Toby Braden Johnson, PhD Lecture: Knowing Guru Nanak: the Janam-Sakhi Narratives and Sikh Pedagogy

The founder of the Sikh Panth (community), Guru Nanak (1469-1539), wrote songs of devotion to express his mission of faith and charity to his early followers. He did not write an autobiography. Therefore, Sikhs learn about Guru Nanak and relate to his life story through a corpus of janam-sakhi (birth stories) narratives that present his life’s story but are not part of the scriptural canon. This discussion will focus on how Sikhs’ identity, rooted as it is in the relationships constructed by the janam-sakhis, is still being negotiated and defined by their understandings of who Guru Nanak was, how he lived his life, and how they are to live in accordance with the traditions he established.