Beneath political borders and sovereign identities of the world today lie older layers of kinship, shaped by shared languages, cultures and spiritual expression. Countries that can absorb these deeper cultural affinities develop more robust, confident and integrated societies.
Though Pakistan was formed as recently as 1947, the cultural tissue connecting the inhabitants of this region, like all other regions, stretches beyond its political borders and far into the past. Therefore, the history of Pakistan is inseparable from the larger cultural history of its people.
This article traces the historical development of Sikh devotional music, known as Gurbani Kirtan or Gurmat Sangeet, which emerged from the layered environment of the Subcontinent, focusing on the region of the greater Punjab.
The arrival of Islam in South Asia from the eighth century onwards introduced new aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities, without displacing existing ones. The Indus region, followed by the Gangetic plains, became zones of intense musical interaction.
From Guru Nanak and Bhai Mardana to the rababi musicians of Punjab, the story of the Sikh devotional music Kirtan reveals a deeply interwoven musical heritage shaped by devotion, language and shared cultural space
Persian and Central Asian modal systems, such as maqaam and dastgaah encountered the Indian raga-taala, a melodic framework, producing a hybridised yet coherent musical ecology. The musical heritage of this region has thus always functioned as a palimpsest, with newer layers being written over older ones.
By the time Sikhism emerged in the late 15th century, the region’s soundscape already included Sufi sama’a [musical practice] and qawwali, Nath yogi chants, Vaishnav bhajans [Hindu devotional singing], courtly dhrupad [ancient form of north Indian classical singing] performances and vernacular folk songs. Sikh Kirtan, rather than rejecting these forms, reorganised them around a magnetic spiritual centre.
Guru Nanak and the Birth of a Musical Movement
Guru Nanak (1469-1539), born in Nankana Sahib near Lahore, expressed a philosophy of Divine oneness, which he called Ik Onkar [God is One], resonant with the Islamic idea of unity (wahdat) and the Vedantic understanding of ultimate reality (brahman).
His efforts to unite the cultural streams of Sufi Islam and Vedantic Hinduism, using the vernacular dialects of the wider Punjab region, resulted in the birth of the religion we know as Sikhism.
In Guru Nanak’s time, Punjabi had not yet crystallised as a named language. Poets such as Baba Farid, whose verses Nanak revered and later incorporated into Sikh scripture, wrote in dialects that scholars retrospectively described as Multani, Lehndi or Old Punjabi. Nanak composed across multiple dialects, reflecting Punjab’s linguistic plurality. His verses were later standardised in Gurmukhi by Guru Angad Dev, the second Sikh Guru.
Nanak was not just a deeply spiritual figure but also a polyglot, poet and musician, who articulated his teachings almost entirely through sung verse (bani). Central to this practice was Bhai Mardana, a Muslim miraasi [hereditary musician] and Nanak’s lifelong companion. Mardana played the rubab, a fretless lute of Central Asian origin, and sang verses of Guru Nanak and several other poets-saints of the time, which were also later incorporated into the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh sacred scripture.
Their partnership in composing and singing devotional poetry became the template for Sikh musical practice, with two hymns of the Guru Granth Sahib [Sikh scripture] even being designated as Salok [couplet] Mardana, acknowledging this shared authorship.
Over two decades, Guru Nanak and Bhai Mardana travelled extensively, covering South Asia, the Middle East (including Mecca and Baghdad), Tibet and, possibly, Southeast Asia. Their extensive journeys, chronicled as udaasis, are full of accounts of how their music was instrumental in spreading their message.
At Tulamba, near Multan, Nanak’s song melted the heart of the notorious dacoit Sajjan Thug. In Benares, he debated orthodox ritualism with Pandit Chaturdas through the philosophy of sound. When confronted by the high priest Pir Dastagir’s objections to music at the outskirts of Baghdad, Nanak argued that music has both the power to degrade or elevate, depending on the intention and skill of the practitioner.
It was at Kartarpur, by the Ravi River, where Guru Nanak established a settled community, that Kirtan became institutionalised, with two daily congregational sessions — pre-dawn and evening — with sohila [Sikh hymns] continuing individually late into the night.
The hymns were usually accompanied by the rabab and pakhawaj, sung in both folk tunes and in classical ragas [traditional melodic frameworks], appreciated by villagers and by connoisseurs. Thus, Nanak deliberately bridged the elite and popular musical worlds, using music as an instrument of social integration. Communal eating [langar] further reinforced this musical egalitarianism.
The Guru Granth Sahib: A Musical Scripture
Sikhs recognise a lineage of 10 Gurus, beginning with Guru Nanak Dev and culminating in Guru Gobind Singh. The first five gurus were not just spiritual teachers but also musicians and poets, who composed their poetry within the raga framework.
In 1604, the fifth Guru, Arjan Dev, compiled their compositions, along with his own, into the Adi Granth [a holy scripture of Sikhs], marking a decisive moment in Sikh history. This was not just the establishment of a textual canon, but also a musical one: the hymns were systematically organised according to the ragas deemed most appropriate for their performance.
The 10th guru, Gobind Singh, later added the hymns of his predecessor, Guru Tegh Bahadur, to the Adi Granth and named the completed scripture as Guru Granth Sahib. Although a great poet himself, Guru Gobind Singh was too humble to add his own verses to the Adi Granth, though they are also often performed at Kirtan gatherings.
Besides the teachings of the mentioned gurus and some of their close companions (Gursikhs), the Adi Granth also contains the poetry of several saints (bhagats), including Baba Farid Ganjshakar and Bhagat Kabir, as well as hymns by several bards (bhatts) from the court of Guru Arjan.
Rababis, Raagis and Dadhis
The hereditary performers of Kirtan, traditionally associated with the rubab and called rababis, claim to be descended directly from Bhai Mardana, gaining their name from the instrument he used to perform on.
They were traditionally mostly Muslim, and many were well-versed in the dhrupad style of classical singing, with connections to the Kapurthala and Talwandi lineages of classical music. There is also an unverifiable story that Tansen’s teacher, the great dhrupad singer of the Bhakti tradition, Swami Haridas, had been a disciple of Bhai Mardana.
According to a scholar of Sikhism, Dr Gobind Singh Mansukhani, during the time of Guru Arjan, there was a disagreement between the guru and some of his rababi musicians after they demanded a large sum of money during the Baisakhi festival. This led the guru to terminate their services and encourage amateur musicians from his congregation to take up the Kirtan service, while personally training them in music himself. The descendants of these Kirtan practitioners, who did not originally belong to music lineages, came to be known as raagis.
Another class of musicians associated with the Sikh musical tradition were the dadhis [ballad singers who recount heroic history]. Their emergence is closely linked to a pivotal shift in Sikh history during the time of Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, who established the Sikh High Court (Sri Akaal Takht).
Following the execution of Guru Arjan by the Mughal emperor Jahangir, amid accusations of supporting the rebel prince Khusrau Mirza, the Sikh community found itself drawn into the violent currents of Mughal imperial politics. Facing persecution and insecurity, the Sikhs began to organise themselves militarily in order to defend their community and faith. Guru Hargobind, who was also a great patron of the arts, established the practice of dadhi musicians at his court, who would recount heroic deeds of Sikh warriors accompanied by the hand-held percussion instrument, the dadh.
Innovation and Devotion
Besides the collection and adaptation of many classical ragas, folk tunes and devotional poetry from the greater Punjab region, as well as the patronage of entire classes of musicians, the Sikh Kirtan tradition may also be credited with the refinement of several musical instruments.
We have already mentioned the rubab of Punjab, which later evolved into the classical sarod instrument. As early Kirtan performances drew heavily from the contemplative and austere dhrupad tradition, instruments such as the pakhawaj (later the jhori), rubab, sarinda, taus and dilruba, defined its sonic identity.
In his musical treatise Qanoon-e-Mauseeqi, written in 1874, Sadiq Ali Khan Dehlvi says that the classical form of the sarinda was invented by Guru Amar Das, the third Guru of Sikhism, which he adapted from its older folk form.
Over time, newer musical forms, such as khayal [a form of classical music that focuses on melodic improvisation], also influenced Sikh music, especially under Guru Gobind Singh. Yet the core aesthetic remained devotional rather than performative, as music was meant to tame the mind, rather than excite the ego. Therefore, dance, when arising spontaneously from ecstasy, was permitted, but theatrical display was frowned upon.
The gurus also described the experience of amrit rasa through Kirtan music — a divine sweetness distinct from the classical nine rasas [Divine spiritual bliss], or emotional flavours, of Indian aesthetic theory. Evoked through remembrance of the Divine, this rasa, Nanak said, renders all other pleasures tasteless.
Confluence and Rupture
From its inception, Sikh devotional life articulated an ethic of interfaith openness, expressed as much through music as through architecture.
When I visited the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 2005, our guide told me that the foundation stone of the temple, originally called Harimandir Sahib, was laid in 1588 by the Lahore-based Sufi saint Hazrat Mian Mir, at the invitation of Guru Arjan Dev.
This interfaith synthesis found its most stable institutional expression in the early 19th century when, after the disintegration of the Mughal Empire, many stalwarts of music migrated from Delhi to the Punjab region. Under Maharajah Ranjit Singh, Gurbani Kirtan received unprecedented patronage: musicians, particularly rababis, were granted generous stipends and status, and raga-based performances were rigorously promoted at the Harimandir Sahib and major gurdwaras across Punjab.
This period marked the consolidation of Kirtan as a disciplined, interfaith and central practice of Sikh religious life, a legacy that would begin to erode only after the collapse of Sikh sovereignty following the Anglo-Sikh wars.
This shared sacred world was violently ruptured in the cataclysm of Partition in 1947. As British colonial rule drew to a close, the hurried and poorly managed division of Punjab transformed long-interwoven religious communities into antagonistic political blocs. Centuries of coexistence collapsed under the weight of fear and the vacuum of authority left by the withdrawing colonial state.
Communal identities that had long remained porous were suddenly hardened and mobilised, as violence spiralled across both sides of the new border. The resulting massacres and mass displacements engulfed Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus alike, tearing apart families, musical lineages and devotional ecologies that had once flourished together.
Post-Partition Rababi Lineages in Pakistan
In the aftermath of the 1947 Partition and the collapse of Sikh political and institutional patronage, the centuries-old tradition of Muslim rababis in what became Pakistan suffered a profound rupture.
For generations, these hereditary musicians had been central custodians of Gurbani Kirtan, performing in major Sikh shrines across undivided Punjab. Partition dismantled this shared devotional ecology almost overnight: Sikh congregations migrated eastward, gurdwaras were abandoned or repurposed, and rababis were left without the institutions that had sustained their art. While some converted to Sikhism to preserve their livelihoods, others remained in Pakistan, carrying the tradition forward as a family inheritance and a source of memory and pride.
Among the most important post-Partition figures was Bhai Ghulam Muhammad Chand (1927-2015), born near Amritsar into a distinguished rababi lineage tracing back to musicians active in the time of Guru Tegh Bahadur and Guru Gobind Singh. His father, Bhai Chand (Sundar Giani), was among the last rababis to perform regularly at the Golden Temple and had established a Kirtan academy in Lahore in the 1920s.
After migrating to Lahore in 1947, the family lost both patronage and visibility. Bhai Chand sustained himself through qawwali, naat [devotional poetry in praise of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)] recitation and Punjabi Sufi music, while quietly continuing to teach and perform Kirtan.
In later interviews, he recalled a time when rababis were valued for lineage and devotion rather than formal religious identity, lamenting the later insistence of allowing only baptised Sikhs to sing Gurbani, which he saw as a narrowing of an originally inclusive tradition. His emotionally charged performances in India and abroad late in life revealed the enduring resonance of this marginalised history.
Alongside Bhai Chand, Bhai Lal Mohammad (d 1962) and Bhai Taaba Ji (Taabay Hussain, c 1885–1963) represent parallel strands of rababi continuity. Bhai Lal Mohammad, trained in the Gwalior and Kapurthala gharanas [hereditary schools of music] and honoured with the title Sangeet Sagar [Ocean of Music] in 1927, migrated to Lahore after Independence and later served as music supervisor at Radio Pakistan, passing on his legacy through his son, the great classical maestro Ustad Ghulam Hussan Shaggan.
Bhai Taaba Ji, one of the most celebrated rababis of the Golden Temple before Partition, settled in Lahore’s Chuna Mandi and later made influential visits to India in the 1950s, where his compositions were documented and preserved by Bhai Gian Singh Abbottabadi in Gurbani Sangeet.
Sikh influence is also audible beyond the rababi community, for instance in the enduring circulation of Guru Gobind Singh’s ‘Mitar Pyare Nu’ [‘To My Beloved Friend’], sung by artists as diverse as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Tufail Niazi, testifying to a shared Punjabi spiritual aesthetic that continues to traverse the porous boundary between Sikh and Sufi repertoires, despite political separation.
The story of Gurbani Kirtan in Pakistan is not simply one of loss, but of layered memory, where older inscriptions on the musical palimpsest, though partially effaced, continue to shape the region’s sonic aesthetic. The lingering permeability between Sikh and Sufi repertoires points to a deeper civilisational continuity that outlives political rupture.
By owning this heritage, Pakistan not only reaffirms its plural foundations but also draws nourishment from its rich cultural roots.
This essay is the second in a series on religious music in Pakistan, originally commissioned by the Centre for Social Justice. The first, Sounds of the Sacred, was published in Icon on December 7, 2025
The writer is an author and musician. He can be reached at ariebazhar@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, ICON, May 24th, 2026
