Songs to the Jinas and of the Gurus: historical comparisons between Jain and Sikh devotional music

ABSTRACT

Jain worship has always been accompanied by music and likewise for Sikhs the performance of and listening to the singing of hymns, as composed by several of their Gurus, continuously has been central to the community’s spiritual experience. For different reasons, however, Sikh and Jain devotional music, known as kirtan and bhakti respectively, until recently were neglected subjects in historiography. This article investigates the parallels and differences among the two genres from a historical comparative perspective against the successive backgrounds of the bhakti movement and Indic culture, the imperial encounter and globalization. In doing so, it particularly emphasizes the importance of identity politics to the making of modern Sikh and Jain devotional music, as well as the fact that, in comparison to Jain bhakti, Sikh kirtan generally remains North Indian ‘Hindustani’ art music, rather than regional folk music.

Acknowledgements

Besides at the conference ‘The Music and Poetics of Devotion in the Jain and Sikh Traditions’, Loyola Marymount University (LMU), Los Angeles, on 26 February 2016, a subsequent version of this article was presented at a colloquium of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, on 6 December 2016. I am thankful to Nirinjan Kaur Khalsa for her invitation to present a ‘comparative’ paper on Sikh and Jain devotional music at the LMU-conference. I learned a lot from it. Thanks also to Pashaura Singh and Whitney Kelting for their insightful comments upon my presentation, as well as to the anonymous reviewer for the helpful remarks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It should be noted, however, that the Sikh tradition includes the ascetic orders of the Nirmalas and Udasis, who both claim to have originated from the Sikh Gurus. See further: Judge (2014); and particularly on the position of Nirmalas and Udasis in the process of modern Sikh identity formation: Oberoi (1994).

2. To be clear, until the early twentieth century statues of Hindu deities often also adorned Sikh gurdwaras. See further: Oberoi (1994).

3. The most famous one probably is the following from the Guru Granth Sahib:

They pluck the hair from their heads, drink water in which people have washed, and beg leftovers. They take up their excreta and inhale its smell […] they always remain filthy, day and night, and there is no tilak (a distinctive spot of coloured powder or paste worn on the forehead by Hindu men and women as a religious symbol) on their foreheads. They sit about in groups as if in mourning and do not share in public activities. Brush in hand, begging bowl over the shoulder, they walk along in single file.

(as cited in Cole 2014, 254, translation added)

4. Jain monks are also to be seen on a few paintings in the Qila Mubarak’s Ran Vassa building, which was used for guests and entertainment. See: K. Singh (2003, 78–81, figures 10 and 12).

5. Despite processes of modern identity formation which led to the emergence of the terms ‘Jainism’ and ‘Sikhism’ as representations of ‘world religions’ still today many Jains, in contrast to Sikhs, tend to identify themselves as ‘Hindus’ at certain occasions. As a matter of fact, as underlined by Jeffrey D. Long, the relationship between Jains and Hindus is very easy in the United States, ‘even to the point of utilizing the same worship facilities and participating in one another’s rituals–although the Jain and Hindu rituals remain distinct’. Moreover, he continues, a portion of the Hindu-Jain Temple of Pittsburgh also functions as a Sikh gurdwara (Long 2009, 14, 42).

6. Overall, I assume that the imperial encounter brought a ‘moral dimension’ into modern South Asian history because elitist Indians in general could not fully break with their ‘traditions’ in the light of ‘progress’. This predicament, sometimes labelled the struggle between ‘faith’ and ‘reason’, existed also of course in the Western world, but undeniably it was far more urgent within non-Western civilizations and cultures because of the clash with European civilization. Since the nineteenth century and in the context of local ‘Enlightenments’, then, I argue that traditions were redefined into ‘moral languages’, of which ‘Jainism’ and ‘Sikhism’ are two, and partially because of this process, moreover, Indian ‘nations’ were already sovereign, even though the state officially was in foreign hands. Over time, these ‘moral languages’ continued to be of great importance as the basic points of reference for South Asian ‘diasporic’ identity politics in Western ‘multicultural’ societies which remained dominated by Christian morality, racism and a belief in ‘progress’. See further: van der Linden (2008).

7. Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936) remains India’s most important modern music reformer. See further: Bakhle (2005) and van der Linden (2013).

8. Before the actual start of the yearly three day Adutti Gurmat Sangeet Sammelan kirtan competitions are held; on Jain puja competitions: Kelting (2001a, 172–173).

9. Many instances of Sikh kirtan can be found on YouTube; see for examples of Jain music, besides the many clips on YouTube, the links to recordings at the end of M. Whitney Kelting’s ‘Songs of Devotion’ article at the Jainpedia website: http://www.jainpedia.org/themes/practices/songs-of-devotion/mediashow/print/index.html.