INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

ceremony and afterwards continued to Varanasi to search for jobs. 152 Another man
from the same caste decided to become a Sikh after having listened to Baba Shiv
Ram’s lecture on equality: “Baba ji said, ‘accept this religion, in this religion you will
get a lot of convenience. You will get honor (izzat)’. Immediately he started to save his
hair. Baba Shiv Ram taught him the technique of tying a turban and exchanged his
caste name with “Singh”.
Social discrimination is not only an impetus for conversion in the rhetoric of a
Sikh propagandist but real experiences which motivate people to leave their villages
and past lives behind. A middle-aged man from the carpenter caste (tarkhan) said he
could easily get the 1500 rupees he earned monthly on the gurdwara employment in
the Hindu society, but he would never get respect. In his home district the village of
the Brahmins and the village of carpenters were clearly separated. Whenever family
members went to the other village to ask for work the Brahmins would let them sit
outside the house and wait three to four hours before they replied yes or no. After a
fight with the Brahmins he took refugee in the gurdwaras in Varanasi and decided to
stay. When I asked him what would happen if he went back to the village now as a
Sikh, he answered:
I would not go to them. Even if they would invite me I would not go.
We cannot call them by name. If we would do that they would kill us.
Here I am sitting with the Bhai Sahib ji, but in the village it would not
be like this. Now they call me Sardar ji. That is all I want. I got that
from here. I am not greedy for money. I am just greedy for human respect.
For this man, like many others, conversion to Sikhism was not simply a strategy to
move upwards the social caste hierarchy but a way to achieve human dignity and
respect that he strongly felt he had been deprived from. Another interlocutor who did
return to his native village confirmed that the new Sikh identity did not entail higher
social status in the eyes of the Brahmins, but instead they reported him to the police
for wearing a dagger in a public place.
Although the motives for adherence to the Sikh religion varies and are always
individual, for low caste Hindus social factors are the driving force behind religious
conversion, which represents incorporation into a new social community, and for
many a new social identity and life. One man simply said he entered the Sikh fold for
social reasons, but the Sikh Gurus and their teaching he got to know about afterwards,
from discourses in the gurdwara. Propagandist like Baba Shiv Ram stresses
the importance of adopting a Khalsa identity because it allows for a formal break
with previous caste taboos and external identity markers that are replaced with Sikh
symbols and names.
152
One informant claimed that more than a hundred Hindus from different villages in U.P. took
amrit on that occasion in Allahabad.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008