INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

With the new registration method the Nanak panthis were pigeonholed as a
“Vaishnava sect of Hindus” with 352 members in total in Varanasi. 120 In other words,
when followers of the Udasins and Nirmalas were asked to state their religious affiliation
they prefer to categorize themselves as Hindus and not as Sikhs. The reasons
behind this categorization may have been a combination of colonial politics, the
growing self-awareness among different religious communities, and intellectual and
political influences of the predominantly Hindu context.
Benares Male Female Benares Male Female
Division percent percent city percent percent
Census 1911 571 72% 28% 350 81 % 19%
Census 1921 365 43 % 57% 46 50 % 50%
Census 1931 424 65% 35% 154 69% 31%
Figure 1.
In 1893, for instance, intellectual Hindus in Varanasi founded the association
Nagri Pracharini Sabha with the aim to develop Hindi literature and language. The
driving force of the association was Baba Shyam Sundar Das (1875 ‒ 1937), the first
professor in Hindi at Benares Hindu University, who started the magazine Manoranjan
Pustakmala to illustrate Indian history and religion. Between 1914 and 1922 the
magazine published four articles on different events in the Sikh history. As Banerjee
(1992) suggests, the articles reflect critical Hindu reactions to political endeavours to
mark out a separate Sikh identity in the Punjab, either by presenting Sikhism as a
religion that belonged to the larger Hindu society and emerged for protection and
restoration of Hinduism, or by explicitly warning against separatist views of Sikh
leaders. 121 It remains unclear if these articles represented widespread reactions within
the local Hindu society or if the authors just wrote from a dominant Hindu paradigm
of historiography. It is a similarly cloudy matter if the late nineteenth century Sikh
reform movement Singh Sabha and the Gurdwara Reform Movement in the 1920s
exerted any direct influence on Nanak followers and the Sikhs in Varanasi. The fact
that British records on Varanasi from the beginning of twentieth century remain silent
on these matters may indicate that Sikh residents were not only small in numbers
but rather unmoved by political developments in the Punjab. In consideration of the
colonizers vigilance for agitations and proselytizing activities at other places within
the provinces of Agra and Oudh, 122 one could expect that at least a note on local po-
120
Census of India 1911, Vol. XV, 1912: 156 ‒ 157.
121
Banerjee 1992: 150 ‒ 155.
122
In Census of India 1931, for instance, Commissioner Turner noted that the Sikhs had carried
out a massive campaign and census propaganda among Jats in the western parts of the province
to induce them to return to Sikhism. The movement was organized from Delhi and local Sikhs in
western districts broadcasted printed handbills, exhorting Jats, especially Pachlada Jats, to re-
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008