Every September, Sikhs across the world remember the passing of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism who died in 1539. 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, Guru Nanak’s presence might seem less visible. Yet, his teachings continue to echo through the city’s streets, its literature, and its rich 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, Guru Nanak grew into a reformer whose message of equality transcended caste and creed. He sang of a divine unity that rose above ritual, caste hierarchies, and sectarian boundaries. His institution of langar—a communal kitchen where all, regardless of status, ate together—embodied this egalitarian ethic.
However, Guru Nanak was much more than a social reformer. He was also a poet, composing hymns that later formed the bedrock of the Guru Granth Sahib, the central holy scripture of Sikhism. He was a traveller as well—journeying from Bengal to Baghdad, from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka—taking the spirit of Punjab to places few others did.
Above all, he was a teacher of everyday discipline: through kirtan (devotional music), through sewa (selfless service), and through the insistence that kirat karo (honest labour) was itself a form of worship.
These practices were not confined solely to Sikh spaces. In Punjab’s villages and cities—including Lahore—Guru Nanak’s words mingled with Sufi poetry and oral traditions, promoting vocabularies of justice and inclusion that would later resonate strongly 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 within the city’s literary networks. Shrines and gatherings in and around Lahore welcomed Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu audiences alike, blurring rigid boundaries of devotion.
Poets and chroniclers invoked Guru 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 Guru 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 important manuscripts scattered.
Today, much of Lahore’s public memory leans heavily towards Mughal and Islamic heritage, often overlooking how Sikhism once shaped 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.
Guru Nanak’s relevance extends far beyond the past. In a South Asia fractured by sectarian politics, his teachings offer a vital reminder that religious and cultural identities are not meant to fuel conflict. His insistence that the divine resides in everyday labour, compassion, and the rejection of hierarchy still unsettles dominant logics of power.
For Muslims in 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 history of solidarities that defy neat religious binaries.
Some 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 language 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.
So, 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 solely through Mughal domes and colonial gardens flattens its rich heritage.
Bringing Guru 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 shrine.
We are no strangers to questions of identity and belonging—whether in school curricula, public monuments, or polarized debates. Guru Nanak’s anniversary offers a moment to pause. It invites us to recall 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 hopeful 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 Guru 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
