One of the most impressive facets of the Sikh faith has, for me, always been their total commitment to equality. Re-reading Owen Cole’s excellent ‘Sikhism: An Introduction (Teach Yourself)
Talking About Equality
Here in Britain we do a lot of talking about equality and it has acquired a fair importance with governments, especially in the light of feminist critiques of our society. Yet, and let’s be honest, we’ve not really achieved much more than a slight redress of the balance in the last 40 years or so, especially in the areas of wealth distribution and male-female jobs.
Certainly some things are better but, on the whole, there is a massive divide between rich and poor. We talk about equality a lot but we don’t really believe in it. If we believed in it we’d be living it out.
Sikhs don’t just talk about equality. They live it, week in and week out.
Living As Equals
Guru Nanak, living at a time of great strife between Hindu and Muslim communities, realised that the identity of a person with this religion or that religion is actually far less important than the practical out-living of that person’s faith into reality. He said:
“There is no Hindu and no Muslim, so whose path shall I follow? God is neither Hindu nor Muslim and the path I shall follow is God’s.”
Sikh worship and community life reflects this basic idea that, because God is not committed to any one group of people but instead created them all, the faithful Sikh should endeavour to look into the eyes of every person and see their divine value reflected there. In other words, you need to treat everyone as if they were the most precious person in creation.
Sikhs come together in worship and sing hymns to God, hear the sacred scriptures read (so that they might attain some wisdom), and share. The biggest element is this idea of sharing.
Radically Equal
Every visitor to any Gurdwara (Sikh place of worship) will be offered Karah Parshad, a sweet pudding made by mixing equal quantities of sugar, flour and ghee before heating it. This is shared as a symbol of the sweetness of God’s grace and goodness.
Following worship visitors will also be invited to take Langar, the community meal of Punjabi vegetable curry, lentil soup, rice and chappatis. This meal is symbolic of everybody being equal and seeks to provide everyone with what they need: a hot, simple meal and good company.
Sikhism arose from within a society that was deeply entrenched in the Hindu caste system, something which while originally a useful social tool had, in Nanak’s eyes, become an inflexible and damaging restriction. Family and farm life was made to feel like some kind of burden and Nanak’s declaration that it was a worthy path in it’s own right rang contrary to Hindu culture at the time. The rich were no longer to put themselves above the labourer, and instead they were to sit and eat as equals together.
Sikhs love to tell the tale of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar the Great, who made a visit to Guru Amar Das. Before he was allowed to come into the Guru’s presence he was made to sit on the ground and eat with the other men and women as an equal. The principle, “first eat together, then worship together” has remained at the heart of Sikh practice to this day.
Learning For Us?
I’ve long felt that the “Christian” West could do with remembering the second most important command given by Jesus: “Do to others as you would wish them to do to you” (my paraphrase). Sikhs essentially live this through their twin ideals of worship as equals and sewa (service), of which I will write more another time.
Today, though, I just want to suggest that sitting together and eating a simple meal, vegetarian so that no one is offended (meat being contentious between different religious and political groups), is a wonderfully simple act. It restores dignity when the “untouchable”, that person who is socially ‘beneath’ you, is invited into the circle to eat as a brother or sister.
When we think back to those mythical halcyon days of British community spirit, epitomised by the ‘street party’, we again see this levelling of the playing field in a grass-roots setting. We imagine families bombed out of their homes during World War II being taken in by neighbours, or housed in community spaces, and those shared meals and sung songs restoring their dignity and sanity.
In a society now as divided as ever, with rioting and looting erupting every 20-30 years since the 1950’s, are we not in need of some grass-roots equality? What could we learn from the simple act of sharing a meal, considering one-another as equals, and putting aside our pretensions of caste and superiority?
I always rather enjoyed langar.
