Magazine
All aboard the Guru Express!
The Guru Granth Sahib is carried shoulder high on a palanquin from the railway station to the Makindu Gurdwara. Photo/RUPI MANGAT
Posted Monday, February 22 2010 at 00:00
The five-day journey of the Granth Sahib — from Kericho to Kisumu by road, and from Kisumu by special train stopping at Nakuru and Nairobi for prayers for Kenya’s peace, prosperity and unity — has been dubbed the “Sacred Travel for Peace, Prosperity and Unity.”
The new temple is built with materials retrieved from an earlier temple constructed in 1926. The front two windows are from that time.
To understand the reverence given to the Granth Sahib, one has to go back into Sikh history.
It starts with Guru Nanak Devji’s birth in 1469 in the village of Talwandi, now in west Pakistan to Hindu parents.
Pious from childhood, he was an excellent student — by the time he was 10 years old he had mastered all that the teachers had to teach him, including the Persian language.
Soon after, his father arranged for a sacred thread ceremony, in which the sacred thread that would identify him as a Brahmin — Hinduism’s highest, priestly caste — would be put around the young boy’s neck by a holy man.
Nanak asked of the holy man, “Why must l wear the thread? Will it make me good and kind?” To which the holy man replied, “I am not sure.”
Clear vision
Nanak refused to wear the thread and instead asked the priest to give him the sacred thread “of mercy and contentment.”
This, though he was still a child, was the beginning of Nanak’s refusal to follow dogmatic rites and superstitions, emphasising the one, universal nature of God.
Travelling with his faithful companion, Mardana the Mussulman (literally, the “manly Muslim”) as far as Mecca and beyond, Nanak’s followers grew, much to the chagrin of the Mughal rulers of India, who at one point had him imprisoned.
Undeterred, Nanak continued with his teaching and finally settled down to a farmer’s life in Kartarpur, where he established a community kitchen or “langar” where all were welcome to dine.
It is a hallmark of the Sikh faith that any person coming to a Sikh Gurdwara is welcome to share a simple meal.
Nine gurus followed Guru Nanak, and Sikh history runs parallel to Mughal rule in India.
Some Mughal emperors respected the Sikh gurus but others, such as the Aurangzeb, were intolerant and persecuted the Sikhs.
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