Guru Nanak was a monotheist who insisted on the beauty and truth of this world. In his vision of life, there were no gender or caste distinctions and, through a life of ethical and social commitment, it was possible for both men and women to attain liberation, a place of honor in the divine court, the ultimate goal. Furthermore, he believed that a personal attainment of truth was insufficient in itself because individual liberation went hand in hand with helping others realize truth.

To understand Guru Nanak’s actions during these years, it is important to look at Kartarpur, the town he founded. The immediate reason in the selection of the place seems to have been its proximity to the village of Guru Nanak ’s father-in-law. It is likely that he was helpful if not entirely instrumental in locating and then acquiring the land for the new town. Help from his father-in-law, however, could not have been the only reason for Guru Nanak’s decision to found his center there. If comparison is made between the location of Kartarpur with that of Talvandi, for instance, Guru Nanak’s home, several features of Kartarpur as a preferable site for the new community come into focus. First, the area is located on the bank of the river Ravi , which enters the plains at this point. The soil is extremely fertile, with heavy rainfall and plenty of subsoil water it is excellent for agriculture, and thus provided an ideal location for building a self-sufficient community with a firm agrarian base.

It is also known that the area was in the process of development, as evidenced by the establishment of new villages during this period. As Kartarpur was quite central in this belt, it was well placed to attract devotees from the surrounding villages. The town was on the route to the ancient Shiva temple in Amarnath ( Kashmir ), and the Devi temples in the Shivalik hills. Consequently, a large number of pilgrims passed through the Kartarpur area. Thus Guru Nanak could meet these spiritual seekers and show them the realization of his ideas in the life of his community, and if convinced, they could join the new settlement. The location thus allowed the emergence of a core community and also provided for its potential growth in the future.

With the Himalayas in the background, the Kartarpur landscape enjoyed an idyllic setting and Guru Nanak’s compositions show a great degree of sensitivity to it and the beauty of nature. Images of thundering clouds, flashes of lightning (M1, GG, 1273), lotuses, fishes, frogs (M1, GG, 968), herons, swans, cuckoos singing in mango groves (M1, GG, 157), larks cooing at dawn (M1, AG 1285) and dusk (M1, GG, 1283), and various meadows (M1, GG, 418, and 843) make frequent appearances in his writings. If the physical world was a divine abode (M1, GG, 580, 1257), then to him here was a beautiful fragment of that creation.

Kartarpur was strategically secure from military or political interference, because it was located about fifty miles toward the hills, well away from the main Lahore-Delhi route, which the invading armies coming from the west had historically taken. The site’s potential to sustain a community with an independent economic base, prospects for growth, natural beauty, and relative security, were important aspects of Guru Nanak’s vision for the future of his community.

What was the nature of the social and religious life that Guru Nanak created in Kartarpur? It is known from his compositions that he made no distinction of caste, creed, or gender for since there is a single creator, how could one hold beliefs in the distinctions between high and low, pure and impure, strong and weak, men and women (M1, GG, 83)? It is probable that Guru Nanak’s family served as the core of the community around which other families gathered. The doors of his community were open to all, although not everyone joined it. The limited evidence points to the likelihood that families that did join his community came from four backgrounds: the Muslims; the low-caste people from the Hindu social hierarchy; the Khatris; and lastly, the Ja‚ts and other rural groups who lived in the immediate vicinity of Kartarpur. Very few Muslims seem to have joined the new community. Muslim rule during this period discouraged Muslims from leaving Islam and joining another religion, which would mean that the individual would automatically lose the state’s protection--not a prospect many people would have looked forward to. As for the low-caste section of Hindu society, their presence in the Sikh community is registered only toward the end of the sixteenth century.

As mentioned earlier, Guru Nanak himself was a Khatri, and it seems likely that relatives from his own village moved to Kartarpur. Relatives from his wife’s side who lived in the vicinity of Kartarpur may have also joined their son-in-law’s venture. Beyond his family fold, there would have been others impressed by his charismatic leadership and some would have developed links while continuing to live in their villages. Finally, the Ja‚ts and other ancillary rural groups, who were the main inhabitants of the Kartarpur area, joined Guru Nanak’s following in large numbers. In all likelihood, they constituted the largest segment of the community at Kartarpur.

What was the nature of early Sikh religious life? With the family at the center of Guru Nanak’s vision, life at Kartarpur seems to have been based on practical dictums. At the personal level, a Sikh was supposed to keep the body clean with a morning bath (ishnan) and the mind sanctified with prayer, which included among other things singing and listening to Guru Nanak’s compositions praising the divine (nam). This was to be accomplished in the larger setting of a life centered on hard work (kirat), taking one’s rightful share (haq halal), and contributing towards the collective good (dan). In simple terms, religious life was firmly framed in the values of personal purity, familial loyalty, productivity, and dignity.

Congregational prayer constituted the heart of Sikh devotional life (M1, GG, 17, 72, 1025, 1026, 1280) and Sikh men and women gathered and sang the praises of the Creator, expressed in the compositions of Guru Nanak, accompanied by musical instruments (kirtan). They offered thanks for receiving the gift of human life, and asked for a life of humility and service. The day at Kartarpur seems to have been structured around three daily prayers recited at sunrise, sunset, and just before going to sleep. It seems that while the first two prayers were congregational, the last one may have been recited individually or in a family setting. The singing of the prayers informed the devotees about the nature of the Creator and his relationship with the world. The Guru was at hand to explain these compositions (katha); after all, he was responsible for providing his followers with religious and ethical knowledge (M1, GG, 503 730, 938). At the closing of the prayer session, men, women, and children gathered and shared langar (a communal meal).

Work constituted the center of life at Kartarpur. There are reports of Guru Nanak helping with farming work. In an interesting episode, he is involved in weeding the rice crop, while Lehina (1504-1554), later his successor, carried the wet grass for the feeding of the cattle. A portrait of Guru Nanak in an eighteenth century manuscript depicts him conversing with a follower while another is running a Persian wheel, a system of irrigation, in the background. This was a model of respect for labor. While working hard, the Sikhs were to remember the creator in whose hands was the final outcome of their endeavor. They had to sow and weed the crops; the harvest, however, was a divine gift.

Guru Nanak’s model of ideal living in Kartarpur was different from those of his neighbors. As a believer in Vahiguru, Guru Nanak could not accept the Jain belief system in which the divinity was simply absent, and he found their ascetic practices of pulling hair and not having bath as desecrating to the body (M1, GG, 150). He was also convinced that the Hindu search for liberation centered on image worship was futile (M1, GG, 637). The Nath Yogis’ belief in solitary meditation and rejection of family life had no appeal to him. While the Yogis may have perceived their centers situated on high mounds and caves as markers of spiritual elevation, standing above the villages of the plains, the Guru regarded their monastic way of life as a form of social escapism (M1, GG, 1245).

Although sharing a belief in an all-powerful Creator, Guru Nanak questioned the practices of Islamic orthodoxy. However, in the founding of the Kartarpur community, there is a pattern that parallels the lives of Sufi masters, many of whom traveled to distant centers (khanqahs) in the early stages of their lives and finally settled down to establish one of their own. At these centers, which were generally these Sufi saints’ homes, they imparted religious learning to those who lived around them and provided shelter and food for travelers. Based on the belief that they should serve common people and maintain cordial relationship with them, Sufi masters fed the hungry and tended to the sick who were living in the vicinity.

Expanding on this vision of giving service to fellow beings, Guru Nanak created a constituency that was far more comprehensive than that of a typical Sufi center. Although it contained families and fulfilled their material, moral, and religious needs, Guru Nanak’s conception of his role was significantly different from that of many Sufi masters. He had no use for the extended meditation sessions during which the Sufis abstained from food and drink and subjected themselves to ascetic practices. Nor was he open to making claims of power that could guarantee a higher level of spirituality for others, as some Sufis and Yogis did (M1, GG, 1286).

After establishing the community, Guru Nanak consciously worked toward providing it with distinct structures and an understanding of itself as a group. For Guru Nanak, he was the founder with his followers (M1, GG, 503), and leaders of all kinds whatever, religious, political, or military, enjoyed divine support (M1, GG, 145). He also saw himself as the medium of the divine message, and in this special status, he formulated beliefs for those who were willing to follow him. He worked in the fields to show respect for labor, and established models of behavior for his followers. He also debated religious and social matters with those who were interested.

It is important to point out that he was not simply a religious figure but the overall leader of the community. Writing in the 1540s, Satta and Balvand, two bards at the Sikh court, report the founding of Kartarpur in political terms embellishing it with royal metaphor such as the “creation of a castle,” “the striking of a coin,” and calling the ceremony of the Guru’s succession the “royal coronation” (GG, 966-967). An entry in the Goindval Pothis, a manuscript compiled in the early 1570s, describes Guru Nanak, “Emperor Bedi protective of matters religious and temporal.” [ Picture 2]

The fact that Guru Nanak elevated a successor to his position indicates the seriousness with which he held his office. His selection of a single successor during his own lifetime distinguishes the Sikh model of succession from those of the Sufis and Nath Yogis, who appointed multiple successors or who became successors by virtue of their being disciples. In the case of the Sufis, their children were normally the successors. For Guru Nanak, spiritual merit rather than a biological link was the sole criterion of selection.

Working within a context in which contemporary saints made use of the vernacular for their compositions, Guru Nanak wrote in Punjabi, but he made sure that his “new revelation” was recorded in a distinct script, Gurmukhi. He believed that those who sang his compositions recorded in the new script would attain liberation (M1, GG, 432). By this time, paper was available in the Punjab and Guru Nanak recorded his compositions in the form of a volume (pothi), a revelatory text and a precious possession of the community. From early accounts of the succession ceremony (dastarbandi), we know that the placing of this volume in the hands of his successor marked the actual passing of the authority from the Guru.

Being a divine creation, the whole world is sacred for the Sikhs. However, the gurdwara, the house of the Guru, for example, enjoyed a special status within it. The Sikhs met there to pray, receive ethical and metaphysical knowledge, and share langar (M1, GG, 153, 730, 930, 933, 1015). With the Guru at its head, the congregational nature of worship would have required a large space to accommodate all worshipers. The langar was not a unique Sikh institution, as both the Sufis and the Nath Yogis had a system of collective eating (langarkhanah and bhandaras). The Sikhs, however, used it as a venue for both service and charity and provided the food themselves. This ideology was different from the Nath Yogis, who begged for food, and the Sufis, who often accepted land-grants to run their kitchens.

The succession ceremony for the Guru comprised of placing a sacred mark on the forehead of the successor, tying a turban on his head, and passing Sikh scriptural text on to him. The Sikhs appropriated the ceremony from the Sufis, who in turn had acquired it from models of royal coronation prevalent at that time. The central role played by Sikh sacred text, however, provided the ceremony with a distinctive atmosphere.

There are also references to an initiation ceremony involving the nectar of the feet (charan pahul) at Kartarpur. In the Hindu ceremony, the master’s foot or the toe was touched or washed in water, which was then offered to the initiate to drink as part of his or her entry into the group. However, in the Sikh ceremony, as Bhai Gurdas reports, the roles were reversed: the new initiate’s toe was washed and other Sikhs drank that water. These details are confirmed in Dabistan-i-Mazahib ( School of Religions ) written in the 1640s. As the ceremonies were appropriated, important changes were made to establish the Sikhs as a community that was unique from others.

To sum up, then, this examination of Guru Nanak’s life and activity at Kartarpur helps us to understand the details of the vision of this charismatic figure. Coming from an upper caste, affluent, educated background, he had the opportunity to work in an important administrative setting and to travel extensively for two decades. His beliefs surface in the writings of his contemporaries but he stands apart in his emphasis on the unity of the divinity, a life of personal, familial, and social commitment, and the need for collective liberation. Furthermore, he stands alone as someone who translated the beliefs that he sang in his compositions into the actual founding of a community. To provide his followers with a sense of community, Guru Nanak created institutions of central authority, a sacred text, the gurdwara, liturgy, and rudimentary rituals. Within his own lifetime, he raised his most worthy disciple to the status of the Guru and helped the community to make the transition to new leadership. The following chapters examine how the seed planted by Guru Nanak took root and flourished.