HUMANISING SAINTHOOD

Pakistani author Haroon Khalid on Nanak and his historical identity

QWhat inspired you to write the book Walking With Nanak? I have been fascinated with Nanak for a long time. Given his Punjabi roots, he is someone who is so close to my own identity, yet given his non-Muslim heritage, he has become an elusive character in Pakistan. While other Muslim Sufi saints such as Bulleh Shah, Baba Farid and Shah Hussain are being celebrated in the popular Punjabi culture, there is nothing being said about Nanak. To me it felt like a forced awkward silence. I wanted to hear this sound of silence and make my own humble effort to restore Nanak to his rightful status in Pakistani Punjab.

Walking with Nanak took some time to conceptualise in my mind, much more than my last two books. For almost three years I couldn’t help but be obsessed about the book even when I was writing my last two books. To be honest, I had never planned Walking with Nanak to be one book. It is actually a culmination of three books—a fictional story of Nanak, a discovery of Nanak’s heritage in Pakistan and finally the history of evolution of Guru Gobind Singh’s Khalsa, in other words, the appropriation of Nanak’s heritage in institutional Sikhism. Q. You have effectively managed to ‘humanise’ Nanak. Why did you do that? I feel one of the greatest disservices we have done to our folk heroes is to strip them of their humanity and raise them to the status of sainthood. When a human is made a saint, he becomes an idol placed on a tower that can no longer offer inspiration to ordinary mortals. It is instead their humanity which needs to be celebrated, their vulnerabilities, their errors and how they overcame them to achieve what they did. This dehumanising and raising to sainthood has been the unfortunate history of all humanity. Q. What was your research process? There are three main narratives in the book— fictional, non-fictional travel, and history of the subsequent Sikh gurus. All of these required a different research process. For the fictional part on Nanak, I read his biographies and his poetry, sifting through them for what I perceived to be the essence of Nanak. The non-fictional travel part of the book is almost like a pilgrimage to Nanak’s shrines. It was a spiritual experience for me that I have tried to encapsulate in the book. It therefore might not adhere to conventional “academic” standards of research. The final part of the book was once again secondary research, digging history books, and articles and trying to understand the political context that led to the institutionalization of Sikh religion through the course of the lives of nine Sikh gurus after Nanak. Q. The book is part fiction. Were you not apprehensive that the Sikh community might not take your interpretations well? I was. But I was not critical of their religion and looked at it as an explanation of Sikh history. There is no doubt in my mind that Nanak’s movement was against institutional religion. Now, when you juxtapose that fact with the Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh, an institutional religion, it comes across as contradictory. However, there are eight gurus in the middle and an entire century, during which the Sikh community increased exponentially. All religions reflect their political contexts and that is what the institutionalization of Sikh religion also elicits. I wanted to understand what led to those changes. The idea is not to criticise anyone or any religion but rather to understand it in a political and historical context. Q. Nanak was an important figure in undivided India. How would you comment on the fact that little is being done to preserve his legacy in Pakistan? Also, what do you think about the treatment meted out to Punjabi language in Pakistan? Absolutely. He is one of the most influential figures in our history. Unfortunately he is missing from the official historical framework of Pakistan, which only explores its historical identity in terms of Muslim heritage. This has in fact led to a simplification of history, where historical characters have been appropriated in to “ours” and “theirs”. This is a phenomenon that happened on both sides of the border. Nanak, in Pakistan, unfortunately fell into the category of “theirs”, which is a grave injustice to his heritage. His entire life was spent in trying to bring together different religious communities. Today, in Pakistan, and to some extent in India as well, we have placed him in our contemporary categories that necessarily do not reflect the realities of Nanak’s time. However, I feel like in the past two-three decades in Pakistan, there is growing awareness of the potential of Sikh tourism

Q. WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON NOWADAYS? CAN YOU FEEL ANOTHER BOOK BREWING INSIDE? TELL ME ABOUT IT. I have recently signed a deal for my new book on Lahore. It would be a travelogue that would use historical structures in the city to narrate the history of the city.

in Pakistan, which has led to renovation of many Sikh gurdwaras. This has also correspondingly led to the emergence of a few documentaries and books by Pakistani authors on Sikh heritage in Pakistan. Whereas on the one hand these are great signs, on the other hand they unfortunately fall into the same traps that we have laid for ourselves in these past seven decades, by categorising them into distinct Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim heritage.

I think one of the greatest contributions of Nanak has been to the Punjabi language. He is regarded as the second literary poet of Punjabi language, a language that at that point and perhaps more so today (in Pakistan) is seen as the language of the uneducated. Rebelling against the language hegemony of his time, he chose to spread his message in the vernacular. In that sense, his message is perhaps even more relevant today than it was at that time. After Pakistan, Punjabi in the country has increasingly been associated as an unruly language. Take the instance of a recent example of a private school in Pakistan that labeled Punjabi a “foul” language. Q. Someone told me about your obsession with forgotten shrines. I am a history buff. In fact I wanted to study archaeology but for some reason could not pursue the dream. Exploring historical spaces is a spiritual experience for me. I can sense history playing around me when I am at these places. Within historical spaces, I think I have been most fascinated with non-Muslim religious heritage, abandoned temples, and gurdwaras. They are a glimpse of a world that no longer exists here but thrived once. It is almost surreal for me to imagine that world in a highly homogenized country. It is perhaps my longing to be a part of that society that no longer exists. Q. How and when did you decide to be a writer? Believe me, my writing career actually began as an accident. During the last year of my college, I was mapping the history of an abandoned temple in Lahore. The temple had been occupied by refugees of 1947. Over the years, its historical structures had been demolished to pave way for residential spaces. While I was at the temple, I was told that the family living at the main temple was planning to demolish the main shrine and replace it with a sturdy structure. I wanted to do something to save the temple. Hence, I wrote an article talking about its imminent destruction and its historical significance. The article was well received by the liberal media of the country, encouraging me to talk about other such abandoned structures that were being neglected and slowly being destroyed. Q. How tough/easy is it to survive only on writing in Pakistan? All writers I know do writing on the side. They all have full time professions that become the main source of money. Writing is an obsession that continues even though its monetary rewards don’t make any sense. Q. Contemporary Pakistani literature in English is now big in the world and has such a huge following in India. What do you think is the reason? How come young writers from Pakistan are coming up with such original stories and telling them brilliantly? I think it’s due to the recent blooming of English literature in the country. It is still novel, unique, a glimpse into a world that has been casted into particular stereotypes. India had its share of a similar renaissance at the turn of the century. I think that too became a source of inspiration for Pakistani writers. I was in school when Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things was released. She had come to Pakistan to promote her book and I had the honor of attending one of her sessions. I was mesmerised by her charm. Another reason I believe is the focus on the country nowadays in context to religious extremism and intolerance. There is a genuine interest in the world to learn more about Pakistan, a country that occupies an important space in the political imagination of people. Therefore, any book that reinforces or even breaks away from these stereotypes draws interest.