But while Nanak had substituted holiness of life for vain ceremonial, Guru Govind Singh demanded in addition brave deeds and zealous devotion to the Sikh cause as proof of faith; and while he retained his predecessors' attitude towards the Hindu gods and worship he preached undying hatred to the persecutors of his religion.
He also was a Khatri, and was chosen by Guru Nanak in preference to his own sons.
Hinduism for Guru Nanak was deficient in that it taught social disunity and religious segregation and gave no hope of liberation to the underclasses.
Ideas of revolt and reform of decadent systems are always in the air, it may be for centuries, until some one man bolder than the rest stands out to give them free expression; and as John the Baptist preceded Jesus Christ, so Nanak was preceded by several reformers, whose writings are incorporated in the Granth itself.
Little is known of the ministry of Angad except that he committed to writing much of what he had heard about Guru Nanak as well as some devotional observations of his own, which were afterwards incorporated in the Granth.
Nanak said, "Ye who trust in me eat of this food."
Nanak seems to have been produced by the same cyclic wave of reformation as fourteen years later gave Martin Luther to Europe.
Nanak was born in the province which then formed the borderland between Hinduism and Islam.
Nanak's successor, Angad, was born in A.D 1504 and died in 1552.
Sikhism was founded by Nanak, a Khatri by caste, who was born at Talwandi near Lahore in A.D.
Starting from the unity of God, Nanak and his successors rejected the idols and incarnations of the Hindus, and on the ground of the equality of all men rejected also the system of caste.
The fighting spirit of the people of for iveness and endurance, upheld Guru Nanak's g p was roused and satisfied by the spiritual and military leader.
The legend of his choice is that Nanak with his followers was going on a journey, when they saw the dead body of a man lying by the wayside.
The peculiar conciliatory tendencies of Kabir were carried on with even greater zeal from the latter part of the 15th century by one of his followers, Nanak Shah, the promulgator of the creed of the Nanak Shahis or Sikhs - i.e.
The Sikhs of to-day, though they all derive primarily from Nanak, are only recognized as Singhs or real Sikhs when they accept the doctrines and practices of Guru Govind Singh.
The word Sikh literally means "learner," "disciple," and was the name given by the first guru Nanak to his followers.
Thenceforward the Sikhs believe the spirit of Nanak to have been incarnate in each succeeding guru.
These are largely Nanakpanti Sikhs, or followers only of Guru Nanak.