Because I am looking at the issue of female-feticide through a Sikhism perspective, I thought it would be interesting to see the sex ratio in the families of the 10 Sikh gurus. Here is what I found:

Guru Nanak Dev: 2 sons
Guru Angad Dev: 2 sons & 2 daughters
Guru Amar Das:   2 sons & 2 daughters
Guru Ram Das:    3 sons
Guru Arjun Dev:  1 son
Guru Hargobind:  5 sons & 1 daughter
Guru Har Rai:      2 sons
Guru Harkrishan: — —
Guru Tegh Bahadur: 1 son
Guru Gobind Singh:  4 sons

TOTAL: 22 sons 5 daughters

The numbers change when the above guruship is seen in 2 phases.

First phase from 1st Guru to 3rd Guru, when the guruship was passed on not within the family. In that phase, the sex ratio was: 6 sons to 4 daughters.

In the second phase, from the 4th Guru to 9th Guru, when the Guruship was passed on to members within the family, the sex ratio was: 12 sons to 1 daughter.

The 10th Guru had 4 sons and no daughter: all 4 sons died while upkeeping the fight for the faith. 2 sons died in battlefield, and 2 sons were buried alive in a wall upon refusing to convert to Islam. The 10th Guru passed on the guruship to Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the scripture, for eternity.

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These numbers are facts. Facts tell stories. Stories generated from facts are however subject to the story-teller’s intentions and world-views.

So what am I trying to tell by pulling up these numbers from Sikh history? Honestly, at this point I do not know. I pursued my curiosity by looking at the demographic information on Sikh Gurus, and am posting what I found. I am curious to read the different stories these numbers generate. I know this much for sure that a knee jerk reaction to these numbers can be an attack on Sikhism’s claim of egalitarianism. But there must certainly be more to it than that.

I would like to point out that the topic of sex ratio in the families of Sikh Gurus is not to be conflated with the issue of sex ratio in Sikh Guruship which had men as all its 10 Gurus. When it comes to the issue of having a female spiritual head, Sikhism is not different from most other religions of that day (during 1400 – 1600 A.D.). The absence of a female Sikh Guru is a topic for separate discussion that I intend to pursue in this blog at some point.