The short version: the Sikh scripture rejects caste in some of its best-known lines, and Sikh society has never been without it. The two have stood side by side since the Gurus’ own lifetimes: the Gurus set caste aside at the meal and in worship, and married within it. Today caste is a living fact among Sikhs and an open argument within the Panth. Consensus that it survives; Political on what that means. What follows traces the line between teaching and practice through five centuries, then sets out the groups and the debate as §11 describes them.
What the Gurus taught
The Punjab Guru Nānak was born into had a caste order: Khatrīs, a caste traditionally assigned trade and clerical work, who claimed descent from the Kṣatriyas, the warrior varṇa; Jaṭs, traditionally herders and cultivators; artisan and service castes; and below them groups treated as untouchable, among them the castes traditionally assigned leatherwork, the caste of the poet Ravidās (§1).[1][2] Consensus
Guru Nānak rejected caste as a measure of a person before God, in some of the scripture’s best-known lines (§2). In Āsā he tells his hearers to recognise the divine light in each person:[3] Consensus
ਜਾਣਹੁ ਜੋਤਿ ਨ ਪੂਛਹੁ ਜਾਤੀ ਆਗੈ ਜਾਤਿ ਨ ਹੇ ॥
jāṇahu joti na pūchhahu jātī āgai jāti na he ||
“Recognise the light; do not ask about caste: in the world beyond there is no caste.”[3]
In Sirī Rāg he places himself with the lowest:
ਨੀਚਾ ਅੰਦਰਿ ਨੀਚ ਜਾਤਿ ਨੀਚੀ ਹੂ ਅਤਿ ਨੀਚੁ ॥ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਤਿਨ ਕੈ ਸੰਗਿ ਸਾਥਿ ਵਡਿਆ ਸਿਉ ਕਿਆ ਰੀਸ ॥
nīchā andari nīch jāti nīchī hū ati nīchu | nānaku tin kai sangi sāthi vaḍiā siu kiā rīs ||
In this site’s translation: those who are lowest among the low castes, the very lowest of the low: Nānak is with them, at their side; why should he vie with the great?[4] Consensus on the text.
The scripture Guru Arjan compiled in 1604 also carries the voices of poets from outside the high castes. Ravidās, “the tanner set free”, imagined a city called Begampurā where “there is no second or third rank there, all are one”.[5][6] Consensus on the text; Majority on the attribution.
What the Gurus did
The teaching was put into practice where people met. The community at Kartārpur ate and worshipped together.[7][1] Majority Under Guru Amar Dās the laṅgar became a rule: later tradition gives him the saying pahile paṅgat pāchhe saṅgat, “first the row, then the congregation”, by which every visitor sat and ate in a row with everyone else before seeing the Guru (§3).[8][1] Majority that this is the tradition; Consensus on what the story means: in the Guru’s kitchen caste and rank were set aside.[9] The Harmandir Sāhib’s door on each of its four sides is read by Sikh writers as openness to all four castes.[8][10] Consensus on the plan.
Marriage was another matter. The Gurus themselves were Khatrīs, Guru Nānak a Bedī and the line from the fourth Guru Sodhī, and they married their children within their caste, as most Sikhs did for centuries after.[7][1][11] Majority; Political From the start, then, caste was set aside at the meal and kept in marriage. Majority
The Khālsā and the eighteenth century
The Khālsā of 1699 gave men of every caste the same warrior name, Singh, and Sikh writers have long read it as an assault on caste names. In the tradition’s account the first five initiates came from five castes, one high and the others middling or low; that detail is first written down in later eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts (§5).[12][13] Majority
In the fighting that followed, men of castes then called low took up arms. Irvine, reading the Persian chroniclers, says Banda Singh Bahādur’s recruits came mostly from the lower castes, and the chroniclers single out sweepers and tanners.[14] Majority Caste did not vanish: Persian witnesses named two misl chiefs by caste, “Jassa Kalal” and “Jassa Najjar”, distiller and carpenter, and most of the chiefs were Jaṭs (§6).[15][1] Majority The Jaṭs, who had joined the community in large numbers from the late sixteenth century, became most of it.[2] Consensus
The reformers and the shrine
The Singh Sabhā reformers of the late nineteenth century drew a similar line. Sanātan Sikhs kept caste, with the authority of the Gurus’ descendants; the Tat Khālsā rejected it in religion, though often kept it in marriage (§8).[16] Majority
The test came at the Harmandir. Among the reformers’ complaints against the shrines’ custodians was their refusal of offerings from Dalit Sikhs. On 12 October 1920 newly initiated men from the lowest castes were brought to the Harmandir with offerings, which the priests refused; the scripture was opened at random for a ruling, a verse of Guru Amar Dās on the Lord forgiving the worthless came up, and the offerings were accepted. The priests of the Akāl Takht then left their posts (§9).[8][17] Consensus that this is the account. The Sikh Rahit Maryādā, published in 1950, wrote the marriage rule down: Sikhs are to marry “without giving thought to the prospective spouse’s caste and descent”.[18] Consensus on the text.
Caste among Sikhs today
The main groups are these.[19][20][21][22]
- Jaṭs, the landowning agricultural caste, are the largest group in rural Punjab and dominated the SGPC and Sikh politics in the twentieth century. Majority
- Khatrīs and Aroṛās, traditionally mercantile castes, were the Gurus’ own and have been prominent in the towns. Consensus
- Rāmgaṛhīās, from castes traditionally assigned carpentry and smithing, were prominent among the Sikhs who went to East Africa and then to Britain, and run gurdwaras of their own in several British towns. Majority
- Mazhabī and Ravidāsīā (or Rāmdāsīā) Sikhs come from Dalit castes, the first from a caste traditionally assigned sweeping and the second from one traditionally assigned leatherwork. Majority
Most Sikh marriages are arranged within caste. In many Punjab villages Dalit Sikhs have their own gurdwaras and cremation grounds, and in Britain caste names attach to some gurdwaras.[19][21] Majority Punjab has a higher share of Scheduled Castes than any other Indian state, about 32 per cent of its people in 2011, many of them Sikh.[23] Consensus
The ḍerās and the Ravidāsīā break
Many Dalits, Sikh and not, follow ḍerās, religious centres around a living teacher; Ronki Ram has shown how heavily they are represented there, since a ḍerā offers a place where caste does not bar a person from religious honour.[20][21] Majority The Ravidāsīās venerate Ravidās, whose hymns are in the Guru Granth Sāhib; many were Sikhs, or kept the Granth in their own temples, while following the Ḍerā Sachkhaṇḍ Ballāṅ near Jalandhar.[22][24] Majority After an armed attack on the ḍerā’s two leaders at a temple in Vienna in May 2009, in which one of them died, the ḍerā declared a separate religion, Ravidāsīā Dharam, at Varanasi in January 2010, and began to replace the Guru Granth Sāhib in its temples with its own scripture, the Amritbāṇī.[24][21] Consensus on the events; Political Not all Ravidāsīs followed: many still keep the Guru Granth Sāhib and call themselves Sikhs. Majority
Is Sikh caste “caste”?
Three positions, each with its proponents:
- Caste persists despite the Gurus. Marriage, separate gurdwaras and landholding show a living hierarchy (Surinder Jodhka, Ronki Ram).[19][20]
- A different kind of hierarchy. Jodhka argues that Sikh caste is not the Brahmanical hierarchy of purity, since the scripture and the gurdwara leave no religious place for it, but a hierarchy of land and status that Jaṭ dominance of the countryside keeps alive.[19]
- A gap to be closed (much Sikh opinion). Many Sikhs, with the Rahit Maryādā, hold that the scripture rejects caste and that practice should be brought into line with it.[18]
Contested; Political
Common misconceptions
- “Sikhism abolished caste.” The scripture denies caste any religious worth, and the laṅgar and the gurdwara set it aside; marriage within caste has continued since the Gurus’ own families. Majority
- “Sikh caste is the Hindu varṇa system.” Sikh doctrine gives it no religious sanction, and Jodhka reads it as a hierarchy of land and status; whether that makes it a different thing is the debate above. Contested
- “The Gurus came from low castes.” All ten were Khatrīs, a caste traditionally assigned trade and clerical work that claimed Kṣatriya status. Consensus
- “All Ravidāsīās left Sikhism in 2010.” Many still keep the Guru Granth Sāhib and call themselves Sikhs. Majority
What the evidence cannot settle
The texts and the practice can both be dated: the hymns from the sixteenth century, the code from 1950, the villages and the ḍerās from fieldwork and the census. What the evidence cannot decide is whether the distance between them is a failure to live up to the teaching or a different kind of social order that the teaching never addressed. That is the argument the Panth is having with itself. Political
References
- ^ a b c d e J. S. Grewal The Sikhs of the Punjab. The New Cambridge History of India II.3, Cambridge University Press, 1990. The standard narrative history; revised edition 1998.
- ^ a b W. H. McLeod The Evolution of the Sikh Community: Five Essays. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976. Includes the argument that the Jaṭ peasantry shaped the community's turn to arms.
- ^ a b Guru Granth Sāhib, ang 349 — Guru Nānak, Āsā. before 1539 CE (composed); 1604 CE (compiled). Punjabi in Gurmukhi. "Recognise the light; do not ask about caste: in the world beyond there is no caste." read the text
- ^ Guru Granth Sāhib, ang 15 — Guru Nānak, Sirī Rāgu. 1604 CE. Punjabi in Gurmukhi. "Nānak is with the lowest of the low" — the rejection of caste in the Gurus' own voice, not later apologetic. read the text
- ^ Guru Granth Sāhib, ang 345 — Ravidās, Gauṛī (Begampurā). 1604 CE (compiled). Old Hindi (sant bhāṣā) in Gurmukhi. Begampurā, the city without sorrow, with no land tax (khirāj), no ranks, and a tanner set free as its citizen: Persian revenue vocabulary in a Sant's vision of heaven. read the text
- ^ Pashaura Singh The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority. Oxford University Press, 2000. doi The formation of the Sikh canon, from the 1604 Ādi Granth to its installation as Guru.
- ^ a b W. H. McLeod Guru Nanak and the Sikh Religion. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1968. The critical study of Nānak's life and theology, separating the janamsākhī tradition from the hymns.
- ^ a b c Harbans Singh, ed. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism. Punjabi University, Patiala, 4 vols, 1992. open access Published 1992–1998; the standard reference, with signed entries reporting both tradition and sources.
- ^ Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. Oxford University Press, 2014.
- ^ Pashaura Singh Life and Work of Guru Arjan: History, Memory, and Biography in the Sikh Tradition. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2006.
- ^ W. H. McLeod Who Is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989.
- ^ W. H. McLeod Sikhs of the Khalsa: A History of the Khalsa Rahit. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003. The code of conduct from the rahitnāmās to the Sikh Rahit Maryādā; the main source for dating the Five Ks.
- ^ Purnima Dhavan When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799. Oxford University Press, New York, 2011.
- ^ William Irvine Later Mughals, vol. 1: 1707–1720. M. C. Sarkar & Sons, Calcutta (ed. Jadunath Sarkar), 1922. full text The fullest account of Banda's rising from the Persian chronicles, from the Mughal side.
- ^ Qāẓī Nūr Muḥammad, Jangnāma — Persian verse account of Ahmad Shāh Abdālī's seventh campaign, 1764–65. 1765 CE. Persian. An eyewitness hostile to the Sikhs praises their conduct in war (they do not kill one who is not a man, obstruct fugitives or plunder women) and says: "They are not from amongst the Hindus. These miscreants have a distinct religion of their own." Edited by Ganda Singh (1939); translated by Iqtidar Alam Khan in Grewal and Habib (2001), Text 18, pp. 208–209, who render the author's pun on sag ('dog') as 'Sikhs'.
- ^ Harjot Oberoi The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. University of Chicago Press, 1994. The "Sanātan" Sikhism of the early nineteenth century and the Singh Sabhā's sharper boundaries.
- ^ Guru Granth Sāhib, ang 638 — Guru Amar Dās, Rāg Soraṭh. 1604 CE (compiled). Punjabi in Gurmukhi. The Lord Himself forgives the worthless and sets them to the True Guru's service: the verse taken as the Guru's ruling at the Harmandir on 12 October 1920, when the offerings of low-caste Sikhs were accepted. read the text
- ^ a b Sikh Rahit Maryādā — Code of conduct of the Shiromaṇī Gurdwārā Prabandhak Committee. approved 1945 CE; published 1950 CE. Punjabi. The code most Sikh institutions follow: who is a Sikh, the amrit ceremony, the Five Ks and the four cardinal prohibitions. about
- ^ a b c d Surinder S. Jodhka Sikhism and the Caste Question: Dalits and their Politics in Contemporary Punjab. Contributions to Indian Sociology 38, nos. 1–2, 2004. Caste among Sikhs as hierarchy of land and status; separate Dalit gurdwaras.
- ^ a b c Ronki Ram Social Exclusion, Resistance and Deras: Exploring the Myth of Casteless Sikh Society in Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly 42, no. 40, 2007. Why Dalits, Sikh and non-Sikh, turn to the ḍerās.
- ^ a b c d Eleanor Nesbitt Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2016.
- ^ a b Opinderjit Kaur Takhar Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups Among Sikhs. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2005. The Nishkām Sevak Jathā, Nāmdhārīs, Ravidāsīs, Vālmīkīs and the Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere; argues there is no single yardstick of Sikh identity.
- ^ Census of India 2011: Sikhs — Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India. 2011 (religion tables released 2015). English. Counts 20,833,116 Sikhs, about 1.7 per cent of India (1.9 per cent in 2001); about 16.0 million in Punjab, 57.7 per cent of the state (59.9 per cent in 2001). Punjab's Scheduled Castes are about 31.9 per cent of its population, the highest share of any state.
- ^ a b Ronki Ram Beyond Conversion and Sanskritisation: Articulating an Alternative Dalit Agenda in East Punjab. Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 3, 2012. The Ḍerā Sachkhaṇḍ Ballāṅ, the Vienna attack and the Ravidāsīā Dharam.
