Celebrating the word

ON September 1, all roads in Amritsar will lead to the Golden Temple for the 400th anniversary of the Guru Granth Sahib. Sanatam dharam sabh...

ON September 1, all roads in Amritsar will lead to the Golden Temple for the 400th anniversary of the Guru Granth Sahib.

Sanatam dharam sabhas are erecting gates to welcome the processions that have already started converging. Shivratri and Ram Naumi committees are holding langars. Devotees from Varanasi have begun filing in and the Dalai Lama has promised to join the celebrations.

The Guru Granth Sahib contains hymns and writings of not just Sikh Gurus, but Hindu and Muslim saints as well. The hymns of Jaidev from Bengal, Kabir, Ravidas, Ramanand from UP, Sheikh Farid from Punjab, Namdev, Tarlochan and Parmanand from Maharasthra and Dhanna from Rajasthan are all found in the Guru Granth Sahib.

8216;8216;The Guru Granth Sahib has commandments both for the Brahman and the Qazi and it does not say that the Sikh way of the life is the only path to God,8217;8217; says Bhai Ashok Singh Bagrian, who belongs to the Bagrian family which was closely associated with the anointment of Sikh Gurus.

What is also rare is that the original handwritten book is still available. 8216;8216;Sikhs are singularly lucky that the original text has survived,8217;8217; says Jasbir Singh Ahluwalia, president of the Guru Gobind Singh Foundation. While in other religions, texts were transmitted through an oral tradition and were scribed much later, in the case of Guru Granth Sahib, the fifth Sikh pontificate, Guru Arjun Dev himself dictated it to Bhai Gurdas who wrote it down.

However, the family of the sixth Guru, Hargobind, later took possession of the original book and took it out of the Temple. It8217;s still with this family 8212;the Sodhis at Kartarpur8212;who have since been ostracised from the community. Access to the original text is restricted. So far, very few Sikh scholars have been allowed to study it8212;one of them obtained a court order to do so. 8216;8216;It is high time that the original text of the Guru Granth Sahib is handed back to the Sikh community,8217;8217; says Ahluwalia.

The Guru Granth Sahib has writings spanning over five centuries. The writings of Sheikh Farid are from 12th and 13th century, while the compositions of ninth Sikh Guru date to the 17th century.

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The Sikhs are also called the people of Ahl-I-Kitab or 8216;8216;people of the sacred book8217;8217;. Their guru is a holy book and the religion does not recognise any living Guru.

Though the Granth Sahib was written in 1604, it was granted the status of a Guru only in 1708 when the last Guru8212;Gobind Singh8212;passed on guruship to it.