Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some people live on lies — and it's as if they're feeding on something dead and rotten.
And then, having fed on falsehood themselves, they go out to teach everyone else! Fooled themselves, they end up fooling the people who trust them. Sadly, that's what far too many leaders are like.
This sharp little shalok is a warning about corrupt leadership, and its central image is deliberately disgusting: those who live by lies and dishonest gain are said to eat dead bodies — to feed on carrion. To live on falsehood, on what is taken unjustly, is to nourish yourself on something rotten and dead. It is a visceral way of naming the inner corruption that polished words and respectable position can hide.
The deeper scandal is in the next line: and yet, they go out to teach others. Having fed on falsehood themselves, they set themselves up as guides — and so the corruption spreads. They are deceived, and they deceive their companions. A leader who is himself fooled cannot help fooling those who follow him; he passes on the very blindness he is lost in. This sets up a theme that runs through several shaloks of the Vaar — the catastrophe of the false guide, the blind leading the blind.
Guru Nanak's closing line lands like a verdict: such are the leaders of men. It is a clear-eyed, unsentimental look at how much of human leadership actually works — people lost in falsehood, leading others into it, all draped in authority. The point is not cynicism for its own sake; it is to make us hungry for the real thing — the true Guru, the genuine guide, who is the subject of the very next shalok. You feel the worth of a true teacher most sharply right after seeing clearly what a false one costs.
How do you tell the difference between a guide who truly sees and one who is only confident?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI