday in a different season from the one most old biographies name? How much of the legend around him can be trusted? And what did a man of the 15th and 16th centuries teach that still anchors a living faith? The answers begin in his birth village, with an argument about the calendar.

  2977801290

• 2. Two Birthdays

  ›

  Each year, Guru Nanak Gurpurab marks his birthday across India on the full moon day of the month of Kattak, which falls in November. Yet the oldest layer of biography points to spring. Most janamsakhis, the traditional life stories of Nanak, place his birth on the third day of the bright lunar fortnight in the month of Baisakh, in the year Samvat 1526. That corresponds to the 15th of April 1469.

  The Puratan janamsakhi, the Miharban janamsakhi, the Vilayat Vali janamsakhi and the Gyan-ratanavali by Bhai Mani Singh all agree on that spring date. Sikh records add a second clue. They say Nanak died on the 10th day of the Asauj month of Samvat 1596, the 22nd of September 1539, aged 70 years, 5 months and 7 days. Working backwards from that precise age points to the month of Vaisakh, not Kattak.

  The festival itself followed the spring tradition for a long time. As late as 1815, under the ruler Ranjit Singh, his birthday was commemorated in April at Nankana Sahib. The shift to November came later, and the earliest record of a November celebration at Nankana Sahib dates from 1868.

  The November side has its own witnesses. The Bala janamsakhi is the only janamsakhi that supports Kattak. It says Bhai Bala obtained Nanak's horoscope from Nanak's uncle Lalu, giving a date matching the 20th of October 1469. But the book came from the Handalis, a sect following a convert named Handal, who wanted to present their own founder as greater than Nanak. A superstition of northern India held that a child born in Kattak would be weak and unlucky, so the work's choice of that month is telling.

  Other texts favour the Kattak full moon. Bhai Gurdas wrote on such a day several decades after Nanak's death, saying Nanak had gained omniscience on that date. The eyewitness chronicles called Bhatt Vahis also name the full moon of Katak. So do the Gurbilas Patashahi 6, written in 1718, the Meham Parkash of 1776, and the Bansavalinama of 1769 by Kesar Singh Chibber. The Gurbilas, though attributed to Bhai Mani Singh, contradicts his own janamsakhi.

  Max Arthur Macauliffe, writing in 1909, offered a practical explanation. A Hindu festival held on Kartik Purnima in Amritsar drew large crowds of Sikhs in the 19th century. The community leader Giani Sant Singh disliked this, so he began a festival at the Golden Temple on the same day and presented it as Nanak's birthday.

  Macauliffe added a point about money. Vaisakh already held Holi, Rama Navami and Vaisakhi, and farmers were busy in the fields after the Baisakhi harvest, so attendance and donations would have been thin. By the Kattak full moon, Diwali was over and peasants had cash from their crop sales.

  There is one more suggestion, from the Dabestan-e Mazaheb. It proposes that November marks Nanak's "spiritual birth" in 1496, a moment this documentary reaches later.

  727339529

• 3. Restless Schoolboy

  ›

  Mehta Kalu, formally named Kalyan Chand Das Bedi, kept the crop revenue accounts as patwari of Talwandi. He and his wife Mata Tripta were Hindus of the Khatri caste who worked as merchants. Nanak belonged to the Bedi Khatri clan, like every Sikh Guru. His grandfather was Shiv Ram Bedi and his great-grandfather was Ram Narayan Bedi.

  Sikh lore surrounds his birth with wonders. One tale says the baby laughed like a grown adult and startled the Muslim midwife. Another says astrologers foresaw his greatness. The stories echo those told of Buddha, Jesus and Krishna, though Nanak's birth is described as natural and not to a virgin.

  At the age of five, he was enrolled in the village school under a teacher named Gopal. He learned arithmetic, book-keeping, the mnemonic tables of accountancy and the Devanagari script. Lore says he startled Gopal by explaining that the first letter of the alphabet, shaped like a numeral one, stood for the oneness of God.

  At seven he went to study under Brij Nath, learning the Vedas and the six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy. At nine, on the suggestion of Rai Bullar, he was sent to a maktab under the Muslim teacher Saiyid Hassan. There he studied Persian, Arabic and Indo-Islamic literature.

  His father hoped for an accountant or a merchant. Nanak preferred the open country, where he tended the family cattle and talked with sadhus and Sufis. Stories say that once, when his buffaloes ruined a neighbour's field, the crops were found unharmed. Gurdwara Kiara Sahib in Nankana Sahib marks the spot.

  Another tale concerns the sleeping boy watched by Rai Bular. In one version a tree's stationary shadow covered his head, and in another a venomous cobra shaded him. The cobra version comes from the Bala janamsakhi tradition.

  In 1475, Nanaki married at the age of 13 and moved to Sultanpur Lodhi. Her departure grieved Nanak. Two years later, the village priest Hardyal tried to place the sacred janaeu thread on him and shave his head. Nanak refused and criticised the impermanence of such a thread, which caused local controversy and began his break with orthodox Vedic and Hindu custom.

  The famous episode known as the sacha sauda came next. His father gave him 22 rupees to buy goods in a neighbouring town named Chuharkhana. Nanak spent it on food for hungry sadhus, and his furious father struck him.

  Pressure only grew as he withdrew into silence. When the family pressed him toward a government job at Sultanpur, he stopped eating, and relatives feared possession. The village physician Hardas was summoned. Nanak answered with hymns that now sit in the Raga Malar section of the Guru Granth Sahib, saying his illness was spiritual and no doctor held the cure. Sultanpur, where his sister now lived, was about to claim him anyway.

  312399395

• 4. Sultanpur and the River

  ›

  On the 24th of September 1487, in the town of Batala, Nanak entered an arranged marriage with Sulakhani. She was the daughter of Mul Chand and Chando Rani. The couple had two sons, Sri Chand, born in 1494, and Lakhmi Chand, also called Lakhmi Das, born in 1496 or 1497. Some sources say he married later, at the age of nineteen.

  Jai Ram, the husband of Nanaki, worked at a modikhana, a storehouse for revenues collected in goods rather than cash. He served Daulat Khan, the Lahore governor under the Delhi Sultanate. Jai Ram helped Nanak find work there, and Nanak began as custodian-general of the state's stores at about the age of 16. Mandair offers a different version, in which he worked as an accountant in a village near Sultanpur.

  Life then settled into a rhythm for roughly twelve years. By day he worked. In the night and early morning he sang devotional kirtan, and at dawn he bathed in the Bein river. His wife joined him once he had an income. His old friend Mardana arrived again to sing with him.

  One tale from this period involves the number thirteen. When Nanak weighed out rations and reached thirteen, which is tera in Punjabi, he kept repeating tera, tera, tera. In Punjabi it also means "yours", so the counting became a prayer. Another tale has him scolding a Qazi whose mind was on a foal at home during prayers. The many references to government in his hymns probably come from these years.

  Then came the morning at the Bein river that Sikh belief treats as the turning point. By Sikh tradition he was 33. Kapur Singh gives circa 1496 and the age of 27. Nanak walked into the water and did not come out. Locals found only his clothes on the bank and assumed he had drowned. His Muslim employer had fishermen cast nets, but they found nothing.

  On the third or fourth day he returned. He was silent and kept apart from others. When pressed, he replied only: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim."

  The janamsakhis describe what happened during his absence. He was taken to the court of God and given amrit, a sacred nectar, and a robe of honour. A divine voice told him to spread naam simran, remembrance of the name, along with dan, charity, isnan, cleansing, and seva, selfless service. Asked how the divine name should be praised, he answered with the song that now opens the Japji:

  "There is but one God, True is His Name, The Creator, Fearless, without rancour, Timeless, Unborn, Self-existent. By God's grace he is known."

  His words about Hindus and Muslims drew a complaint from a Qazi to Daulat Khan Lodhi. Nanak was summoned to court, met the Qazi, joined his prayers, and then criticised him for lack of focus. He began to speak of divine unity as Ik Onkar, beyond the religious identities of his age. The first person to accept that he had reached enlightenment was his sister, Nanaki.

  He then gave up his government post and the settled family life that went with it, and took to the road.

  339127495

• 5. Roads and Doubts

  ›

  Four great journeys, known as udasis, are attributed to Nanak in the janamsakhis. The travelling period spanned from age 33 to 50. Before the four tours, he is said to have toured northern and western Punjab with Mardana, visiting Saidpur and Multan. He stayed at the house of Bhai Lalo, a man of low caste, whom Nanak appointed as the first Sikh missionary.

  The eastward tour reached Mathura, Varanasi, Bodh Gaya, Bengal and Assam, returning through Jagannath Puri. The southward tour took in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, with stops in Malabar, Mumbai and Rajasthan on the way back. The northern tour visited Ladakh and Tibet. The western tour went to Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.

  Mardana, who played the rabab as Nanak sang, accompanied him on the east and west tours. Low-caste Hindus went with him in the north and south. On the way back from the last tour he witnessed the armies of Babur invade India at Saidpur. Four hymns known as the Babur Vani record the events.

  He visited temples, mosques, viharas and Sufi lodges called khanaqahs, and he attended fairs and festivals. His first followers came from both Hindu and Muslim backgrounds. Between tours he returned to Sultanpur. Sikh accounts say nothing of what his wife and two sons did while he was away.

  The tales from the road carry lessons. At Mecca, when a Qazi tried to move Nanak's feet away from the Kaaba, the Kaaba is said to have turned to follow them. At Multan, Nanak laid a jasmine petal on a brimming cup of milk to show that spiritual quality matters more than quantity. At Haridwar, seeing pilgrims throw Ganges water toward the sun, he threw it toward his own fields, to show the futility of the rite. In another story he stopped a large boulder with one hand.

  But the historical record is thin. Nanak left no account of his routes, though his hymns preserve some conversations he held. Scholars debate both the routes and the authenticity of the stories. Callewaert and Snell, writing in 1994, note that early Sikh texts do not contain them. The accounts grow more elaborate with each later version, and some first appear in the 19th-century Puratan janamsakhi, which still omits Baghdad.

  The Baghdad stone, carrying an inscription in a Turkish script, is contested. Some read it as saying that Baba Nanak Fakir was there in 1511-12. Others read 1521-22. Several Western scholars argue the stone dates from the 19th century. Beyond the stone, no Middle Eastern text or inscription mentions his visit, and claimed additional inscriptions have never been found.

  Callewaert and Snell also see the embellishments as close parallels to the miracle claims of Islamic pirs in Sufi tadhkirahs of the same era. They suggest the legends may have been written in competition. Other borrowings come from Hindu epics, the puranas and Buddhist Jataka stories.

  The janamsakhis fall into the Bala, Miharban, Adi and Puratan traditions, and they were written as devotional works, not objective biography. The Gyan-ratanavali attributed to Bhai Mani Singh was composed after Sikhs asked for an authentic account, reportedly to correct heretical versions. Macauliffe and others doubt that the Bhai Bala of the Bala tradition could have been Nanak's companion, given the writing style and language. Bhai Gurdas wrote shorter accounts in his vars.

  A 1976 book by Fauja Singh and Kirpal Singh, Atlas: Travels of Guru Nanak, tried to map his routes. Nepalese tradition adds that he meditated for over a year at Nanak Math in Balaju, Kathmandu, around 1516, where he is known as Nanak Rishi. His next stop in the janamsakhis was not a road but a settlement on a river bank.

  5281952972

• 6. Kartarpur Community

  ›

  By the age of 50, Nanak had gathered a following known as the Nanak Panth. It was drawn mostly from relatives, friends and other Khatris. Later, large numbers of Jatts joined, a community noted for its anti-Brahminical views. Returning from one journey, he found a spot beside the Ravi river suited to an ashram, and a follower donated the land. That settlement became Kartarpur.

  Around the age of 55, Nanak settled there as a householder and remained until his death. He rejected asceticism and hoped to build a society free of economic and social discrimination. The community, called a sangat, rose at dawn, bathed, and sang together in kirtan or chanted the name of God. Afterwards the members returned to ordinary work and gathered again in the afternoon.

  This pattern spread to other places where he had followers, and local leaders emerged in each congregation. Two institutions gave the equality he preached a practical form. Langar, a communal meal adopted from earlier Sufi and Nath practice, and pangat, the seating of all in a row, were funded by shared donations.

  He also introduced the charan pahul initiation. New members drank water from the same cup in which his toe had been dipped, whatever their caste. The Japji, which he had worked on for decades, was finalised at Kartarpur. It joined the Kirtan Sohila and the Rahiras as part of the regular recitation. Outsiders called his followers Kartaris, after the village.

  His sons did not inherit the leadership. According to Bhai Gurdas, Nanak tested them and both failed. Sri Chand was an ascetic, a lifestyle Nanak had reprimanded. Lakhmi Das was uninterested in religion and had his own family. Sri Chand nevertheless founded the sect known as the Udasis.

  Nanak chose Bhai Lehna of Khadur, a former worshipper of Durga who had probably met Nanak in his late 20s. He renamed him Angad, meaning "one's very own". Nanak placed a coconut and five paisa before Lehna and bowed to him. Writings in the Guru Granth Sahib also mention a tikka on Angad's forehead and a canopy over his head. Sikhs describe the succession as one light passing between two bodies.

  Mandair observes that appointing an unrelated successor was not new in India. But it showed that Nanak meant his work to continue and that any follower might reach perfection within one lifetime. It also, Mandair argues, let the early Sikh community survive as a distinct group instead of being absorbed by other sects.

  Nanak died at Kartarpur on the 22nd of September 1539, aged 70. Sikh hagiography says his Muslim and Hindu followers quarrelled over his body. As they tugged at the sheet covering him, they found only a heap of flowers. Each side took flowers and either buried or cremated them according to its own custom.

  Angad moved the community's headquarters to Khadur, because Nanak's sons claimed their father's property at Kartarpur. What Nanak left behind was a body of verse, which survives in the scripture.

  7412965063

• 7. Teachings and Verse

  ›

  Guru Arjan, in 1604, gathered 974 hymns by Nanak into his Ad Granth compilation. The Japji opens the volume, and every later Guru's writing was modelled on Nanak's. Among the prominent compositions are the Japji Sahib, the Asa di Var, which means "Ballad of Hope", and the Sidh Gosht, which means "Discussion with the Siddhas". He wrote three vars in all, with the Asa di Var the most prominent.

  Nanak called himself a poet, using the words sairu and shair. His earliest verse is said to date from his time at Gopal's school. It is the Patti Likhi, "written on the tablet", with each stanza beginning with one of the thirty-five letters of the native script. It was later set to Raag Asa in the Guru Granth Sahib.

  His style is plain. He favoured the salok, a rhyming couplet, and also wrote lyrical shabads and pads. His language was archaic Punjabi and Khariboli, with many Persian loanwords. He drew on Saraiki vocabulary in some works and chose more Hindi or Sanskritic words when discussing Hindu subjects. Rather than write only in elite languages such as Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit, he used the Punjabi of ordinary people to reach a wider audience.

  The Japji, his most celebrated composition, uses more than one metre, which sets it apart from most Guru Granth Sahib poetry. It asks questions about the universe and life, claims no final answer, and leaves the listener in reflection. Like his other hymns, it casts him as a slave of the divine and prefers love to hatred.

  His core message is Ik Onkar, a single creator who dwells in all creation. Tradition sums up its practice in three phrases. Naam japo means meditating on God's name to feel the divine presence and to control the five thieves of the personality. Kirat karo means earning an honest living without fraud. Vand chhako means sharing with those in need.

  He taught equality across gender, caste and religion. He rejected the fourfold varna divisions of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras. He denied that women were impure or inferior. Liberation, or mukti, came from conduct and recitation of the name, not social background. He also condemned the greed and cruelty of the rulers of his day and urged forgiveness.

  He held that family life belonged to religion. In his view, the spiritual life and the householder life were intertwined, and an active, truthful and practical life ranked above metaphysical truth. Mandair summarises the Sikh stance as one where anyone can reach direct experience without rituals or priests.

  He addressed Muslims directly, too. In a verse he said: "When he is merciful to all living beings, O Nanak, Then will he be called a Musalman."

  Scholars disagree on what kind of figure he was. Cole and Sambhi hold that his teachings were revelation from God, not a social protest or a bridge between Hinduism and Islam. Singha holds that he was a Guru, not an incarnation or prophet. A third view, supported by Bhai Gurdas, Bhai Vir Singh and others, holds that he was an incarnation of God. Bhai Gurdas wrote that the Guru and God are one.

  8875531296

• 8. Afterlife Across Faiths

  ›

  Scholars once described Nanak's movement as a blend of Islam and Hinduism, but recent work places it in the Sant and Bhakti movements of medieval India, with some Islamic influence. James R. Lewis has criticised the label "syncretic" as vague and selectively applied to Sikhism. Many historians link Nanak to the nirguni tradition, which imagines God without form. Roopinder Singh argues that he in turn shifted later Bhakti authors from sargun, God with form, toward nirguna. Unlike earlier bhagats, he also founded a community at Kartarpur.

  The Guru Granth Sahib is the final and perpetual Guru of Sikhism. According to Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, Guru Gobind Singh's creation of the Khalsa in 1699 aimed to return to the egalitarian ideals Nanak set at Kartarpur. The changing course of the Ravi eventually washed away his mausoleum. His son saved the urn holding his ashes and reburied it on the river's left bank, where the settlement of Dera Baba Nanak formed.

  In 1750, Diwan Kaura Mal sponsored holy tanks and memorial gurdwaras at Nankana Sahib. The village had been deserted and abandoned until then. Kaura Mal also gave the shrines generous land, which formed the estate of Nankana Sahib until the partition of Punjab in 1947.

  No artwork made in Nanak's lifetime is known. Tradition records that he wore a woolen seli, a topi head-cap, a chola cloak, wooden kharawan sandals and a rudraksha mala. Some such items survive in collections, especially among descendants of the Gurus. Sikh art shows him haloed, white-bearded and meditating, with an Ik Onkar glyph on his right palm. Early paintings are in the Guler collection, the Government Museum and Art Gallery in Chandigarh, and the Bagrian family's collection.

  Other communities claim him in their own ways. In a letter of the 27th of October 1985, the Universal House of Justice of the Bahá'í Faith called him a "saint of the highest order". Punjabi and Sindhi Hindus often follow Nanakpanthi teachings, and the Dadupanthis listed him among their sants and bhagats. Tibetans have long visited the Golden Temple in Amritsar, and many believe he was an incarnation of Padmasambhava. In 1930 or 1931 the Tibetan teacher Khyungtrul Rinpoche called it "Guru Nanak's Palace". A Bonpo monk described a figure whose secret name is Guru Nanak.

  The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community regards him as a Muslim saint. In 1895, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad defended him against accusations by Dayananda Saraswati, and some cite a chola inscribed with Quranic verses as support. Dominique Sila-Khan has proposed that he was a Nizari Ismaili Muslim before Sikhism began. There is no consensus on his faith before Sikhism.

  The story is still being retold. A Punjabi film, Nanak Shah Fakir, directed by Sartaj Singh Pannu, appeared in 2015. A 2021-22 docuseries, Allegory: A Tapestry of Guru Nanak's Travels, follows his journeys across nine different countries.

  3012964044