INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

the life and deeds of Guru Nanak. Today the history has become scriptualized in a
booklet titled “Some Historical Recollections of Varanasi” in the Punjabi version, and
“The Historical Gurdwaras of Varanasi” in Hindi with an English translation appendixed.
Neither the editor nor publication year is mentioned in the small history book,
but to all appearances the managing committee of the two gurdwaras printed it in the
1990s. At request of the pilgrim, he or she will be offered a free copy of the booklet as
a religious souvenir from the holy city of Kashi. If for some reason the local history
cannot be orally rendered to pilgrims, abbreviated versions of the stories have been
painted in Gurmukhi script on framed boards attached to the wall of the main entrances
of two gurdwaras ‒ in Gurubagh the wall inscription tells about Guru
Nanak’s visit in 1506 and in Nichibagh about Guru Tegh Bahadur’s stay in Varanasi
in 1666. Just like the granthi, other Sikhs had committed the stories to memory, at least
a few anecdotes or the essential outline, which they communicate to children, visitors
and whenever the need to report history occurs. Although there are no satisfactory
historical sources to testify exactly what happened during the Gurus’ visits in Varanasi,
the events make a part of the collective memory of a meaningful past that affirms
the importance of religious places and a community in the present.
When I began my first fieldwork in Varanasi in 1999 my objective was to combine
the anthropological approach with a search for historical documents to reconstruct
the historical context of the Sikh community in Varanasi. Today it appears
almost commonsensical for students in anthropology to contextualize cultural analyses
of the religious community, social group, or institution of study within a historical
framework. In order to provide holistic understanding of the local Sikh community
and institutions, I intended to do the same. If the initial goal would turn out to be
impractical, my intent was to find at least some pieces of source material to sketch the
local history, or at the very least shed some light on the last decades. The ambition
brought me to a number of libraries and archives in Varanasi district, which offered
valuable experiences of archival work, even if the search for textual sources proved
less fruitful. Varanasi is a city associated with a Hindu population and not the Sikhs.
Apart from access to Census reports and a few district Gazetteers at the library at
Benares Hindu University, the Regional Archive in Sigra, and assessments lists of tax
on buildings at Maha Palika (Municipal Corporation), textual material on the Sikhs
were few or inaccessible. 85 As the paucity of historical accounts slowly begun to cloud
my initial goals I had started to collect oral accounts on the local history from a selected
number of community members. Their stories made me question my own
preconceived notions of history (as some kind of systematic evaluation and analysis
of source material to construct a description of events and institutions) when I ventured
into the field and drew my attention closer to basic anthropological queries
related to indigenous conceptions of history and historiography: which history is
85
Nita Kumar (1992) has revealingly described the challenges of gaining access to local archives
in Varanasi.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008