When Hindus say that Sikhs are a Hindu panth, they mean it with absolutely no political agenda partly because they have no political agenda in the first place. But more importantly, for Hindus, doctrinal differences are not just tolerable but most expected.

After all, Hindus inherit a tradition of dialectics, describing which as glorious would be an understatement. We have debated over everything even though these days our debates tend to be rather embarrassing.

The glorious debates of the yore were hardly pleasant though. Those we hold as sages and pathfinders today did not have it so easy with their contemporaries and even their own disciples sometimes. They fought bitterly and often called each other names.

They established their own sampradayas and panths. They debated about whether there was a reality, the nature of that reality, the valid means of knowing that reality, whether a particular means of knowing stood on its own or needed validation from a higher principle and so on.

The six Āstika schools of classical Hinduism - Sāmkhya, Yoga, Vaiśeṣika, Nyāya, Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta - have agreed over the authority of the Vedas but have often invoked that authority to arrive at very different philosophical positions.

There are, of course, records of heated debates even between the branches of the same school, say Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita schools of Vedanta darsana. Then there are the heterodox schools and thousands of blends of the above.

It is absolutely clear that those Sikhs that still want to self-identify as Hindus are under no pressure to conform or fall in line. Because there is no doctrinal line in the first place or more accurately, there are so many that conformance means nothing.

Therefore, Sikh separatism is a political idea, not a religious one and it is pointless to tell the Sikhs that the word Ram appears x times in this Gurbani or that their Guru prayed to Ma Durga before such and such battle. They are just not interested and will still hate Hindus.

Sects like Udasi and Nanakpanthis are recognized as part of the Hindu fold and have been disowned by the dominant Sikhdom. They continue to practice their religion as they please without any Hindu wagging their finger at them.

Even among the orthodox Sikhs, there are still many who do not really want to burn all bridges with Hindus because they are not completely taken in by the propaganda. They call themselves patriot Indians etc and that is totally fine.

But whenever their rabid Khalistani co-religionists go nuts, these folks find themselves in a tight spot. Because the polarization that follows really causes them a lot of distress. They find themselves in the middle of a crossfire.

On one side are their community leaders pushing for a civil war in India and on the other side, they find a section of Hindus turning hostile due to the direct threat by Khalistanis. What do the Indian-but-not-Hindu (IBNH) Sikhs do next? They take the path of least resistance.

They blame "extremists" on both sides & pull the old trick of drawing false equivalences. Unity loving raitas start giving them covering fire & "condemn all attempts to break the prized Hindu-Sikh unity" as if it was this Gandhian posturing that ended the 80s bloodbath in Punjab.

IBNH Sikhs deserve sympathy because they actually want harmony. But they are powerless in the face of historical forces that weaned their community away from mainstream Hindu society. In time, they fall in line with the Khalistanis because it is the path of least resistance.

The case of IBNH Sikhs is yet another lesson for Hindus that Indianism and territorial nationalism are kool-aids that will not even keep the well-intentioned 'Indics' on your side. And they talk of gharwapsi of Ms!

The only way forward for keeping India from breaking is a Hindu Civilizational State but then it is not mentioned in the Holy Constitution. So, let's just raise slogans of Hindu-Sikh unity and go back to sleep. [end of thread]