I. J. Singh | New York, NY Posted: 05:50 PM | December 20, 2011

A Tale of Two Cities: Manhattan and Anandpur

Let me borrow the subtitle from Charles Dickens. But mine is a tale of two very different cities, worlds apart in miles and meaning.

I offer you two factoids and then we’ll dissect them.

What we now celebrate as New York City - The Big Apple (this playful name was coined by Jazz musicians) was once known as the New Netherlands, and the Director-General of this colony, administered by the Dutch, was a Walloon, Peter Minuit.

On May 24, 1626, Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from the locals (Native Americans) for some cloth, beads, hatchets, and other odds and ends then worth about 60 Dutch guilders. According to the best estimates, 60 guilders would buy about a pound and a half of silver in 1626. The market price of silver then was about $4 per troy ounce, and 12 troy ounces made a pound. Hence the popular and well worn idea that the early settlers, in what is now New York City, bought the island of Manhattan from Native Americans for $24 and some trinkets.

What a bargain! Now, almost 400 years later, one couldn’t rent a square foot in Manhattan, much less buy it for that sum. No wonder Dutch traders have such a well-deserved and justified reputation as canny businessmen and bargainers.

For many of us who live or work here, there is no life outside of New York City and Manhattan. All else is mere existence -- often in the boondocks. Nothing ever captured that idea better than the March 29, 1976, cover of The New Yorker that highlighted a cartoon by Saul Steinberg. More than half of his sketch focused on the majestic avenues of Manhattan, with progressively lesser space, as one moved further west from the Hudson River, with the rest of the country beyond New Jersey disappearing into the sunset of almost nothingness.

Surely, I am not the first to think so, but I have often felt that if this world were to ever truly evolve into a single united entity, it could have no other capital than Manhattan. In fact, that’s how it is already even though we enjoy a fragmented existence. Manhattan is the epicenter of the world, its focal point, and there can be no other.

That’s exactly why the attackers on 9/11 zoomed in on Manhattan and its most visible marker, the World Trade Center, even though Chicago and Boston, too, have many tall buildings. Life often speaks through symbols. And nothing is more symbolic of American might and its preeminence in the world than Manhattan.

The attack brought home to us Manhattan’s price and its value. The price was roughly $24 at one time. It is now surely in billions or trillions. It can be paid and has been paid many times over. Its symbolic value measured in history, and in the thousands of people killed in the attack on 9/11, continues to haunt us.

This brings me to another town, the second factoid – its price tag and its value then and now.

Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Guru of the Sikhs, like many earlier Gurus, particularly the founder of the faith, Guru Nanak, was an inveterate traveler. The purpose always was to spread the message of Nanak across the land and knit the many small and scattered Sikh communities into a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts -- sort of a nation without borders.

On one of his travels, Dowager Rani Champa of Bilaspur wanted to give Guru Tegh Bahadur a tract of land. The Guru didn’t want it as a gift so he opted to buy it for, what was in those days, the princely sum of 500 rupees. This happened sometime in mid May of 1665, only about 40 years after Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for 24 dollars and change. What was a Rupee worth in the 17th century, I don’t know. Today, 500 rupees would translate to the round figure of 10 or 12 American dollars.

The Guru created a township that he dubbed Chukk Nanki, after his mother. In the time of his son, Guru Gobind Singh, it became Anandpur, and that’s how we know it now.

The name tells us something. A literal rendering would point to anand meaning bliss and pur standing for town. Anandpur then is the town or city of bliss. Much Sikh history is centered there, a lot of it hair-raising and blood curdling.

Chukk Nanki was where the Brahmins from Kashmir came to seek the Guru’s intercession because they would be sentenced to death if they did not convert to Islam. Guru Tegh Bahadur took on the challenge and a martyr’s death rather than accept Islam. His was the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of human rights, for freedom of religion for the Hindus, even though the Guru was certainly not one himself.

This is where Guru Gobind Singh received his father’s severed head and cremated it. It was after a battle in which Guru Gobind Singh routed the Hindu Hill Rajas that he renamed the city “Anandpur” and built a ring of forts around it.

It was at Anandpur that Guru Gobind Singh staged the Vaisakhi of 1699. This is where the institution of the Punj Piyaray started, where the last vestiges of the caste system were destroyed, and where he created the institution of the Khalsa. It was from this beginning that a new nation was built with institutions that promised participatory self-governance, accountability and transparency.

Becoming increasingly suspicious of the growing might and independence of Sikhs, the Hindu Hill Rajas along with the Mughal Islamic government laid a prolonged siege of Anandpur in May 1705. Guru Gobind Singh and his family, with a few followers, abandoned the fort on the night of December 5, 1705.

Even today, more than 300 years after the Vaisakhi of 1699 that created the Khalsa, when Sikhs become Amritdhari by initiation into this discipline, they intone a simple formula to discard the baggage of caste, family, lineage and connections as well as riches and material success, thus forging a unified and unique identity. Each amritdhari avows Mata Sahib Devan as the mother, Guru Gobind Singh as the father and Anandpur as the novitiate’s place of birth. Thus, for a people, it is a new identity forged not from common bloodlines but from common purpose.

Kesgarh, a fort of the Anandpur complex, stands today as one of the five takhts, or seats of authority, for Sikhs worldwide.

Obviously these are not matters for literal translation. That would make no sense. Keep in mind that the heaviest, most significant truths are often symbolically addressed. As examples, I offer you the flag of a nation, the wedding ring for most people, and the articles of faith that define a Sikh. Similar examples abound in all cultures and nations throughout human history. Only symbolic reality you might counter, but good people will live and die for them.

It may take a talented economist to figure out if the prices paid for Manhattan and Anandpur were fair or comparable. The values are surely mind-blowing, and as different as apples and oranges.