INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

commemoration day of Guru Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom in 1675 devotees offer
money and light candles and incense on this place. Sometimes people sit in front of
tapasthan for hours, and through their sitting postures, recitations of gurbani, and
remembrance of God, embody the ideal of concentrated meditation associated with
the human Guru. When people have special wishes they make individual promises to
go daily to tapasthan for forty days in a row to perform various worship acts ‒ light
candles, pray, and drink the nectar water of river Ganga that Guru Tegh Bahadur
conjured ‒ with expectations that God will reciprocate them in favorable ways. Some
families in Varanasi can “testify” that they have been blessed with the birth of a son
after regular visits and prayers at the place. Ritualized activities around this space
draw their meaning and authority from their alleged connection with the human
Guru. The space was indicated by the Guru and is believed to metonymically preserve
and radiate an objective power of his deeds through which people may benefit
both spiritually and materially.
On all these ritual occasions spatial codifications of social behavior and order
exist in the presence of the Guru’s seat. The tapasthan is held to be pure space which
only Amritdhari Sikhs are allowed to enter. The laity is therefore spatially separated
from the chamber by two doors with large window panels, through which they can
look into the room. To fortify the historical identification of this place, a large and
garlanded picture portraying Guru Tegh Bahadur seated in a meditating posture has
been placed in the chamber behind the four-poster bed for scriptures. The picture is
usually illuminated with spotlights to catch the attention of visitors. The iconographic
representations, along with the ritual behaviors, create an imaginary presence of the
historical Guru ‒ a presence that is further reinforced by the Guru’s relics.
On the left side of the entrance to tapasthan, Guru Tegh Bahadur’s kurta in
Dhaka muslin, touched by the Guru’s body and handed over to the congregation
before his departure from Varanasi, is kept in a showcase. On the other side of the
doorway, fourteen hukam-namas ‒ historical letters from Guru Tegh Bahadur, Guru
Gobind Singh and his wife Mata Sahib to the Sikh congregation in Varanasi and Mirzapur
‒ are displayed. 229 Of the twenty-two letters written by Guru Tegh Bahadur’s
own hand in cursive style, eight are preserved at Varanasi and have provided the
229
During my fieldwork in 2000 ‒ 2001 seventeen photocopies of hukam-namas (including copies
of the main text and marginal notes) were displayed in showcases, while the original letters
were kept in a cupboard at the gurdwara office in Nichibagh gurdwara. When I returned in 2005
the photocopies had been replaced by the fourteen original hukam-namas. The hukam-namas are
generally divided into two categories: those written by Guru’s hands and treated as genuine
“autographs” of the Gurus, and those recorded by scribes with only marginal notes of the Guru.
The autographs normally open with names of the devotees to which the letter is addressed,
followed by behests and blessings of the Guru. When letters are written by scribes Guru’s own
words are found in the left hand top corner of the letter, whereas the scribe added dates and
gave the letter a final touch.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008