Guru Nanak
Guru Nanak founded Sikhism and was the first of its ten gurus. Born in 1469 at Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, into a Hindu Khatri family, he worked as an accountant for a local Muslim official at Sultanpur and married and had two sons. At about thirty he disappeared while bathing in the river Bein and was assumed drowned. He returned after three days and said: there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim. It is the founding statement, and it meant that religious labels were secondary to conduct and to the one formless God. He then travelled for over twenty years on journeys known as the udasis, reportedly reaching Assam, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Mecca and Baghdad, accompanied for much of it by Mardana, a Muslim musician of low caste who set his verses to music. His teaching rejected caste, ritual, idol worship, pilgrimage and the authority of priests, and asserted the spiritual equality of women in a way that was unusual for the period and place. He condemned the practice of sati. He summarised right living in three principles: remember God, earn an honest living, and share with others. He refused monasticism. He settled at Kartarpur on the Ravi and worked as a farmer, establishing the langar, a free communal kitchen where people of any caste or religion eat together seated in a row — still central to Sikh practice. He composed 974 hymns, which his successors collected; they open the Guru Granth Sahib. He witnessed Babur's invasion in 1526 and wrote about the suffering it caused. He chose a disciple rather than his sons to succeed him, and died in 1539.
- Lived: 1469 CE – 1539 CE
- Nationality: Indian
- Roles: founder_of_sikhism
