INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

etold in Varanasi, Guru Nanak visited the village of Hasan Abdal in present Pakistan
with his companion Mardana. When Mardana was feeling thirsty Guru Nanak
advised him to bring water from a fakir who kept a spring on a mountain. Upon
being informed that Nanak was an incarnation of God in kaliyug, the fakir became
jealous and refused Mardana water, saying that a divine incarnation should be able to
conjure his own spring. To challenge the fakir Guru Nanak opened a new spring,
which eventually drained all water from the fakir’s spring. In anger the fakir threw
down a large rock which Guru Nanak stopped by raising one hand.
In the two paintings the local artist has kept recognizable appearances and
attributes of the Sikh Gurus as in standardized bazaar posters, but reversed the their
typical postures and acts: Guru Nanak is attentively present and acts in the world,
while Guru Gobind Singh is mediating in tranquility. The painter has exploited his
artistic freedom to combine distinctive features of Guru Gobind Singh with popular
images of a Hindu character who also practices austerities in the Himalayas: Lord
Shiva. On a leopard skin floating on the celestial lake, the disarmed Gobind Singh sits
in the yoga posture with his eyes closed. All attributes of weapons are present but
laid down and spread around him. He wears a saffron-colored turban with a steel
discus on top and his right hand holds a rosary. Similar to popular pictures of the
contemplating Shiva, his body is covered with the skin of a leopard.
The scenes of the two anecdotes which have posed as models for the paintings ‒
Hemkunt Sahib and Panja Sahib ‒ are two cherished pilgrimage sites in the Sikh community
today. 242 To Sikhs who have visited these sites the paintings can function as
schematic mementos that trigger memory of the related stories, personal experiences
of past pilgrimages, and conduce mental re-visits. 243 The paintings may also work as
didactic means to remember stories of the Gurus’ wonders and evoke imaginative
pilgrimages to places that people have heard of but never been able to visit. These
narrative pictures are yet dependent on verbal data to realize the meanings they may
obtain. Discourses and action events outside the paintings provide the context in
which the visual representations are embedded and given meanings. During festival
days the paintings are taken out in city processions and displayed to spectators not
necessarily familiar with the narrative tradition. On these occasions the paintings
metonymically demonstrate publicly acknowledged Sikh virtues and signs. The interaction
between spectators and the body of Sikhs displaying paintings creates a
242
It is noteworthy that almost a half of my informants in the semi-structured interviews asserted
they had been on pilgrimage to Hemkunt Sahib, while Panja Sahib was a more difficult
destination because of its location in the town Hasan Abdal in Pakistan.
243
In modern gurdwaras outside India, it is quite common to decorate the walls behind the
scriptural throne with large pictures or paintings of Harimandir Sahib in Amritsar. These pictures
are often painted in more exaggerated colours, sometimes with illuminations, and are
intentionally placed at locations where they will meet the eyes of the congregation. Apart for
purely decorative purposes the pictures may evoke memories and imaginaries of Harimandir
Sahib, even imaginary revisits, to all who have been on pilgrimage to Amritsar.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008