Guru Nanak Dev Ji

Guru Nanak

The Founder of Sikhism

Overview

Guru Nanak (1469–1539) was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus. Born into a Hindu family at Nankana Sahib (now Pakistan), he rejected empty ritual — Hindu and Muslim alike — after a revelatory immersion in which (tradition says) he vanished three days and returned declaring: "There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim."

Key Facts

• Born: 1469, Nankana Sahib (Talwandi)
• Died: 1539, Kartarpur — the farming town he founded on the Ravi
• Successor: Guru Angad (chosen by service, not blood)
• Scripture: his Japji Sahib opens the Guru Granth Sahib; 974 of its hymns are his

Teachings — The Three Pillars

• Naam Japna — meditate on God's Name; the divine is one (Ik Onkar), beyond fear and enmity
• Kirat Karo — earn an honest living; Nanak farmed at Kartarpur and scorned idleness in holy garb
• Vand Chhako — share what you earn; the seed of langar, the free kitchen where all sit equal

The Travels (Udasis)

For some twenty years Nanak walked — with his Muslim companion Bhai Mardana playing the rabab — to Hindu tirthas, Sufi khanqahs, and (tradition holds) Mecca itself, debating priests and pirs in song. The Janamsakhi birth-stories preserve these encounters as teaching-tales: Nanak sleeping with his feet toward Mecca ("turn them where God is not"), feeding the hungry instead of feeding Brahmins (sacha sauda, the true bargain).

Scholars read the Janamsakhis as devotion layered over a historical core — a reformer who farmed, sang, fed, and appointed the humblest servant, Lehna (Guru Angad), as heir.

Legacy

• Kartarpur: his town of honest work and shared meals — prototype of every gurdwara community
• The hymns: set to ragas, sung daily as kirtan across the world
• Gurpurbs: his birth anniversary (Kartik Purnima, November) is Sikhism's greatest festival of lights and processions