Thread by @Paperclip_In

On Khushwant Singh’s birthday, sharing a compelling excerpt from one of his most poignant essays ‘Sangam of Religions’ that is highly pertinent in this time of divisive politics. Follow the thread for his profound words. (1/14)

When I was a child of about four living in a tiny village with my grandmother, she taught me my first prayer. I was scared of the dark and prone to having nightmares. (2/14)

She told me that whenever I was frightened, I should recite the following lines by Guru Arjan:
Taatee vau na laagaee,
Peer-Brahma sarnaee Chowgird hamaarey Ram-kar, dukh lagey na bhaee (3/14)

Which translates to -
No ill-winds touch you,
the great Lord your protector be around you
Lord Rama has drawn a protective line,
Brother, no harm will come to thee. (4/14)

Being young, innocent and having infinite trust in my granny’s assurances, these lines worked like magic. Later, I discovered that most Sikh children were taught the same lines even before they learnt other prayers. (5/14)

Mark the Hindu terminology in this short prayer: Peer, Brahma, Ram-kaar, Ram-naam, and Prabhu. As a matter of fact, a painstaking scholar counted the number of times the name of God appears in the Adi Granth. (6/14)

The total comes to around 16,000. Of these, over 14,000 are of Hindu origin: Hari, Ram, Govind, Narayan, Krishna, Murari, Madhav, Vithal etc. There is also a sizeable number of Islamic names for God: Allah, Rehman, Rahim, Kareem, etc. (7/14)

The purely Sikh coinage ‘Wahe Guru’ appears only sixteen times. The point I am trying to make is all religions take a lot from other religions with which they come into contact. (8/14)

There is not a single religion in the world which has not borrowed some concept or the other from another-some of its vocabulary and even its ritual. (9/14)

In the Judaic family of religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - there is plenty of evidence of wholesale borrowing. Islam’s five daily prayers have roughly the same names as those of Jews; its greeting salaam alaikum is a variation of the Jewish shalom aleichem; (10/14)

The intermingling of faiths is much more in evidence in the Hindu family of religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. All share belief in karma, the cycle of birth-death-rebirth, meditation etc. (11/14)

Since Sikhism was the last of these major religions and the only one to come into contact with Islam, it is the only one which took a lot of the terminology of Islam from Sufi saints. (12/14)

When the thekedars (contractors or purveyors) of religion claim that their faith owes nothing to the others and is, therefore, purest of the pure, it makes me laugh at their ignorance. (13/14)

Source: excerpt taken from “Me, The Jokerman: Enthusiasms, Rants & Obsessions” by Khushwant Singh, Aleph Book Company.
Photo credit: Sondeep Shankar (Associate Press)

NB: His real birthday was unknown so his father registered 2nd Feb during admission. (14/14)