On the nature of satiyuga
“Every sacred space implies a hierophany, an irruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different... the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center.” (Mircea Eliade, 1957)
— — -
In the first few weeks of the 2020-21 farmer's protest, a news clip went viral of a reporter interviewing a man riding a bicycle from Punjab to Delhi. Asked why he is so eager to reach the protest site, the man replies, tearing up, that for many days he has felt the calling that Guru Nanak Maharaj is present among the congregation there, walking among the protestors and agitators chanting and praying together. In a poignant moment, the two men shed tears and exchange warm greetings.
The video was a moving testimony to the deeply rooted idea that the Gurus dwell among the sangat, the sacred congregation of the devout. The sacred light of the Gurus illuminates the assembly of bhaktas, and guides them in their endeavors, no matter how atrocious or improbable the odds. This belief has powered the body politic of the Khalsa from crisis to crisis, marching through history’s weltering fields assured of the Gurus’ ultimate favor.
— — -
From sangat to Panth
Mahakal Gurmukh Singh Nihang in a katha mentions the Janamsākhī where Guru Nanak forbade kaliyuga from entering his Sikhs’ congregations. Kaliyuga’s reign will always fail to penetrate a gathering of Sikhs praying and chanting the Divine Name.
In Suraj Prakash, Guru Gobind Singh says his darsana can be gained via any group of five rehitvān Singhs— they are his own form. ਸਿੰਘ ਸੁ ਰਹਤ ਪੰਚ ਜਹਿਂ ਮਿਲੇਂ । ਮਮ ਸਰੂਪ ਸੋ ਦੇਖਹੁ ਭਲੇ ।—When Five Singhs of good conduct congregate; recognize it as my own form. Later, ਸਿਖ ਪੰਚਨ ਮਹਿਂ ਮੇਰੋ ਬਾਸਾ ।—Among these Five Singhs I am present.
Bhai Gurdas writes, ਇਕ ਸਿਖ ਦੁਇ ਸਾਧ ਸੰਗ ਪੰਜੀ ਪਰਮੇਸ਼ੁਰ॥—One alone is a Sikh, two together become a congregation, five the form of Parameśur (the supreme lord/ruler).
From the very beginning, the sangat or sacred congregation has clearly been treated as a sacred space, a sanctuary where the light of satiyuga persists amidst the darkness. This sense of sacrality acquired aspects of both miri (rulership, aristocracy) and piri (saintliness, mysticism) during Guru Hargobind’s militarization reforms. The Akal Takhat (Eternal Throne) was erected before Sri Harimandir Sahib, becoming the temporal-martial seat of Sikh authority. These innovations put into practice (and to test) the sangat’s active role in sustaining dharam against the depredations of the age.
The sangat attained its exalted zenith in the form of the sovereign Guru Panth Khalsa, a militant order of consecrated warrior-priests borne from Guru Gobind Singh’s metaphysical self-immolation: in joining the brotherhood of the Khalsa, the Guru sacrificed and infused his spiritual-temporal authority into the body politic of the Khalsa, unifying the Guru-chela—the saint and his disciples—the king and his knights.
From here to eternity, the Khalsa warmachine is the Guru Panth, the custodian of the mystical flame that illumines the office of the Guru, carried in succession by the ten Gurus— the very form of the Parameswara, the Light of lights, solar gods of warre.
Armed with this mandate of heaven, the Khalsa, Kalki Dharam incarnate, set about bringing satiyuga’s moral-spiritual order— dancing blissfully within the heart-lotus of the sangat— to earthly fruition, thundering into a world-historical maelstrom of crumbling empires, revolting feudatories, opportunists and petty tyrants, all locked in a bloody struggle for power.
— — -
satiyuga as sacred time
To understand satiyuga in qualitative rather than reductive, temporalized terms, it is useful to look at Eliade's idea of sacred or mythical time, when the sacred entered into the world— time the homo religiousus yearns to return to, be close to. Thus, he ritually mimicks the celestial patterns of sacred time, attempting to recreate and emulate the gestures of that mythical age. Consider: satiyuga exists in a dual sense: as a cosmic cycle that we inhabit temporally, as well as a sacred space in eternal time that we can access and eternally return to by upholding and abiding with divine order— cosmic balance— Dharam.
Those who do so are already always in satiyuga, their heart-lotus forever infused with divine light. This is why saints function as guides— as earthly qutbs, poles of divine illumination (This is also what makes the kaliyuga so wretched— the saints themselves sin with abandon).
— — -
He who has achieved Sahaj Yoga (ineffable, eternal divine bliss; communion with the Absolute; “wherein the various kinds of liberation merge as one” Prem Sumarag Grantha) by contemplating the Divine Name is effectively imbued with the light of satiyuga, carrying it in his heart-lotus. This is the nūr or mystical glow that always adorns the countenance of the holy and the blessed: it is divine illumination itself.
In chanting the Lord’s holy names, in abiding by the Guru’s moral codes and performing the sacred gesta, the rites and ceremonies initiated by the Gurus, upheld by the Panth, the Sikh inhabits sacred time indefinitely. He operates in an enchanted symbolic universe thoroughly shot through with the Divine, saturated with sacred signifiers and myth, awash with aesthetic-affective excess. He lives in myth as he does in history, in Time as well as Time out of Time.
It is from this realized position that the Gurmukh (he whose face is turned towards the Guru, as the sunflower’s is towards the Sun) then engages with the world, as a metaphysical patishah, as a sovereign qutb of sacrality, eternally in unity with Hari, like sea merges with sea.
— — -
Similarly, objects, spaces, affects stained by the Guru’s divine light are imbued with a sacral valence. Gurudware, dharmic asthans, martyrdom sites, relics, granthas, weapons, saints, martyrs, congregations of the pure— the Nishan Sahib, battle emblems, swords held aloft, barshas, bungas.
These are sacral qutbs, metaphysical poles, hierophanic sites dyed with holiness. In Sant Kabir’s beautiful words, लाली मेरे लाल की, जित देखू तित लाल ॥ लाली देखन मैं गयी, मैं भी हो गयी लाल ॥— The lush crimson radiance of my beloved, wherever I look I see this crimson; when I went to see this crimson radiance, I too became dyed in its crimson glow. An entire constellation of holiness, manifesting Waheguru's jeweled oceans of light temporally amidst the rancorous squalor of the kaliyuga.
— — -
“God enters into history with Guru Gobind Singh.”
The avatara of the Gurus, manifesting in ten successive forms, redeemed and consecrated historical time itself, bringing transcendental sacred time crashing into history. As Eliade said, "an irruption of the sacred… results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different.”
The arrival of the Gurus marks this hierophanic irruption, revealing the godhead, the fount of dharam in the kaliyuga, staining the fabric of Time itself with joyous divine light. The Khalsa cosmos fashioned in Dasam scripture and traditionalist texts exists “within a longer mythological time-cycle in which [the Khalsa] is part of a larger design to fight the forces of evil” (Deol, 2001).
This is most evident in the elaborate canonical mythology of Dushta Daman, where Guru Gobind Singh’s satiyugi unmanifest ascetic avatar, in samadhi at Hemkuntha, assists Durga in her battle against demonic armies. In turn, the goddess promises to assist the Guru as the Tenth Nanak in forging the Khalsa Panth (which she did at Naina Devi). This narrative also provides the foundation for the archaized ਛਿਆਨਵੇ ਕਰੋੜੀ (960 million) Khalsa figure, and ties together the Devi ballads in Dasam scripture.
The myth establishes a continuity between the mundane and supramundane realms of history and myth, creating an eternally recurring cosmos, and fits the model of itihasa-as-myth within which the Khalsa functions.
— — -
Arriving when the balance of dharam is on its last legs, the Gurus are understood to be the triumphant pinnacle of the cycle of avataras that descend to the earthly realm to restore the cosmic order of Dharam— the ਪੂਰਨ ਤਮ ਅਵਤਾਰ (pūran tam avatāra— the perfect kaliyugi incarnation), carrying the jyoti (light, flame, nūr al-anwār) of Hari himself. Divine illumination hemorrhaging freely, in ruinous solar excess—the interiorized realization of satiyuga, carried by the Khalsa warmachine, bleeding outwards into the rotting topographies of historical time— overwhelming the diseased darkness of the kaliyuga.
This is the millenarian mythic frame that spontaneously opens up the potential for satiyuga to conceptually manifest within the realm of kaliyuga’s reign, for in being imprinted by the Guru-avatara's lotus-feet, history itself has become sacred, become myth.
This, essentially, is the crux of the Khalsa’s will to power. Rooted in the desire to redeem dharam, to create the possibility of redemption for those who sleep the sleep of adharam and avidya, to smite the evil and the wicked— fated to manifest the Lord’s glory, this blessed light, eternal righteous order temporally. It stems from an impulse rooted in benevolence, magnanimity, plenitude, grace and aristocratic ῥαθυμία.
— — -
dharma-yuddha
To establish a realm of dharam— to manifest interiorized gnostic unity with the Absolute temporally, to be eternally close to the gods, which is what satiyuga-qua-sacred time essentially is— requires waging chaoskampf against the forces of adharam. Guénon considers the raison d’etre of war to be to put an end to disorder and restore order— “the unification of multiplicity, by means that belong to the world of multiplicity itself.” Satiyuga, in its interiorized sense, is communion and immersion in the Absolute, in the immutable principle represented by the bindu (dot, point, center, representing the Absolute, Unity— “the very place of order, of balance, of harmony” Guénon, 1930).
ਦਿਨਿੰਦ ਤਿਨੇ ਗੁਰ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਸਭੈ ਜਗ ਬਿੰਦੂ ।—Guru Gobind Singh is the Sun, he is the Bindū of all worlds.
In temporal terms, Satiyuga on earth will invariably seek to homologize itself with the moral-spiritual dimensions of this immutable principle, dharam, ṛta. In so doing, the territory will attain a qualitative homology to the principle of satiyuga, existing on a spiritually exalted plane relative to its mundane milieu. Dharam-yuddha (war for righteousness, holy war), thus, is the totalizing instrument that is meant to establish and uphold dharam “by means that belong to… multiplicity.”
This process of cosmic reintegration with the Absolute, of correcting disorder, appears destructive from the perspective of manifest multiplicity and hence disordered, and by extension, tragic. But it isn’t— it is closer to Jünger's hallucinatory, amoral ruminations on war as a joyous festal experience.
Rudra screams, Shiva dances.
— — -
‘rāj binā nā dharam chalai hai’
Historically, Sikh raaj manifested time and again in the form of polities territorial, statist, or otherwise. The Khalsa’s inherent ideal of a territorially fluid, self-sustaining polity allowed it to function as roving non-territorial guerilla warbands (as Nader Shah was told, “They live on their horses”); as decentralized misals led by military aristocracies; as defiant, anarchic pockets of war-torn autonomy; as artisanal and devotional cities; and most prominently as Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s imperial monarchy.
Every gurudwara is deemed to be functionally self-sufficient, and every congregation of Sikhs a mobile sovereign unit. Each of these is an iteration of Sikh spatio-temporal autonomy, and within its bounds satiyuga blooms. Sikh tradition has anointed Takhat Sri Hazur Sahib as Abchal Nagar (ਅਬਿਚਲ abical: firmly fixed, unshakably rooted), the Imperishable, Eternal City. It is Sachkhanda, the realm of Truth, much like every gurudwara is.
— — -
Sikhs across history have been guided by the idea that the purpose of temporal rule is to actualize moral-spiritual order on Earth. Indeed, kaliyuga itself yearned to welcome the Guru Panth. ਕਰਤਾ ਹੁਕਮ ਹੋਆ ਹਮੈ ਤਬ ਕਲਿ ਜੋਰੇ ਹਾਥ । ਰਾਜ ਤੁਮਾਰਾ ਬੇਰ ਹਮ ਹਮੈ ਪੰਥ ਕੋ ਸਾਥ ।— “When God granted me kingdom the Kuliyoga told me with folded hands, let your reign be in my time, and I may live with your Punth.” In response, Banda declared his rule to be the commencement of the satiyuga, granted by the Gurus: “ਅਸਾ ਸਤ ਜੁਗ ਵਰਤਾਇਆ ਹੈ—We have granted satiyuga.”
ਰਾਜ ਬਿਨਾ ਨਹਿ ਧਰਮ ਚਲੈ ਹੈਂ । ਧਰਮ ਬਿਨਾ ਸਭ ਦਲੈ ਮਲੈ ਹੈਂ ।—Dharam cannot flourish without temporal power; without Dharam, all falls apart. This expresses the universal stratagem of brahma-kshatra, sacerdotium and regnum: the light of cosmic order guides the hand of power; power creates the space for cosmic order to prosper.
— — -
The idea of a transcendental, divine order guiding the state from above, so alien to contemporary norms of liberal mass democracy (power bottom-up, from the ‘grassroots’), is baked into the conceptual logic of Sikh political thought. Religion cannot be relegated to the anodyne confines of the private household, blissfully estranged from political circumstances; it is intimately entwined with power. Indeed, the two aren’t distinct, but dual aspects of true sovereignty (miri-piri, brahm-ksatra, Mitra-Varuna, Φιλοσοφία and δύναμις).
— — -
As the importance of the sangat suggests, religion is as much a social phenomenon as it is an interiorized one. The Panth fulfils and orients the Singh as much as the Singh constitutes and carries the Panth.
Initiated into the mysteries as the son and zealous knight of the Tenth King, the Singh is identified and homologized with the Guru, his lineage, the Panth, the Sun, the gods of warre, Mahakaal-Kaalika. These are the only indices of eternity: the rest is ephemeral flux.
On the level of the individual, ਖਾਲਸਾ ਸੋਇ ਜੋ ਕਰੇ ਨਿਤ ਜੰਗ ॥—Khalsa is he who wages war daily. This war is meant to be simultaneously waged on the interiorized (al-jihad al-akbar, the greater war, fought against the vikaras within the heart-lotus) and worldly (qital fi sabilillah, armed war in the name of God) planes: the ksatriya who wages war to uphold the balance of dharam must also strive to sustain it within himself.
The thorns of raw temporal power must guard the blossoming flowers of dharam. The fragrant orchards of the House of Nanak are hedged with the Khalsa’s swords, lined with the Khalsa’s life-blood.
— — -
pragaṭ kīn tab prabhū udārā
Regarding Mahakavi Santokh Singh’s literary treatment of Sikh rule and satiyuga, Sagar (1993) writes: "Santokh Singh is of the opinion that the Sikh rule was satyug. It suggests obliquely that the Sikh rule is the transformation of utopia into reality.—ਸੋ ਸਤਿਜੁਗ ਕਲਿ ਕਾਲ ਮਝਾਰਾ । ਪ੍ਰਗਟ ਕੀਨ ਤਬ ਪ੍ਰਭੂ ਉਦਾਰਾ ।”
This presents an almost proto-Fukuyama vision of the end of history, one where the Sikhs have established a utopian satiyuga in the midst of kaliyuga, decisively actualizing God's kingdom on earth. Santokh Singh, much like Banda before him, evidently saw the satiyuga manifested by Sikh rule to be lasting. However, as subsequent history testifies, Kāla's procession stops for none.
At the same time, tracing the pockets, patchworks and polities of (nominal as well as explicit) Sikh rule that have continued to manifest throughout history, the idea of satiyuga effectively becomes fungible, bursts of sacred white heat destined to wilt and perish time and again in kaliyuga’s multiplicitous reign of quantity.
Satiyuga as an eternal principle, as a return to the immutable Absolute, the site of divine Unity, can be returned to and harvested endlessly through mystical gnosis, by participation, by crossing the Sun-door, by opening the heart-lotus to light. As long as this transcendental interior ocean of Sahaj Yoga is accessible, one can hope to continue striving against the manifest degenerating order of kaliyuga. Chaoskampf is an eternal recurring struggle to conquer and crush adharam, and this struggle itself is the source of meaning. There is joy in righteous struggle, in strife.
— — -
The mystic incarnation of light
The belief that the Guru dwells among all assemblies of pious Sikhs is invariably shared by most Sikhs, whether in literal or metaphysical terms. The fabled anecdotes of Shaheed Singhs, the Guru’s spectral armies of Sikh martyrs, assisting Sikhs in pivotal battles through history is a manifestation of this belief. The most potent of these tales paint visions of Guru Gobind Singh himself arriving on the battlefield, either to directly intervene in the events or to provide spiritual fortitude. Posts on obscure internet fora as well as oral tradition mention the World Wars, the 1984 genocide, Operation Bluestar, etc.
Part of the daily ardaas invokes the Tenth Master thusly: ਦਸਵਾਂ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਸਿੰਘ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਜੀ! ਸਭ ਥਾਂਈ ਹੋਇ ਸਹਾਇ॥— O tenth Patishah Sri Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji! May you help/protect/rescue us everywhere.
Much like the occulted Imam Mahdi, Luis (2007) notes that Guru Gobind Singh reveals his darsana only to the worthy and saintly Gurmukh, to the pyare, the beloved. Significantly, the Prem Sumarag Grantha says the Creator manifests to the Gurmukh as ‘mystic light’ (jyoti); to dispose of the wicked, this jama (incarnation) will assume forms both violent and benign. ਕਲਿਜੁਗ ਕੇ ਸਮੈ ਜੋ ਸਤਿਜੁਗ ਵਰਤੈਗਾ; ਸੋ ਤਿਸ ਸਮੈ… ਇਸੀ ਜਾਮੇ ਜੋਤਿ ਦਾ ਪ੍ਰਗਾਸ ਹੋਵੈਗਾ।—when satiyuga irrupts [cf. Eliade] into the kaliyuga, in that time... this incarnation of mystic light will manifest splendorously.
— — -
The morcha as a model of Sikh autonomy
Returning to the farmer’s protest, the aforementioned video is emblematic of this firm belief in the Guru’s merciful hand guiding the Sikhs. The morcha itself was driven by a complex, interlocking set of motivations and incentives, of which the religious dimension was a central Schelling point. Religion as well as ethnic and regional amity were the principal forces that informed the morcha’s ‘asabiyyah throughout the year-long protest, from the first jathas that tore down barricades on their way to Delhi to the thousands of elders and youth weathering water canons, batons, harsh winters; more or less fighting a battle with the Delhi police at the Red Fort; miraculously, somehow withstanding waves upon waves of attacks and sabotage orchestrated by the ruling disposition.
Congregations praying and chanting together, Nihang Singhs seen roaming the precincts on their horses armed to the teeth or making shaheedi degh (a cannabis-based sacramental drink), langars set up to serve food throughout the day, medical aid, literature, music, food offered and distributed freely. These fostered a sense of shared community, presenting alternative models of modernity that eschewed the bourgeois bugman ideals of utility, profit, and self-preservation. It embraced an ideal of blood, soil and sarabloh, an ascendant solar principle brimming with vitality and an excess of life, imposing its dominion defiantly.
— — -
sūrā so pahicānīai
As the morcha battled all odds to outlast and withstand all manners of assaults, attacks, sabotage and protracted media campaigns against it— essentially locked in a stand-off against the regime— many privately and publicly began to profess that they were convinced of divine providence guiding and safeguarding the morcha.
One of the fundamental tenets of Sikhi is chardi kala, an ascendant, resilient sense of optimism, a worldview that is antipodal to the ‘blackpill,’ so to speak. And yet ‘optimism’ falls short, failing to encapsulate its essence; chardi kala rejects both hysterics and delusions for a grounded, stoic acceptance of the circumstances, opting to defiantly hold fort, much like Spengler’s proverbial last Roman soldier.
ਸੂਰਾ ਸੋ ਪਹਿਚਾਨੀਐ ਜੁ ਲਰੈ ਦੀਨ ਕੇ ਹੇਤ ॥ ਪੁਰਜਾ ਪੁਰਜਾ ਕਟਿ ਮਰੈ ਕਬਹੂ ਨ ਛਾਡੈ ਖੇਤੁ ॥— He alone is known as a chivalric warrior, who fights in defense of faith/righteousness; he may be hacked to pieces, but he does not abandon the battlefield.
Every Singh who affirms this couplet will always be pyara, beloved, to the Guru.
— — -
Dhawan (2011) uses the phrase ‘affective communities’ to describe the sort of community that centered on Guru Gobind Singh’s darbar; a Bataillean sovereign courtly culture of plenitude and solarity, driven by economies of devotion and patronage, of bhakti and ennoblement in service of dharam. Instead of models of transactional exchange of services and naukri, the darbar of the Guru (“the epitome of Kshatriya kingship”) functioned on devotional labor and chivalry.
This is the archetypal model, the vision of an affective community of the Guru’s Khalsa functioning as a dynamic, self-sufficient, mobile superorganism, one that expends freely, exults in aristocratic plenitude and solar magnanimity— ਧਰਤੀ ਦੇਵੇ ਅੰਨ ਧਨ… ਗਊ ਦੁਧ ਬਹੁ ਦੇਵੇਗੀ ਪਰਬਤ ਦੇਵੇਂਗੇ ਲਾਲ ॥ “The earth will bear grain and riches… The cow [that sacred Aryan symbol of maternal abundance and charity] will give lots of milk, and the mountains will provide beautiful jewels.”— This is the vision that the quiet hand of Fate brought to life (yet again) through the morcha.
— — -
As long as the march of history continues to wade into the kaliyuga’s ever-darkening tide, pockets of satiyuga will continue to manifest temporally and wither in sundry manifestations, dams and bulwarks meant to resist this Age’s spiritual malaise. Disdaining ascetic retreat and gnostic inactivity, the Khalsa will continue to embrace aktionism, to actively engage in the world as householder-sovereigns, as raja-yogis and gods of warre; it will continue to battle the forces of adharam and establish God’s lasting kingdom temporally, create the possibility for reintegration with the Absolute.
This is the way of patishahi. This is the will to power vested in the Guru Panth Khalsa.
— — -
Within the morcha’s ecstatic, triumphant milieu of symbolic-aesthetic excess, in a movement steadfastly operating according to Sikh principles, the Guru did manifest— figuratively, metaphysically, if not in a material sense. Wherever the Khalsa establishes the reign of righteousness, the Guru surely sits on the throne, watching over his children. And insofar as homologization equals re-actualization, the Tenth King’s court continues to thrive wherever dharam reigns. As long as the Khalsa continues to strive against adharam, the Guru’s darbar reigns triumphant, dyeing all of existence with divine light. Such territory is sanctified, and exists in sacred time.
Blessed is the House of Nanak, where the flowers of satiyuga bloom eternal in joyous, beautiful shapes and colors, bathing in the Light of lights, upon fields soaked in the sacred blood of martyrs.