‘Truth first’ is the distinctively GurSikh priority—and not as quietistic velleity, but in ‘all things’ and ‘at any price’. Blood of the martyrs, doctrinal clarity, and dastār as public testament converge to sharpen the GurSikh’s uncompromising resolve to live in joyful sacrifice to the originary truth—continuous across ages—that is today true, and that Gurū Nanak proclaims shall eternally be true. Continuity is then a veridical criterion, for whatever contradicts whatever was, is, and shall be true cannot but be false. This pan-domain prioritization of living truthfully as foremost imperative—what we may term GurSikhī’s ‘alethic maximalism’—naturally generates both those aspects of GurSikhī that are singular as well as those that resonate across traditions.
Especially if we are to be maximalists, it is essential to ascertain precisely what is to be maximized: what is the GurSikh understanding of truth? Not merely a property of some propositions nor mere expressive candor regarding what one feels to be the case, saču (ਸਚੁ) is simultaneously epistemic, ethical, and ontological. Reality is then not agnostic toward our moment-to-moment choices, which entrench soul-fragmenting delusion to the degree that they do not enact dharam (righteousness)—action in accordance with divine hukam (order). Conversely, since the originary source and destination of all existence is the One, whatever exists is true to the degree that it perfects our apprehension of this unity within and across all things. Through truth, we thus come to act truthfully, and thereby merge into truth itself.
Analysis may serve to illuminate more fully how GurSikhī’s alethic maximalism—which in turn grounds and orders GurSikh volition—is itself a corollary of the divine’s oneness. Readers familiar with Gurū Nanak’s Japu jī Sāhib, with which Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib begins—or even with the Mūl Mantar, with which Japu jī Sāhib begins—will have immediately recognized the conceptual nexus at the heart of our discussion: it is through the Gurū’s grace that we realize the personal unity of divine attributes whereby our souls find peace in the One. By individually willing that we walk in the divine will, we transcend the canonical five robbers whose vicious ascendancy thwarts personal flourishing and the good of all. Alethic maximization therefore conduces to sarbat dā bhalā—universal flourishing.
GurSikhī’s distinctively non-exclusivist non-relativism—its principled, non-hegemonic universalism—is crucially downstream of its alethic maximalism, rather than the civilizational dead ends of irenic pluralism or abstract egalitarianism. Not all peace is worth dying for, nor can everything be equalized, save as rubble. It is precisely because GurSikhī does not idolatrously enshrine the frequently disingenuous cant of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ above truth that political visions animated by GurSikh principles—as in Māhārājā Ranjit Singh’s empire (1799-1849)—safeguard the genuine civic virtue of justice across difference. Indeed, principled difference becomes possible where the robust pursuit of truth—and still more importantly, of truthfulness—unites the apparently heterogeneous.
GurSikhī rejects invidious discrimination—as on the basis of caste, creed, and sex—not merely as affronts to equality, but as a transgression against reality, or truth in its ontological aspect. Bhagat Kabir’s justly celebrated padā in Rāga Prabhātī ‘Avali Alaha Nūru Upāiā’ (SGGS: 1349) explicitly discerns the moral implication of the metaphysical: as all creation arose from the One radiance—the One truth pervading all things—who may be deemed good—who bad:
Avali Alaha Nūru Upāiā Kudarati Ke Sabha Baṅde ||
Eka Nūra Te Sabhu Jagu Upajiā Kauna Bhale Ko Maṅde ||1||
Khaliku Khalaka Khalaka Mahi Khaliku Pūri Rahio Sraba Ṭhāṅī ||1||Rahāu||
Māṭī Eka Aneka Bhāṅti Kari Sājī Sajanahārai ||
Nā Kachu Poča Māṭī Ke Bhāṅḍe Nā Kachu Poča Kuṅbhārai ||2||
Sabha Mahi Sačā Eko Sōī Tisa Kā Kīā Sabhu Kachu Hoī ||
Hukamu Pachānai Su Eko Jānai Baṅdā Kahīai Soī ||3||
Alahu Alakhu Na Jāī Lakhiā Guri Guṛu Dīnā Mīṭhā ||
Kahi Kabīra Merī Saṅkā Nāsī Saraba Niraṅjanu Ḍīṭhā ||4||3|| (SGGS: 1349).
On a frankly implausible moral relativist interpretation (that I have nonetheless heard propounded), the question ‘Kauna Bhale Ko Maṅde’ of the first stanza is taken to be rhetorical; because all are made of the same light, none are (morally) better or worse. More plausibly—drawing on the theme as treated across the padā—a more onto-ethical interpretation reads the question (still rhetorically), as ‘who is (intrinsically) good— who bad’ implying an irreducible metaphysical equality across persons. This is the preferred takeaway at pacific interfaith dinners—affirming the equal dignity of persons as a concomitant of creation—conveniently demanding nothing further from us dinner-goers!
Yet Bhagat Kabir is, of course, no less an alethic gadfly than Socrates or Gurū Nanak, which necessitates a deeper, less complacent exegetical attendance. The sančārī, here the third couplet, begins with the proposition ‘in all is the true One itself, of which everything created is its creation’. Yet it concludes by furnishing an answer (even echoing the noun ‘Baṅde’, ‘Baṅdā’) to what, in our egalitarian complacency, may have seemed rhetorical: ‘that one who recognizes hukam knows the One; that one is said to be (truly) human’. Beyond the irreducible human dignity of being created equal, we are dared to apprehend the divine order whereby one may come to live truthfully, as One.
The very inclusion of Bhagat Kabir’s Bāṇī in Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib—as with that of the other Bhagats, Pīrs, Bhaṭs, and GurSikhs—itself reflects the inner logic of alethic maximalism. There is nothing coalitional in the holy Granth’s composition, no whiff of contributors having been selected—heaven forfend—to represent ossified identity formations. Indeed, Srī Gurū Granth Sāhib is a marvelous treasury of revelatory songs first sung by those who truly attained union in the One as expression of this union, and whose true singing may eternally guide whoever would experience this wondrous oneness. Honoring truth, multiplicity is naturally celebrated, yet honoring multiplicity for its own sake, there is no guarantee of ever converging upon truth.
In its alethic maximalism, GurSikh tradition then affirms truth as universal, without erecting a (self-defeatingly) exclusive claim to salvific gatekeeping. Gurū Nanak’s four great journeys, his udāsis—with his profound dialogues across traditions and keen observations of human nature—furnish sufficient empirical testimony for establishing two key propositions. First, it is the rarest of individuals who attains a truthful state of being perfectly attuned to the divine will. Second, the few who have attained this blessed state of union have found the One across a variety of languages, creeds, and practices. As veteran readers of this journal may recall, I have previously submitted that, “Gurū Nanak’s ability to celebrate and illuminate the One’s creative fecundity then achieves that rarest of universalisms, which never succumbs to exclusivism’s mistaking of the sufficient for the necessary.”
By way of conclusion, it may be sufficient to intimate that Gurū Nanak’s formal transmission of the institution of Gurūship, Gurū Arjan’s compilation of the Ādi Granth and martyrdom, Gurū Hargobind’s remarkable synthesis of Mīrī and Pīrī, and Gurū Gobind Singh’s soulcraft as statesmanship on Vaisakhi 1699 constitute alethically maximalist watershed interventions in the story of humanity, because safeguarding the flame of perfect illumination is no less vital an enterprise for the true alethic maximalist, who joyfully affirms that the truth is no less true for having been known—and successfully transmitted—before. Indeed, alethic continuities across eternity bear the seal of prophecy and mark of providence.
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Nihal Singh