Although each of us must enter and depart this world alone, GurSikhī encourages us to walk the exacting path to our Creator together. This togetherness is known as ‘saṅgat.’ More specifically, we may define sanġat as a community of GurSikhs oriented towards the Gurū’s way of life, where the shared resolve to live—and if required, to die—by the Gurū’s teachings is at the heart of our togetherness. Basic agreement on such fundamentals is no small thing. Sharing this extraordinary love for the Gurū renders dialogue possible and reconciliation worthwhile, regardless of whatever disagreements may exist between particular Sikhs at any moment. Amidst the institutional paralysis and vacuum of leadership within our community, it is crucial for Sikhs of all ages—but especially the young—to reimagine what saṅgat can be and do.
Emphatically, our bonds of saṅgat do not exist solely when we are assembled in the Gurū’s presence at the gurdvārā. The exalted moments we spend in the manifest Gurū’s darbār undoubtedly reveal the collective depth of a saṅgat’s decorum and devotion, but much like the time reserved for a sovereign’s public audience, they hardly exhaust the affairs of the Gurū’s court. We owe our Gurū study, discipline, service, contemplation, and training—happy duties that extend far beyond our time in the gurdvārā and whose execution may be enriched by performing them alongside fellow GurSikhs. It is noteworthy that the saṅgat assembled for any particular divān may comprise members of several distinct saṅgats, each of which may specialize in adorning its members with different gifts of the Gurū’s endowment.
The idea of saṅgats as independent, semi-autonomous communities of GurSikhs is not without historical precedent. During the Gurū period, the distances and regional differences between various communities of GurSikhs naturally gave rise to independent saṅgats. At times, the Gurūs would personally visit a given saṅgat, bestowing dastārs, manuscripts, arms, musical instruments, and responsibilities at their pleasure. Gurū Amar Das entrusted twenty-two worthy GurSikhs—including both men and women—with manjīs. These geographically-dispersed emissaries of the Gurū were responsible for teaching Gurbāṇī to their respective congregations and collecting the disciples’ offerings for the Gurū’s langar. His successor, Gurū Ram Das, instituted an administrative system of masaṅds tasked with expounding the Gurū’s message, gathering dasvaṅḍh, and conducting groups of Sikhs to meet the Gurū.
The masaṅd system initially succeeded in helping coordinate a burgeoning network of Nānakpaṅthīs across the subcontinent, but with time, it succumbed to corruption and conspiracy, with certain masaṅds going so far as to abet rival claimants to the Guruship. Ultimately, it was abolished by Gurū Gobind Singh, whose establishment of the Khalsā in 1699 consolidated Paṅthic authority under his personal leadership and that of the Paṅj Piārē. Surviving hukamnāmās graced by his pen record administrative directives from the Gurū’s darbār to particular saṅgats. Though the creation of the Khalsā significantly altered the loci of power within the Paṅth, Gurū Gobind Singh notably retained a broadly federal structure, recognizing as legitimate the vocation of the Nirmalā, Udāsī, Nihaṅg, and Sevāpaṅthī orders.
At present, gurdvārā management—for all its talk of ‘The Youth’—is too often a stultifying factor. There generally exists a great chasm between the Gurūs’ humility, vision, and daring as distinguished from the committee rule of those holding institutional authority in their name. While some committee members are indisputably corrupt and others have modeled sevā for decades, the systemic failure of most gurdvārās consists in their unspoken acquiescence to the spirit of secularism: no grand enterprises are expected of ‘religion,’ for we live in the age of science, start-ups, and the state. The problem is that GurSikhī demands constant struggle with inner vices and outer injustices. Nothing in the teachings and example of our Gurūs prepares us for idleness. Our ancestors donned the kirpān and dastār to fight for a better world. Offer young Sikhs a sovereign mode of existence and vibrant community worth belonging to and witness unprecedented gains in ‘Youth Engagement.’
It goes without saying that we cannot rely upon gurdvārā committees to build meaningful saṅgat, nor can each Sikh constitute a saṅgat of one. Young Sikhs envisioning the sort of life they wish to create for their families, in particular, must grapple with the sort of GurSikhī they wish to pass on to their children and the sort of saṅgat this will require. It stands to reason that young Sikh families, with the support of the broader community, are naturally positioned to spearhead a renewal of saṅgat. As social animals, human beings always have some saṅgat, in the broader sense of community. For any given person, the community that most decisively influences one’s choices and view of existence is the community to which one most wishes to belong. The task of renewing saṅgat’s promise thus requires choosing in each moment to live by the Gurū’s remarkable vision and seeking the company of similarly driven GurSikhs.
Concretely, this synergistic intersection of a love for GurSikhī and a love for one’s children may begin as modestly as two families choosing to travel to Amritsar together every summer vacation, corresponding in Puṅjābī as penpals throughout the school year. More ambitiously, families passionate about a particular aspect of GurSikhī may choose to live in close proximity with one another. Beyond cultivating rich friendships, this could lead to pooling academic, professional, extracurricular, financial, and intellectual resources, rendering homeschooling for elementary education a viable option or sparking joint entrepreneurial ventures. What is more, with respect to the families’ shared passion for a specific area of GurSikh learning, they could excitingly combine their dasvaṅḍh—for instance—to invite a master luthier to teach them how to craft musical instruments of the Gurūs’ endowment, like the rabāb, saraṅdā, and tāus.
Another saṅgat might specialize in the binding, calligraphy, illumination, miniature decoration, and restoration of Gurū Graṅth Sāhib sarūps. A further saṅgat might focus on studying the Persian works of Gurū Gobind Singh and Bhāī Nand Lal, and still another on learning the original Sabad Rīts as revealed to the Gurūs and the remarkable system of classical percussion of the Gurū’s dabār. Is it not enough that after his final journey, Gurū Nanak settled in Kartarpur and established an agricultural community, farming himself and alluding to inner cultivation in his Bāṇī—is this not enough to inspire a saṅgat to grow organic fruits and vegetables for the Gurū’s laṅgar? Surely Gurū Tegh Bahadur, who gifted his very own mridaṅg to a saṅgat whose Kīrtan greatly pleased him, would smile on a saṅgat whose shān—glory—is the shān—spectacular display of percussive vidiā—that precedes the rendition of Kīrtan.
It is critical that specialization in particular branches of GurSikh knowledge be complemented by an ethos of generalism, where each GurSikh strives to inculcate the virtues of his or her fellow GurSikhs. As every GurSikh is formed by the Saṅgat as a whole, every GurSikh must endeavor to gain the virtues of the whole Saṅgat. Indeed, for a GurSikh to be truly sovereign, he or she must be equipped both to participate fully in the world and to transmit the distinctive excellence of Gurū Nanak’s court. Imagine GurSikhs equally adept in scriptural exegesis, coding, the rāgas of Gurū Graṅth Sāhib, world history, and self-defense. Consider the flow of knowledge between saṅgats a marriage would herald, and consider the scrutiny a saṅgat would bring to bear on one who would wed a particularly gifted Kīrtanīā! Of course, bringing about such a state of affairs is no small undertaking, but insofar as individual Sikhs possess such knowledge and desire to share it with fellow Sikhs equally desirous of learning, we have everything to gain by choosing to renew the promise of saṅgat.
This picture of sovereign GurSikhs assembling in decentralized, semi-autonomous saṅgats, in turn forming a supernational federation presents an intriguing model for minting Paṅthic leaders. Individuals nurtured by saṅgats of this kind will possess qualities priming them to assume positions of responsibility within gurdvārās and other Sikh and non-Sikh institutions in the diaspora and abroad. The rich coordination saṅgat on this understanding facilitates would ideally equip these leaders with the ideas and community mandate to foster institutional renewal—and where this proves sufficiently intractable—to found and staff new institutions. The longterm flourishing of GurSikhī in the United States will almost certainly require the emergence of full-time Kīrtan and Kathā exponents among the most gifted American-born GurSikhs. Such a bottom-up movement of semi-autonomous saṅgats would yield a unique experiment in the ability of civil society to provide for the responsible cultivation of world-class talent.
Renewing saṅgat’s promise will require nothing short of the selfless dedication of mind, body, and soul. It will demand Sikhs to look closely at their fellow Sikhs, look within, and discover the mettle to choose a life of perfect accountability to the Gurū’s sublime teachings. Absent the virtues of courage, integrity, patience, and forgiveness, communities of this kind cannot long endure on this earth. Saṅgats in this sense will delight in the spiritual and temporal victories of their members, spot them fortitude in times of adversity, and channel the collaborative and competitive energies needed to realize a renaissance in GurSikh affairs. By divine mercy alone does one belong to the saṅgat of the saintly; cast in this crucible of virtue, one attains supreme blessedness.
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Nihal Singh