INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

more inclined towards ritual worship. These value-laden schemes of stereotypes are
intended to create differentiation and borders between groups within the Sikh community
and strengthen images of the self. But it should also be noted that the various
zat do observe different caste-related customs. Some ceremonies observed by Khatri
Sikhs will not be found in the Jat society and vice versa. The following descriptions
will reflect collective worship and family practices among a few Sikh informants of
Khatri castes and others who were strongly influenced by the Khatri dominance at
Varanasi. A survey among other social groups would most probably have generated
slightly different information.
SIKHISM AS A SOCIAL PROJECT
Another significant group of the local community in Varanasi is Hindus who have
converted to the Sikh religion. Some of my informants said their families were “decorated”
as Sikhs (sikh saje) one or two generations back and told about massconversions
of Hindus, in history and modern times, when hundreds of villagers had
gone through the Sikh initiation ceremony (Khande di pahul) and adopted a Khalsa
identity. Most of the converts I spoke with originated from rural areas and belonged
to lower castes. Conversion to Sikhism was motivated by experiences of social discrimination
in the Hindu society.
Religious conversion to Sikhism has been an understudied subject, probably
because of the prevailing perception among scholars and the Sikhs themselves that
conversion is not a feature of the tradition. One exception is the historical analysis of
Sikh attitudes towards conversion by Fenech (2003), which focuses on the public
stance (or lack of stance) to conversion taken up by the Sikh reform movement Singh
Sabha in the nineteenth century. 147 As Fenech suggests, the Singh Sabha reformers
promoted a Khalsa identity that separated the Sikhs from the Hindu and Muslim
“other”, however they did not take up a clear official policy regarding conversion to
Sikhism. One of the several reasons for this lack of a concise formulation Fenech finds
in the motives behind the establishment of Singh Sabha: the reform movement
emerged to restore Sikhism from within and strengthen the loyalty to Khalsa ideals
among the Sikhs, rather than converting non-Sikhs to the religion. Reform and missionary
activities carried out by the Singh Sabha, as well as contemporary Sikh institutions,
such as the Dharam Pracharak Committee of the SGPC and the Sikh Missionary
Colleges, were not intended to proselytize, but to edify and propagate a Khalsa identity
and ideals within the Sikh community. 148 Fenech correctly writes that the English
147
See also Dusenbery’s (1990) comparative analysis of attitudes towards conversion among
Punjabi Sikhs and American Sikhs.
148
Fenech 2003: 151 ‒ 154. A visiting propagandist who organized the Khande di pahul at Mogul
Sarai maintained that personal information of all who undergo the ceremony, including their
name, address, age and previous religious belonging, will be registered and sent to the Dharam
Pracharak Committee in Amritsar. He said the information will be used for statistics of Khalsa
members, converts, and the spread of the Sikh religion.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008