
| 
 | 
From: http://human.st/ttbr/NHistory.html
No consensus exists on the origins of this religion. Historians
              and specialists in Eastern religions generally believe that Sikhism
              is a syncretistic religion, related to the Bhakti movement within
              Hinduism and the Sufi branch of Islam, to which many independent
              beliefs and practices were added. Many Sikhs disagree; they believe
              that their religion is a direct revealed from God - a religion
              that was not derived from either of these two religions. Sikhism
              does contain many unique postulates and principles that are quite
              different from both Hinduism and Islam. Joseph D. Cunningham (1812-1851),
              the author of "A History of the Sikhs" (1848), observed: "It
              has been usual to regard the Sikhs as essentially Hindu... yet
              in religious faith and worldly aspiration, they are wholly different
              from other Indians, and they are bound together by an objective
              unknown elsewhere."