International Seminar on ‘Guru Gobid Singh: Life and Legacy’

New Delhi

Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that great warrior, spiritual guru and scholar, Guru Gobind Singh ji’s life resonates with a universal message that showed the masses can be motivated to rise against tyrants; that there can be no political unity without social cohesiveness; and that religious bigotry and intolerance have no place in the multicultural tapestry of this land. He was delivering the inaugural address at the International Seminar on ‘Guru Gobind Singh: Life and Legacy’ organized by Bhai Vir Sahitya Sadan in collaboration with India International Centre, here today. The former Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Shri Arun Jaitley and other dignitaries were also present on the occasion. 

The Vice President said that the repeated harassment and persecution of the still nascent Sikh identity led the Guru to organize the Sikhs into a martial order. He further said that the Guru saw the Khalsa as saint-soldiers and laid emphasis on social equality, universal brotherhood, altruism and social service. If the weapon he gave to the Sikhs for political determination was the ‘shamsheer’; then the ‘shabad’ was his weapon for spiritual enlightenment, he added.

The Vice President said that Guru Gobind Singh took forward the teachings of preceding Sikh Gurus, promoted social institutions such as the langar, sangat and kirtan as great levellers and unifying agencies. He further said that the Guru dreamt of a society outside of the prevailing rituals and ethics, based on social equality and built on the ‘recognition of light of the divine in all beings in equal measure’. Guru Gobind Singh Ji was a learned poet and a philosopher and his works posses a sublime poetic beauty; they were later compiled into the ‘dasm granth’, he added.

The Vice President said that Guru Gobind Singh ji a spiritual leader, a poet, a scholar and a great warrior, fought, not only against tyranny of the Delhi darbar and its religious bigotry, but also against the ills of casteism and social exclusion, and against distortions in his own faith and the growing cults of personality.