Academic response by Dr. Harpreet Singh (Harvard) to the unacademic work of the controversial writers (who were not academic or critical), like WH Hew McLeod, Harjot Oberoi, and others, in the Oxford Handbook on Religion for Sikh and Sikhi based writing. (Sikhism)
Dr. Trilochan Singh was an academic that authored many books. Some of his works have been, The Turban and the Sword, Historical Sikh shrines in Delhi, and Life of Guru Hari Krishan: a biography and history, to name a few. In his work Ernest Trumpp and W.H. McLeod as scholars of Sikh history religion and culture, he exposes WH McLeod and his unacademic work.
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
O thou that buttest the high mountain, seeking to dislodge
it with thy horns, take pity, not on the mountain but on thy
head
Sheikh Ahmed Al-Aawi:
Al-Balagh
There is a Buddhist legend narrated by Rumi in one of his
famous stories which aptly describes the attitude of some
arrogant intellectuals towards Sikhism. Sikhism is for them is
an elephant, which a group of blind men touch, and each
describes it according to the part of the body his hands had
touched; to one the elephant “appeared like a throne, to another
like a fan or like a pillar. But none was able to imagine what the
whole animal was like.
From Dr Ernest Trumpp, a fanatic Christian missionary
of nineteenth-century to Dr William Hewat McLeod, a leading
light of Batala-Berkley Christian Missionary group of the
twentieth-century critics of Sikhism, and from Swami Dayanand
leader of Anti-Sikh Arya-Samaj Hindu-cult to a host of
turbanned and bearded communists, atheists, agnostics,
opportunists, bearing the name “Singh”, there have been a
number of spiritually blind, intellectually corrupt, highly conceited
writers and scholars who have described Sikhs and Sikh ism
in a manner, no ordinary person with even a rudimentary
intellectual honesty and historical insight can ever comprehend
or describe.
Sikhism offers many points of attraction, many subline
doctrines of universal interest, many moral and spiritual
values for which Sikhs and their faith are admired all over
the world. The aesthetic beauty, the poetry and music
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which forms the backbone of Sikh Scriptures, and the mystical
dimensions of the profound spiritual experiences of Sikh
Prophets, recorded in their own authentic and canonized sacred
works, is a vast field of study for all seekers of Truth and honest
exponents of Sikh religion. Many eminent scholars, Christians.
Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus have given us profound insights
into this faith. Others who know the religion through those who
love it and practice it have not failed to appreciate their love
for religious and cultural bonds with sister faiths, their passion
for freedom and liberty, their single-minded devotion to dignity
of labour, and their boundless courage to suffer and die for
their faith and freedom, which has inspired them to produce
great saints. Scholars freedom fighters, and determined
reformers.
For some Christian theologians like Professor Mark
Juergenmeyer ‘Sikhism is a Forgotten Tradition” virtually
ignored in the various fields of religious studies; for some the
Sikhs are an uncultured backward tribe, and for still others
highly biased minds it is an undefined faith with uncertain spiritual
or philosophical roots. They are afraid to call it a religion or a
philosophy because their intellec-tual perceptions blunted by
ingrained prejudices fail to see the profound metaphysical and
mystical thoughts, the ethical, social and philosophic doctrines
of a highly developed spiritual religion. revealed on every page
of their scriptures to those who care to understand it correctly.
For some it is a fading Hindu sect with no identity of its own,
yet some others like Dr Hew McLeod, who consider themselves
the cleverest pundits in this dark sphere of academic gimmick,
have in vain tried to fit a square peg in a round hole by trying to
prove that Guru Nanak was a petty “Sant” in the long chain
of ‘Hindu Nirgun San Sampardaya of North India” an
impressive name without form or content. They make bland
irresponsible statements about Sikh prophets and their religion,
without even being able to prove anything. Sikhism is neither a
“tradition” nor has it been forgotten. It is a living faith, a
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universal religion, with well known and clearly defined identity
and institutions, and philosophical, social and political doctrines.
Let anyone open any page from the history of Punjab from the
date of the birth of its Founder, Guru Nanak, to the present
day written by any non-Sikh, you will find the Sikhs as Masters
of the destiny of Punjab. But still a handful of Christian
Missionary Scholars, most of whom were working together
as teachers in Barring Christian College, Batala, and writing
under the common banner, “Christian Approach to Sikhism”
during the late six-ties and early seventies, still have spared no
pains to mount indecent attacks on Sikhism in recent years.
Their natural Christian bias first changed to unhealthy and
disturbing comments about Sikh Gurus and Sikhism. Then in a
se-ries of articles, read in their Group Seminars and books, their
prejudiced comments have changed into hostile criti-cism and
malicious vulgar assaults in the name of rational thinking and
Christian academics of particular group and a particular brand.
It is about such rational critics of Buddhism, Dr D.T.
Suzuki wrote in bitter words, although these learned critics
had made signal con tributions in Sanskrit studies. This world
renowned scholar of Buddhism, Dr D.T. Suzuki writing on
“Why injustice is done to Buddhism”, in his well known
work “Outline of Mahayana Buddhism” says, about such
writers and critics of religions other than their own, “The people
who have had their thoughts and sentiments habitually trained
by one particular set of religious dogma, frequently misjudge
the value of those thoughts that are strange and unfamiliar to
them. We may call this class of people bigots or enthusiasts.
They may have fine religious and moral sentiments as far as
their own religious train-ing goes; but, when examined from a
broader point of view, they are to a great extent vitiated with
prejudices, superstitions, and fanatical beliefs, which since
childhood, have been pumped into their receptive minds, before
they were sufficiently developed and could form independent
judgments. This fact so miserably spoils their purity of
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sentiments and obscures their transparency of intellect, that
they are disqualified to perceive and appreciate whatever is
good, true and beautiful in the so-called heathen religions. This
is the main reason why those Christian missionaries are
incapable of rightly understanding the spirit of religion generally
controversialwhmcleod 