Source: TW
Divorcing phenomenon
Lot of Sikhs bet on the strategy of completely divorcing themselves from the bad reputation and stereotypes of India by calling themselves “Punjabis, Sikhs” and believing in that exceptionalism. Indians obviously took glee in it when North Americans started rejecting this shtick.
Refuge of mediocrity
I’m also a Punjabi, but why should I do Punjabi exceptionalism? If I really want to divorce myself from India’s bad reputation, then who cares about ethnicity? I should just bring in my caste (Khatri) which is responsible for most of Punjabi history as well as being elite human capital in modernity.
The reality is regional and linguistic exceptionalism is cope. The only thing that’s real in India is caste -
and we don’t do caste exceptionalism because it’s impolite,
and we wanted to build a unified civilizational identity by sacrificing our own caste for wider goals like Hindutva/Dharma. Lot of non-Khatri Punjabis just didn’t get this. You lead from ahead, not from behind.
What I am trying to explain is something nuanced. Lot of Indian castes that were and are truly exceptional chose to not give a shit about their caste’s achievements - so they could do national unity and Hindutva.
But mediocre people doubled down on regional/linguistic/caste kanging to destroy this national civilizational unity. That’s the tragedy of India.
Ever seen Iyers (Tamil Brahmins) go around telling White people saar we have as many Nobel Prizes and Fields medals as NW Europeans, saar we arent pajeets, why would you dare to call us a pajeet? When in fact, Iyers can easily make such a claim and it is true.
But they don’t do it! They only care about Hindutva/civilizational Indian identity. This is true nobless oblige.
Hindutva/Indic unity and identity might be based on lies and be “copium” but it is a necessary copium to keep everything going. If we all just start caring about our castes, it’s game over.
Trajectory
The problem is, many Punjabi Sikhs not only rejected Indic civilizational identity, they doubled down on hating India/Hindus while feeling comfy that they live in the 1st world now.
- move to 1st world
- realize ur fairer than avg indian
- realize ur religion can be seen as non-Hindu
- realize india is a shithole w no positive tropes
- reject indian identity to get rid of this pajeet baggage
- claim a new identity for yourself that has 0 negative baggage
Abrahamisation of Sikhi worked like this
- brits conquer all of india & punjab
- brits are xtian
- realize xtian is high status in 19-20th c
- hinduism low status loser religion
- realize many brits think sikhi is like xtianity in some ways hence better
- reject all hindu elements (inferior pajeet things)
- convenient new identity that has 0 negatives of hinduism: one god, one book, no caste, comfy!
Preexisting sikh identity
(Nice thread, since you are being candid and following historical trends somewhat respectfully, let me just provide my own response to it.)
It was very difficult to draw strict lines of separation in theological identity in pre-modern primary religions, so what makes up Hinduism theologically is not a clear cut bullet point list. The identity of Hindu has always been subjective but it comes down to what Savarkar has said. Hindus are a people, tied by genetics, culture, language and ancestral connections to 1 homeland. Hindus are those people whose homeland is bhArata.
There is a common philosophical base of Vedanta-Upanishads in India from which all sects source beliefs (historically, from a materialist analysis). Sikhi clearly also sources concepts from this, like literally every Hindu sect, but all the sects have their own interpretation of those concepts or build on them further.
- karma, reincarnation (punarjanma), individual soul (atman), world soul (brahman), panentheism (brahman pervades everything, and everything is sourced in it), concept of dharma, reverence for cows etc
Not religion
What defines a sect from a religion -
now from that sense is completely based on self-identity.
MANY Hindu sects can just make an argument that we are totally different than xyz other sect and hence not the same “religion”.
However, reasonably, people understand they share a common identity
based on many things and don’t feel the need to do so.
Sure, there was a “Sikh identity” but there was also a Gaudiya Vaishnav identity, Shri Vaishnav identity, Pashupatin identity, Lingayat identity etc historically.
There was even a Shrautin vs non Shrautin identity, this is the point.
My point was at a time in history in the 20th century, a portion of Sikhs chose to further a separation from the rest of Hindu civilization for a variety of reasons and started rejecting both habits and scriptural ideas found in Gurbani itself.
khatri Gurus
You talked about the Khatri identity of the Gurus,
let us then be candid and clarify some things.
The Gurus were part of a mileu of the Bhakti movement
in which hypocrisies prevalent in their own cultures
(both their caste, as well as the civilization they came from)
were being rejected,
things like these happen in all civilizations
(the idea that we have degenerated, and live in times where noble ideals are no longer followed).
The reality is the Gurus were very conscious of their caste and lineage, it’s mentioned multiple times in Gurbani, and lot of the metaphors or ideals they draw are from their own caste identity.
They considered themselves Kshatriyas, and from the times of the Khalsa, the Kshatriya lineage of the Sodhis was seen as metaphorically making Kshatriyas out of the entire Khalsa by many Sikhs.
Too many examples of the above, but for example, the Prem Sumarga says all Khalsa Sikhs acquire the noble caste of being a Sodhi Khatri.
Guru Gobind Singh famously says that he is the son of a Kshatriya, not a Brahmin (hence reflecting the ideals he must live up to are one of action).
It’s also well known that the Sikh Gurus never married outside their lineage (caste),
and this isn’t just for the Gurus themselves, all their relatives and children also did the same, despite being Sikhs themselves.
Let us be candid, why do you think this is so?
Does someone who want to reject and destroy their lineage/caste do such a thing?
By the way, not only did they not marry in caste,
they also followed subcaste rules of marriage of the Khatris,
you can see this from the maternal Khatri lineages of the Gurus.
No opposition to caste given moksha
This, however, leaves us with a conundrum.
How can the Gurus reject caste and still do such a thing, right?
This is not a real conundrum once you understand the primary opposition to “caste” in Gurbani
is an opposition to the hierarchical discriminations of varnashrama,
the soteriological role of varna in salvation (moskah)
and the hypocrisies that high castes practice by not living up to the scriptural ideals.
Read this excellent explanation.
The idea was NEVER to abolish the reality of caste as a biological and cultural lineage rooted in clan patrimony.
It was simply to get rid of the significance of varna in attaining moksha.+++(5)+++
In the sense, that all castes obtain moksha by the same thing
(becoming a gurmukh, doing nAma-japa of parameshvara)+++(4)+++
If you want to consider non-Khatri non-Sikh sources,
then you can see what Punjabi Brahmins thought about this practice of the Gurus,
and it becomes clear the reason they didn’t do inter-caste marriages is because of lineal reasons.
Pandit Sharda Ram Phillauri mentions this explicitly.
Kesar Singh Chibber (Sikh Mohyal Brahmin) is very concerned with the genealogy of the Gurus and it’s Kshatriya lineage.
Singh sabhA
Sure, the Singh Sabha movement can be a reaction to Christian missionaries too,
but what kind of a reaction was it and where did it source ideals from?
For example, the Arya Samaj and Brahmo Samaj were also a reaction to Christian missionaries,
but will anyone ever argue they represented traditional Hinduism of the time, or even of today,
or that they had no Western influences in their reactionary beliefs?
The easiest way to see this is,
why is there even the slightest controversy over the authenticity of the Dasam Granth?
Why did a reaction against it arise
and why did some Khalsa Sikhs start feeling uncomfortable about it’s contents?
(Tej Singh being a notorious fundamentalist inspired by Singh Sabha/Gurudwara reform movement.)
Also, why is there a controversy over it’s prakAsha?
It’s obvious that the contents of the text make/made some ill-read Sikhs feel uncomfortable the same way Arya Samajis find Puranic stories uncomfortable. Hard to miss the parallels.