Sikhs, a small but sizable segment of the Indian population, were a fifteenth-century off-shoot of Hinduism in reaction to the caste system. The other tenets of their beliefs have remained consistent with Hinduism. Theirs is but one upheaval over the social inequity rigidly protected by the prohibitions of intercaste mobility. In the latter half of the twentieth century, they have revolted against the prevailing Hindu government with assassination and temple desecration.
In 1700 B.C., there was a wave of conquest of the Indus River Valley by northern people, Aryas-a Sanskrit term meaning “nobles” –whose skin was light and who were at a much lower level of cultural development. Not city dwellers, they were nomadic horsemen and warriors; their gods were connected with the universal element (sky, sea, wind, lightning, and rain ) rather than the soil. Gradually the indigenous and invading cultures melded both socially and in their mythic complexes, blending into the Hindu cultures that predominates (as recently as the late 1970s, 83 percent of India’s population was Hindu ). Indus is the word from the Indo-Aryan language of these invaders for the dwellers they found in the Indus Valley, and Hindus were those who lived and worshipped like them.