Mina (Sikhism)

The Mīnās were a sect of Sikhs that followed Prithi Chand[1] (1558–1618), the eldest son of Guru Ram Das, after his younger brother Guru Arjan was selected by the Guru to succeed him.[2][3] Prithi Chand would vigorously contest this,[3] attracting a portion of Sikhs to his side who followers of Guru Arjan referred to as ਮੀਣੇ mīṇe, meaning "charlatans,"[4] "dissemblers,"[5] or "scoundrels."[3][6] They sustained their opposition to the orthodox line of Gurus through the seventeenth century, and upon Guru Gobind Singh's founding of the Khalsa in 1699, they were declared by him, as well as by Khalsa rahitnamas (codes of conduct),[7] as one of the Panj Mel, or five reprobate groups,[6] that a Sikh must avoid.[3] They are occasionally referred to in the more neutral terms Sikhān dā chhotā mel ("those who remained with the true Guru lineage for a short time") or as the Miharvān sampraday ("the order of Miharvan") in scholarship.[8]

They emerged as the only major rival sect of the Sikh Guru period, whose line of succession ran in parallel to that of Guru Arjan and his official successors.[4] They controlled Amritsar and Harmandir Sahib built under Guru Arjan for much of the 17th century.[5] During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Minas gradually faded into the background of Sikh society in relation to the mainstream Khalsa,[7] as Mina literati declined along with the sect.[9]

History

Born in 1558 in Goindwal as the eldest son of Guru Ram Das, Prithi Chand felt that due to his position as such, he was the natural choice as his father's successor, though the Guru would select his youngest son, Guru Arjan (b. 1563), to succeed him. Prithi Chand refused to accept the choice.[10] While eventually accepting the choice and acknowledging Guru Arjan's authority, supporters of Guru Arjan would consider this the period when Prithi Chand would start to feud with him.[8] In the years following his father's death, Prithi Chand would grow bitterly opposed to Guru Arjan, for instance asserting that Guru Arjan had usurped his father's property; to counteract this, Guru Arjan would transfer his property to him, opting instead to live on his followers' offerings.[11] In a ballad verse about the offspring of the Sikh gurus, for example, the influential Sikh figure Bhai Gurdas would comment, "Prithi Chand became a mīṇā (charlatan)."[8] According to some commentaries, he would also taunt Guru Arjan about his wife's inability to produce an heir; when Guru Hargobind was born in 1595, an unsuccessful poisoning attempt would take place on the child.[5][8][12]

The birth of the child seemed to dampen his spirits, and as his enmity with his brother grew, Prithi Chand would leave Amritsar the following year, first for Hehar village near Lahore, then to Kotha Guru village near Bathinda in the Malwa region of Punjab, where in the latter half of his life,[8] where he would begin to compile a granth, or volume of poetry, of his own to compete with Guru Arjan's.[11] He had witnessed the formation of Sikh scripture before Guru Arjan's compilation of the Adi Granth in 1604, and it has been argued that Guru Arjan's compilation was partially in response to Prithi Chand's ambitions,[8] as incidents with Prithi Chand would impress the need to complete the manuscript as soon as possible so that the Sikhs would be able to distinguish the true verses of the Gurus from imitators.[12]

Still having ambitions of becoming the Guru, considering himself to be more enlightened than Guru Arjan,[13] Prithi Chand would make pragmatic alliances with local Mughal agents Sulahi Khan, a district revenue official,[11] and Chandu Shah, repeating his claim of illegal usurpation of his position,[11] and it has been suggested that this alliance may have had a role in Guru Arjan's arrest and execution.[8] Prithi Chand's followers had also circulated accusations that Guru Arjan's compilations denigrated Islam,[11] which would be dismissed by Akbar, who, after being presented with the compilation by Baba Buddha and Bhai Gurdas, would donate an offering of gold and robes to the book.[12]

Guru Arjan, meanwhile, had completed the Harmandir Sahib with dasvand donations between 1581 and 1589, with the foundation stone having been laid by Mian Mir, creating a rallying point for the community and a center for Sikh activity, and created a place for the installment of the Adi Granth, the community's own scripture. He had also gone on a tour of Majha and Doaba in Punjab, founding the towns of Tarn Taran Sahib, Kartarpur, and Hargobindpur named after his son. Due to their central location in the Punjab heartland, the ranks of Sikhs would swell, especially among the Jatt peasantry, and create a level of prosperity for them; Guru Arjan would serve not only as a spiritual mentor but as a sovereign leader (sacha padshah) for his followers in his own right.[11]

Following the death of Akbar in 1605, Guru Arjan's friendship and support for Akbar's grandson Khusrau Mirza (who was Akbar's favored choice as successor over his own son Jahangir) and the sudden growth of the Sikh population drawing from other communities amidst the resurgence of Persianate Sunni and Naqshbandi Islamic orders in Punjab which supported Jahangir, who in turn supported these orders, would contribute to Guru Arjan's arrest and execution in 1606.[14] After the execution, Guru Arjan's chief votaries and prominent figures in Sikhism, Bhai Gurdās and Baba Buddha, supported the selection of Guru Hargobind, indicating that Prithi Chand was not the popular choice.[8]

In April 1618 Prithi Chand died after passing on his breakaway position to his son, who became known as Miharvan, born on 9 January 1581. While being attached to Guru Arjan, he would follow his father in 1596, and receive an education in various languages and music, establishing himself as a more accomplished philosopher, writer on diverse topics, and kirtan performer compared to Prithi Chand, and more focused on expanding his community and challenging the authority of Guru Hargobind, traveling across Punjab and Kangra to do so, eventually settling near Lahore.[8] He would die on 18 January 1640, and despite fostering an enclave of supporters, would not significantly disturb Guru Hargobind's popularity either.[15] He would be succeeded by his son Harjī.

Guru Hargobind left central Punjab in 1635 following a series of battles with the Mughals, setting up court in the eastern Punjab hills. With the Golden temple left without an appointed custodian, Harji used his lineage as Guru Ram Das' great-grandson to assert a proprietary claim to it. He would reside there his whole life, using the wealth to expand the Mina corpus and have his predecessors' writings manuscripted with the aid of Miharvan's scribe Kesho Das,[16] and transforming Mina thought by constructing a cult of personality around Miharvan by writing a biography of his predecessor, which no Sikh guru had done. His ulterior motive to do so was undermine the mainstream Sikh tradition by showing Miharvan's birth with the same grandeur as Nanak's, to depict his two predecessors as supporters of Guru Arjan, and to emphasize Miharvan's expositional ability, relating how Guru Nanak prophesied how special Miharvan would be in a sakhi, or story.[17] Harji died on 17 April 1696 at Amritsar, having made Miharvan the emblem of Mina Sikhism.[7] His three sons would be evicted in 1698 on the orders of Guru Gobind Singh, and they would find refuge in their ancestral villages of Kotha Guru and Muhammadipur near Lahore.[7] The Minas would subsequently begin to fade from history as the Khalsa order initiated by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699 would embody the mainstream Sikh panth as it began to assert itself against the Mughals.[7]

Discourse

Miharvan Sikhs emerged in a period of religious persecution and inner dispute within the Sikh tradition on the appropriateness of violence and non-violence in the pursuit of religious freedoms and spiritual matters. According to Hardip Syan and Pritam Singh, Miharvans emphasized more of the non-militant approach of Guru Nanak and earlier Gurus in theological pursuits, while the Guru Hargobind followers pursued the miri piri approach, or the fusion of temporal and spiritual power by which he could form an autonomous community,[13] and began militarizing the Sikh tradition to resist the Mughal persecution.[18][19] Bhai Gurdās would describe this schism in the Sikhs, in which some would question Guru Hargobind roaming itinerantly as opposed to being based in one dharamsala or spiritual center, being arrested by the Mughal emperor of his time instead of being approached by them, being a hunter, and not contributing writings, finding these reforms to be a break with the mechanisms of sevā (service) and prasād (grace).[13] Bhai Gurdās would emphasize the centrality of devotional service to the Guru,[13] while sectarian literature would be concerned with defining themselves as maintainers of the precept of interiorization.[20] Bhai Gurdās would hold that Guru Hargobind "bore an intolerable burden and did not assert himself," justifying the new character of the court with the argument that to grow safely, an orchard needed the protective hedges of the thorny kikar trees. In other words, the panth of Nanak needed to assert force for its protection, in the wake of the execution of Guru Arjan by the Mughals.[21]

They were the sole major sect in the 17th century in parallel to the orthodox Sikhs, but not the only sect; a lesser Sikh sect was the obscure Hindalis, who followed Bidhi Chand, son of Hindal, an Amritsar Jatt who became a Sikh during Guru Amar Das' reign, who would follow his father's path, becoming a chief official at a Sikh temple in the town of Jandiala Guru in Amritsar. He would lose his congregation after marrying a Muslim woman however, and so would establish a new panth in an effort to undermine Guru Hargobind, propagating his father Hindal to be superior to Guru Nanak, who was relegated to being simply a follower of Kabir.[7] They would not impact Sikh society the way as the Minas did, leaving little behind besides a janamsakhi tradition and attempts to link their tradition to Bhai Bala, a Sandhu Jatt, as they were a Jatt-led sect.[7] Despite the majority of the Sikh panth being Jatt, the Hindalis did not draw a large following.

The Hindalis, compared to the Minas, produced a modest volume of literary contribution. The competing works of the Minas and Hindalis provide insight into early Sikh society and thought.[4]

The Minas faded in the eighteenth century and is now extinct.[5][2]

Literary contributions

Prithi Chand's own literary output is sparse and difficult to date and attribute, as Mina texts have been interpolated by later Mina savants. The verses of his version of the Basant ki Var, while not compiled until probably the late 1600s, are believed to be genuine. A modification of Guru Arjan's identically-named composition, it divides Guru Arjan's composition and places the portions at various points in the text. Aside from his Basant ki Var, no other significant literary achievements have been conclusively attributed to him.[22] His works, which largely imitated the style of earlier Gurus, can be seen as indicative of early sectarian works of the 1500s and 1600s, whose writers were often disgruntled relatives of the Gurus, passed over for leadership, whose imitations were attempts to assert their spiritual authority.[22]

While Prithi Chand's writing style was that of an imitator[9] attempting the style of the earlier Sikh gurus but without the same creativity,[22] Miharvan's was more that of an innovator.[9] Contributors after Prithi Chand would move away from imitation towards a style based on story and exegesis.[13] Miharvan's output was more substantive, and relied on prose goshts, or discourses or sermons, in his writings, for example the Miharvan janamsakhis, which are divided not into sakhis but goshts. The compilation of 45 discourses, goshti Gurū Miharivānu, or "discourses of Guru Miharvan," would also begin to show a Vaishnavite influence in Mina thought beginning with Miharvan.[7] His poetic style was such that it was made to resemble that of early Sikh gurus, using the pen names Nanak, Nanak Das, or Das Nanak. His successor Harji would also use these pen names,[17] and expand on Miharvan's established gosht tradition and attempt to further establish Mina authority.[15] The Minas also wrote their own janamsakhis of the first four Gurus.

The Mina texts also misattributes Guru Arjan's verses variously to Guru Nanak, Guru Angad, and Prithi Chand's grandson Harji, and added ten saloks, or verses allegedly written by the first five Gurus, though none of these appear in the Adi Granth. Alongside these verses are ones written by Prithi Chand and his successors, reflecting the Mina desire to create a clear chain of transmission from Nanak to the Minas and to legitimize the tradition,[22] and which they believed to be a continuation of Guru Nanak's.[23]

Sectarian literature of the 1600s was dominated by Miharvan's and Harji's Mina writings,[15] originally stemming from a visceral dislike of the mainstream Gurus.[9] While they would blend Sikh and Vaishnavite ideas of devotion to produce a philosophy that exhorted Sikhs to integrate bhagati, or devotion, into the existing social structure, the mainstream Sikh Gurus, in contrast, would develop a bhagati in which Sikhs were empowered to challenge the existing social order.[7] Further descendants after Harji, beginning with his great-grandson onwards, would form smaller groups like the divanas, or ecstatics, which would be patronized by the Patiala court, like Darbari Das, who would continue to propagate the Mina lineage but fail to get widespread support, as the tradition faded.[9]

Historians of the Mughal era recorded the conflict and contest between the Miharvan and the followers of Hargobind, such as in the Dabistan-i Mazahib.[24]

Bibliography

• Syan, Hardip S. (2014). "Sectarian Works". In Singh, Pashaura; Fenech, Louis E. (eds.). TheThe Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. Oxford University Press. pp. 170–179. ISBN 978-0-19-969930-8.
• Syan, Hardip S. (2013). Sikh Militancy in the Seventeenth Century: Religious Violence in Mughal and Early Modern India. I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-78076-250-0.
• Mandair, Arvind-pal Singh (2013). Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed (illustrated ed.). London, U.K.: A&C Black. pp. 40–51. ISBN 9781441102317.

References

1. Syan 2013, pp. 88-90.
2. H. S. Singha (2000). The Encyclopedia of Sikhism (over 1000 Entries). Hemkunt Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-81-7010-301-1.
3. Winand M. Callewaert; Rupert Snell (1994). According to Tradition: Hagiographical Writing in India. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 23–24. ISBN 978-3-447-03524-8.
4. Syan 2014, p. 170.
5. W. H. McLeod (2005). Historical Dictionary of Sikhism. Scarecrow. pp. 130–131. ISBN 978-0-8108-5088-0.
6. Arvind-Pal S. Mandair; Christopher Shackle; Gurharpal Singh (2013). Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity. Taylor & Francis. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-1-136-84634-2.
7. Syan 2014, p. 178.
8. Syan 2014, p. 171.
9. Syan 2014, p. 179.
10. Mandair 2013, p. 41.
11. Mandair 2013, p. 42.
12. Mandair 2013, p. 43.
13. Syan 2014, p. 173.
14. Mandair 2013, p. 44.
15. Syan 2014, p. 175.
16. Syan 2014, p. 176.
17. Syan 2014, p. 177.
18. Singh, Pritam (2015-01-14). "Review: Sikh militancy in the seventeenth century: religious violence in the Moghul and early modern India, by Hardip Singh Syan". South Asian History and Culture. Taylor & Francis. 6 (2): 307–310. doi:10.1080/19472498.2014.999446.
19. Syan, Hardip Singh (2011). "Early Sikh Historiography". Sikh Formations. Taylor & Francis. 7 (2): 145–160. doi:10.1080/17448727.2011.593297.
20. Syan 2014, p. 174.
21. Mandair 2013, p. 49.
22. Syan 2014, p. 172.
23. Syan 2013, pp. 52-54.
24. Syan 2013, pp. 88-91.