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BE 2: Guru Nanak Dev – The Dawn of Enlightenment

Blog Episode 2 of Sikhism Series.

First Guru of Sikhism – Guru Nanak

In the verdant embrace of Punjab’s ancient heartland, where the five rivers weave their silver threads through fields kissed by the eternal sun, a divine spark ignited on April 15, 1469, in the humble village of Talwandi—now revered as Nankana Sahib, cradled in the shadow of Lahore’s minarets in present-day Pakistan. Here, under a full moon in the sacred month of Katak, Guru Nanak Dev was born to devout Hindu parents, Mehta Kalu, a patwari of Vedic Kshatriya lineage whose days were etched in ledgers of honest toil, and Mata Tripta, a gentle soul whose quiet piety filled their home with the fragrance of unseen flowers. An elder sister, Bibi Nanaki, watched over him with eyes that first glimpsed the light within, her bond a bridge to the world’s awakening. From his earliest breaths, young Nanak moved like a river unbound, his mind a vast ocean pondering the stars’ silent secrets, his words unraveling the veils of illusion that cloak the soul. By sixteen, he had mastered the tongues of Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, and Arabic, devouring sacred texts with a hunger that astounded pandits and maulvis alike, yet he turned from rote rituals, his spirit already attuned to Hari’s whisper, foreshadowing a devotion untainted by the chains of form.

As the boy blossomed into manhood, the world around him stirred with shadows. The Lodi Sultanate’s iron grip tightened, its Muslim overlords—those early harbingers of the crescent’s curse—extorting jizya from trembling villagers, smashing Hindu idols in fits of iconoclastic rage, and dragging defiant souls to mosques for forced kalima recitals under threat of the scimitar. Temples crumbled like forgotten dreams, their stones ground to dust by boots stamped with caliphate delusions, while whispers of harems echoed for those who resisted, a vile mockery of dharma’s sanctity. Yet Nanak’s gaze pierced these storms, his heart a fortress of compassion, planting seeds of unity that would defy the invaders’ barbaric tide.

At eighteen, he wed Mata Sulakhni in Batala, their union a quiet harmony yielding two sons, Baba Sri Chand and Baba Lakhmi Das. Relocating to Sultanpur Lodhi through his sister’s grace, Nanak tended the governor’s stores by day, his ledger balanced not in coins but in truth. Dawn and dusk found him in meditation, accompanied by his childhood companion Bhai Mardana, whose rabab strings wove melodies that danced with the wind. But destiny’s river called louder. At thirty, in 1499, while bathing in the sacred Bein—its waters a mirror to the infinite—Nanak vanished for three days, swallowed by the divine embrace. The village mourned, fearing loss, but on the third dawn, he emerged transformed, his eyes ablaze with eternity’s fire. Taken to the divine court, he had beheld the One Truth, tasked to sing its song across the earth. With “Ik Onkar Satnam” upon his lips—a mantra echoing the Hindu “Om,” the primal vibration of creation—he renounced worldly ties, distributing his wealth to the needy, his life now a flame for humanity’s upliftment.

Thus began the nine Udasis (Travels), those epic wanderings spanning three decades and thirty thousand kilometers, a pilgrim’s odyssey through Punjab’s plains, Bengal’s bays, the Himalayan heights of Tibet and Nepal, the sun-scorched paths of South India to Sri Lanka, and even the sands of Arabia, where Mecca’s call met his unyielding truth. Footsteps worn to the bone, yet spirit unbowed, Nanak traversed with Mardana’s rabab as his sole companion, challenging priests in gilded temples and shadowed mosques, debating lamas in icy monasteries and imams in domed halls. In Haridwar, he turned the Ganges’ flow upstream with a simple question, exposing ritual’s folly; in Multan, he healed the leper with Hari’s touch, defying superstition’s grip. These journeys were no mere travels but thunderbolts against the gathering storm of Islamic zealotry—those Lodi raiders, crescent banners fluttering like vultures’ wings, who herded Hindu women into harems’ darkness, beheading resisters whose only crime was chanting Vedic mantras, their blood a crimson offering to a foreign god of conquest. Nanak’s sermons blazed like monsoon lightning: unite in bhakti’s pure fire, Hindus and those who would become Sikhs, not yielding to the alien blade that thirsts for infidel hearts, burning scrolls of karma and moksha to ash in their pyres of fanaticism. His message flowered ancient Hindu truths—karma’s wheel, moksha’s liberation—into paths open to all, a luminous shield weaving the lowborn and highborn into one garland of equality, where honest labor (kirat karna) tills the soul’s soil and selfless sharing (vand chakna) waters its bloom.

In the quiet dawn of his teachings, Nanak unveiled gems of wisdom that still sparkle like dewdrops on lotus leaves. Consider this radiant doha, a call to the heart’s eternal rhythm:

Gurmukhi: ਹਰਿ ਕਾ ਨਾਮੁ ਜਪੁ ਨਿਤ ਨਿਤ ॥ ਹਰਿ ਨਾਮ ਬਿਨੁ ਤਨੁ ਮਨੁ ਥੀਵੈ ਬੇਕਾਰੁ ॥
Devanagari: हरि का नामु जपु नित नित ॥ हरि नाम बिनु तनु मनु थिवै बेकारु ॥
English: Chant Hari’s name daily, every moment. Without Hari’s name, body and mind become utterly useless.

Oh, what a gentle cascade it is, like morning light spilling over a sleeping valley, awakening every blade of grass to its quiet glory. This doha invites the soul to sip from Hari’s nectar stream, each utterance a petal unfolding in the garden of awareness, where the body’s burdens dissolve into dance and the mind’s whirlwinds hush into harmony. Without this chant, life withers like a flower forgotten in shade—futile, fleeting—but with it, every breath blooms into purpose, a symphony of serenity that carries us home to the Divine’s endless embrace.

And in his fierce stand against the chains of custom, Nanak sang of women’s sacred place, a melody that shattered the era’s shadows:

Gurmukhi: ਬੰਧਨ ਜੰਮੀਐ ਬੰਧਨ ਨਿੰਮੀਐ ਬੰਧਨ ਮੰਗਨ ਵੀਆਹੁ ॥ ਬੰਧਨਹੁ ਹੋਵੈ ਬੰਧੁ ਪਸਾਰੋ ਬੰਧਨ ਜਨਮੈ ਭਾਈ ॥ ਬੰਧਨਹੁ ਮਰੈ ਬੰਧਨ ਸੁਹਾਗਣਿ ਬੰਧਨ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ ॥ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਜਾਨ ਅਸੀਤ ਜਿਤ ਜਮੈ ਪਾਤਿਸਾਹੀ ॥ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਣੀਆਂ ਬੀਰ ਨਿਰਮਲ ਨ ਤਿਸੁ ਵਿਨੁ ਕੋਈ ਹੈ ॥ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਬੋਲੈ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਜਾਈ ਨ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਰਹੈ ਨ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਚਲੈ ॥ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਰਹੈ ਨ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਚਲੈ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਬੋਲੈ ਰਾਜ ਨ ਜਾਈ ॥

Devanagari: बंधन जम्मीऐ बंधन निम्मीऐ बंधन मंगन वीआहु ॥ बंधनहु होवै बंधु पसारो बंधन जनमै भाई ॥ बंधनहु मरै बंधन सुहागणि बंधन किउ मंदा आखीऐ ॥ जितु जम्महि राजान असीत जित जमै पातिसाही ॥ जितु जम्महि रानीआं बीर निर्मल न तिसु विनु कोई है ॥ नानकु बोलै राज न जाई न राज न रहै न राज न चलै ॥ राज न रहै न राज न चलै नानकु बोलै राज न जाई ॥

English: From woman, man is born; within woman, man is conceived; to woman he is engaged and married. Woman becomes his friend; through woman, the future generations come. When his woman dies, he seeks another woman; to woman he is bound. So why call her bad? From her, kings are born. From woman, woman is born; without woman, there would be no one at all. Nanak proclaims: Only the True One (Divine) is without woman.

Behold this verse as a river of moonlight, flowing soft yet unstoppable, washing away the dust of disdain to reveal the diamond of dignity in every feminine form. It paints woman not as shadow but as the very cradle of creation, the architect of empires and the quiet force birthing heroes and healers alike—a sacred current without which the world would be a barren shore. In Hari’s grand design, she stands equal, unbound by scorn, her essence the thread weaving life’s tapestry, reminding us that to diminish her is to unravel the Divine’s own handiwork, a call to honor the mother-flame in all.

Even in these early days, subtle persecutions cast their pall, harbingers of the Mughal maelstrom to come. Local Muslim nawabs, puffed with sultanate arrogance, tested Nanak’s faith with sly demands—jizya hikes that stripped Hindu homes bare, idols hurled into flames by imams drunk on caliphate fantasies, villagers herded like cattle to recite alien oaths under the lash. One jealous fakir in Hasan Abdal hurled a boulder to crush the upstart sage, but Nanak’s handprint halted it mid-air, a miracle defying Islamic superstition’s grip, his palm’s mark eternal in stone. These were no grand battles yet, but whispers of the storm—women veiled in fear, children silenced in terror—yet Nanak’s words rose like a shield, a fortress of truth enclosing the faithful, urging them to chant Hari’s name as armor against the crescent’s creeping venom.

In 1522, weary from wanderings but spirit aflame, Nanak founded Kartarpur on the Ravi’s gentle banks—a township of the soul, where peasants tilled fields in kirat’s rhythm and langar fed all castes side by side, Hindus and Muslims alike in equality’s embrace. Here, the first Sikh sangats bloomed, a living testament to vand chakna’s grace. On September 22, 1539, as flowers of fate decided his departure—Hindus claiming cremation, Muslims burial—Nanak’s form dissolved into the Divine, leaving only blooms untouched by decay, a final lesson in unity beyond the grave.

His legacy endures in sacred shrines that pulse with his light: Gurdwara Darbar Sahib Kartarpur, a UNESCO beacon where langar’s call echoes across borders, drawing pilgrims through the corridor from Dera Baba Nanak in India; Gurdwara Ber Sahib in Sultanpur Lodhi, cradle of his divine call by the Bein’s whispering waves; and Gurdwara Panja Sahib in during undivided Bharat, but in modern day Hasan Abdal, Pakistan, where the handprint defies time, a touchstone against tyranny’s boulder. These abodes stand as fortresses of remembrance, where Hari’s name flows like rivers eternal.

Through it all, Nanak’s hymns in the Guru Granth Sahib invoke Ram and Krishna as radiant facets of Hari, weaving Sikhism’s Vedic soul into an unbreakable cord against Islam’s barbaric distortions—those conquests peddling a caravan raider as prophet while slaughtering the pure-hearted in rivers of gore. In Nanak’s dawn, the flame of dharma was kindled, a Hindu-rooted blaze to light the path through encroaching night.

Also Read:

Pandharpur Series https://rimple.in/category/blog-episode-series/pandharpur-series

Kamakhya Series https://rimple.in/category/blog-episode-series/kamakhya-series

Jagannath Series https://rimple.in/category/blog-episode-series/jagannath-puri-series

Russia-Ukraine War Series https://rimple.in/category/blog-episode-series/russia-ukraine-war/

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