Nanak, as ever
Eternal are Guru Nanak Dev’s words and his message. But today, more than ever, we need to reiterate his teachings. This belief was echoed at Government Museum auditorium where City journalist & writer Roopinder Singh’s book Guru Nanak – Jeevan Aur Sikshaayein, a Hindi translation of his earlier published English book Guru Nanak -His Life And Teachings was released.

As Governor Punjab and Administrator, Chandigarh Administration Gen S F Rodrigues (retd) released the book, he reminded that we, the product of Macaulay’s minutes of meeting, needed to take a re-look at where we were moving & how we’d evolved. It was time, he asserted, we reclaimed our ancient heritage & pedestal of our culture from where we had been dethroned.

Hailing Guru Granth Sahib as the book that contains more seminal truths and spiritual beliefs than any other, he underlined the significance to go back to basics of Nanak’s thinking.

Guest of honour H K Dua, editor-in-chief, The Tribune too talked of how Guru Nanak Dev stood for love and more pertinently love for fellow human beings transcending the barriers of religion. He asserted that Nanak’s message was simple. Only our lives today had become complicated as we were forgetting the values the great guru espoused.

Eminent art critic and historian Dr B N Goswamy professed that Nanak of belief and faith is different from Nanak of history and often faith is greater than history. He talked of janamsakhis, disputed and debated upon, but they remain extraordinary accounts. He referred to how one learns so much through images and Roopinder too has used several significant images in his book. The author, he held, had simplified the message that went with those images and made it accessible to us.

The writer himself stressed the urgent need to retell Guru Nanak’s teachings, if possible, a thousand times. On the need for Hindi translations, he said since English edition had done well outside Punjab & fewer books on Nanak in Hindi were available, it was the right step. A Punjabi version too is on the way.

(NONIKA SINGH)