Legacy is not religion — and Guru Nanak’s Panth stretches far beyond the boundaries of any single faith or geography. In this landmark talk at IIC, researcher and author Amardeep Singh presents the extraordinary civilisational scope of his decade-long project: retracing Guru Nanak’s journeys across nine countries, recording all 1,656 shabads of fifteen Indic saints in their original ragas, and building a multilingual documentary archive freely available at thegurunanak.com.
Amardeep challenges the reductive framing of Nanak as merely the “founder of Sikhism,” arguing instead that Guru Nanak was the great integrator of the Bhakti tradition — who documented saints from Kabir to Ravidas to Baba Farid, weaving the subcontinent’s spiritual diversity into a single living scripture. He traces how the concept of India as a political entity was forged in the land of the five rivers through the Guru Granth Sahib’s compilation, and how Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s empire — 80% of which now lies in Pakistan — was the direct fruit of Nanak’s civilisational impulse.
The talk closes on a sobering note: Partition didn’t just redraw borders — it severed the Nanak Panth’s cultural heartland, displacing its living traditions of music, scholarship, and memory.

About the Speaker:
Amardeep Singh is an independent researcher, author, filmmaker, and former corporate executive. His work focuses on documenting the historical legacy of Guru Nanak, Nanak Panth, and the cultural traditions associated with them across the Indian subcontinent. Through his documentaries, books, and field research, he offers fresh perspectives on the civilizational dimensions of Guru Nanak’s legacy.
https://youtu.be/_Xxi_FEiv84