Review: Guru Nanak

Guru Nanak (Spiritual Masters Series)

In his definitive scripture Japji, Guru Nanak establishes the vital link between ethics and the human spirit, paving the way for the ascent of man to rise up to divinity. During his amazing and perilous travels across south and west Asia, he used the love of God as his armour-plate, ever willing to engage in dialogue with the holy and powerful personages: with Babur in 1521 at Eminabad, Siddha Yogis of Gorakhnath school in high Himalayas, the Raja of Sri Lanka, and the high priests in Puri as well as in far-off Mecca and fabled Baghdad.

This attractive and compact book comes in an evocative new series on Spiritual Masters. Written by an eminent educator and teacher, the narrative sensibly guides the reader through the tumultuous times and milieu that witnessed the advent of Guru Nanak, his unconventional childhood and mystical encounters with the ruling Lodhi Nawab, even as he won the admiration of Rai Bular, the village chief, as a strong willed but magnetic young man.

In modern times, the honorific "Guru" has been so outrageously devalued by western writers that it is just as well the author discards the title, as was done in another similar book by Navtej Singh Sarna in The Book of Nanak (Sikh Review Aug. 2004). The conversational style and lucid diction used by the author in narrating many of the fascinating saakhis (lit. eye-witness account) lend the book a special flavour that should attract the new generation. But then, the younger generation hardly reads books!

The stories reveal Guru Nanak as the messenger of God, a fascinating teacher and prophet, in tune with divine truth, willing to build bridges with all faiths, dismissive of shibboleths and superstition. Harish Dhillon's word-pictures and turn-of-phrase being to life many a historic figure: Rai Bular who was the Guru's earliest devotee, Bhai Mardana, the gifted musician, and even the teeming masses who suffered privation and persecution. High or low, those who came in contact with the glorious Guru Nanak underwent a shining transmutation.

Over the last five decades of The Sikh Review, we have been privileged to see a steady stream of books on the life and times of Guru Nanak. We recall Sir Jogindra Singh's chaste biography of Guru Nanak, stories of Guru Nanak by Raja Sir Daljit Singh, Baba P.L. Bedi's fascinating book and, of course, "Hymns of Guru Nanak" by the evergreen Khushwant Singh, who had also led the Sikh scholars' team to bring out UNESCO's Sacred Writings of the Sikhs. What distinguishes the Indus Source publishers' present offer is Harish Dhillon's informal, down-to-earth style wherein the times of Guru Nanak come alive in vivid word-pictures.