The Minas and their literature.

• Author: Deol, Jeevan
• Position: Dissident Sikh group - Includes appendix

SODHI MIHARBAN AND THE MINAS

In the sikh panth, the term Mina was originally applied to a group who recognized a different line of gurus after the fourth Guru Ramdas: instead of the orthodox line proceeding from Ramdas to his youngest son Arjan and subsequently to Arjan's only son Hargobind, the Minas recognized Ramdas' eldest son Prithi Chand as Arjan's successor.(5) Because of this allegiance, the Minas were spurned by the mainstream Sikh panth and given their collective epithet, which was originally the name of a "criminal tribe" that inhabited southwestern Punjab.(6) (It is worth noting that the Minas reject the epithet and refer to themselves merely as "Sikhs" in surviving documents.) Partially due to the strength of their following, the Minas were stigmatized by the mainstream Sikh panth fight up to the middle of the nineteenth century and are invariably numbered among the panj mel, or five groups with which relations are forbidden, in the earliest Khalsa rahitnamas (codes of conduct). Indeed, although the Minas had all but ceased to exist by about the beginning of the twentieth century, formal sanctions against them still form a part of modern-day rahitnamas. Despite these prohibitions, the Mina following seems to have remained relatively strong until sometime in the nineteenth century, particularly in the Malva region of southwestern Punjab. The Minas' literary output was formidable, including scriptural exegesis, hagiography, and devotional poetry. The Minas even spawned an ascetic sub-group, the Divanas, who enjoyed a particularly strong following in Malva until very recent times. Although mainstream Sikh opposition to the Minas seems largely to have arisen from the Minas' adherence to a different line of gurus, it is unclear what other factors may have influenced the conflict.

The strength of orthodox Sikh reaction against the Minas is quite clear from the time of Guru Arjan right up to the middle of the eighteenth century. In his thirty-sixth var,(7) Guru Arjan's maternal uncle Bhai Gurdas portrays the Minas as irredeemable wretches who will be punished in God's court, false claimants to guruship who lack the qualities necessary for spiritual leadership (36:11). Associating with the Minas is the path to pain and suffering in this world and hell in the next (36:5-6), and those who choose a false guru - the Mina guru - are condemned to repeated rebirth (36:13-16). The Minas, Bhai Gurdas tells us, "are false coins from a false mint" (36:8). A century and a half later, the Khalsa tradition evinced a more institutionalized and intense antipathy toward the Minas than did the early Sikh panth. The Chaupa Singh Rahitnama, a mid-eighteenth-century Khalsa manual of conduct, warns Sikhs not to contract marriage alliances with the Minas, while nineteenth-century codes forbid Sikhs (including Sahajdharis) from any dealings at all with the Minas or their followers - even warning that those who show sympathy for the Minas are to be excluded from the Sikh sangat (congregation).(8) A major component of the discourse of stigmatization and marginalization that was applied to the Minas was the orthodox contention that the Minas had broken faith with the panth by composing and disseminating heterodox literature, particularly spurious writings attributed to the Gurus. As early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, mainstream Sikh tradition began to contend that the existence of Mina bani(9) composed in the name of Guru Nanak had caused Guru Arjan to compile the Adi Granth in order to safeguard the sanctity of the Gurus' authentic compositions.(10) Other texts of the period claim that the Minas interpolated the janamsakhis(11) portraying Guru Nanak's life with stories that denigrated him by claiming that Nanak had been the disciple of a Hindu raja in a past life or that he had exercised the droit de seigneur with a landowner's daughter in his present incarnation. Thus, tradition explains, Sikhs petitioned Guru Gobind Singh's contemporary Bhai Mani Singh to write a proper, uninterpolated janamsakhi for the panth:

The Sikhs said, "The chhote mel [Minas] put whatever they wanted in the gostis [discourses] they wrote. They wrote that Guru Nanak married the daughter of a Ranghar and was a disciple of Raja Janak. They polluted the gostis by doing so."(12)

Because of their perceived literary output, then, the Minas were seen as a hermeneutic as well as a social threat to the Sikh panth.

The root of mainstream Sikh hostility to the Minas lies in their attempt to replace the orthodox guru lineage. The wider context of this dissent is the tension between spiritual and lineal succession to the guruship that began to reach a critical point in the time of Guru Ramdas. Where Guru Nanak and Guru Angad had passed the guruship on to devotees completely unrelated to them (although still Khatris), Guru Amardas nominated as his successor his son-in-law, Jetha (who became known as Guru Ramdas). The ultimate result of this action was a growing feeling that the guruship was an inheritance that should belong to Guru Ramdas' Sodhi descendants, a contention increasingly supported by hagiographical tales that claimed the guruship had been promised to the Sodhis by Guru Amardas or, in some versions, by the Bedi ancestors of Guru Nanak. Indeed, by the time of the succession of Guru Hargobind (the sixth Guru), the guruship was largely seen as a hereditary Sodhi possession, and it was vigorously contested by the descendants of Guru Ramdas.(13) At the same time, though, the older conception of a purely spiritual succession exercised a certain appeal: Bhai Gurdas notes disapprovingly the attempts of children and grandchildren of the first four Gurus to arrogate spiritual authority to themselves at the expense of the "spiritual lineage" (babani piri) of descent from Guru to guru. Despite such admonitions, lineal succession to the guruship eventually evolved into claims of Guru status based on descent from one guru or another that continued to exercise particularly powerful appeal among certain sectors of Punjabi society up to the beginning of the twentieth century.(14)

The beginnings of Mina dissent from the orthodox line of succession lay in the conflicting claims to guruship of Guru Ramdas' three sons, Prithi Chand (sometimes called Prithi Mal), Mahadeo, and Arjan.(15) While there is brief reference in Bhai Gurdas' twenty-sixth var to Mahadeo's attempts to claim spiritual authority, it is Prithi Chand's attempt to become Guru and subsequently to pass the succession on to his son Manohar Das (referred to as Miharban in Mina sources) that receives the greatest attention in traditional accounts. One of the earliest independent accounts of the Sikh panth, part of a seventeenth-century account of Indian religious groups, records both the depth of the split in the panth caused by Mina claims to the Guruship and the relative success of those claims:

After Arjan Mal, his brother Bartha [sic] (whom his followers call Guru Miharban) succeeded him [bi-khilafat nishast]. And now, in the year 1055 hijri, Guru Harji is his successor and styles himself bhagat, or worshipper of God. The disciples of Guru Hargobind, son of Arjan Mal, call them "Mina", which among them is a term of abuse. After Arjan Mal, Hargobind also claimed spiritual authority [khilafat] and sat in his father's place....(16)

This account indicates that the guruship must have been so thoroughly contested by the descendants of Arjan and Prithi Chand as to create two noticeable panths or sangats - an impression supported by a reading of later Sikh sources, most of which indicate that uncertainty about the succession followed Guru Ramdas' death.(17) Writing in 1769-70 C.E., Kesar Singh Chhibbar claims that after Guru Arjan ejected Prithi from his darbar (court) for twice trying to kill the child Hargobind, some of the rababis (musicians who play the rabab or rebeck), purohits (ritual priests) and brahmins from Guru Arjan's court joined Prithi in Lahore, creating two distinct guru darbars in the panth. He also claims that Miharban's bani in the name of Nanak began to become so popular (even among Arjan's disciples) that he was compelled to order Bhai Gurdas to compile the Adi Granth in order to keep the Gurus' bani separate from that of Miharban.(18) The contemporary evidence of Guru Arjan's own bani as recorded in the Adi Granth seems to corroborate both the impression of a heated struggle between the two groups and the supposition that the Mina opposition was a strong one, since it contains a high number of references to the detractors (nindak) who threaten the peace of his tenure as guru.(19) On the other hand, Mina sources indicate that the group bolstered its own claims to legitimacy by emphasizing its devotion to the earlier Gurus, particularly Guru Nanak.

Very little information is available on the early history of the Minas, most of the available accounts being either Mina hagiography or Sikh accounts of Mina plots against the Gurus. There is, for example, almost no information on the socio-economic or caste status of the Minas or no indication of whether Nanakpanthis in the imperial administrative framework favored the Minas or the mainstream panth. Mina and Sikh accounts agree that Prithi Chand served as vazir (minister) in Guru Arjan's darbar, although Mina accounts add that Miharban succeeded his father both in this post and in his responsibility for the darbar's accounts while still in his teens.(20) Mina accounts also indicate that Miharban had a major following in the village of Patti (near Amritsar) and in the Punjab hills, claiming the allegiance of the rajas of Mandi, Kahlur, and Suket and of at least one Mughal administrator.(21) The same sources claim that the Minas showed special reverence for a pothi(22) and male (rosary) passed down through the line of gurus as relics and that the group placed great importance on portraying itself as a repository of classical...