1469–1539

Guru Nanak and the Birth of the Sikh Path

Guru Nanak, born in a Punjabi village in 1469, preaches devotion to one formless God, rejects caste and ritual, and founds a community at Kartarpur.

Nanak — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) — Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford University Press (2016)
The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

Traditional account faithidentityculture

A boy from Talwandi

Nanak was born in 1469 in Talwandi, a village west of Lahore now called Nankana Sahib, in Pakistan. His father was a village accountant from the Khatri caste, and the family was Hindu, living in a Punjab ruled by Muslim Lodi sultans.

Nanak — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)

Almost everything we know of his life comes from the janam-sakhis, “life stories” written down in the generations after his death. Historians such as W. H. McLeod treat them as devotional literature rather than biography, and only a handful of facts can be checked independently. But for Sikhs these stories are how Guru Nanak is known and loved, and they are told to every Sikh child.

Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

In the stories, young Nanak is a thoughtful, unworldly boy who refuses the sacred thread of the high castes because it will wear out, and who spends the money his father gave him for a “true bargain” on feeding hungry holy men. That act, sacha sauda, is remembered as the first langar.

Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) — Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford University Press (2016)
Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)

“There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim”

As a young man Nanak worked as a storekeeper in Sultanpur Lodi, where his Muslim friend and companion, the musician Mardana, played the rebab. Tradition says that one morning, around the age of thirty, Nanak went to bathe in the river and disappeared for three days. When he returned, his first words were, in the commonly told version, “There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.” Sikhs understand this as his call: that God is beyond the labels people fight over, and what matters is how one lives.

Nanak — Encyclopaedia Britannica
Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) — Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford University Press (2016)
Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)

He then travelled for many years, the janam-sakhis say as far as Assam, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Mecca and Baghdad, singing hymns with Mardana. One famous story tells that he fell asleep in Mecca with his feet towards the Kaaba; when an angry attendant dragged his feet away, the Kaaba seemed to move with them, showing that God is in every direction.

Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) — Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford University Press (2016)

What he taught

Nanak’s hymns, of which 974 are in the Guru Granth Sahib, centre on one God, Ik Oankar, who is formless, without fear or enmity, beyond birth and death, and known through the Guru’s grace.

Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed — Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Bloomsbury (2013)

Liberation comes not from pilgrimage, fasting, renunciation or priestly ritual but from nam simran, inwardly remembering the divine Name, and from overcoming haumai, the self-centred ego. He sharply criticised caste pride and hollow religion, Hindu and Muslim alike, and taught that a householder with a family and a job could reach God as well as any ascetic.

Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)
The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed — Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Bloomsbury (2013)

Kartarpur

In his last years, perhaps from the 1520s, Nanak settled at Kartarpur on the Ravi river and farmed. A community gathered round him: they worked the land, sang hymns morning and evening, and ate together regardless of caste. Historians see this settlement as the true seed of the Sikh community, the Panth.

The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)
Sikhism — W. H. McLeod, Penguin (1997)

Before he died in 1539, he passed over his own sons and named a devoted disciple, Lehna, as his successor, renaming him Angad, “a part of my own body”. The Guruship was a spiritual office, not an inheritance, and nine more Gurus would follow.

Nanak — Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Sikhs of the Punjab (The New Cambridge History of India, revised edition) — J. S. Grewal, Cambridge University Press (1998)

Sikhs tell that when he died, Hindus wanted to cremate him and Muslims to bury him; when the sheet over his body was lifted, only flowers were found, and each side took half. Today Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur stands in Pakistan, a few kilometres from the Indian border, and the visa-free Kartarpur Corridor opened in November 2019 for the 550th anniversary of his birth.

Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (2nd edition) — Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford University Press (2016)
The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies — Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds.), Oxford University Press (2014)

Why it matters today

Sikhism

Everything Sikh begins with Guru Nanak. His birthday, Gurpurab, is celebrated with processions and langar worldwide; his hymns open the scripture and the daily prayers; and the pattern of life he set at Kartarpur, honest work, remembering God, and sharing with others, is still how Sikhs sum up their faith. The Kartarpur Corridor, opened in 2019, lets Indian Sikhs visit his resting place in Pakistan without a visa.