Nirmala! new breed/old breed

[drawrof]

Hi guys,

I thought an open dialogue on what is perceived as a new breed and old breed nirmallay should be brought to the table.

First and foremost, I dont' beleive there is a new breed or an old breed. This kind of seems like a "buddha dal/taruna dal" structure which has uncircumstancially creeped onto nirmallay. In all honesty, from what little I saw of them, they seem to have their own structure and their own circles that they work in. At the village level, where I saw some. I saw a few who looked like sant babbay, but simply dressed in peach and others who played the ayurvedic role. Many are now married, and many have property. At one time that wasn't common. does this make them new or old? The nirmal panchayti akhara was in punjab but they have moved now....could it have been that nirmallay created sant-babbay and then didn't wear kirpans to fight them, so they ran off to hardwar (this is being cheeky, don't take this as being serious at all).

My question, with regards to the old breed and new breed is whether this is based on regional locations. If so, that can't be true in its entirity, because there are many nirmallay who have lived in punjab as nirmallay.

some sikhs will say the original nirmallay are the khalsa, then the guys wearing bhagwa came in and bahmanized sikhi, and then the true singhs took birth to steer the panth back to sikhi hence the sant babay are the new nirmallay who have come back from the past.....

opinions/facts/clarifications...anything guys

[tSingh]

Well yes its a vast oversimplification 'old breed and new', and I used it just to articulate the changes of the last century. Nirmalay are not homogoneous, neither are Sant Babay. Nirmalay are sant babay. Any nirmala who is celibate is termed 'Sant' or 'baba'. There are Nirmalay in punjab and always have been. There are nirmalay in white, nirmalay in peach, god knows maybe the odd one in blue. The move to Haridwar was a long time ago...before the rampaging Akalis (as the letter from all the major Akharas against the events of the 1920s testifies with the then Sri Mahant issuing it from Kankhal). Yes yr right. My rant above was as much directed to modern mahants as it is to punjabi sants. the reason for the decline in the tradition I reckon is genealogical (to coin a phrase) meaning a whole host of factors not necessarily directly related, i.e. western models of education undermining them, changing religious boundaries, possibly apathy...who knows.