And Now for a Projection of Nanak Within

The official business of recalling Guru Nanak in Britain this year ended at the grandly picked Guildhall in London. The Nanak name certainly came to London in ways not seen before. It was flashed across the facade of Stratford shopping centre in east London. A Guru Nanak chair was launched at Birmingham University; Hans Raj Hans turned up to sing at another event in Birmingham later. The list of Nanak events is a long one, hosted both officially and by those angry with the official. Was all this the way Nanak would have liked to be remembered? Who’re we to say, but going by what we know of Nanak’s life and the thoughts he expressed, the confessedly speculative question is at the least worth an ask.

Nanak appeared, in name, more feted than followed. The Nanak sound-bytes delivered plentifully had some keywords missing. Take two: Music, and the Environment. If you can allow a moment of personal indulgence, sitting through many of these events reminded me of a few evenings spent with Dr Gopal Singh Puri at his home in Liverpool hearing him speak on the Guru Granth Sahib. Perhaps it was because he was a professor of botany, but he believed the entire holy book could be read at one level as a work on the environment. And I recalled conversations between my mother who taught history at Delhi University and her friend Dr Mohinder Kaur Gill, who was principal of Mata Sundri College and who specialised in Gurbani. They had much to say, but none mentioned a need to go to Kartrapur to get it right by Nanak.

Music and the environment, they all agreed, come together in the Granth Sahib. That coming together is at the heart of the Granth Sahib call to create inner harmony that is in harmony with music and nature. I do suspect the fine gentleman in Liverpool, and the two gentle ladies in Delhi were closer to Nanak than managers of the flashy spectacles around Nanak we’ve had this year. Unless all that was meant to remind us loudly that we ought to remember Nanak more.