Every new religious movement is born out of and shaped by existing faiths, and like offspring, bear likeness to them. Sikhism was born out of wedlock between Hinduism and Islam after they had known each other for a period of nearly 900 years. But once it had taken birth, it began to develop a personality of its own and in due course grew into a faith which had some semblance to Hinduism, some to Islam and yet had features which bore no resemblance to either. In order fully to understand Sikhism and its contribution to the religious thought of the world, we have to be acquainted with early Hinduism, its reaction to Muslim invasions, and the compromises it effected in its tenets to meet the challenge of Islam. We also have to know something of the way Islam developed as it travelled away from its desert home in Arabia and domiciled itself in India. We will then know how the two rival faiths extended the hand of friendship towards each other and evolved rules of good neighbourliness in order to be able to live together in peace.
It is difficult to define Hinduism with any precision. It has three aspects: its pantheon of gods and goddesses with the legends that are attached to them, the social order of the caste system and the poetry and philosophy of its Sanskrit classics. The first two were the direct outcome of the Aryan impact on India’s aboriginal people and their culture. The third was the work of Aryan scholarship, some brought from the Aryan’s original homeland, much of it produced in India.
It appears that when the Aryans came, the inhabitants of northern India had no defined religion of their own. They worshipped a variety of gods and goddesses — like the male and female deities of Mohenjodaro —which frequently symbolised the things they dreaded. They offered sacrifices to images of reptiles and animals, and propitiated epidemics like smallpox and plague. The Aryans were worshippers of the beautiful in nature. They chanted hymns to the sky and to the rising sun...and they raised goblets of soma juice to the full moon. Out of the frightened faith of the animists and the rapturous faith of the lovers of nature was created the Hindu pantheon. The aboriginal gods were either pushed into the background or reincarnated in Aryan garb. The relationships between the gods themselves underwent many changes until there came to the fore, the triumvirate of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, the three facets of the One God who was Ishvara. Thus, out of the polytheism of the pantheon had emerged the idea that the ultimate power to create, keep or kill resided in the one Supreme Being....
It is unlikely that in Guru Nanak’s lifetime (Guru Nanak is the first guru of the Sikhs) his numerous admirers formed a distinct sect; they were at best people who dissented from both Hinduism and Islam and became his disciples because they agreed with what he said. His teaching appealed specially to the politically downtrodden Hindus of lower castes and the poor of the Muslim peasantry. The ground had no doubt been prepared by the Sufis and the Bhaktas. But it was Nanak’s own personality, that combined gentleness with great courage, that endeared him to all. A History Of The Sikhs
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