Every September, Sikhs around the world commemorate the passing of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism who died in 1539. His teachings remain deeply etched in Punjab’s cultural and spiritual fabric.
In Lahore, a city often celebrated for its Mughal grandeur and colonial legacy, Guru Nanak’s presence might seem less visible. Yet, his teachings continue to echo through the city’s streets, literature, and its layered history of coexistence. To commemorate his death anniversary is to confront the plural roots of Punjab’s identity.
Born in Nankana Sahib, just a short distance from Lahore, Nanak grew into a reformer whose message of equality transcended caste and creed. He sang of a divine unity that went beyond ritual, caste hierarchies, and sectarian boundaries. One of his lasting legacies is the institution of *langar*—a communal kitchen where all, regardless of status, ate together—embodying his egalitarian ethos.
Guru Nanak was much more than a social reformer. He was a poet, composing hymns that later became the bedrock of the *Guru Granth Sahib*, the central holy scripture of Sikhism. He was also a traveller, journeying across vast regions—from Bengal to Baghdad, the Himalayas to Sri Lanka—taking the spirit of Punjab far beyond its borders.
Above all, Nanak was a teacher of everyday discipline: through *kirtan* (devotional music), *sewa* (selfless service), and an insistence that *kirat karo* (honest labour) was itself a form of worship. These practices were not limited to Sikh spaces. Across Punjab’s villages and cities, including Lahore, Nanak’s words mingled with Sufi poetry and oral traditions, promoting a vocabulary of justice and inclusion that would later inspire freedom fighters in anti-colonial movements.
Lahore, in particular, was a place where these values took root. The *janamsakhis* (narratives of Nanak’s life) were copied and circulated through the city’s literary networks. Shrines and gatherings around Lahore welcomed Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu audiences alike, blurring conventional boundaries of devotion. Poets and chroniclers invoked Nanak not as a figure of sectarian separation, but as part of a shared *Punjabiyat*—a regional culture that resisted narrow definitions of identity.
Centuries later, Lahore’s reformist press and revolutionaries drew on an egalitarian idiom reminiscent of Guru Nanak’s insistence on human dignity. Commemorating Nanak’s death anniversary from Lahore’s vantage point invites us to reflect on the complexities of memory and erasure.
The Partition of 1947 uprooted Sikh communities from the city, leaving behind poignant traces. Many of Lahore’s gurdwaras were converted into government offices, shrines fell silent, and precious manuscripts scattered. Today, much of Lahore’s public memory emphasizes Mughal and Islamic heritage, often overlooking the profound ways Sikhism once shaped the city’s rhythms.
To recall Guru Nanak, then, is to recover this plural inheritance. It is an acknowledgment that Lahore’s story is incomplete without its Sikh chapter.
Guru Nanak’s relevance extends far beyond the past. In a South Asia fractured by sectarian politics, his teachings offer a powerful reminder that religious and cultural identities are not meant for division. His insistence that the divine resides in everyday labour, compassion, and the rejection of hierarchy continues to challenge dominant structures of power.
For the Muslims of Punjab, Guru Nanak was never a distant other. Historical records show Muslim fakirs attending his gatherings, Punjabi Muslims quoting his verses, and reformers drawing parallels between his critique of ritual and Islamic reformist thought. These overlaps point to a shared history of solidarities, disrupting simplistic religious binaries.
Some of the freedom struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries bore the imprint of this shared heritage. Punjabi revolutionaries, Sikh and Muslim alike, found common ground in resisting colonial authority. Their languages of justice and equality echoed Nanak’s teachings.
Commemorating Guru Nanak’s death anniversary this month is thus less a sectarian act and more a reminder of how religious ethics infused the region’s political imagination.
What would it mean for Punjab in 2025 to truly commemorate Guru Nanak? Beyond ritual observance, it would require Lahore to recognize how its historical identity is built on multiple legacies. To tell Lahore’s story only through Mughal domes and colonial gardens is to flatten its rich heritage.
Bringing Nanak back into the conversation restores balance and recalls a Punjab where the sacred and the civic intertwined—a place where a Muslim could recite Nanak’s verses, and a Sikh could revere a Sufi’s shrine.
Today, questions of identity and belonging dominate debates on curricula, public monuments, and political discourse. Guru Nanak’s anniversary offers a pause—a moment to remember a time when the city’s boundaries were porous, when solidarities flourished, and when the divine was accessible to all.
His egalitarian ethos remains both a historical reality and a future aspiration. Punjab’s heritage cannot be reduced to sectarian memory; it lives on in Nanak’s insistence that truth lies in humility and shared humanity.
As he taught:
*Awal Allah Noor Upaya, Qudrat Kay Sab Banday.*
*Ek Noor Tay Sab Jag Upjeya, Kaun Bhalay Ko Manday.*
(First, God created the Light; from this Light, all beings were born.
From the same Light came the entire universe, so who is good, and who is bad?)
To remember Guru Nanak is to remember that our histories and futures are illuminated by the same light.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/1345126-guru-nanak-and-punjabs-shared-past