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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."