Walking with Nanak

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Haroon Khalid's lifelong fascination with Guru Nanak was reignited when he came upon Baburbani', a poem written by the saint. This, and the discovery that Guru Nanak spent a large part of his life in Pakistan, inspired Khalid to undertake a journey that he hoped would help him learn more about the revered founder of Sikhism.

In this wonderful paean to Guru Nanak, Khalid describes his travels across the length and breadth of Pakistan as he visits the many gurdwaras and other locales associated with the saint, delving into their history and musing about their place and significance in a Muslim country. But this book is not merely a story about gurdwaras, it is also a retelling of the story of Nanak the son, the poet, the wanderer, the father, the friend. Sifting through the stories of his miracles and poetry, we emerge with a picture of Nanak the man.

Also exploring the histories of all the subsequent Gurus after Nanak, the book traces the story of how an unorganized spiritual movement evolved into the institutionalized Khalsa of Guru Gobind Singh. Through the journeys of all the Gurus, the book describes how Nanak the poet became Guru Nanak the saint.

Haroon Khalid has an academic background in anthropology. He got his undergraduate degree from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in social sciences with a focus on anthropology and history, and his graduate degree in anthropology from the University of Toronto. He has been a freelance journalist since 2008 and has written over 350 articles for numerous publications, including Al Jazeera, CBC, MacLean's, Scroll. in, Wire.in, TRT World, Himal, Dawn, the News and Express Tribune. He has travelled extensively around Pakistan and has written about minority rights, folk traditions, the politicization of history and heritage, nationalism and identity, and several other topics.

Haroon is the author of four books-A White Trail (2013), In Search of Shiva (2015), Walking with Nanak (2016) and Imagining Lahore (2018). He has also written a non-fiction short book called The Enigma of Pakistani Identity (2017) and Beyond the Other (2016). In his work, Haroon explores fluid identities, traditions and religious practices that challenge the notion of exclusivist identities, which defines communities in South Asia today. His writings have been translated into many languages, including Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati and Italian. He is based in Toronto, Canada.

I had always been fascinated with Guru Nanak, before I had even read a single word written by him or about him. Guru Nanak was someone who was so near and yet so elusive. Having been born and brought up in Pakistani Punjab, I had heard of Guru Nanak-about him being the founder of Sikhism, about him being a poet and about him being a spiritual leader. Yet given the Muslim-dominant culture of Pakistani Punjab, there were no avenues available for me within the culture to explore his personality. He was on the one hand someone who was my own, being a Punjabi, and yet on the other hand, he was an alien, since he was a non-Muslim. When I did eventually read books about him I was disappointed. I was disappointed because even after reading several books I did not feel I had the slightest clue as to who Guru Nanak was as a person or what his life was like. This was particularly disheartening because he had lived only five centuries before the present day and there have been better records of people who had lived even before that time.

I truly discovered Guru Nanak for the first time through my mentor, Iqbal Qaiser. We spent several hours talking about him, his poetry, and this gave me a much better idea about Guru Nanak as a person, compared to any book that I had read. Iqbal Qaiser recited Nanak's Babur Bani to me, a long poem that Nanak wrote at the time the Mughal marauder Babur attacked Punjab, destroying the cities of Eminabad and Lahore on the way. The poem was riveting. It had a huge impact on me and I saw for the first time glimpses of the man I had been trying to discover. Here was a man who is considered a religious figure, the founder of Sikhism and a believer in God and then there was this poem of his which lays the blame of Babur's wrath at God's feet. Through his poem Nanak challenges the divinity of the Divine and asks if this bloodshed is the blessing that God had promised. This man might as well have been the prophet of those who questioned the existence of God. I realized that one way of getting to know Nanak better was through his poetry.

My fascination with Guru Nanak increased further when I learned on my travels with Iqbal Qaiser that he had spent a major portion of his life in present-day Pakistan. He was born here. He initially preached his new religion here by travelling around this region and eventually settled in a small village which is now on the Pakistani side of the border.

Wherever I went to see gurdwaras raised in the memory of Guru Nanak, I felt his presence around me. I could see him sitting with Bhai Mardana, his Muslim companion, oblivious to our presence and detached from the world around him. In my imagination, I began visualising Iqbal Qaiser and my journey as an extension of Guru Nanak and Bhai Mardana's journey. We too travelled like vagabonds, learning the ways of the different people we met on the way. We too engaged in philosophical and religious discussions and despite our intellectual differences, adored each other's company. It was through this understanding of our interactions, struggles and experiences that I was able to make sense of the experiences of Guru Nanak. For me then the second way of discovering Nanak was by walking with him. I wasn't interested in Nanak the saint but in Nanak the son, Nanak the father, Nanak the philosopher, Nanak the poet and Nanak the wanderer.

Discovering Nanak should have satisfied my curiosity; however, it only exacerbated the situation. I began seeing the contradictions between Nanak the man and Nanak the saint. Nanak vehemently spoke against organised religion and yet today, the religion that is attributed to him is one of the most prominent organised religions in the world. He abhorred the concept of associating miracles with religious personalities, but today, his biography is nothing but a story of his miracles. On his deathbed, he appointed not his son but his most loyal student as his spiritual successor This was a clear indication that Nanak did not want his legacy to become a legacy based on kinship, but on intellectual and philosophical heritage.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages