Every September, Sikhs around the world remember 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 may seem less visible. Yet, his teachings continue to echo through the city’s streets, its 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, a short distance from Lahore, Nanak grew into a reformer whose message of equality cut across caste and creed. He sang of a divine unity that transcended 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 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 traveler, journeying from Bengal to Baghdad, from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka, taking Punjab’s message to places no one else did.
Above all, he was a teacher of everyday discipline: through *kirtan* (devotional music), through *sewa* (selfless service), and through insisting that *kirat karo* (honest labour) itself was a form of worship. These practices were not confined to Sikh spaces alone. Across Punjab’s villages and cities, including Lahore, Nanak’s words mingled with Sufi poetry and oral traditions, promoting vocabularies of justice and inclusion that later resonated with freedom fighters during 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 in and around Lahore hosted Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu audiences alike, blurring 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 Nanak’s insistence on human dignity. Commemorating Nanak’s death anniversary from Lahore’s vantage point draws us into the complexities of memory and erasure.
The 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 manuscripts were scattered. Today, much of Lahore’s public memory tilts towards its Mughal and Islamic heritage, often overlooking how Sikhism once shaped the city’s rhythms. To recall Nanak is to recover that plural inheritance and acknowledge that Lahore’s story remains incomplete without its Sikh chapter.
Nanak’s relevance extends beyond history. 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, compassion, and the rejection of hierarchy continues to challenge dominant power structures.
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 highlight a history of solidarities that trouble neat religious binaries.
Some of the 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 rhetoric echoing Nanak’s emphasis on justice and equality.
Commemorating his death anniversary this month is therefore less a sectarian gesture 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 richness. Bringing Nanak back into the conversation restores balance and recalls a Punjab where the sacred and civic intertwined, where a Muslim could recite Nanak’s verses 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 polarized debates. Nanak’s anniversary offers a pause. It invites us to remember a time when the city was porous, when solidarities were possible, and 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 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
