I. J. Singh | New York, NY Posted: 04:40 PM | January 04, 2012

NIT NAYM: The Daily Grind?

My columns often emerge from conversations with friends; so does this today.

A reader, Gurjender Singh, responding to something I had written wondered about the banees that tradition tells us Guru Gobind Singh focused on at Vaisakhi 1699 at the initiation of the Khalsa.

And then at a gathering of some young and not so young Sikhs, Ruchie Kaur, a bright young woman -- a doctoral candidate in education no less -- piped up: “Why does the Sikh Code of Conduct (Rehat Maryada) demand the daily grind of reading ad nauseum pages upon pages of gurbani?”

Why, she asked, such emphasis on nit-naym, the daily requirement of so much gurbani every morning and evening? What exactly does this meaningless repetition accomplish? How does it promote any understanding of what one is reading?

And finally: With so little time in the day isn’t this a waste?

Then she added salt to the wounds. “This is not just my question,” she said, “but one that many of us -- Sikh friends in school or at work -- often obsess about for it makes no sense.”

I readily confess that this has, at times, vexed us all. The riposte that all religions have similar requirements and recommendations is really no answer at all. It invites the retort: “So what?”

To many the answer to the dilemma is simple: “We do nit-naym because our Guru asked us to.” The questions then come flying in our face: Which Guru, and when and where? And a raging battle ensues. The focus gets diffused and the purpose of the question entirely lost.

The first 13 pages of Guru Granth Sahib clearly lay out the hymns that comprise the minimal daily recitation. We know this because this portion is set apart from the rest of the corpus. Except for the major portion of Japji Sahib, the rest of the compositions are later repeated in the Guru Granth. They reappear, sometimes with minimal variation of a word or two, under the appropriate raga where they belong.

This puts the spotlight on the hymns on pages 1-13 and a natural inference is that they are to be specially read and experienced. This is what our tradition tells us and I can’t really imagine what other reason there would be for this special compendium of banees in the Guru Granth except as a core selection for a Sikh to focus on and integrate into his or her life. Given the history I would think that the selection comes from Guru Arjan who edited and compiled the Adi Granth himself in 1604, and which, with minor additions, became the Guru Granth a hundred years later in 1708.

Over time this small body of gurbani – the substance of the nitnaym -- has been embellished by the addition of some writings that tradition and scholarship attribute to Guru Gobind Singh. Historically, this was a Panthic decision made at the time that the Sikh Code of Conduct (Rehat Maryada) was formally codified in the last century from the unbroken traditions and antecedents of the Sikh people.

Obviously, I have stated only my view. I haven’t really cited any evidence to support it beyond unbroken tradition. But this is likely how we have arrived at the composite collection of hymns of varying length that comprise the generally accepted banees that are to be read by a Sikh who follows the requirements of the faith. In practice, minor variations on the number and the selections exist even today.

Remember that the Rehat Maryada only codified existing traditions. It didn’t invent any de novo. How did the compositions that exist from page one to page 13 inclusive evolve into such a foundational role in a Sikh life? When exactly, how and by the mandate of which Guru, are not easy questions to delve into. The best I can do is to defer such concerns to another day. Perhaps the readers of this column will help me cogitate on matters that I am leaving unexplored at this time.

Today my focus is deliberately limited to the import of the nitnaym. Why do it – the meaning and the purpose. My initial stance on this is meant rile up readers. But indulge me a little longer. I hope to present a more useful rationale for the nitnaym.

It seems to me that most Sikhs can be classified into two categories: There are those that avow that continuous repetition of the name of God is the only true meditation and the goal of life, while rational analyses are just head games that find no place in God’s divine court. Thus salvation and liberation lie in the virtues of endless repetition of God’s name. They recommend ‘Naam dhyanaa’ or ‘Naam japnaa’ – as the primary virtue. Such believers cite endless lines of gurbani to buttress and promote this panacea for saving us from ourselves.