ANTI-FEUDAL DIALECTIC OF SIKHISM 23 impact of the two-fold process of feudalization and vedanticization, the spiritualist-materialist tradition of thought of the Nanak variety has gravitated back towards the old spiritualist-idealist tradition to such an extent that its shadow has eclipsed the very identity of Sikhism. To rediscover the metaphysical distinctiveness of the Sikh philosophy, we have to keep in view the socio-economic context of its origin. Contemporary sociologists advance the view that in medieval India, certain post-feudal bourgeois relations were visibly developing in the womb of the feudal society;1 corresponding to this embryonic growth, new revolutionary forces, both at the social and the ideological level, were emerging slowly but steadily. Sikhism arose as a dynamic expression of this process destined to play a historical role in the transition to the post-feudal frame of values and modes of thought. The Bhakti traditions (nirguna and saguna) of the medieval period remained far behind the Sikh movement socially and ideationally in opposing the given thought-systems and social organization. The ideational base and the motivational urges of Sikhism were qualitatively different from those characterizing the other medieval Bhakti movements with which the Sikh mysticism is often confused by those who, with a reductive methodology, are interested more in working out the so-called unity-in-diversity than in analysing out its distinctive contributions to Indian thought in general. As pointed out by Hazari Prasad Dwivedi2 the saguna Bhakti tradition was not dissatisfied with the social conditions of the medieval age; it betrayed compromising tendencies. On the other hand, the nirguna dhara could go only to the extent of expressing social protest at the surface level. What was needed was to inject a revolutionary spirit in this social protest and to give it an anti-feud alistic orientation socially as well as ideologically. This is how Guru Nanak filled the protestant spirit of the age with new ideational content enabling it to develop into a revolutionary force with far-reaching historical consequences. The conservative in-worldliness as well as the other-worldliness of the Bhakti mysticism turned into a this-worldly dynamism directed against the status quo in the realms of thought and ethics. Herein lies the uniqueness of the Sikh movement which gets distorted when Sikhism is interpreted either as a reformed phase of Hinduism or as a synthesis of the Hindu and the Islamic thought. Those characteristics of Sikhism which give the impression of its being a Hindu reformation or a form of medieval synthesis are, in a sense, only the epiphenomenal attributes referring not to its inner dialectic but only to its exogenous growth. Polity and Religion Social equality of all human beings irrespective of caste, creed, country, sex or station in life; elevation of labour; non-acceptance of the fatalistic-deterministic form of Karmic law—these concepts flow from the anti-feudal matrix of Sikhism. By bestowing the spiritual sovereignty on the Adi Granth and the temporal sovereignty on Panj Piaras^ representing the Khalsa Panth, Guru Gobind Singh has carved out the democratic-