What was the Nanak panth?
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Answer:
Nanakpanthi
A Nanakpanthi is a follower of the teachings of Guru Nanak, the foundational guru of a spiritual community natively known to as Nanakpanth while known world-wide as Sikhism.
Answer:
A Nanakpanthi[1] (Gurmukhi: ਨਾਨਕਪੰਥੀ )is a follower of the teachings of Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the foundational guru of a spiritual community natively known to as Nanakpanth while known world-wide as Sikhism. Nanakpanth is an open frontier that references strongly an early Sikh community, and which it cannot be cordoned by the modern signifiers Sikhism and Hinduism.
Today a large fraction of the Sindhi Hindus consider themselves not simply as Sikhs, but more precisely as Nanakpanthi, both in Pakistan[2] and in India. They generally do not sport beards or wear a turban (i.e. are sahajdhari) unlike Amritdhari Sikhs.[3] Even in the 1881 and 1891 Indian censuses, the Sindhi Hindu community could not decide to collectively identify as Hindu or Sikh.[4] In the later 1911 Census Report, Shahpur District (Punjab) reported that 12,539 Hindus (being 20 percent of the total Hindu population) identified as Nanakpanthi along with 9,016 Sikhs (being 22 percent of the total Sikh population).[5]
From its early times the Nanakpanthi community extended far beyond Punjab and Sindh. Maghar, a town in Uttar Pradesh has a high proportion of Nanakpanthis.[6]