Sikh Gurus Research Articles

Pre-Twentieth-Century Sikh Sacred Music: The Mughals, Courtly Patronage and Canonisation

This article discusses the canonisation and institutionalisation of Sikh sacred music (kirtan) at the courts of the ten Sikh gurus and the later Sikh maharajas in Lahore and Patiala. At the same time, it emphasises possible parallels with what happened musically at the Mughal court. Essentially, the article argues that pre-twentieth-century Sikh sacred music was Hindustani (classical) music because of its performance practice, instruments used, music theory and the interactions between Sikh court musicians and those of the Mughal and other North Indian courts, as well as of different Hindustani music lineages (gharanas). Ultimately, it underlines the importance of contextual history, for example in terms of Mughal culture, the imperial encounter and globalisation, in forming a firm understanding of continuity and change over five centuries of kirtan performance practice.

EQUALITY OF WOMEN IN SIKH IDEOLOGY

The status of a woman in a society shows the social, cultural, religious and political scenario of that society. The position of the woman has passed many phases. It becomes evident after studying the fundamental teachings of different spiritual traditions that different religions accorded high status to the woman. Through this research paper, an effort has been made to know the status of the woman in Sikhism. For this purpose, Semitic and Aryan religious traditions have been made the foundation to understand the status of the woman prior to the emergence of Sikhism. Misogynistic interpretation of the myth of Adam and Eve in Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions and Pursha-Prakriti duality in Hindu Sankh philosophy made it clear that it is male chauvinism and misogynistic bent of mind which undermined the role of the woman in those societies. In the fifteenth century, Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism and his successor Sikh Gurus accorded very high status to the woman. Guru Ram Das, fourth Nanak, composed Lavan- the recitation of which became an essential part of the Sikh marriage ceremony. Lawans helped the women to get worthy status with men not only in this world but in spiritual realm also. Women in Sikhism through the institution of marriage regained their lost status. In this research paper, it has been concluded that Eve and Prakriti i.e. women are enabled to play equal and more vibrant role in the socio-religious, political and economic spheres due to the egalitarian and humanistic message of the Sikh Gurus. Sikhism has made it possible to wipe out the gender bias and narrow-mindedness associated with a male dominated society.

GURBANI KIRTAN RENAISSANCE: REVIVING MUSICAL MEMORY, REFORMING SIKH IDENTITY

This article examines the modes of revival within the contemporary renaissance of traditional Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh devotional music) in an effort to differentiate historically operative practices from modern products being sold as tradition. Modern reformist tendencies have attempted to institutionalize a normative Sikh musical identity into one homogeneous ‘Gurmat Sangeet’ genre through codifying Sikh raga forms and promoting a particular Sikh musical orthopraxy and history. The process of institutionalization privileges written sources as authoritative, erasing the memory of operative practices passed down orally since the time of the Sikh Gurus through the Gurbani Kirtan parampara (tradition). In questioning how Sikh musical knowledge has been propagated and authenticated since modernity, I propose a reassessment of what values and musical modes are indelible to the fabric of Gurbani Kirtan, what aspects are modern derivatives, and what aspects are negotiable. I believe such an approach will not limit Sikh musical expression to a past identity subsumed by orthodox rigidity. Instead it will move toward a phenomenological epistemology that recognizes how orality and embodied experience are intrinsic to the Gurbani Kirtan parampara that remembers, practices, and teaches a particular methodology to embody the Bani as Guru for newly creative Sikh subjectivities.

Making pilgrimage places of the gurus in Varanasi: countering Hindu narratives in local Sikh historiography

The Sikhs in Varanasi constitute a small minority situated within the boundaries of a Hindu-dominated culture. Most of the families now residing arrived in the years surrounding the partition in 1947 as migrants and traders from West Punjab, and only a few have a previous history in the city. In attempts to create meaningful representations of a shared past and visibility in the Hindu pilgrimage centre, the new-comers constructed their own collective history centring on the Sikh gurus' visits to and wonders in Varanasi. This article first examines how images of Varanasi and its inhabitants unfold in the historical writings of the Sikh gurus and the hagiographical literature (janam-sakhis) that aimed at proving the spiritual supremacy of the first guru, Guru Nanak. It continues to describe and analyse how the written history constructed by contemporary Sikhs in Varanasi manifests itself as a ‘counter-narrative’ in relation to a dominant discourse of the city as being a centre of Hindu pilgrimage and religious learning. The narrative structure of this modern history is set and framed by selected stereotypical images of Varanasi, but instead of verifying Hindu values and authority it creates an alternative paradigm that eventually confirms the spiritual superiority of the Sikh gurus and their teaching. Constructed as a counter-narrative, the local historiography provides contemporary Sikhs a possibility to make claims on the visibility, the identity and the right to occupy a space within the sacred geography of Varanasi and negotiate ‘an other’ representation of the collective self from within the dominant cultural discourse.

Louis E. Fenech, The Darbar of the Sikh Gurus: The Court of God in the World of Men (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2008, pp. 325

Louis E. Fenech, <i>The Darbar of the Sikh Gurus: The Court of God in the World of Men</i> (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2008, pp. 325

Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections from the Sikh Scriptures. Edited and translated by Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, pp. l, 164. London and New York, Routledge, 2005.

Teachings of the Sikh Gurus: Selections from the Sikh Scriptures. Edited and translated by Christopher Shackle and Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, pp. l, 164. London and New York, Routledge, 2005.

Religious beliefs: online information and resources

The Sikh religion is ranked as the world’s fifth largest, according to the number of professed adherents to that faith, with over 20 million followers worldwide. This month marks the martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Sikh guru who completed the compilation of the previous Guru’s writings into the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Holy Scripture. The book was different in that its content included Hindu and Muslim compositions, which were consistent with the tenets of Sikhism; perhaps best illustrating the religions emphasis on the equality of man and devotion to one God.

Materializing Sikh pasts1

Objects and sites related to the Sikh Gurus, heroes and martyrs are ubiquitous in Punjab and beyond. As objects of memory, they function to represent the past and participate in a larger narration of that past as history. This paper examines exemplary cases of Sikh historical objects and sites and considers their role as lieux de memoire, as theorized by Pierre Nora, to commemorate the Guru and the relationships that constitute the community around him. Narration constitutes the animating principle for these objects, making them both like and unlike other kinds of material religious traditions generally known as ‘relics’. The early Buddhist tradition is provided for productive contrast, to suggest a parallel case of a narrative frame that determines the historical meanings of the material aspect of religious practices and ideologies.

Re-Membering the body of the transcendent one

This paper is a re-memory of Sikh scripture from my perspective, which happens to be that of a Sikh female scholar. I borrow the term ‘semiotic’ from Julia Kristeva who distinguishes the Mother's free and primordial ‘semiotic’ language from that of the Father's divisive and oppressive ‘symbolic.’ So by using Kristeva's semiotic process we enter the elemental power of Sikh verse: we become sensitive to its sensuousness and sensuality and re-experience the full physicality, dynamism, and elan vital of the sacred words. Kristeva's ‘semiotic’ helps us realize that female is not set aside in the male compositions of the Sikh Gurus, and that ‘word’ and ‘flesh’ do meet in their expression of and quest for the transcendent Reality. A revised version of this paper appears in my book The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (SUNY, 2005).

Non-Canonical Compositions Attributed to the Seventh and Ninth Sikh Gurus

The printed version of the Adi Granth, the Sikh scripture, contains no compositions by the seventh Guru, Har Rai, and one hundred sixteen by the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur. This study introduces to textual scholarship a couplet attributed to Guru Har Rai in two seventeenth-century manuscripts and seven couplets and two padas attributed to Guru Tegh Bahadur in a number of early manuscripts. It also discusses a notice found in seventeenth-century manuscripts recording a verse of the fifth Guru, Arjan, supposed to have been written in a manuscript copy of the Adi Granth by Guru Har Rai. The study also introduces six seventeenth-century manuscripts of the Adi Granth.

The Mīṇās and Their Literature

Although the past few decades have seen an increasing amount of writings on the Sikhs and their history, very little has been written that imparts nuance to the accepted narratives of the early period of Sikh history. Much of the early history of the Sikh panth remains unexplored, and much of what has been written merely repeats already familiar stories. Noticeably absent in teleological versions of the Sikh past has been any mention of the dead ends of Sikh history : the various groups that arose from within the early panth to varying degrees of prominence and stability only to suffer a fatal decline under the influence of the reformist Singh Sabhā movement at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Not only has this trend in historical writing impoverished the early history of the panth but it has also meant that whole corpora of devotional and commentarial literature have languished virtually ignored. This has largely been the case with the Mīnās, a dissident group that arose in the time of the fifth Sikh Guru, and their prolific literary output.

The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society

The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh Society

Niharranjan Ray: The Sikh Gurus and the Sikh society: a study in social analysis, [ix], 205 pp. Patiala: Punjabi University, 1970.

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