CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 82 of 120

Correct — A, Guru Nanak. The stem is taken almost word for word from the standard textbook account: 'Baba Guru Nanak organised his followers into a community. He set up rules for congregational worship (sangat) involving collective recitation.' Nanak's teaching was that the Divine has no gender or form and is approached by remembering and repeating the Divine Name, and he expressed it in hymns called shabad, composed in Punjabi and sung in various ragas while his companion Mardana played the rabab. Turning that practice into a rule for a gathered community — a sangat meeting to recite together — is what the question is pointing at, and it was Nanak who did it, at Kartarpur in his last years. He also appointed his disciple Angad to succeed him as guru, and the succession ran for nearly two centuries.

• (b)Guru Angad — Guru Angad was the successor Nanak himself appointed, and he is remembered for the Gurmukhi script and for extending the langar; the rules for congregational worship were already in place when he received the office.
• (c)Guru Arjan — Guru Arjan, the fifth guru, compiled the hymns of Nanak, of his four successors and of poets such as Baba Farid, Ravidas and Kabir into the Adi Granth, and built the shrine at Amritsar — later work that rests on the sangat rather than founding it.
• (d)Guru Govind Singh — Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, instituted the Khalsa in 1699 and closed the line of living gurus by vesting authority in the scripture. That is nearly two centuries after the practice named in the question began.

Sangat and langar are the two institutions that turned Nanak's teaching into a community. The sangat is the congregation that assembles to recite the hymns together; the langar is the common kitchen where all who come eat the same food seated in the same line, regardless of caste or standing. Both are practices rather than doctrines, and both work by making the teaching visible in behaviour. Nanak did not set out to found a separate religion; his followers consolidated their own practices after his death and came to distinguish themselves from both Hindus and Muslims.

The four options run through the sequence of gurus, and each is associated with a genuine institutional step, so the question is really asking which step came first. Fix the order and the answer follows: Nanak established the sangat and appointed a successor; Angad developed the script and the langar; Arjan compiled the Adi Granth and built at Amritsar; Hargobind added the temporal dimension; and Gobind Singh created the Khalsa and ended the line of living gurus. Anything to do with founding a practice, rather than formalising or expanding one, points back to Nanak.

• Guru Nanak organised his followers into a community and set rules for congregational worship, the sangat, involving collective recitation.
• His hymns, called shabad, were composed in Punjabi and sung in various ragas; his companion Mardana played the rabab.
• He appointed his disciple Angad to succeed him, and the practice of nominating a successor continued for nearly two hundred years.
• Guru Arjan, the fifth guru, compiled the Adi Granth, including hymns of Baba Farid, Ravidas and Kabir alongside those of the gurus.
• Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth guru, instituted the Khalsa in 1699.

• Crediting Guru Arjan with founding congregational worship because he compiled the scripture used in it.
• Assuming Nanak intended to found a separate religion; the community's distinct identity consolidated after his death.
• Placing the langar with Nanak and the sangat with a later guru, or the reverse; the safe line is that Nanak established the gathered community and its rules.

As a practice-to-guru pairing, as a guru-to-achievement match, or as a chronology of the Sikh gurus.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Adi Granth was compiled by which one of the following gurus?

  • (a)Guru Nanak
  • (b)Guru Angad
  • (c)Guru Arjan
  • (d)Guru Tegh Bahadur

  Answer(c) Guru Arjan — the fifth guru gathered the hymns of Nanak, his successors and other poets into a single volume.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Guru Nanak's companion, who played the rabab as Nanak sang his compositions, was

  • (a)Mardana
  • (b)Bala
  • (c)Angad
  • (d)Amar Das

  Answer(a) Mardana — the rababi who travelled with him and accompanied the singing of the shabads.