��ѿ��ý

Available for over a year

Good morning. Just a few months after the Great Fire of 1666 had destroyed most of London, a child was born in India whose life and legacy would change the destiny of the subcontinent. That child was Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th Sikh Guru, whose birth anniversary is being celebrated this week by Sikhs around the world. Stretching over a region similar in size to the EU, India in the 17th century was rich in diversity, knowledge and spirituality. And although there were distinct regional differences, a strong feeling of unity thrived on a shared history of the area. The Guru himself spent most of his life in Punjab in the north, although he was born 900 miles away in the eastern reaches of the country, and died in Central India some 1,100 miles south of his home. His was a pan-continental life. He was fluent in several languages spanning the length and breadth of the region, including Persian, medieval Hindi and classical Sanskrit. He was learned in the Hindu classics and the Koran, as well as the Sikh scriptures, and his ideas brought about social reform to Northern India. He actively challenged discrimination against minorities, and he believed that the Sikh faith transcended any ethnic barriers or labels. By creating the Khalsa, the Order of the Pure Ones and the inner core of the faith, he showed how people from different ethnicities and backgrounds could coalesce and bring strength to the community as a whole. He counted Muslims and Hindus amongst his loyal supporters, individuals proud of their own beliefs who respected the 10th Guru as a strategic political leader of spiritual significance. Soon after the Guru was born, he was visited by a Sufi saint who brought two pots of sweets, one purchased from a Muslim and one from a Hindu. The mystic offered both pots to the Guru to see which faith he would favour the most. The Guru is said to have reached out to both pots at the same time, symbolising that he would treat them with equal respect and dignity. In the modern era, we can often become burdened by pigeon-holing our identities, and such intransigence can lead to deep divisions between groups, reducing the world to black and white, a place where it’s easy to declare that I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m loyal and you’re a traitor. Real life is much more complex than that. One of Guru Gobind Singh’s verses states that “All of humanity is the same, though the illusion is of difference”. It’s the idea that our essence, which makes us who we are, transcends any dissimilarities that we may have. Difference should always be respected, but we should acknowledge that there is much to bind us together in unity.