Weapons & Warriors: The Warrior Saints

I’ve written about warriors who battled to defend their religious rights, but never about a warrior culture that rose up within a pacifist religion. They took up arms to defend themselves and their way of life from forces that threatened to murder them and destroy their way of life. Then they went on to help save the world from a marauding evil. Sounds like a great story of fiction doesn’t it? Well it’s not. Let me tell you about the Warrior Saints of India, the Sikhs.

Guru of the Sikhs (Picture via Wikipedia)

In the late 1400’s and early 1500’s a man named Nanak Dev Ji was born and grew up in the Punjab area. He was a respected and loved man. He was very intelligent and inquisitive. At some point he became the founder of a new religious group that was unlike the other religions. Guru Nanak preached that there was no Hindu or Muslim because in the eyes of God we are all equal. Guru Nanak traveled all over the Middle East and into parts of Africa before returning to India to settle down. The followers of Guru Nanak became known as the Sikhs, which means “to learn.”

The pacifist group grew over the decades and centuries. At times the religion was respected by all, Hindu and Muslims included. Guru Nanak was known to meet and speak to the leaders of both Hindu and Muslims. He preached about equality and working hard to achieve goals in life. He even taught that women and men were equal because without women to raise good men, there would be no good men.