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Moral Decay
This, however, Gurbachan Singh's phenomenal access to affluence and power, popularity and prestige, is not a point of contention between Gurbachan Singh, his followers and the Sikhs. Nor is the moral laxity, unbridled permissiveness and disintegrative malaise which he and his movement foster in society, a direct issue between the Sikhs and these pseudo-nirankaris. Retreat from religious and absolute moral values is a world-wide phenomenon arid permissiveness, sex-promiscuity, moral laxity and social disintegration is by no means, peculiar to India today; the phenomenon is world-wide and ecumenical, the reasons for which are deep-seated and historical. Nor is this phenomenon exceptional to modem times. It erupts, it seems, whenever there is an onset of decay and deterioration in social cohesiveness and moral vitality of a culture or civilisation. Gibbon has noted emergence of all sorts of sects and societies, "Oriental religions", as he calls them, when the Roman Empire weakened and disintegrated. In Bhagvadgita, we are told that, ''as moral decay sets in, men take to adulation of and subservience to mortal humans and abandon worship of the unseen God" : sivanam puja parityajaye manussanam upasanam. The Sikh pious texts of Bhai Gurdas (d. 1637) tell us that a symptom of moral decay is that, "social censure and absolute moral judgment disappear and men become playthings of their own passing fancies and corruptive passions", koi kisai na varjai soi karai joi mana bhavai. Guru Gobind Singh provides us with a key to an understanding of this phenomenon by revealing that, "there shall arise an Absolute God in every house, altogether contemptible and degraded men these". : ghar ghar hoe behenge rama, tinu te sari hai na kou kama. Have our pseudo-nirankaris taken their cue from Bhagvadgitd, Bhai Gurdas and Guru Gobind Singh, in founding their new religion for the modern miserable man, in utter defiance and contempt of the Voice behind the Bhagvadgita, the Inspiration behind Bhai Gurdas and the 'Light in Guru Gobind Singh? Sri Dina Nath, Sidhantalankar, an eminent writer, in the April, 1973 issue of the Hindi Monthly, Jana Gyan (p. 30) tells us that:
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