"Nanak's religion consisted in the love of God, love of man and love of godly living. His religion was above the limits of caste, creed and country. He gave his love to all, Hindus, Muslims, Indians and foreigners alike. His religion was a people's movement based on modern conceptions of secularism and socialism, a common brotherhood of all human beings. Like Rousseau, Nanak felt 250 years earlier that it was the common people who made up the human race. They had always toiled and tussled for princes, priests and politicians. What did not concern the common people was hardly worth considering. Nanak's work to begin with assumed the form of an agrarian movement. His teachings were purely in Punjabi language mostly spoken by cultivators. He appealed to the downtrodden and the oppressed peasants and petty traders as they were ground down between the two mill stones of Government tyranny and the new Muslims' brutality. Nanak's faith was simple and sublime. It was the life lived. His religion was not a system of philosophy like Hinduism. It was a discipline, a way of life, a force, which connected one Sikh with another as well as with the Guru."

Guru Nanak Education See all quotes by Guru Nanak →

React to this quote

More by Guru Nanak

“There is no Hindu, nor any Mussalman.”

“Max Arthur MacAuliff, The Sikh Religion, Vol 1, , Oxford University Press, 1909.”

“Eternal Glory of Sri Guru Nanak Dev”

“Shri Babaji shows us the practical side of the teachings of great saints like Guru Nanak, who did not preach a particular religion or cult. He gave teachings of spiritual perfection, valid for all mankind. To follow these teachings is to realize good for all humanity and the unity of all humanity and the unity of the individual soul with the universal Soul.”

“Sufis, Philosophers, and Nanak”

“Guru Nanak 'called himself a Hindu. According to Janamsâkhî, he wore a sacred thread and had a lock of hair on his head. After him till the fifth Guru, each had his sacred thread ceremony performed, were married according to Vedic rites, used to apply tilak and used to hear tales from Vedas and Puranas.'”

Resonant Thoughts

"The social product which is now maintaining a human population of this world four or five hundred times as large as that which man could achieve in the natural hunting and gathering stage is owed only…"

— Friedrich Hayek

Philosophy1899–1992

#knowledge

"Not til the late nineteenth century was the doctrine of the subordination of time and change seriously challenged. Bergson and William James, animated by different motives and proceeding by different …"

— John Dewey

Philosophy1859–1952

#art

"You all should feel angry tonight, very angry, because yet again the legal system in this country has let you down. A court has ruled that a man who committed a ghastly crime against a little girl sho…"

— Derryn Hinch

Politics1944

#family

"At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had com…"

— Adolf Hitler

Politics1889–1945

#society