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Later Sikhs, particularly in the days of the Singh Sabha reform movement and after, were to insist with the utmost vehemence that whatever else Sikhs… - W H McLeod
" "Later Sikhs, particularly in the days of the Singh Sabha reform movement and after, were to insist with the utmost vehemence that whatever else Sikhs might be they were certainly not Hindus and never had been. Gum Nanak, they maintained, founded an entirely new religion, in no way dependent on Hindu tradition nor on anything else. This, however, is simply not true. Gum Nanak was a member of the Sant movement, fitting easily into its panthic mould, and his successors continued in the same tradition. Future change was certainly awaiting the Khalsa that would lead it further away from its Hindu origins, but that change still lay some distance in the future. In its basic formation, the origins of the Khalsa were plainly Hindu.
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About W H McLeod
William Hewat McLeod (1932–2009; also Hew McLeod) was a New Zealand scholar who helped establish Sikh Studies as a distinctive field.
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William Hewat McLeod
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Hew McLeod
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Additional quotes by W H McLeod
Hindu tradition lay at the basis of the Rahit and had much to do with the shape which it took. It performed this function in two ways. First, it provided the cultural soil in which the Rahit first grew. It was not Muslim India which provided this cultural background, though the eighteenth century period was one, which directly pitted the Khalsa against the barbarian Muslims. Except for some minor features the Rahit was not Muslim but rather almost wholly Hindu in origin. The social organisation of Khalsa Sikhs was entirely Hindu, with the same caste structure. Karma, transmigration, and liberation formed key parts of Sikh doctrine; Hindu dating was used for all Sikh events; key terms were drawn from Hindu precedent;30 and a knowledge of Hindu mythology was an ever-present source to be drawn on whenever need should arise. With this background the diverse items of the proto-rahit fitted neatly into the Hindu concept of various panths which together constituted the pattern of Hindu society.
Guru Nanak regarded Hindu and Islamic beliefs as ‘fundamentally wrong', and that the religion of Guru Nanak is not a synthesis of Hindu and Islamic beliefs. We know indeed that Guru Nanak looks upon contemporary religion in terms of the Brahmanical, the ascetical and the Islamic tradition; all the three stand bracketed, and none of them is authoritative for Guru Nanak.
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