Introductory - Global Sikh Studies

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priestly caste. There was no scope, much less a fertile soil, for concerted
action on the basis of class interests, because classes were bedevilled
by caste considerations at every step. Had it not been so, Indian history
might have taken quite a different turn. In many cases, the same class
consisted of different castes, each one of which was concerned more
with the preservation of its own exclusiveness rather than with the
furtherance of the common class interests. 15 There was no pronounced
regional nationalism in the Punjab either, which could inspire the people
to united action. There is hardly any noteworthy instance in history
when the people of the Punjab made common cause against a foreign
enemy in the manner the people of Maharashtra under Shivaji did. In
these circumstances, the innate yearning of the human spirit for equality
and liberty could not find any ready expression on its own. The
Enlightenment and the Reformation had prepared the Europeans for
that liberation of the human spirit of which the French Revolution
was only a more prominent symptom. Compared to the reversal of the
orthodox ideology which the Radical Bhatas advocated, Luther’’
innovations in the interpretation of the Christian doctrine are not so
radical. But, Protestantism touched off a wave of liberalism and
generated a momentum which overflowed the bounds of religion and
influenced freed of ideas and action in social and political spheres. In
India, one has only to read the latest official reports on Scheduled
Castes to realize the extent of the hold which caste still exercises
despite the influence of the medieval Bhakti movement, Islam and
the Western culture. There could be only one explanation for this rigid
resistance to the ideas of human equality in India. In Europe, the
human spirit was not cowed down to the same extent as it was in
India. There people suffered by and large, from class domination, the
various manifestations of feudalism and absolute monarchism. In India,
the masses were, in addition, enslaved psychologically by the caste
ideology and physically by the inexorable mechanism of the caste
society.
The Sikh movement was faced with an uphill task. It had
first to wean away people from the purely individualistic approach
to religion and yoke them for the achievement of social and political
goals. It had also to overcome the inhibitions which the wrong