The emergence of modern 'Sikh theology’

8/9/2019 The emergence of modern 'Sikh theology

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Bulletin of SOAS, 68, 2 (2005). 253275. School of Oriental and African Studies. Printed in theUnited Kingdom.

The emergence of modern Sikh theology:Reassessing the passage of ideas from

Trumpp to Bham i Vir SinghARVIND-PALS. MANDAIR

Hofstra University

This paper interrogates the conventional representation of the teachings of theSikh Gurus (gurmat) as Sikh theology. The force of this claim is based on thebelief that the exegetical commentaries by reformist Sikh scholars such as Bham iVir Singh completed in the early decades of the twentieth century, retrieve theoriginal intentions of the Sikh Gurus. Rather it will be argued that Sikh theol-

ogy can more usefully be envisaged as an ideological formation arising, on theone hand, from a language event that had far-reaching implications for thedevelopment of modern Sikh ideology. This event was the commissioning of anofficial translation of the central Sikh scripture, the Am di Granth, by the colonialadministration in Punjab, a task undertaken by the German Indologist ErnestTrumpp and published in 1877. On the other hand this ideological formationwas unwittingly perpetuated by Trumpps non-Sikh and Sikh protagonistsover the next fifty years. Though rarely considered, this regime of translationarises out of and reflects some of the key ideological contests in the history ofEuropean ideas during the nineteenth century, specifically the religio-

philosophical debate between Hegel and Schelling. Central to this debate is theWests reconceptualization of its own comparative imaginary which emergesat the uneasy intersections between the so-called pantheism controversy andfledgling disciplines such as Indology. By exposing the silent sources and subse-quent passage of ideas through Trumpp and Macauliffe to Bham i Vir Singh, thechief exponent of the Singh Sabham ideology, it is possible to read the emergenceof modern Sikh theology as a transformation of the meaning ofgurmat ratherthan an ahistorical continuity.

Delimiting a regime of translation: Trumpps odium theologicum

It may seem surprising, though it would hardly be an exaggeration, to suggestthat Ernest Trumpps basic thesis concerning the Sikhs religious systemsummarized in twenty short pagesremains historically the most influentialdocument concerning the question: What is Sikhism? The brevity of this pre-fatory chapter entitled Sketch of the religion of the Sikhs1 belies the profoundimpact it has exerted on the reception and representation of Sikh scripture.Despite the vociferous rejection of this work by Sikhs ever since its publicationin 1877, it would not be far from the truth to suggest that the vector informingthe Sikh response and consequently over the next fifty years the adoption oftheology as a conceptual framework for translating Sikh scripture, is largelya response to Trumpps translation and, more importantly, to his schemati-zation of the Sikh religion. Why did Trumpps work have such a significantinfluence? Why was such a need felt to refute this work? Let me begin by re-counting some of the basic themes Trumpp put forward and the influences thatcaused him to write in such a manner.

Any serious evaluation of Trumpps Sketch of the religion of the Sikhsneeds to situate his writing in the context of a broad shift in the nature of

1 Ernest Trumpp, The Amdi Granth (London, 1877), pp. xcviicxviii.


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254 ARVIND-PALS. MANDAIR

Indological research after the 1860s. To illustrate briefly this shift, the earlyphase of Indological research (pre-1840s), which had its beginnings in the workof William Jones, Charles Wilkins and H. T. Colebrooke, posited Advaita

Vedamnta as the central philosophy and theology of Hinduism (Halbfass 1988;King 1999). According to this particular representation, which continued tobe propagated throughout the nineteenth century by Indophiles such asSchelling, Schopenhauer and Max Mller, Hinduism could in essence be con-sidered a philosophy but not a true religion as the term was understood in theWest. The nearest thing to genuine religion in India was the mlange of cultsand sects based on the worship of chthonic deities. If Hindus had had a truereligion it could only have existed in the remote and ancient past, a GoldenAge from which the originally Aryan race of Hindus had fallen intotheir present state through centuries of domination and racial mixing (Dalmia

1996: 176210). After the 1860s, however, the work of a new generationof Indologistsamongst them H. H. Wilson, Albrecht Weber, FriedrichLorinser, Ernest Trumpp, Monier Monier-Williams and George Griersonbegan to discover what soon came to be regarded as the only real religion ofthe Hindus within the various forms of devotion (bhakti) to personal deities,but particularly within the Vaishnava bhaktior the tradition of devotion to thedeity Vishnu. (Sharma 1986; Dalmia 1996). Not surprisingly this view receivedintellectual support from orthodox Hindu scholars and publicists, which ledduring the last two decades of the nineteenth century to the integration of themlange ofsamdpradamyas (sects) under the all-encompassing political leadershipof the Vaishnava samdpramdaya (Dalmia 1996: 396). As a result, bhakti as adevotional form common to all true Indian religiosity, and monotheism asproper to it, crystallized as the essential feature not only of Vaishnavism, butof pan-Indian Hinduism (Dalmia 1995: 179).

What brought about this change in the nature and orientation of Indology?At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, this reversal took place at the intersec-tion of a whole series of intellectual debates that were arising simultaneouslyduring the early nineteenth century, and included the theorization of religion,aesthetics and the history of philosophy. Almost all of these debates inter-sected with the growth of Indology. Much of this activity was centred, particu-larly in Germany during the 1790s, around two parallel movements. First,what Bernard Reardon describes as the intellectual rekindling of Christianityboth Protestant and Catholic without parallel since high middle ages (Perkins1999: 357). Secondly, the growth of national consciousness motivated in par-ticular by a need felt by leading European intellectuals to respond to a prolif-erating knowledge of Oriental religions and cultures (Bernal 1987; Perkins1999).

As Wilhelm Halbfass notes, the newly discovered Indological materialsaffected European understandings of philosophy, the history of philosophyand, more directly, the relationship between religion and philosophy (Halbfass1988: 83). Indology was in its formative stage during the very period in whichthe history and historiography of philosophy were assuming new forms,particularly in the work of Schelling and his antipode, Hegel. Despite theircommon concern for rethinking the European and Christian traditions, theirrespective responses to the Oriental Enlightenment are motivated by oppos-ing desires, which, for arguments sake, can be referred to as Orientalist andOccidentalist.2 Nowhere are these opposing desires better manifested than in

2 I am aware that Orientalists were not necessarily Indophiles. Rather this distinction is meantto highlight the opposing tendencies within European thought itself.


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255THEEMERGENCEOF SIKHTHEOLOGY

the battle for ideological supremacy between the respective systems of Hegeland Schelling. This battle, which began in the early 1800s with Hegelscritiques of Schellings Identittsphilosophie and Naturphilosophie, heated up

considerably in the early 1820s following Hegels arrival at the University ofBerlin and the dissemination of his lecture courses on aesthetics, history andreligionall of which engaged in some form or other with newly availableIndological materials. Schellings defence of pantheism, and his juxtapositionof Indian ideas with discussions of European philosophy and religion, hadalready exercised considerable influence beyond Berlin and certainly beyondthe field of philosophy. Though caricatured as an Indomaniac, Schellingsengagement with India was propelled less by any love for India than by a des-ire to present a radically different way of perceiving Europe, a difference thatis not necessarily imported from a foreign source but is already at the heart of

European identity.By contrast, for Hegel, whose thinking was more in tune with the inter-

linked currents of nationalism and imperialism sweeping across Europe at thetime, India and pantheism needed to be kept intellectually and culturally at asafe distance from the West. Hegels reasoning as to why it was more appropri-ate to speak of Indian thought as religious but not philosophical, and why itwas necessary to demarcate it outside the history of philosophy but within thehistory of religions, has to do with the fact that notions of individuality andpersonhood are less conspicuous in Indian religious thought than in European.Thus the only relationship between India and the West could be one of intellec-

tual and political subordination. With Berlin at this time being recognized asone of the two premier centres of European learning, the stakes for rivals suchas Schelling and Hegel could not have been greater. Given the very differentorientations of their philosophies, the consequences of ones success and theothers failure would be enormous since the stakes amounted to nothing lessthan the future direction of European self-consciousness. In short, the debatebetween Hegel and Schelling, as well as the shift in the direction of Indologicalresearch, can be traced to a change in the framework for conceptualizingreligion(s) which itself is redefined through the encounter with Indology, giventhat what is at stake in (re)defining religion was the place and status of

European identity as essentially Christian. The impact of the battle betweenthe Orientalist and Occidentalist poles of European ideology was far reaching.Though often overlooked, one of its more important consequences was toinspire a new generation of Indologists and missionaries trained at institutionssuch as the Tbingen Stift, who were fully conversant with Indological materi-als, scientific in their methodology, yet absolutely committed to the Euro-Christian standpoint. This was quite a shift from the earlier phase of BritishIndology exemplified by names such as William Jones, Henry ThomasColebrooke and Charles Wilkins, who espoused an approach to Orientalcultures that was, as far as possible, religiously neutrala neutrality that

caused considerable hindrance to the early missionaries in India. Indologists-cum-misisonaries such as Ernest Trumpp belonged to this new generation.

Viewed from the above perspective, Trumpps Sketch presents remarkablesimilarities to the ideological construction of Vaishnavism as the only realreligion of the Hindus by Indologists such as Monier-Williams, Weber,Grierson and Lorinser, all of whom were Trumpps contemporaries and peers(Sharma 1986; Dalmia 1996). Moreover Trumpp was not writing for the layreader. His work was instigated and funded by the Punjab Administrationwho apparently wished to gain a more authentic understanding of the Sikhs, a


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task which would be facilitated by gaining access to their sacred scriptures.Trumpps primary audience would therefore have consisted of influentialpolicy makers and, because of Trumpps renown in Europe as a scholar of

Oriental languages, the growing market of Orientalists, philosophers andmissionaries who had had, until then, little or no knowledge of Sikhs except asa sect of the Hindus.

At the outset of the Sketch Trumpp informs the reader that what he isabout to present is an attempt to remedy a prevalent bias in the received viewof the Sikhs and their religious system. Trumpps indebtedness to the well-established Orientalist traditions can be immediately discerned from the natureof his remarks.3 He conceived his task not merely as a work of translation, butas the work of a benefactor endeavouring to impose a semblance of systematicunity and the principles of speculative philosophy which the Am di Granth

apparently lacked:

Namnak himself was not a speculative philosopher who built up a concisesystem on scientific principles; he had not received a regular school-training and uttered therefore his thoughts in a loose way . .. now scatteredthrough the Granth, and must first be patiently searched out and collectedinto a whole, before we can form an idea of his tenets (Trumpp: xcvii).

Trumpps inheritance of German and British Orientalism led him to comparethe chief point in Nanaks doctrine, namely the unity of the Supreme Being,with the Hindu philosophical systems which were already more or less

familiarised with this idea (Trumpp, p. xcvii). In reality this Being alone exists:

It is the ground or root of all things, the source, from which all havesprung, the primary cause; in this sense it is called the creator. But we mustnot misunderstand this appellation, for no creation out of nothing isthereby intended. When Absolute Being is styled the creator, the expansionof the same into a plurality of forms is thereby meant... .

[T]he whole universe and all things therein are identified with theSupreme ... All the finite created beings have therefore no separate exist-ence apart from the Absolute, they are only its various forms and appear-

ances ... All creatures are therefore alike with the only difference that theAbsolute becomes self-conscious in man No teleological principle what-ever is assigned for the production or destruction of the created beings(Trumpp: xcviii, xcixc).

Unable to find reasonable grounds for specifically differentiating the notion ofSupreme Being in the Am di Granth from the orthodox Hindu philosophy,Trumpp proceeded to classify the Granths central philosophy as pantheism,albeit one that leaned towards a degraded dualism:

We need hardly remark, that this whole definition of the Supreme isaltogether pantheistic. The Hindum way of thinking comprehends in theAbsolute both spirit and matter, as the creation of material bodies out ofnothing is totally incomprehensible to the Hindum mind (Trumpp: c).

3 From what we know of Trumpps background (b. 1828), it would appear that he came from astrongly Lutheran background and was, initially at least, marked out as a future Lutheranminister. As with many of his more famous predecessors, Trumpp joined the famous TbingenStift, where besides pursuing a core curriculum consisting of theological studies, he also concen-trated on languages which included, in addition to Hebrew, Sanskrit and Arabic. See for exampleSchimmel (1981) and Singh (1991).


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What for Trumpp appeared to be a contradictionthat Indians were notconcerned to separate the unity of the Supreme Being from a dualistic pan-theism, etc.becomes part of a general strategy on his part to show that the

Am

di Granth is an incoherent document full of contradictory statements.Unable fully to account for this contradiction, however, Trumpp resorts todistinguishing between two different varieties of pantheism within the Am diGranth: a grosser as opposed to a finer kind of pantheism. This move isstrongly reminiscent of Hegels problem of defining the difference betweenreligions by means of a distinction between consistent and inconsistentelevation in the 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (pp. 46870):

The grosser Pantheism identifies all things with the Absolute, the universein its various forms being considered the expansion of it. The finer Pan-theism on the other hand distinguishes between the Absolute and the finite

beings, and borders frequently on Theism ... [In the finer Pantheism God]remains distinct from the creatures ...[and] creation assumes the form ofemanation from the Supreme; or the reality of matter is more or less denied(Trumpp: c, ci).

Trumpp then proceeds to give an indication of the intellectual and ideologicalpole against which he measures his interpretation of the Granth:

That an Absolute Being, thus defined, cannot be a self-conscious spiritendowed with a free will and acting according to teleological principles,seems never to have struck their minds. For after the strongest Pantheistic

expressions, the Supreme is again addressed as a self-conscious personality... with whom man endeavours to enter into personal relations. Contradic-tory sentences of this kind we find a great many in the Granth (Trumpp:ci).

These remarks are of more than simply passing interest. They allow us aninsight into the main intellectual influence upon Trumpps thinking and,consequently, the orientation of his translation, both of these being particu-larly dependent on the passage of ideas between philosophy and Indology. Theinfluence of Schlegels distinction between emanation and pantheism isdiscernable here, according to which the latter, as found mainly in Vaishnavastrands of Vedamnta, represents the most degenerate form of all Indian thinking.There can be little doubt, however, that Hegels writings on the philosophy ofreligion provide the main ideological influence behind Trumpps distinctionbetween fine and gross pantheism. By the mid-nineteenth century, whenTrumpp was receiving his theological training at Tbingen, Hegels reputationas a leading European thinker had been firmly established for some time.Hegels influence on theology, history of religions and Orientalism was parti-cularly marked. Prompted by personal attacks from influential Pietist theolo-gians such as Tholuck, on what was perceived to be a closet pantheism withinHegels own philosophy, Hegel himself had begun to distinguish between thegenuine pantheism, which he attributed to Schelling and the early Schlegel,and Spinozistic pantheism, which had certain similarities to Oriental pan-theism. Indeed, by 1827 we find that Hegel had begun to differentiate thenature of pantheism within Oriental religions, a move that was tied up with hisfailure in the 1824 Lectures to formulate a suitable definition for the stand-point of religion. It thereby allowed him to differentiate between the outrightatheism of Buddhism and the kind of pantheism specific to Hinduism, whichdiffered only in the sense that a countless number of incarnations areadopted, although as Hegel states, these incarnations are merely a mask that


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substance adopts and exchanges in contingent fashion (Hegel: 315). Hence,implicit in many of Trumpps remarks is the historically oriented gradingof religions according to their proximity to or distance from the theoretical

standpoint of religion, namely, the metaphysical as such, or the Absolute asself-conscious spirit that is peculiar to the Hegelian schema.4

With regard to ethics in the Am di Granth, Trumpp asked the followingquestions: What is the relationship of man to the Supreme? [and] How did ithappen that [the individual soul] fell into impurity or sin? (Trumpp: cii). Theanswers to these questions are provided in several short passages which deserveto be reproduced here since they provide, in short, the central themes aroundwhich the future response of Sikh reformist scholars will be organized:

[The aim of existence] ... is the total dissolution of individual existence bythe reabsorption of the soul in the fountain of light ... i.e. NirbamnD ,5 the total

cessation of individual consciousness and reunion with the Vacuum.If there could be any doubt on the Pantheistic character of the tenets

of the Sikh Gurus regarding the Supreme, it would be dissolved by theirdoctrine of the NirbamnD . Where no personal God is taught or believed in,man cannot aspire to a final personal communion with him; his aim canonly be ... individual annihilation. We find therefore no allusion to the

joys of a future life in the Granth ... . The immortality of the soul is onlytaught as far as the doctrine of transmigration requires it ... . The Nirbam Dn... was the grand object which Buddha ... held out to the poor people.From his atheistic point of view he could look out for nothing else;

personal existence ... with the concomitant evils of this life ... which arenot counterbalanced by corresponding pleasures .. . appeared to him as thegreatest evil. Buddhism ... like Sikhism ... [is] unrestricted Pessimism,unable to hold out ... any solace ... (Trumpp: cvi).

From the foregoing remarks it is plain enough, that in a religion, wherethe highest object of life is the extinction of individual existence, there can beno room for a system of moral duties; we need therefore hardly point out,how wrong the statement of some authors is, that Sikhism is a moralizingDeism (Trumpp: cix, cx).

These passages deserve closer attention for several reasons. Firstly there isTrumpps implicit rejection of the prevalent view among the Punjab Adminis-tration officers, of the un-Hindu-like character of the Sikhs. It implies that theWestern hope and desire to find within the central texts of the Sikhs reasonsfor their outwardly Deistic or moral being, was misguided. According toTrumpps account the content of the Am di Granth was not a good indicator ofthe Sikhs present character and position, since it could only lead to a pessimis-tic nihilismwhich from a European standpoint was intrinsically immoral.Thus the answer to what made them tick must be located not within thecontent of their sacred scriptures, but rather in their historical evolution. The

reasons for their apparent difference from degenerate Hinduism had no neces-sity, but were purely arbitrary or incidental, the result of historical accidentcaused by external factors outside their control, rather than being located inthe teachings of the Am di Granth, which conveyed only a lack of teleologicalprinciples.

4 Note Trumpps frequent references to the lack of teleology or teleological principles in Hinduthinking.

5 The word nirbamnD is the Punjabi version of the Sanskrit term nirvamnD a or the Pali term nibbamna:lit. the blowing out or annihilation of consciousness/desire/appearance.


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The rejection of Sikhism as a moralizing Deism, replaced by the view of itas a cross between pantheism and atheism, represented a considerable dilemmato the emerging Sikh lites in the years following the publication of Trumpps

work. Under constant threat from Christian missionaries, Arya Samajists and,not least, faced with internal opposition from Sikhs who envisaged Sikhism asa strand of the Sanamtana dharma or orthodox Hinduism, Trumpps work poseda very serious challenge to their chances of gaining political recognition andpatronage for their cause (Oberoi 1994: 247). The import of passages such asthose cited above threatened to undermine the very basis of Sikh reformistsclaims for recognition from the administration and, in a wider context, theirclaims to possess an individual self-consciousnessthe moral basis for anyfuture claims that the community be regarded as a nation and that they wereits legitimate representatives. It would certainly have undermined their efforts

to reconstitute the rahit

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tradition that would be fundamental to the project ofnationalizing Sikh traditions, that is, to the socio-political task of cementing itsreligious boundaries.

Backed by the authority of the colonial administration, Trumpps trans-lation and accompanying odium theologicum towards the Sikh religion putseveral far-reaching classificatory moves into place. For the first time Sikhismwas installed into a position on the graph of the historical evolution of reli-gions, in a position even lower than that of Hinduism. In fact Trumpp placedSikhism on a par with atheistic Buddhism. Leaving aside his discernmentof the lack of a proper theological characterits incoherence, multiple andcontradictory conceptions of God and selfto the Am di Granth, this is an inter-esting and potentially fruitful observation on Trumpps part, although itsimplications cannot be explored here. The real implication of this move was toinvalidate, on the basis of empirical observation and from the evidence of theirown scriptures, the prevalent view that the Sikh religion was a moralizingdeism or that it possessed any historical or leavening impulse of its own(Cunningham 1981: 34). As a result prevalent notions about SikhismthatSikhs were not really Hindoos but had been wrongly identified with themon account of their own fall, or that their fall was due to the incursions ofBrahmanism which had crept in as a result of Maharajah Ranjit Singhs opu-lence, hence their defeat at the hands of the British, or that their encounterwith the British would help to revitalize the original spirit of Sikhismallstood to be undermined. According to Trumpps reading, Sikhism, like Hindu-ism, was always already fallen in the sense that it was outside history. Or touse Hegelian terminology, Sikhism did not possess any Aufhebungthat essen-tial extrication and elevation from gross nature to history (transcendence)which only Western religions possessed. It was therefore a mistake to say thatSikhism had fallen but could be resurrected.

More important perhaps was the displacement of the discursive fieldof translation and interpretation of the Am di Granth, into an order of thingsgoverned by oppositions such as theism/atheism, chaos/order. In other words,the conceptual terminology in any future discourse concerning Sikhism wasshifted into the domain of ontotheology, where all propositions and statementson the Sikh religion were automatically rerouted through the question con-cerning the existence of God as the ground of rational thinking. As a resultindigenous Sikh and Western interpreters were presented with clearly definedtasks. For Sikhs, this was to prove their commitment to the idea of Gods

6 Lit. way to live; as codified in the manuals of Sikh conduct called rahitnamme, rahits weredocuments that codified an authentic Sikh conduct. See further McLeod (2003).


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existence, which meant a commitment to proving that their central texts couldprovide a suitable concept of God if they hoped to receive political recognitionand patronage from Europeans as a valuable and useful religion. For Western-

ers, having determined the nature and essence of the Sikh religion in terms ofits conception of God and the self, the path was cleared for the only real taskthat remained, i.e. comparative and classificatory study. Whether one liked itor not, Trumpps demarcation of conceptual boundaries for the study ofSikhism provided a framework which future interpreters could contest butnever remain outside of. Indeed, as we shall see, both Sikh reformists andWestern scholars of Sikhism, in order to refute Trumpp, needed first to engagewith the terminology and framework he had imposed. Yet in doing so theywere inadvertently forced to adopt its very premises. What Trumpp had effec-tively inaugurated was a framework for the future politics of religious lang-uage centred on a rigorous conceptualization of Gods being that was tobecome instrumental not only in refiguring boundaries between religions butalso in the construction of a Sikh national consciousness.

Pincott and the politics of classification

While Trumpps opponents could dismiss his work on account of its purportedbias and inaccuracies, what they were unable to dismiss is the fact that Trumppmanaged to shift the ground of future discourse on Sikh scripture under thepurview of the Western intellectual and religious tradition, and specifically intothe context of current debates in theology and philosophy. This is due partly to

Trumpps credentials as a philologist, but more importantly to his formaltraining in theology and philosophy at the Tbingen Stift. Compared with hispredecessors, who had presented mainly observational travel accounts or hist-ories and who had little knowledge of the central Sikh texts, Trumpp was,intellectually speaking, on relatively safe ground. Perhaps the best indicationof this is the ineffectiveness of attempts by Sikhs and non-Sikhs alike to refutethe central aspects of Trumpps programme.

A good example of this is provided by Frederic Pincotts two articlesSikhism (Pincott 1999: 157) and The arrangement of hymns in the Am diGranth (Pincott 1999: 185), both of which were originally published in the

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Against Trumpps argument that therewas only an accidental relationship between Islamic and Sikh concepts of God,Pincott, in his article Sikhism, tried to adduce a greater influence of PersianSufism and thereby of Islamic monotheism on Sikhism. By the end of thisarticle, however, Pincott reaffirmed Trumpps basic thesis: that Sikhism ispantheism based on Hinduism, modified by Buddhism, but merely stirredinto new life by Sufism. What is noteworthy in Pincotts essay is his inadvert-ent accession to historicist premises which seems to lead logically towards theneed to demonstrate an adequate conception of God and the moral qualities ofSikhism.

Even more revealing is the fate of the later article on The arrangement ofhymns in the Am di Granth in which Pincott attempts to undermine oneof Trumpps main complaints about the Sikh scripture, namely the lack of aleading principle (p. 186) within the Am di Granth. For Trumpp this lack ofa leading principle is clear evidence that the compilers of the Granth seemedto have paid less attention to the proper organization of its contents than toattaining a bulky size. By thus jumbling together whatever came to handwithout any judicious selection, the Granth has become an exceedingly inco-herent and wearisome book, a mere promiscuous heap of verses (Pincott1999: 186). Pincotts main corrective was to argue that the Am di Granth could


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be shown to be arranged on a definitive plan from end to end (p. 186). Thisorder or plan is based on the system of north Indian Ragas or musical mea-sures whose characteristic peculiarity is that it is based on the theory that each

musical sound corresponds to some emotion of the human heart. When anyparticular sound predominates in a tune, that tune is supposed to give rise to apeculiar Rag, or emotion (186).

What Pincott failed to show, however, was the sense in which the arrange-ment was methodical. Specifically that the ordering principle here was not infact based on rational or intellectual principles but on a non-system whichemphasizes the primacy of mood or emotion related to particular ragas as anecessary prerequisite for understanding the words of the hymn. What thisindicates is that the original composition of these hymns by the Sikh Gurusmay have been dictated by aesthetic sensibilities centred on mood/emotion as

opposed to conceptual thought.The fact that Pincotts essay was rarely referenced either by Orientalists orby Sikh reformist scholars is not only an indicator of Trumpps influence, butmore importantly of an ongoing war of cultural politics between Orientalismand Occidentalism7two very different ways in which European intellectualsconceived of the relationship between India and Europe or more broadlybetween East and West. The contrast is perhaps best represented by theideological battle between Hegel and Schelling (Bowie 1994). Though rarelyacknowledged, the battle between these two figures centred on the status ofproper conceptual thought based on a reflective self-consciousness in contra-distinction to the kind of thinking based on emotion/mood that resists purelyconceptual or reflective thinking. Grounded in transience as opposed to thestasis of the concept, the latter kind of thinking arises in the encounter with thedomain of art and the sensuous and finds its prime example in wordless music.Interestingly, the respective attitudes of these ideologues towards art formssuch as music are mirrored by their comparative attitudes towards Indianand Western religions. Thus whereas Schelling valorized music, pantheismand Indian religions because they resisted the rigorously conceptual thinkingpromulgated by Hegel, for Hegel art, the sensuous and pantheism epitomizedthe very reasons why Oriental religions had never been able to achieve thefreedom of history. It therefore justified his positioning of India outside thepale of history as an entirely academic consideration.

Judged from this perspective it is not difficult to understand why, firstly,claims such as those of Pincottthat there is an ordering principle based onemotion and mood as opposed to metaphysical conceptualitywould, like theviews of Schelling, be swimming against the tide of his time. Secondly it helpsto explain why the decisive response to Trumpps work from reformist Sikhscame as late as the 1920s and 1930s, almost half a century after the publicationof his Amdi Granth. Thirdly it explains why this response, which came mainly inthe shape of short narratives on Sikh history and longer more systematicworks of scriptural commentary (tD ikam) of a broadly theological nature, tendedto implement the very distinctions which Trumpp had accused the Am di Granthof lacking, namely, the metaphysical distinction between literal and figural.Consequently, in the later commentaries, ontotheological schema will takepriority over ramga, so that in future ramga will be treated either as a mere super-scription or non-intellectual adornment to the proper literary work, or, as isstill commonly thought, as no more than an identity card which ensures

7 This is treated in detail in my forthcoming monograph Religion and the Politics of Translation,Manchester University Press (forthcoming).


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and propagated in the work of G. W. F. Hegel and James Mill, according towhich Hindus lacked history absolutely (Niranjana 1992; Spivak 1999); and onthe other an Orientalist model of history, with intellectual roots in Enlighten-

ment Deism (notably Kant) and propagated by a long line of Indologistsbeginning with William Jones, according to which Hindus had fallen from anoriginal state of monotheism and reason to their present condition (Halbfass1988). Although the possibility of a Hindu revival is held out in the Orientalistmodel, it is, ironically, the second phase of post-Hegelian Indology informedby the new philosophical speculation about the nature of religion along anOccidentalist model of history which led to the discovery of bhakti and theidea of a bhaktimovement as the platform for the revival of the Hindu mind.9

This idea of a bhaktimovement gave the impetus for Indologists to recon-ceptualize two divergent accounts: (i) ofbhaktias the only true religion of the

Hindus, one which included Sikhs and could be traced back to an imaginedAryan Hindu race as it existed before the Muslim incursions (Dalmia 1996:338429); (ii) ofbhaktias no more than a precursory movement which, leav-ened by the influence of Islamic monotheism, merely prepared the way for theadvent of the Sikh religion.10 What concerns us here is that these accountsinvited opposing responses from Hindu and Sikh reformists to the representa-tion ofbhaktieither as a continuity with Hindu time and tradition or as a fun-damental point of departure from the body of lived Hindu experience. Butwhereas Hindu reformists used the bhaktimovement as a means of hearkeningback to a mythic origin, Sikh reformists appropriated the idea of the bhaktimovement as the precursor of a new time, a new origin, the foundation for aSikh narrative representing a true elevation and extrication from the Hindubody.

For Sikh reformists this quest to extricate themselves from the negativestereotype of contemporary Hinduism was inextricably connected, as we haveseen, with Trumpps thesis that Sikhs, according to the testimony of their ownscriptures, were Hindus, and that they shared ideologically, theologically, andontologically a Hindu time and space. Trumpps work served to accentuate thecrisis for reformist Sikhs leading them to articulate their search for identitywith questions like: were Sikhs Hindus? If not, what in fact were they? Howcould they provide evidence which would demonstrate what they claimed? Onwhat basis could they redraw cultural boundaries that had become blurred?

In the absence of any systematic theological speculation that had yet toevolve, Sikh reformists in the late nineteenth century were able to distancethemselves from the negative Hindu stereotype by drawing upon two verydifferent sources: indigenous and foreign. On the one hand, indigenous sourceswhich included: janamsamkhi or hagiographical literature consisting mainly of

9 In her important work Krishna Sharma (1987) points out that there was in fact no comprehen-sive bhakti movement as such which had taken place in medieval India. The proponents of a

bhaktimovement, who included Orientalists and native indigenous elites, disregarded the fact thatbhaktiwas a generic term simply meaning loving devotion or a form of attachment to a divine thatis simultaneously absent and present. It became particularized as a concept only when attachedto the deity towards which it was directed. Only then was it meaningful to discuss the particulartheology indicated by it (Dalmia 1996: 409). More importantly, perhaps, the notion of movementreflects a common concern among Orientalists and native elite scholars to show that bhaktisincethe medieval era had developed a mode of transcendence that allowed it to move away from, orelevate itself above, the monistic impersonal explanations of god as found in the UpanisDads andAdvaita Vedamnta in particular. This sense of movement is also what allowed Hegel, andIndologists influenced by Hegels ideas, to distinguish religion from philosophy (see Mandair,forthcoming).

10 This second view was propounded by a succession of British historiographers of the Sikhsincluding John Malcolm, J. D. Cunningham and M. A. Macauliffe.


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narratives of the lives of the Sikh Gurus and specifically Namnak; the eighteenth-century Gurbilams literature consisting of narratives of the lives of the sixth andtenth Gurus stressing their roles as warriors; and the eighteenth-century

rahitnamme literature which dealt with codes of conduct and the moral beha-viour of Sikhs initiated into the Khalsa order (McLeod 1984: 1113). On theother hand there was the corpus of early and contemporary Europeannarrative accounts which portray Sikhism as a new religion.11 The primarydistinction that can be drawn between these two groups of sources is that thenarrative structures of the indigenous sources remain firmly rooted within anIndic system of time. There is no evidence either of a break with a broadlyIndic ontology, nor the idea of a bhaktimovement as the necessary precursorto a break. By contrast, the Orientalist narrative accounts based on the workof nineteenth-century Indologists not only develop the idea of bhakti as a

movement, but more importantly, they seamlessly incorporate pre-colonialnarratives into the properly historical narrative of imperial history grounded inthe priority of the present (Sharma 1986: 7491).

The real importance of European Orientalist narratives lies not only in thefact that they provide an antidote to Trumpp, but that they will become refer-ence points for Sikh reformists within indigenous constructions of an authenticSikh history and Sikh theology. That is to say, Sikh reformists unproble-matically aligned the timing of the Indic narratives and their own lived experi-ences with and within the historical present of the Orientalist narrative,thereby effecting a conversion to [the time of] modernity (Van der Veer 1996).The kind of encounter whereby this alignment is achieved, namely dialogue, isparticularly revealing, irrespective of whether such dialogue is between personsor between persons and texts. Exemplary of the way in which dialogue betweenSikh reformists and the British helped to effect a convergence and eventualconcordance of ontologically distinct narratives, is the work of Max ArthurMacauliffe.

Macauliffes role, personally and pedagogically, in the overall projectof late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Sikh reformism is of singularimportance for a number of reasons. His main work, the monumental six-volume study The Sikh Religion: Its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors, is anexercise in translation and at the same time a historiography. Its publicationby Oxford University Press in 1909 gained for it significant credibility andsympathy from a European readership, and in that sense alone it provided amajor corrective to Trumpps potentially damaging work. Moreover its lucidnarrative style and contextualization of traditional Sikh materials proved to behighly popular with reformists and continues to be eulogized even today bymany Sikhs. However, what concerns us here is less Macauliffes reception asa historian, which is adequately treated elsewhere (Barrier 1972; McLeod2000). Of greater relevance to us is the way in which his work and closepersonal contact with leading reformist scholars of the day helped not so muchto overcome Trumpps thesis as is often thought, but simply to invert it, thus

remaining within the very space of cultural translation that Trumpp hadopened.

Macauliffes work has often been eulogized for reflecting mainstreamSingh Sabham theology (Nripinder Singh 1990: 255) or the moral and religiouspurity of original Sikhism (which was) in danger of being lost (Dawe 1997:14), primarily through maintaining a close collaboration with a retinue ofwell-knowngyamni whose opinions he would consult extensively and to whom

11 See Singh (1986).


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he would submit his manuscripts for a final examination. But there is a majorproblem with this viewpoint. First, during the period of Macauliffes research(18891909) there was, strictly speaking, no form of literature that can be

regarded as a Sikh theology. As W. H. McLeod (1990) has shown, the earliestsystematic articulations of Sikh theology did not appear until the late 1920s.Any theology at this time can only be spoken of as implicit, that is to say, aform of expression which the reformists desired but were not able to enunciate.Indeed, evidence that the reformists were unable to formulate anything like atheology is given by Macauliffe himself in the preface to The Sikh Religion andelsewhere. On the one hand Macauliffe stresses that, unlike his predecessorErnest Trumpp, he worked very closely with the assistance of the few gyanis,or professional interpreters of the Sikh canonical writings who now survive...(Macauliffe 1909, Vol. 1: vi). On the other hand he seems convinced that of

these few or none is capable of giving an English interpretation. They gener-ally construe in tedious paraphrases in their own dialects. But more than thisthere is hardly any one Sikh who is capable of making a correct translation ofhis sacred writings (Macauliffe 1909, Vol. 1: vi). This somewhat ambivalentstatement, made after the publication of The Sikh Religion, corroboratessimilar sentiments expressed by Macauliffe during the period when he was stillengaged on the translation:

I could have wished the translation into English was made by a Sikh,butand it may be as well to put the matter clearly to prevent error anddisappointmentthere is not as yet, so far as I am aware, any Sikh

sufficiently acquainted with English to make any idiomatic translationinto it; and another translation such as Dr. Trumpps would only castfurther ridicule on the Sikh religion. The work therefore, if done at all,must be done by an English man. In a few generations there will no doubtbe Sikhs who can write literary English, but it is hardly likely that such willbe well acquainted with the Granth Sahib, seeing that there are nowhardly any Sikhs who have made an advanced study of English, and at thesame time acquired a complete knowledge of their sacred writings(Macauliffe 1999: 320).

These statements are remarkable for several reasons. Not only does Macauliffereveal why there were no systematic works of theology or history forthcomingfrom Sikhs at the time, he exposes one of the major limitations of the earlyAnglo-Vernacular education: that English could not be appropriated by thenative elites to the level required for equal intellectual exchange, i.e. to a levelwhere the native elites could think in English. This of course raises furtherquestions regarding the nature of Macauliffes close collaboration with tradi-tional native experts. Were these native experts (including such prominentreformists such as Kamnh Singh Nambham and Bhami Vir Singh) involved as equalpartners in some form of dialogue with Macauliffe? If these experts weretotally unacquainted with English could they adequately judge the valuationand wider import of the form and meaning given by Macauliffe, other thanits potential for gaining access to a space which they desired to occupy butwhich remained beyond their reach and, though rarely considered in this way,forbidden?12

Seeming to anticipate this problem Macauliffe further states that: ... Ihave also whenever practicable engaged English-speaking Sikhs to read my

12 See Derrida (1999). Derrida speaks of the law of the dominant or official language as aninterdict which forbids access to the dominant symbolic order.


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translations, and invited them to offer me their comments and suggestions(Macauliffe 1999: 320). But surely this contradicts the suggestion in the pre-vious paragraph that there are now hardly any Sikhs who have made anadvanced study of English...? What could be the point of engaging someoneto read and comment on an English translation if that very reader was unlikelyto have made a sufficiently advanced study of English? What kind of interlocu-tion would it be where one party (the Sikh) is not naturally inclined to speakand think in English, and where the other party (Macauliffe) would not benaturally inclined to speak and think in Punjabi? The question as to whichlanguage the dialogue is conducted in becomes moot once it is recognized thatthe target languagethe language in which there must be a consensusor agreement between the two parties for any dialogue to have occurredisEnglish.

This can be considered in two ways. In the case of thegyamni, who have noEnglish, Macauliffe, like any other European translator, will have acquired anability to cross over from his native English into the foreign idiom of Punjabi.For the meaning of the Punjabi idiom to remain anything but private theremust already be in place an automatic agreement between the two parties tothe effect that private meanings (corresponding in this case to the Punjabiidiom) must be rendered transferable into the publicthat is, universally intel-ligibleidiom of English. Clearly the distinction between private and publicmanifests the interdiction of imperial law which designates English as official.If this law is adhered to by colonizer and colonized, then neither the crossinginto Punjabi nor the act of transference back into English will have distorted

the private experience of the native experts. While both parties will haveagreed in advance upon the meaning of any particular word or phrase, thenatives will have had no say in determining the appearance and location of thismeaning in the public domain: English. I refer of course to the act of judge-ment. According to Macauliffe those who specifically possess the power tolocate the meaning of the foreign idiom within English only include himselfand other such eminent scholars who have permanently settled in Englandand who can write English like Englishmen (Macauliffe 1999: 326, emphasismine). Because, by inference, one cannot adequately locate meaning outside ofa certain native land or by becoming native to the land in whose language one

writes, the kind of acculturation to English implied by Macauliffe could nothave happened in India.

Consequently, in the case of Macauliffes collaboration with those learnedSikhs acquainted with English, it is again the Sikhs who must make theirPunjabi idiom (consigned as a result of the colonial interdict to the realm ofprivate meaning) conform to the target languageEnglish. The oppositionsprivate versus public, native Indic knowledge versus European knowledge,etc.are of course based on the distinction between the native and the foreign,which can in turn be regarded as a natural projection of the a prioridistinctionbetween self and other. Although common sense dictates that this distinction

can be bridged by the heroic effort of a translator, the act of translation itselfwill have been elided to give the impression of a communication or dialogue.The key point, however, is that the final authority in determining the transfer-ence and relocation of the native meaning not only happens in English,but rests with whatever conforms most closely to the English self. Meaning assuch is therefore determined from within a properly English context whichnecessarily means an English social context.

In his thought-provoking essay The concept of cultural translation inBritish social anthropology Talal Asad (1993) has argued that this kind ofcultural translation is a matter of determining implicit meanings. The term


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implicit not only suggests meanings the native speaker actually acknowledgesin his speech, or the meanings the native listener necessarily accepts, but thosehe is capable of sharing with scientific authority (Asad 1993: 196). What

seems to be evident here in the implicit/explicit, private/public oppositions isthe replacement of the untranslatable or the implicit by a representation oftranslation, that is, an economy of translation-as-dialogue where the act ofenunciating is elided. If Asad is right it is this economization of translation intocommunication or dialogue which gives rise to the idea of implicit meanings orthe untranslatable as that which resists fluent and silent transferral.

Overcoming pantheism: Macauliffes reinstallation of Sikhism in history

In accordance with Asads suggestion, the works of colonial translation exem-plified by both Trumpp and Macauliffe can be considered as simultaneously

psychoanalytical and theological exercises. Psychoanalytic because implicitsuggests unconscious meaning, something that the native does not yet knowbut only desires, because he is as yet incapable of enunciating in a form recog-nizable to English society. Theological because his narrative retelling presentsSikhism as the essence of reform, an exemplary story of indigenous self-extrication from the Indian fall and the awakening to the consciousness ofintellectual responsibility (Macauliffe, Vol. 1: xxxix). This awakening is bestillustrated in Macauliffes Introduction to The Sikh Religion, where he setsout the ideological narrative for the his book, the ideology being a concise butnecessary presentation on the origin and progress of religion until it received

its monotheistic consummation accepted by Guru Nanak... (Macauliffe,Vol. 1: lviii).

Thus for Macauliffeas also for his better-known peers and contemporar-ies who collectively shaped what I have elsewhere termed the second, and post-Hegelian, phase of Indological researchthe origin of religion is an imperfectstate where, in his immediacy to nature miserable and resourceless primitiveman felt the inclemency and fury of the elements... (Macauliffe, Vol. 1: lviii).Religion then progresses with civilization following a series of well-knownstageseach stage corresponding to an extension of mans intellectual condi-tionfrom primitive polytheism and the worship of minor deities, the subordi-

nation of minor deities to a single supreme deity, which lead in turn to a moreexalted concept of divinity, namely the idea or concept of the One: For manycenturies thinking men in India have . .. made no secret of their faith in the soleprimal Creator... .13 This is the high point of Hinduism, its Golden Age. Butat this stage an important question arose how the Supreme Being shouldbe represented.14 Although primitive representations were initially anthropo-morphic, eventually, as mans conception of God extended ... the belief arosethat God is diffused through all matter, and that it is therefore a part of him:this belief is known as pantheism (Macauliffe, Vol. 1: lxii).

Macauliffes view that, properly speaking, pantheism is the creed of intel-

lectual Hindus can be traced back to a long line of Indological scholarshipgoing back to H. T. Colebrooke. Accordingly Macauliffe considers pantheismto be unsuitable for thinking about true religion. It serves merely to distinguishSikhs, who believe in a personal God from Hindus. Hindus, in other words,do not have religion but philosophy, as a result of which they remained ina pre-historical state, a state of mental darkness until the fifteenth century,that is, when a great cyclical wave of reformation spread over India and

13 Macauliffe, Vol. 1, p. lxi.14 Macauliffe, Vol. 1, p. lxi.


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Europe, resulting in the awakening of the Indian mind to the consciousness ofintellectual responsibility (Macauliffe 1909, Vol. 1: xxxix).

Two things need to be noted in Macauliffes theoretical presentation of the

progress of religion. First, it differs from that of his contemporaries such asWeber only in that they ascribe monotheism to bhakti in general. ForMacauliffe, who essentially follows Cunningham, Sikh monotheism requiresbhaktias a precursor, that is, as a pre-historical phase in order for Sikhism tobe designated as a proper or historical religion. Hence the idea that Sikhismis a new or living religion. The distinction between life and death, sleep andawakening, is subtle but crucial to the distinction between bhaktiand Sikhism.Second, and more relevant to our argument, notwithstanding his attempt toreverse Trumpps charge that Sikhism is mere pantheism, Macauliffe admitsfailure in dissociating Sikhism from pantheism:

No religious teacher has succeeded in logically dissociating theism frompantheism. In some passages of the Gurus writings pantheism is, as wehave seen, distinctly implied, while in other texts matter is made distinctfrom the creator.. . (Macauliffe 1909, Vol. 1: lxiii, emphasis mine).

Given that Macauliffe attributes this failure to the failure of logic, it needsto be asked whether, in continuing to maintain the clear distinction betweenHinduism and Sikhism in terms of the oppositions: pantheism/monotheism,pre-history/history, and therefore classifying one in relation to another histori-cally, i.e. as historical identities, the thinking behind such classification doesnot partake of the very essence and function of logic? Moreover, insofar as the

work of logic consists in the (self-)movement from chaos to order by referringto oneself as an origin, is this movement not the very definition of transcen-dence in the sense of moving over and beyond? What Macauliffe describes,therefore, is not the mere distinction between two entities, Sikhism andHinduism. By faithfully mirroring the desire of reformist Sikhs, he identifiesthe self-movement of Sikhism as a transcendence of Hinduism, grounded in aself-consciousness that is indissolubly linked to the concept of God proper toSikhism.

In other words, the possession of historical origin is linked to the ability ofSikh subjects to conceive of a particular idea of God. The point here is that

Macauliffes response to Trumpps odium theologicum is imbricated in thesame ontotheological framework as Trumpp. From this perspective the onlyreal difference between them is the position and status that each attributes toSikhism on the ontotheological schema of the history of religion(s): either afully-fledged theism in Macauliffes case, or a pantheism/atheism in the caseof Trumpp. While Trumpp denied Sikh reformists what they desired (anauthentically Sikh origin, subjectivity and a sufficiently exalted idea of God),Macauliffe helped them to satisfy their desire for precisely these things. Aswe shall see in the next section, the desire of Sikh reformists to conceive a suf-ficiently exalted idea of God could only be fulfilled by accounting for the

concept of God in their own scriptures. This was the task which befell thewriters of the exegetical commentaries which came almost fifty years afterthe publication of Trumpps work. It is in these commentaries, and in the taskof proving Gods existence with which these commentaries open, that thebeginnings of the formation Sikh theology are to be located.

Reconstituting gurmat as Sikh theology: The Singh Sabhamcommentaries

Macauliffes efforts notwithstanding, the definitive response to Trumpps mainaccusations against the pantheistic nature of Sikhism as evidenced by the lack


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of a proper concept of God, ethical standpoint and freedom, came as lateas the 1920s in the form of systematic commentaries (tD ikams) by scholars ofthe Singh Sabham reform movement (McLeod 1984; 1990). One of the more

far-reaching effects of these commentaries was to reconstitute what had looselybeen called gurmat (the teachings of the Sikh Gurus as enshrined in the Am diGranth) in terms of a systematic concept of God through a hermeneutic tech-nique which has exerted a hegemonic influence on all modern interpretationsof Sikhism. In these commentaries the reconstitution ofgurmat takes place byconstructing a set of interlinked propositions about the nature of God, whichin turn justifies the modern designation ofgurmat simultaneously as the natu-ral movement of tradition and as Sikh theology. Perhaps the best example ofthis technique are the commentaries on the opening line of the Am di Granth,better known as the Mum l mantar or root mantra, which for Sikhs serves as the

creedal statement expounding the central attributes of the divine.Oamdkamru sati nammu karatam purakhu nirabhau niravairu akamla mumrati ajumnisaibhamd fura prasamdiOne God Exists, Truth by Name, Creative Power, Without Fear, WithoutEnmity, Timeless Form, Unborn, Self-Existent, By the Gurus grace.

In order to satisfy the perceived lack of an adequate concept of God, SinghSabham scholars such as Principal Tejam Singh followed closely by Jodh Singh inhis Gurmat NirnD ay, invested a disproportionate effort to enunciate a preciseand consistent meaning for the twelve or so words of the Muml mantar under

the proviso that its meaning reflected the meaning of the Am di Granth as awhole.

Ih vamrtak rachnam Sikhi da muml mantar haiArthamt is vic oh bunyamdi galammd dasiammd hoiammd hanJinhammd ute sikkh dharum de nemammd di nimd h rakhi gai hi.Ih nimd h vamhigurum di hasti di hai,Jis dam sarump inhammd lafzammd vic ditam hoiam hai

This verse composition is the root mantar of Sikhism.Within it are expounded those basic principles upon which

The foundations of religious faith have been built.This foundation is the existence/being of God.Whose configuration is given in these words (of scripture) (Tejam Singh1995: 1)

Within this innocuous looking statement there is an intended hermeneuticcircle which can be summarized in three main points: (i) that scripture is thegrounds of the religious faith called Sikhism; (ii) that this ground is the exist-ence of God; (iii) and that Gods existence is configured through the wordsof scripture. Ironically, though, these three points also reveal a gap which

provides a means of opening the hermeneutic circle. This gap is the differencebetween the existence of God as God, and the being of God as he comes to beconfigured or imagined in the Mum l mantar commentary.

By far the best example of this hermeneutic is the commentary of Bham i VirSingh (hereafter BVS) on the Muml mantar, which runs into some thirty-sixpages of dense exegesis.15 Unlike all earlier commentaries in Sikh traditionBVSs text reads like a philosophical argument for the existence of God, indeed

15 Bham i Vir Singh (1958).


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a redefining of Gods attributes according to the Gurus own teaching. Itscentral technique, which is unmistakeably modernist, comprises a dual strategyof conceptual cleansing. It works on the one hand by breaking with prior

traditions of interpretation that were also shared cultural and intellectual expe-riences (I refer to the Nirmam la and Udam si traditions of interpretation influencedby Vedantic and Puranic sources) and on the other hand by implementing thepeculiarly modern gesture of breaking with the past followed by the act offorgetting that one has made such a break. Specifically in BVSs commentary,the meaning of the first syllable of the Mum l mantar, ik oamd kamr, is defined bydisavowing any conceptual association with the Hindu om. To do this the BVScommentary presents traditional understandings of ik oamd kamr and om beforesharply separating them with the phrase par gurmat vic (But according to theGurus teachings...), after which are presented the authentic Sikh meanings of

ik oamdka

mr. The basic idea is that although they both refer to the same divinereality, ik oamd kamr and om are ultimately dissimilar because the Sikh primal

word is always qualified by the numeral 1. Clearly this is a move that funda-mentally departs from long-standing Indic traditions that assert the paradoxi-cal unity of the numeral 1, where 1 signifies an absolute unity that resistsconceptualization in terms of subject-object duality.

Moreover, knowledge of this non-dual 1 is grounded in a state of exist-ence which has relinquished the individuality of ego, that is, a 1 based prima-rily on the egos conceptual machinery. Yet for BVS and the Singh Sabham , thenumeral 1 becomes a signifier of difference between religions (Hinduismand Sikhism) based ironically on a notion of unity defined by a logic based onsubject-object duality. To show how this departure is made in BVSs text, Ishall reproduce as briefly as possible the central moves of BVSs argumentwhich focuses on explicating the relationship between the numeral 1 and thebeing of God.

For BVS, though, the numeral 1 (ik) is not just a numeric quality that canbe attributed to a being. Rather 1 is denotative (BVS 1997: 2).16 It stands forthat which signifies Gods configuration as Name (BVS 1997: 2).17 Insofar as1 names the essence of Gods being as oneness (ektav) it must be considereddistinct from other qualities. The numeral 1 qualifies, but cannot be qualifiedby, any other quality except itself. It cannot be defined or spoken about exceptthat it is 1. Yet in the very first line of his commentary BVS feels compelledto define this indefinable 1 (BVS 1997: 1).18 This need to account for (Gods)coming-into-form as a transition from abstract oneness (void), illustrates theaporia of all origination: that the first act is a movement or transition fromvoid to existence, formlessness to form. But in BVSs commentary the very factof transition has to be disavowed in case the movement is revealed either asan imperfection in 1that is, a movement of thought, the work of imaginingetcor, in case the 1 be confused with the void, non-existence, nothingness.A close reading shows how anxious BVS is to resist each of the above,especially the possibility that 1 might be conflated with non-existence (BVS1997: 3).19 His anxiety seems to be linked to the possibility that the reader

16 Ih 1 samd khyam vamcak visheshanD karke nahimd vartiam, par samdgyam karke vartiam hai.17 Jo us sarump dam lakhamyak usdam namm hai.18 Ik: Ekattva hai (niramd kamr, jo namnattva vic) Oamd kamr: (rump hoke pher ekattva) hai.19 Gurum ji de likhe is 1 ne samnummd ih bi dassiam ki anektam yam nam nattva yam srisDti jo kuch kaho is dam

mum l 0 shumn (anD homd d yam manfiat) nahimd , par homd d hai jo 1 hai. Drishya adrishya is iko thirhasti dam pasamram hai ...According to the instruction of the (10th) Guru the ground of this infinite orabstract or created, 1, whatever we call it, is not a zero or void (shumn). It is not non-existenceor negation, rather [its ground] is existence which is 1. The visible and invisible are manifestationsof this one unmoved being ...


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could easily mistake Gods oneness for dualitythere/not there; existent/non-existent. The very idea that you could bring non-existence into the perfectionof the one would be anathema to BVS, evidence of Hindu pantheism.

Later in the same section this very argument is repeated but this time interms of the well-known attributes: NirgunD /SargunD (God without attributes,God with attributes). For BVS Gods NirgunD aspect becomes SargunD aspect[1-ness (ektav) becomes many], but nevertheless remains One (BVS 1997: 1).20

What becomes evident in BVSs treatment of ik oamd kamr is an unmistakeabletension between desire and fact: (i) the desire to know and present Gods iden-tity as absolute, an identity which cannot be represented except through num-ber (ek, ekattva) and negation (nirgunD , niramd kamr, nantav) which do not admitrelationality; (ii)thefact that in speaking about God, it is impossible to avoidduality and contradiction. To acknowledge this tension is to acknowledge that

time, and therefore difference, relates essentially to Gods identity as God,which means, paradoxically, that God cannot be absolute, and must thereforeintroduce transience, negation, indeed uncertainty, at the ground of existence .If so, could the entire message of the Sikh scripture (gurmat) have been unfol-ded on a nihilistic ground? Could impermanence be the proper ground of

gurmat? A ground that in its unfolding, automatically undermines itself?To avoid this dangerous possibility, which would bring Sikhism unbearably

close to Buddhism and Hinduism and thereby proving Trumpp right, BVSattempts to negate the paradox at the heart of ik oamd kamr. This is done byimplementing a metaphysical assumption: that identity (ekattva, oneness) isthe condition for existence, and conversely that existence is the condition foridentity. The intrinsic bond between identity and existence ensures that thedivision between NirgunD and SargunD will have been overcome, through a classicdeployment of the law of non-contradiction (A = A). Thus, NirgunD , normallytranslated as ineffable, comes to be represented by an identitythe identity ofNirgunD and SargunDwhich is logically prior to the difference between them.However, the very resource for this identification can only come from the defi-nition of being itself. This move (where the possibility ofNirgunD as void /non-existence is circumvented by assuming that the identity of NirgunD and SargunDgrounds any difference between them) actually takes place in the commentaryon the compound word satinammu.

Given that the word satinammu is derived from the verb to be (asi), onemight expect (as BVS himself states) that sati is simply an exposition of 1.In fact the commentary on sati is simply used to justify a certain notionof transcendence, where the very meaning of transcendence is redefined inrelation to a figure of eternity. More specifically: the identity of God (1)is defined as Eternal self-presence (= transcendence). God is therefore tran-scendent, the argument goes, because his being remains always stable, immu-table (BVS 1997: 1011).21 In short, what seems to be a harmless use of themetaphors of eternity/stability, turns out to be a well-disguised attempt to

cover up one of the classic problems of religious knowledge: that there is an

20 (uh ekattva) sadam thir (ekattva hai, us dam) namm hi hai (satya arthamt sadam thir rahinD vamlam cetanvajumd ...) That (being) which in time and eternity always remains stable/immutable or: that one-ness which being an immutable oneness, whose name alone exists; in other words is that self-conscious being that remains always stable/immutable.

21 Consider the word sati to be an exposition of 1. The meaning of 1 is the one primal formwhich is one in every state of being, that is, which is immutable. Thus the meaning of the wordsati is that eternal (without break) form which remains stable through the three states of time

is vic sati pad 1 damhi mamno Tikamha. 1 damarth haiik hai muml hasti jo har haml 1 hai, arthamtjo sadam abdal ha... Soi sati pad dam arth haitrai kaml abamdh rump, jo sadam thir hai.


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unavoidable discrepancy between the time of divinity (which the commentaryseeks to present directly), and the time of the exegesis (which can only mediate,re-present the divine). The discrepancy can only derive from a finite cognitive

process, an act of configuration, and therefore, from the identity of the authorwho with his finite cognition is nevertheless engaged in configuring Godsidentity as eternity.

How, then, does BVS shift attention away from the act of imagination,from the work of a finite cognitive process? This is the problem that BVSattempts to overcome (still within the commentary on sati) by deploying athree-step strategy of self-effacement:

1. BVS distinguishes between two different types of cognition: cognition thatis proper to the being of God as he is perceived by our empirical senses(BVS 1997: 7),22 versus a cognition of God that is intrinsic to the nature of

the word sati (being) (BVS 1997: 10).232. In order to overcome these sensible perceptions, BVS argues, we must

cultivate a special type of cognition that stabilizes the manifold into a unity.This special cognition he attributes to the practice of meditative repetition( jap, simran) which overcomes time and the sensuous imagination (BVS1997: 11).24

3. There follows a third move where the notion of quality itself is dividedinto two types of quality: sarump lacchanD orqualities only perceived byonessense faculties and therefore configured or imagined, versustatDsath lacchanDwhere the description of what is perceived abstracts from or transcends

the sensuous aspect. TatDsath lacchanD are privileged qualities that allow oneto speak about God, or allow God to be configured, but which in the actof configuring, automatically negate or overcome any relation to thesensuous.

For BVS the tatDsath lacchanD par excellence is the word kartam (creator). Kartamsignifies a causation whose agency is not dependent on, or affected by, any-thing other than itself. Hence Kartam cannot simply mean creator, but unmovedmover, uncaused cause (BVS 1997: 16).25 The purpose oftatDsath lacchanD is veryclear. It is to neutralize any threat to the transcendence of the divine by remov-ing, through a process of dematerialization, almost any link to time, world, or

the sensuous. By almost denying any link to externality, what is effected is apure self-positing, the self-movement of form that is the mark of subjectivity.

But at the very point where its claims to transcendence is strongest, BVSsaccount of the formless divine (1) reveals fatal flaws. First, to rely even onthe tiniest residue of the human imagination is enough to infect all notionsof divine transcendence with the fatal touch of sensuous imagery, of the image-making process, indeed of the very idolatry/idolization which reformists Sikhs

22Lakh lain vamle dam lakhya lakh laina.23 Now through words the same perception is given of that One always-stable-being. After ik

oamd kamr the first word is sati. hunD padammd yam lafzammd duamram use iko sadam thir hasti nummd lakhamumd dehan ikku oamd kamru tomd magaromd paahilam pad sati laimd de han).24 When we shall begin to meditate upon these perceived qualities, then the tendency of

consciousness to be dispersed will be reduced, unity will come about and with attention fixed onthe one eternal Being, union will be attained. (Jad asimd inhammd lakhamyak lacchnD amd dam, yam inhammd vicomdkise ik dam, yam gur mantra dam jap simran karammdge tammd cit di briti dam vikhep ghatDegam, ekamgratam amvegi teik akaml purakh vic briti dam tDikamu hoke mel prampat hovegam).

25 Now the transcendent (in the sense of quality-less) quality (tatDsath lacchanD ), which enables usto cognize the form of the formless divine is called : creator (kartam): [hunD niramd kamr de sarump nkummdlakha vamle tatDsath lacchanD kahimd de haimd kartam].

Where this word kartam is found in the muml mantra it gives the sense of the transcendent qual-ity of the formless divine and operates as a causative name (kirtam nam): [jithe ih pad muml mantravic piam hai othe ih niramd kamr dam tatDsath lacchanD hoke amiam hai te kirtam namam hoke piam hai].


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believegurmat to be elevated beyond. This is best illustrated by the commen-tary on the phrase: Akamla mumrati, lit. the timeless or eternal image (BVS 1997:278). The problem with this phrase was the ambivalence of the word mumrati,which signifies any form, image, picture, painting, idol, body or likeness that issubject to time (kaml). Ordinarily, therefore, such a word might present a directchallenge to Singh Sabham ideology, given that the most important socio-political factors underpinning the desired separation between Sikhs andHindus was the issue of iconolotary and idol worship (mumrti pumjam). But becausemumrati is preceded by akaml, which implies the negation of time, it is perfectlyconsistent to interpret akaml mumrati as a form or image that is not subject totime. There is still a problem, however: since akaml is rooted in a subjective/human notion of time, it can also mean non-time = non-existence or non-being. For the reformist ideology to succeed, God must exist, God cannot beanD -homd d. Once again BVSs strategy is to interpret akaml as eternal, since thefigure of eternity escapes the human realm of time, but not the category ofexistence itself. So Gods mumrati still exists as eternal in the sense of alwaysunbroken, always remaining. In this way akaml mumrati becomes an elevatedconcept which replaces the mumrati, which is a bad idol. In the end, for BVS, theeternal form (akaml mumrati) can only be presented by thinking in and throughform itself. It can only be imagined as a form that exists in time: sarir, sarump,homd d, hasti.

Conclusion

By relocating our investigation to the intersections between Indology and thepolitical history of European ideas it is possible to provide a more realisticexplanation of how terms such as Sikh theology have come to be regarded asnative categories (in this case gurmat) when neither Sikh experience nor thebroader Indic culture from which it is derived can claim to possess a word forreligion as signifying a mystical or theological core, or a unified faith commu-nity. It becomes easier to understand why, for example, something like Sikhtheology continues to be affirmed as a discursive positivity by believers andsceptics alike.

In the case of believers, the credibility of the proposition gurmat = Sikh

theology hinges on the ability of the commentaries to prove that God existsand that the nature of this existence is an eternally existing identity: a staticimmutable One. Though rarely considered, this static immutable One consti-tutes the hermeneutic basis of the modern Sikh imaginary. Its invocationunderpins the demarcation of the boundary between Sikh self in relation toits Hindu other. From one end of the Sikh social spectrum to the other theinvocation of this static immutable One binds the very structure of personalbelief to the representation of identity in the public domain.

Ironically, however, those who regard themselves as sceptics also appear tohave invested a certain degree of belief in the Sikh theology. Thus we findW.H. McLeod, the most articulate exponent of Sikh studies in the West, argu-ing that although theology is a Western discipline, Sikh tradition as it hasevolved in the hands of the Singh Sabham is rendered eminently suitable to atheological treatment. Consequently theology is a suitable category in thesense that there is no essential distortion of scriptural meaning (McLeod 1990:33 [emphasis mine]). McLeods confidence in there having been no essentialdistortion is clearly misplaced. For as the foregoing argument has shown, it isentirely possible to envision Sikh theology as a formation that did not existprior to the implementation of a regime of colonial translation. To view Sikhtheology as the product of a discursive regime resulting in a passage of ideas


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from colonizer to colonized further suggests that the enunciation ofgurmatas Sikh theology required a fundamental departure from pre-colonial Indicontologies and a concomitant accession to the ontology of modernity. Between

any departure from one ontology and accession to another, lies the processof cultural translation that is experienced subjectively as a transformation.Insofar as any accession to modernity requires a break with the non-modern,which at the same time resists this break, the transformation process canbe regarded as a conversion to modernity (Van der Veer 1996). The onlydifference is that this process of transformation was projected as havingoccurred seamlessly, with no hint of having been affected by anything foreignor external.

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The emergence of modern 'Sikh theology’