Every September, Sikhs across the world come together to remember the passing of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism. He died in 1539, yet his ideas remain deeply etched in Punjab’s cultural and spiritual fabric.
In Lahore, a city often celebrated for its Mughal grandeur and colonial legacy, Nanak’s presence might be less visible. Yet, his teachings continue to echo through the city’s streets, its literature, and its layered history of coexistence. Commemorating his death anniversary invites us to confront the plural roots of Punjab’s identity.
Born in Nankana Sahib, 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. His institution of *langar*—a communal kitchen where all, regardless of status, ate together—embodied this egalitarian ethic.
Guru Nanak was much more than a social reformer. He was a poet, composing hymns that would later become the bedrock of the *Guru Granth Sahib*, the central holy scripture of Sikhism. He was also a traveler, journeying from Bengal to Baghdad, from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka, sharing Punjab’s spirit far and wide. Above all, he was a teacher of everyday discipline: through *kirtan* (devotional music), through *sewa* (selfless service), and through an insistence that *kirat karo* (honest labour) itself was 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 vocabularies of justice and inclusion. These ideals would later resonate with freedom fighters in anti-colonial movements.
Lahore, in particular, became a fertile ground for these values. The *janamsakhis* (narratives of Nanak’s life) were copied and circulated within the city’s literary networks. Shrines and gatherings in and around Lahore hosted Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu audiences alike, blurring traditional boundaries of devotion. Poets and chroniclers invoked Nanak not as a figure of sectarian separation but as an integral 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 Nanak’s emphasis on human dignity. Yet, commemorating Nanak’s death anniversary from Lahore’s vantage point draws us into the complexities of memory and erasure.
Partition 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 were scattered. Today, much of Lahore’s public memory leans towards its Mughal and Islamic heritage, often overlooking the significant role Sikhism once played in shaping the city’s rhythms.
To recall Guru Nanak is to recover that plural inheritance and acknowledge that Lahore’s story is incomplete without its Sikh chapter.
Nanak’s relevance extends far beyond the past. In a South Asia fractured by sectarian politics, his teachings remind us that religious and cultural identities are not meant for conflict. His insistence that the divine resides in everyday labour, in compassion, and in rejecting hierarchy continues to challenge dominant logics of power.
For Muslims in Punjab, 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 reveal a history of solidarities that defy neat religious binaries.
Many freedom struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries bore traces of this shared inheritance. Punjabi revolutionaries—Sikh and Muslim alike—found common ground in resisting colonial authority, their idioms echoing Nanak’s emphasis on justice and equality.
Commemorating his death anniversary today, then, is less about sectarian distinctions and more about reminding ourselves 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 recognise 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.
To bring Nanak back into the conversation is to restore balance—to remember a Punjab where the sacred and the civic intertwined, where a Muslim could recite Nanak’s verse and a Sikh could revere a Sufi’s shrine.
We are no strangers to questions of identity and belonging—whether in curricula, public monuments, or polarised debates. Nanak’s anniversary offers a moment of pause. It invites us to recall a time when the city was porous, when solidarities were possible, when the divine was imagined as accessible to all.
His egalitarian ethos remains both a historical fact and a future horizon. 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 Nanak, then, 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