The RSS now says that Sikhi is a separate religion. Its wider doctrine still places different paths inside one Hindu identity and one Hindu Rashtra. A Sikh answer cannot rest on the sentence we are asked to welcome while ignoring the record we are asked not to examine. Bhai Kahn Singh Ji Nabha’s answer still matters because the question remains one of Guruship: who has the authority to name the Sikh?
Begin with Shabad
In Sidh Gosht, the Siddhs ask Guru Nanak Sahib Ji:
ਤੇਰਾ ਕਵਣੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਜਿਸ ਕਾ ਤੂ ਚੇਲਾ ॥
teraa kavan guroo jis kaa too chelaa.
Who is your Guru, whose disciple are you?
Guru Nanak Sahib Ji answers:
ਸਬਦੁ ਗੁਰੂ ਸੁਰਤਿ ਧੁਨਿ ਚੇਲਾ ॥
sabad guroo surat dhun chelaa.
The Shabad is Guru; consciousness attentively attuned to it is the disciple.
Ramkali, Sidh Gosht, Mahalla 1. The question is on Ang 942; the answer is on Ang 943.
This does not settle every question about Sikh institutions, leadership or collective Panthic action. Sikhs need institutions. The Panth must gather, deliberate and act. Sri Akal Takht Sahib has a unique place in Sikh life. Committees must manage property and carry out practical work. Office-holders may be entrusted with serious responsibilities.
But the first question has been settled. Shabad is Guru. The Sikh consciousness is the disciple.
Everything else must remain within that order. An institution may serve the Guru, but it cannot become Guru. An office-holder may speak from a place of responsibility, but does not own that place. A government may regulate civil matters, but it cannot decide what Sikhi is or place Sikh religious identity beneath another religious or political authority.
That is where Ham Hindu Nahin begins. It is not first an argument about census boxes, constitutional wording or ancient geography. It answers a prior question: who has the authority to tell the Sikh who he really is?
What Bhai Kahn Singh Ji Nabha was defending
Bhai Kahn Singh Ji Nabha published Ham Hindu Nahin in 1898, during a public struggle over whether Sikhi possessed an independent religious standing or was merely part of a wider Hindu system. The book appeared within the Singh Sabha period and became a classic statement of distinct Sikh identity.
The book is not Gurbani. Bhai Kahn Singh Ji was a Sikh scholar, not the Guru. His work remains beneath Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji, as every Sikh book and every PanthSeva article must.
Its importance lies in the question it answered. When others said that the Sikh was not truly separate, Bhai Kahn Singh Ji did not ask for a kinder version of the same claim. He answered it plainly: Ham Hindu Nahin. We are not Hindus.
Some people hear only rejection in those words. They assume that a boundary between faiths must be an act of hostility. It is not. A Sikh may love Hindu family members, defend Hindu neighbours, work beside Hindu colleagues and share language, food and history with Hindu friends. The Sikh should stand against injustice done to any Hindu person, just as the Sikh should stand against injustice done to a Muslim, Christian or anyone else.
None of that gives another person or organisation the right to rename the Sikh. Friendship does not give naming rights.
The positive meaning of Bhai Kahn Singh Ji’s title is larger than its negative wording. Sikhi has its own Guru. Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji is complete. Sikh truth does not need to be placed beneath another religious or civilisational tradition before it can be recognised as real.
The boundary begins with Guruship.
One assurance cannot cancel the record
At an RSS outreach event held at a private college in Ludhiana on Thursday 26 February 2026, Mohan Bhagwat said that the RSS considered Sikhism a “separate and distinct religion”. In the same answer, he said that the Sangh viewed Hinduism “not as a religion but as a way of life”. The report was published the following morning.
Those words should be recorded accurately. But they should not be separated from the doctrine around them.
The question is not whether Mohan Bhagwat made the reassuring statement. He did. The question is what the statement leaves untouched. If Hindu is also the name of a civilisation, a way of life and the nation itself, Sikhi can be called a separate religion while Sikhs are still claimed inside a wider Hindu identity.
The RSS’s own published material shows that this is not a theoretical concern. In August 2025, its official website reported Bhagwat saying that forms of worship may differ while the underlying identity remains one, and reaffirming Bharat as a Hindu Rashtra.
The RSS also continues to host a “Vision and Mission” page which names the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat among bodies serving what it calls a “unifying Hindu appeal” against separatist pulls. That is not a description invented by Sikh critics. It is the organisation’s own account of the work.
Nor is the relationship between this doctrine and political power imaginary. The RSS, the BJP, the Union Government and the Indian state are not the same body, and they should not be carelessly merged. Yet on 10 August 2026 the RSS announced a coordination meeting of 32 organisations it described as inspired by the Sangh, and its own notice named the Bharatiya Janata Party among the participants.
The record is therefore coherent. Sikhi may be given a separate religious name while the Sikh is placed inside a supposedly deeper Hindu national and civilisational identity. The separate room is permitted, but someone else still names the house.
This structure is not new. Savarkar allowed Sikhs to be classed as Sikh in religion while claiming them as Hindu in race and culture. The companion PanthSeva essay, Which “Hindu” Do You Mean?, examines the geographic, census, religious, political and legal meanings separately, and shows how an argument begins in one meaning and quietly ends in another.
A movement should not be judged by the single sentence most convenient to quote. It should be judged by the doctrine it continues to publish, the organisations it maintains and the work it continues to carry out.
A genuine change would be visible. The RSS would say without qualification that Sikhs are free to reject Hindu religious, cultural and civilisational membership. It would stop treating Hindu and Bharatiya as one underlying identity. It would remove the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat from a wider Hindu unity project. It would stop declaring Bharat a Hindu Rashtra in a way that claims Sikhs whether they consent or not.
That has not happened. The February assurance does not settle the Sikh objection. It leaves the larger claim in place.
When praise changes the Guru’s place
Absorption does not always arrive through insult. Sometimes it comes through praise.
In his official Vijayadashami speech on 2 October 2025, Mohan Bhagwat described Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji as having become a shield and sacrificed himself to “protect the Hindu society from the atrocities of invaders from a foreign religion”.
Guru Sahib defended the right of others to remain in their faith. That truth should never be hidden. But defending Hindu freedom of conscience did not make Guru Sahib Hindu, and it did not place his shahadat under Hindu religious ownership. A Sikh who gives his head so that another person may keep a different faith reveals the reach of Gurmat. He does not surrender the Guru’s identity to the people he defended.
On 25 November 2025, at the official commemoration of Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji’s 350th Shaheedi Diwas in Kurukshetra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Anandpur Sahib sacred ground of national consciousness and said that the tradition of the Gurus formed the foundation of the nation’s character, culture and inner spirit. Later in the same speech, Guru Sahib’s fearlessness was connected with the defence of India’s borders and Operation Sindoor.
Some Sikhs will hear honour in this language. I understand why. Governments can also do practical good through access, preservation, public remembrance and facilities for the Sangat. We do not need to deny every useful act in order to examine the meaning being placed around it.
What concerns me is the movement beneath the praise. Guru Sahib is first honoured, and then the modern nation becomes the frame through which his teaching and shahadat are explained. Fearlessness under the Guru is moved into the security language of the present state. Sikh sacred memory is made to support a national account whose deeper identity is repeatedly described as Hindu.
The nation may learn from the Guru. Every nation should. But the nation cannot become the interpreter of the Guru.
A government does not acquire authority over Sikh meaning by issuing a coin, building a road or organising a commemoration. It may honour Guru Sahib. It may not contain Guru Sahib within the political needs of the present day.
Political appropriation can come with folded hands.
Law, elections and the same question of authority
The legal position must also be stated accurately.
Article 25 of the Constitution of India does not generally declare Sikhs to be Hindus. Explanation I expressly recognises the wearing and carrying of kirpans as part of the profession of the Sikh religion.
Explanation II is limited to Article 25(2)(b), concerning social reform and access to public religious institutions. Within that clause, references to Hindus are made to include people professing the Sikh, Jaina and Buddhist religions.
That limit matters. We should not weaken a proper objection by making a false legal claim.
But the wording still makes Hindu the main legal category. Sikh people and Sikh institutions enter through inclusion within it. The Constituent Assembly could have named Hindu, Sikh, Jaina and Buddhist people and institutions separately. It did not.
The law can determine the reach of a clause. It cannot turn its drafting method into Gurmat. The state can decide what a law covers. It cannot decide who is Guru.
The same question of authority appears in the management of Sikh institutions. The SGPC’s own history records that during British rule Sri Harmandir Sahib came under a Sarbrah nominated through the Deputy Commissioner of Amritsar. Sikh resistance helped produce the Gurdwara Reform Movement, and the Sikh Gurdwaras Act 1925 vested management in the SGPC as a representative body elected by Sikh voters. That was a major Panthic victory, won through courage, imprisonment and shahadat. It should not be rewritten as though Sikhs gained nothing.
But the victory took statutory form, and the statutory machinery still matters. The last completed SGPC general election was held in 2011. Fifteen years later, in August 2026, the SGPC president was still writing to the Chief Commissioner of Gurdwara Elections about voter registration, verification and the conduct of officials preparing the rolls.
The point is not whether a particular official is sympathetic. The problem is that a central Sikh management body has not been renewed through a general Sikh election for fifteen years, while the machinery required to hold that election does not finally rest with the Sikh electorate.
A Panthic institution should not depend indefinitely upon a government timetable before Sikh voters may renew it.
The part that belongs to us
I do not want every Sikh argument to end in Delhi. That can become an excuse, and it would not be honest.
Outside control survives more easily when Sikh political parties, families, committees and office-holders learn to use the same structures for themselves. A Panthic institution does not become free merely because the person controlling it is Sikh. A Sikh name does not turn party capture into Panthic authority. A spiritual office cannot speak independently if appointment, salary, tenure and removal all depend upon the same political or managerial circle.
That is a structural problem before it is a judgment upon any particular office-holder.
We have spent too much time searching for the right powerful person. The safer question is how to build institutions that even the wrong person cannot easily misuse. Appointments to important Panthic offices need public rules. Terms and powers should be defined. Conflicts of interest should be declared. Budgets should be open. Reasons for appointment and removal should be recorded. No party, family or management group should be able to treat a Panthic institution as inherited property.
These safeguards do not create spiritual authority. Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji governs Sikh meaning. Civil safeguards simply stop ordinary human weakness from hiding behind a spiritual title.
We cannot demand freedom from outside control while defending hidden control inside. We cannot invoke Shabad as Guru when speaking against Delhi and treat the same Shabad as an inconvenience in Amritsar.
How the Sikh must answer
The Mool Mantar names the One:
ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ
nirbhau nirvair.
Without fear. Without enmity.
Mool Mantar, Ang 1.
These words do not ask the Sikh to choose between courage and decency.
Nirbhau means that we do not soften a conclusion because the organisation being examined is powerful or close to government. We do not treat access, praise or a carefully worded assurance as a substitute for change.
Nirvair means that judgment must not become hatred. Hindu people are not responsible for every RSS statement, constitutional clause or government speech. The Sikh must not turn a disagreement over authority into contempt for neighbours.
But Nirvair does not require gullibility. It does not require the Sikh to accept an assurance contradicted by the doctrine and activity surrounding it. It does not turn organised absorption into an innocent misunderstanding. There is no hatred in judging a movement by its record.
Nor does Sikh distinctness close the Sikh’s concern around Sikhs alone. Guru Amar Das Sahib Ji prays:
ਜਗਤੁ ਜਲੰਦਾ ਰਖਿ ਲੈ ਆਪਣੀ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਧਾਰਿ ॥
jagat jalandaa rakh lai aapnee kirpaa dhaar.
This burning world: save it by Your grace.
Bilaval Ki Vaar, Salok Mahalla 3, Ang 853.
The prayer is for the jagat, the world. The Sikh does not need to become Hindu in order to care for Hindu people. The Sikh does not need to accept another civilisational identity in order to serve a shared country. Sikhi already gives the Sikh a universal responsibility under the Guru.
Guru Nanak Sahib Ji says:
ਸਿਖੀ ਸਿਖਿਆ ਗੁਰ ਵੀਚਾਰਿ ॥
ਨਦਰੀ ਕਰਮਿ ਲਘਾਏ ਪਾਰਿ ॥
sikhee sikhi-aa gur veechaar.
nadree karam laghaa-e paar.
Sikhi is learnt through reflection upon the Guru; through grace, one is carried across.
Aasa Ki Vaar, Salok Mahalla 1, Ang 465.
This is the final answer to absorption.
Sikhi will not survive merely because Sikhs become better at saying what they are not. A boundary is necessary, but a boundary cannot form the person living within it. Sikhi must be learnt. It must enter the home, the Sangat, the gurdwara and ordinary life. Children must know why Shabad is Guru. Adults must listen to Gurbani rather than living only through inherited identity. Sikh institutions must bring the Panth under the Guru rather than use Sikh feeling to preserve their own power.
Otherwise the outer name may remain while the inner authority has already moved.
Ham Hindu Nahin still means that the RSS does not have the right to place the Sikh inside a Hindu nation or civilisation. It means that a legal category cannot become religious truth. It means that official praise cannot make the nation the interpreter of the Guru. It means that Sikh parties, families and committees cannot claim the Guru’s authority for themselves.
The February 2026 assurance does not settle the matter. The larger doctrine and organised activity remain. Until they change, the Sikh should judge the record as it stands.
The old title protects the boundary. The Guru forms the Sikh who lives within it: under the Guru, and answerable to the Guru alone.
Verification and sources
The Gurmukhi, Ang references, Bani headings and attributions used in this article were checked against SearchGurbani and SriGranth. The plain-English senses are learning renderings. They do not replace the Gurmukhi or the need to read each passage in its full setting.
The historical setting of Ham Hindu Nahin was checked against a digitised copy of Bhai Kahn Singh Ji Nabha’s work and J. S. Grewal’s account of the Singh Sabha period in The New Cambridge History of India.
The RSS discussion was checked principally against the organisation’s own published material: its “Vision and Mission” page, its August 2025 account of Bharat as a Hindu Rashtra, its October 2025 Vijayadashami speech, and its 10 August 2026 notice for the coordination meeting of Sangh-inspired organisations. The Ludhiana statement was checked against the report published on 27 February 2026.
The discussion of the public framing of Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji was checked against the official Prime Minister’s Office transcript of the address given at Kurukshetra on 25 November 2025.
The Article 25 wording was checked against the official Constitution of India as in force on 1 May 2026, together with the record of the Constituent Assembly’s handling of the provision.
The history of the Sarbrah system and the Gurdwara Reform settlement was checked against the SGPC’s own historical account. The present election position was checked against the SGPC’s 10 August 2026 statement and reporting on the voter-registration process.
Historical, legal and current claims were checked to 18 August 2026.
If a mismatch is found in the Gurmukhi, Ang reference, Bani heading, attribution, transliteration, English sense, date or source description, PanthSeva will correct it publicly, calmly and with a dated correction note.
Strong disagreement is welcome. Contempt is not.
Bhul chuk maaf karni Ji.
Gurjit Singh Sandhu
PanthSeva
London