THE CHADAR COVERED EVERYONE
An answer from Shabad and early Sikh writings to the claim that Sikh shahadat belongs to Sanatan dharam.
When the Guru defends another person’s freedom of faith, this does not make the Guru part of that faith. Being thankful does not give anyone the right to claim the Guru as their own.
ਏਕੁ ਗੁਸਾਈ ਅਲਹੁ ਮੇਰਾ ॥
ਹਿੰਦੂ ਤੁਰਕ ਦੁਹਾਂ ਨੇਬੇਰਾ ॥੧॥ ਰਹਾਉ ॥
ਨਾ ਹਮ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ ॥
ਅਲਹ ਰਾਮ ਕੇ ਪਿੰਡੁ ਪਰਾਨ ॥੪॥
ek gusaa-ee alahu meraa; Hindu turak duhaan neberaa. Rahao.
naa ham Hindu na Musalmaan; Alah Raam ke pind paraan.
The One, called Gusaain and Allah, is mine. I do not depend on either Hindu or Turk for spiritual guidance. I am neither Hindu nor Muslim. My body and life-breath belong to the One called Allah and Ram.
Gusaain is a name for the Master. In this Shabad, “Turk” is the historical word used for a Muslim.
Raag Bhairau, Mahala 5, Ang 1136. The first two quoted lines are the Rahao, the centre of the Shabad. The next two are verse 4. The Shabad continues through verse 5, which begins ਕਹੁ ਕਬੀਰ. Its heading in Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji is Mahala 5, so it is cited here under Guru Arjan Sahib Ji.
Shabad, the Guru’s Word, gives the governing measure. Early court poetry, political speech and state law must be read beneath it. The Rahao does not place the Sikh halfway between two religions or leave Sikh identity open to either one. It centres the One, who is beyond both. The Shabad then speaks in the first person: neither Hindu nor Muslim; body and life-breath belong to the One. Its discipline begins with the Sikh. The Panth cannot reverse that discipline and place itself inside one of the identities that the Shabad has set aside.
This clear boundary matters. Here, shahadat means giving one’s life as a witness to truth. Across different dates and settings, public officials have repeatedly linked Sikh shahadat to Sanatan dharam, Hinduism, Indian civilisation, culture and nation. The words have varied, but their direction has remained the same.
Some people use this language sincerely to honour the Gurus and express thanks. That intention should be treated fairly, but it does not change what the language does. The Gurus are praised and then placed inside an older religion or civilisation. Sikh shahadat is honoured and then another tradition is allowed to define its meaning and claim it as its own.
The public record shows this. In April 2022, an official Prime Minister’s Office account reported the Prime Minister saying that Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji emerged as a great hope for India to save its identity, stood as Hind di Chadar, and inspired later generations of India to protect the dignity and honour of their culture.
On 1 March 2026, an official Ministry of Home Affairs release reported Amit Shah saying that Guru Sahib gave his shahadat “to save Hinduism and Hindus”. It also reported him saying that followers of Sanatan Dharma across India and the world “express their gratitude” to Guru Sahib for enduring torture and giving his shahadat “to save Hinduism”.
The two statements use different words. One speaks about culture and national identity. The other directly names Hinduism, Hindus and Sanatan Dharma. Their direction is the same: both place Sikh shahadat inside a religious or national story whose meaning is decided outside Sikhi.
The question is not whether Hindus may remember Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji with thanks. Of course they may. The question is whether defending a people gives those people the right to define Guru Sahib’s identity, teaching and shahadat.
Gurbani shows us why the answer is no.
ਦਇਆ ਕਪਾਹ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਸੂਤੁ ਜਤੁ ਗੰਢੀ ਸਤੁ ਵਟੁ ॥
ਏਹੁ ਜਨੇਊ ਜੀਅ ਕਾ ਹਈ ਤ ਪਾਡੇ ਘਤੁ ॥
da-i-aa kapaah santokh soot, jat gandhee sat vat;
ehu jane-oo jee-a kaa ha-ee, ta paade ghat.
Make compassion the cotton, contentment the thread, self-restraint the knot and truthful living the twist. This is the janeu of the inner being. If you have such a janeu, Pandit, put it on me.
Asa Ki Vaar, Salok Mahala 1 before Pauri 15, Ang 471. These are the opening two lines of the Salok.
The janeu is a sacred thread worn by some Hindus. Guru Nanak Sahib Ji compares the outer thread with the qualities that should grow within a person. He names compassion, contentment, self-restraint and truthful living. Self-restraint means the ability to control oneself. These qualities do not belong to only one community. They shape a truthful human life.
The Shabad does not tell the Sikh to hate anyone who wears a janeu. But it does not allow an outer thread to define spiritual truth. A Sikh can therefore defend another person’s right to wear the janeu. This does not make the janeu part of Sikhi.
Gurbani applies the same inner test to Muslim religious practice:
ਮਿਹਰ ਮਸੀਤਿ ਸਿਦਕੁ ਮੁਸਲਾ ਹਕੁ ਹਲਾਲੁ ਕੁਰਾਣੁ ॥
ਸਰਮ ਸੁੰਨਤਿ ਸੀਲੁ ਰੋਜਾ ਹੋਹੁ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਣੁ ॥
mihar maseet sidak musalaa, hak halaal kuraan;
saram sunnat seel rojaa, hohu musalmaan.
Let mercy be your mosque, faith your prayer mat and honest earning your Quran. Let the modesty that turns you away from wrongdoing be your circumcision, and good character your fast. In this way, become a Muslim.
Vaar Majh Ki, Salok Mahala 1 before Pauri 7, Ang 140. These are the opening two lines of the Salok.
Gurbani does not let Hindu ritual govern spiritual truth, and it does not let Muslim ritual govern it either. It tests both by the standard of truthful living. Neither community can claim the Guru simply because the Guru protects members of that community, uses words familiar to them or examines their religious practices.
Shabad must therefore govern how the historical chadar image is read. Chadar means a cloth or covering, and here it is used as an image of protection.
This research found an early written use of the chadar image in Sri Gur Sobha. The work is attributed to Sainapati, a poet linked to the court of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji. In the edition prepared by Ganda Singh, the line reads:
pargat bhae Gur Teg Bahadar, sagal srisht pai dhapi chadar.
Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji appeared, and the chadar was spread over the whole creation.
The key words are sagal srisht: the whole creation. The words karam dharam also appear in the same chhand, or stanza. The following stanzas speak of sarab dharam, tilak, janeu, dharamsala and dharam het.
This early passage holds two truths together. Guru Sahib’s chadar covers the whole creation. At the same time, Guru Sahib’s historical stand protected people whose religious signs and way of life were under attack.
The words “whole creation” do not erase the people Guru Sahib defended. But those people do not own the Guru who defended them.
The Bachittar Natak passage often used in this discussion says tilak janju rakha prabh ta ka and dharam het saka jini keeaa. These words speak of protecting the tilak, a religious mark worn on the forehead, and the janeu. They also speak of a saka undertaken for dharam. Here, saka refers to an event remembered for great courage and sacrifice. This matters because the lines tell us what was being protected in that event.
But the lines do not say that Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji became part of the tradition whose marks he protected. The lines also do not name the Kashmiri Pandits. That connection comes from wider historical accounts recorded later.
The word dharam does not always mean exactly the same thing as the modern English word “religion”. We must read it in its setting, not force it into one narrow modern meaning. But the word alone cannot turn protection into membership of a religion. It cannot give one civilisation the right to claim Guru Sahib or his shahadat as its own.
The record does not support a neat sequence from srisht, to dharam, to Hind, and finally to Sanatan. Srisht and dharam already appear together in the early passage. We should not create a historical sequence that the evidence does not establish.
The first use of Hind di Chadar has not been established. The earliest example found in the sources checked for this essay is in the official report of a Punjab Vidhan Sabha debate on 6 December 1967. This proves that the phrase was in public circulation by that date, but not where or when it began. That unresolved point does not weaken the present finding: in current public language, defence is turned into religious membership, and thanks is turned into ownership.
This is not only an argument about old texts. Governments, courts and legislatures choose words that shape how future generations understand Sikh identity and Sikh shahadat.
Shabad has already given the Sikh measure. The law comes after it. Article 25 of the Constitution of India must therefore be read accurately, but its narrow legal scope must not be used to hide its wider harm.
Article 25 speaks in two directions. Explanation I expressly names “the Sikh religion” and deems the wearing and carrying of kirpans to be included in its profession. Explanation II again names people who profess the Sikh, Jaina or Buddhist religion. Yet for Article 25(2)(b), it orders that references to Hindus must include those people and that references to “Hindu religious institutions” must be enlarged in the same way.
The Supreme Court has said that this expanded meaning is for the special purpose of Article 25(2)(b), “and for no other”. It would therefore be false to say that Article 25 generally declares Sikhi to be Hinduism.
But that legal limit does not make the wording harmless. Within the field where it operates, Hindu is the main constitutional word. Sikh people and Sikh religious institutions enter by being included within it. Sikhi is named, but it is not named equally.
The objection is not to social reform or equal access to the public religious institutions covered by the clause. Sikh identity requires no defence of caste exclusion. A secular Constitution can protect reform and equal access by naming Hindu, Sikh, Jaina and Buddhist people and institutions separately. Equal treatment does not require unequal naming.
The wider danger is not imagined. In 1966, while deciding a case about the Swaminarayan community, the Supreme Court connected Explanation II with what it called the “broad and comprehensive character” of Hindu religion. It then placed beside that constitutional wording four Hindu-named family-law Acts which apply to Sikhs.
In Bal Patil v. Union of India in 2005, the Supreme Court spoke of Sikhs and Jains as having been treated as part of a “wider Hindu community”. The case did not formally withdraw Sikh minority status. Its importance here is that, while deciding a Jain minority case, the Court used language that placed Sikhs and Jains inside a wider Hindu frame.
Neither judgment made a general legal declaration that Sikhi is Hinduism. That does not make the reasoning harmless. It shows limited constitutional wording entering a much wider judicial story about religion, culture and community.
Parliament separately enacted the Hindu Marriage Act 1955, the Hindu Succession Act 1956, the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956, and the Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956. Subject to its stated exceptions, each Act expressly applies to a person who is Sikh by religion. Each also directs that the word “Hindu” within the Act includes a person covered by the Act even though that person is not Hindu by religion.
These Acts apply to Sikhs in fields including marriage and divorce, intestate succession, adoption and maintenance, and minority and guardianship. Article 25 did not itself create them, and they do not depend upon Explanation II for their application. But in 1966 the Supreme Court itself placed the constitutional wording and these four Acts together. The Constitution and the statutes repeat the same method: Sikh identity is acknowledged, and Sikh people are then administered through a Hindu-named category.
The Anand Marriage Act validates qualifying marriages between persons professing the Sikh religion solemnised through Anand Karaj. Since the 2012 amendment came into force, section 6 has required State Governments to make rules providing an Anand Marriage Register. Registration under that provision avoids duplicate registration, but it operates “without prejudice to” the Hindu Marriage Act. It does not supply a separate Sikh law of divorce, succession, adoption, maintenance or guardianship.
The consequence is not merely a word printed on paper. When a Sikh enters a court under one of these Acts, the law recognises that person as Sikh by religion and then tells the court to read the word Hindu as including that Sikh. The objection is not to different communities sharing civil rules. Shared rules can be written and named as shared rules. The objection is to one religion becoming the legal heading beneath which other religions are placed.
This language also supplies a ready-made political claim. A public figure can remove Explanation II from its limited setting and announce that “the Constitution says Sikhs are Hindus”. That general claim is legally false, but the wording gives it a constitutional hook. The ordinary reader is left to untangle a distinction that the Constitution need never have created.
The reasonable inference from the whole record is not that one body secretly coordinated every clause, statute, judgment and speech. It is that, across decades and institutions, the same assimilating assumption has repeatedly appeared. Sikhi is acknowledged by name and then administered or narrated inside a Hindu or national frame. This is a structural pattern, not a series of harmless slips. The record does not disclose one common motive shared by every actor. It does disclose an effect that repeatedly points in the same direction.
This legal pattern supplies a frame through which Sikh shahadat is recast. Once Sikhi is placed inside a wider Hindu or Sanatan civilisation, Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji’s defence of Hindus is retold as a member of that civilisation protecting his own religion. Protection is turned into membership. Gratitude is turned into ownership. The chadar spread over the whole creation is narrowed into the flag of one civilisation.
The objection is neither new nor unreasonable. Without deciding the larger identity question raised before it, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution recommended in 2002 that Explanation II be removed and that Hindu, Sikh, Jaina and Buddhist institutions be named separately.
On 25 February 2011, Sardar Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa introduced a private member’s Constitution Amendment Bill in the Rajya Sabha. Its statement of reasons said that the wording had caused “avoidable confusion about the independent identity” of the religions concerned. The Bill did not become law.
The responsible correction remains clear. Explanation II should be removed. Article 25(2)(b) should name the religions separately. Sikhs should not have to disappear inside the word Hindu before they can be included within a law for social reform or equal access.
A constitutional clause cannot alter Sikhi. Shabad Guru Granth Sahib Ji does not depend upon recognition from any state. But constitutional and statutory words can still affect Sikh institutions, family law, judgments, public teaching and political claims. They can help others misname Sikhi and then present absorption as unity or gratitude. That is real harm. It should not be excused as a technical matter.
The same state has already shown that more accurate official language is possible. In 2021, the Government of India issued rules for a commemorative coin bearing the words pargat bhae Guru Teg Bahadar, sagal srisht pai dhapi chadar. The coin does not correct Article 25 or undo the wider pattern. It does show that narrow and assimilating language is not unavoidable. Official bodies can speak of the chadar over the whole creation when they choose to do so.
Official words do more than remember history. They teach people how to understand it. A modern state may honour Sikh shahadat, but it may not fold Sikhi into another religion and then claim a seventeenth-century shahadat for a religious or national story imposed upon it later.
Many people inherit these phrases through family, school, public remembrance and shared Panjabi life. Repetition is not by itself proof of bad faith. A phrase can be repeated with love while carrying a claim that the speaker has never examined. We should correct the claim without contempt for the person and return patiently to Shabad and the historical record.
ਭੈ ਕਾਹੂ ਕਉ ਦੇਤ ਨਹਿ ਨਹਿ ਭੈ ਮਾਨਤ ਆਨ ॥
ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਸੁਨਿ ਰੇ ਮਨਾ ਗਿਆਨੀ ਤਾਹਿ ਬਖਾਨਿ ॥੧੬॥
bhai kaahoo kau det neh, neh bhai maanat aan;
kahu Nanak sun re manaa, giaanee taahi bakhaan.
Says Nanak, listen, mind: one who frightens no one and is not frightened by anyone else’s threats should be called truly wise.
Salok Mahala 9, Salok 16, Ang 1427.
This teaches the Sikh how to respond. No Hindu should be treated as an enemy because this claim is questioned. Governments and public figures should be questioned without hatred. But we must not give up the Guru’s meaning simply to please political leaders or to avoid disagreement between communities.
Nirbhau means without fear, but it does not mean being hostile. Nirvair means without hatred, but it does not require us to remain silent.
The chadar covered the whole creation. In its historical setting, it sheltered people facing coercion in matters of faith and conscience. That defence did not make Guru Tegh Bahadur Sahib Ji Hindu, place Guru Sahib inside Sanatan dharam, or give Hinduism or a later Indian nation ownership of the shahadat. The same misuse occurs when praise of the Sahibzade, the four sons of Guru Gobind Singh Sahib Ji, is used to place them inside a religious or national story imposed upon them later.
A Sikh can protect another person without joining that person’s faith and without asking that person to become Sikh. Gratitude remains honest only when it leaves the Guru’s identity and authority untouched. When gratitude demands ownership, it becomes appropriation. The Gurus and the Sahibzade bore witness to truth under the Guru alone. No community or state may claim them as its property.
Verification and sources
Every Gurbani passage above can be checked by its Ang number: Raag Bhairau, Mahala 5, Ang 1136; Asa Ki Vaar, Salok Mahala 1 before Pauri 15, Ang 471; Vaar Majh Ki, Salok Mahala 1 before Pauri 7, Ang 140; and Salok Mahala 9, Salok 16, Ang 1427.
The Gurmukhi text of Gurbani comes first. Romanisation means writing Gurbani in English letters. Romanisation and the English meanings are learning guides. They do not replace the Gurmukhi or the need to read the whole Shabad in its proper setting.
Gurbani: Ang 1136 at SearchGurbani, Ang 1136 with Professor Sahib Singh’s teeka at SriGranth, Ang 471, Ang 140, and Ang 1427.
Early Sikh writings: Sri Gur Sobha, Ganda Singh edition, read alongside the 2014 Punjabi-English edition. Ganda Singh’s edition reads dhapi. The Punjabi text printed beside the 2014 English translation reads jaki. Both keep the important words sagal srisht. This essay quotes the Ganda Singh edition and records the difference openly. See also Bachittar Natak, chapter 5. This essay does not examine or decide the wider debate about the Dasam Granth.
Later use of the phrase: Punjab Vidhan Sabha debates, 22 November to 14 December 1967. The first use of Hind di Chadar has not been established. The use on 6 December 1967 is the earliest one found in the sources checked for this essay and proves that the phrase was in public circulation by that date.
Government record: Prime Minister’s Office, 21 April 2022, Ministry of Home Affairs / PIB, 1 March 2026, and official 2021 Coinage Rules.
Constitution and judgments: Constitution of India, Article 25, Punjab Rao v. D.P. Meshram, Sastri Yagnapurushadji v. Muldas, Bal Patil v. Union of India, 2002 Constitution Review Commission report, and 2011 Constitution Amendment Bill.
Family-law statutes: Hindu Marriage Act 1955, Hindu Succession Act 1956, Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act 1956, Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act 1956, and Anand Marriage Act 1909.
Strong disagreement is welcome. Contempt is not.
Bhul chuk maaf karni Ji.
Gurjit Singh Sandhu
PanthSeva
London