I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion

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No one is a Hindu; no one a Muslim.
With these radical words Guru Nanak (1469-1539) founded the Sikh religion, calling for the recognition of one God, by whatever name devotees chose to call him, and the rejection of superstition, avarice, meaningless ritual, and social oppression. In his embrace of all religions, Guru Nanak envisioned a loving God that was outside the bounds of any one religion. He upheld the truth of equality among all beings and practiced the quiet heroics of holding up a mirror to foolishness. Meditation and devotion were identified as the work of the private domain and charity, honest work, and service to humanity as the obligation to the social domain.
The goal of this catalogue and the exhibition it documents is to bring together and illuminate works of art that identify these core Sikh beliefs in the period of their early development by the ten historical Gurus (16th-17th century). Through them, we are taken behind the external signs that identify Sikhs, who constitute the world's fifth largest organized religion, to its founding principles.
The works of art, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, include paintings, drawings, textiles, and metalwork. They are drawn from museum collections in India and the United States and private collections in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The essay and object texts by B.N. Goswamy and Caron Smith provide keen insight into early Sikh devotion and examine the works of art in the context of the North Indian cultural mix in which they were created.

B. N. GOSWAMY studied history at the Punjab University in Chandigarh, India, and later specialized in the history of Indian art. For more than thirty years he was a professor of Art History at the Punjab University, where he was also Director of the University Museum of Fine Arts. He has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, California (at Berkeley and Los Angeles), Texas, and Zurich and has lectured extensively in Europe, the United States, and India. Most of his publications have been in the area of Indian painting, imperial land grants, and the history of Indian costume. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the Punjab University.
CARON SMITH received a degree in philosophy from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Ph.D. in Chinese Art and Archaeology from the NYU Institute of Fine Arts. She has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the Department of Asian Art and Office of the President, at the Asia Society, New York, as Associate Director of Galleries and Curator of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection: and at the San Diego Museum of Art, where she was Senior Curator of Asian Art. Currently she is Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.
Dr. Goswamy and Dr. Smith have successfully collaborated on exhibitions and a catalogue in the past, notably Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting for the San Diego Museum of Art. Their combined academic and museum- based experience, their deep knowledge of the material at hand, and their understanding of what makes a compelling book and exhibition have all been brought to bear in I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion.

This catalogue and the exhibition it supports are overdue. Between 1999 and 2004, San Francisco Toronto, London, and New Delhi hosted important exhibitions of art reflecting the history and beliefs of Sikhism. An on-going installation at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History documents the five hundred years of Sikh culture since the founding of the religion in the late sixteenth century. For many, these exhibitions remain a first glimpse of the values, practices, and artistic heritage of Sikhs, who comprise the world's fifth-largest organized religion and number more than 24 million individuals worldwide. But, until this undertaking, no such presentation had been made to an audience in New York, the most polyglot of America's cities in a region where the largest population of the 500,000 Sikhs in the United States make their home.
The exhibition and catalogue are also timely Earlier exhibitions have provided a broad and comprehensive view of Sikh art and culture, we have chosen to focus on visual reflections of fundamental beliefs The outward markers of Sikh identity, such as turbans, uncut facial hair and the surnames Singh and Kaur, are familiar in the West but the beliefs they represent are little known. In this time of global tensions, the cost of ignorance is too great as witnessed by many senseless assaults in the United States, more than three hundred on Sikhs alone, in the wake of the attack on America on September 11, 2001.
THE CONDUCT OF TRUTH
Sikhism, though rooted in the matrix of Indian thought and history, developed a profile distanc from Hinduism and Islam, the religions dominant in North India during the period of its inception. The fundamental tenet of Sikhism is "GOD IS ONE This pervasive single God is to be found everywhere, in everything and everyone hence, the second fundamental tenet equality among all beings, man or woman, rich or poor low or high born, of any complexion G Nanak emerged from a transforming period of meditation with the words "No one is a Hindu no one a Muslim," a radical and even heretical statement in medieval Indian society, rigidly ordered by caste, creed, gender, and entitlements as prerequisites for the experience of God. It remains radical today, negating any bases for religion to divide mankind. Nanak was a le man, a philosopher and poet, yet his message was clear and plain and meant for everyone: God is found through humility, service, and an affirmation of beauty and joy in everyday life. The path to God is dwelling on his name in communal hymns, searching within for truth, caring an honest living, sharing meals with those in need, and caring for one's family-not withdrawal from society priestly intervention, or self-abnegation. The messages are of tolerance, quality social responsibility, and devotion to simple truths. We have assembled works of art, primarily paintings that were made to convey these messages.