Christopher Shackle

Debating the Dasam Granth

Much has been made in recent years of the need to unscramble the neo-theology of the Singh Sabha reformists, which from the beginning of the last century, so successfully established itself as the normative formulation of a Sikhism fully able to play its independent part in the concert of world religions. One focus of this critique of the dominant orthodoxy has quite rightly been directed towards the distorting influence of those ideas of the reformists which were derived – whether consciously or unconsciously – from Christian modes of thought. So perhaps one should be careful about drawing any too glib parallels between Christianity and Sikhism. When it comes to the Scriptures, though, it is difficult not be struck by the fact that both these religious traditions are not only very importantly defined (in some contrast to, say, Hinduism) by their sacred texts, but also by the fact that (in contrast to, say, Islam with its exclusive basis in the Qur’an) they also each have two scriptures. From the earliest centuries of Christianity there has been an elaborately ongoing process of exploration of the proper understanding of the relationship of the never-abrogated Jewish Hebrew scriptures, redefined as the Old Testament, with the teachings of the Christian revelation proper later recorded in Greek in the very different New Testament. The tension between the two continues to be reflected at the most popular level today, when the Christian scriptures are available to all in modern translations in their own languages. Whereas certain kinds of Christian fundamentalism, inspired by the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Word of God, emphasize the prescriptions of the Law, gentler understanding of the perceived incompatibility between a vengeful Jehovah and a loving Jesus are often resolved only by treating the new revelation as primary and relegating the Old Testament to the status of a scriptura abscondita most of which can safely be tucked away out of sight. In the case of Sikhism, of course, the relationship of the two scriptures is reversed. It is the older Adi Granth which is in every sense the primal scripture and is the focus of public display and private devotion, while the later Dasam Granth has for the last century at least tended to be tucked away. Whereas the Dasam Granth continues to enjoy fully equal scriptural status among certain groups, like the Nihang Sikhs, it has become marginalized in the mainstream Sikh community as the result of reformist questioning of that status. In the new millennium, however, one sign of the gradual weakening of the long dominance of Singh Sabha definitions of what does and what does

Capitalism and Christianity, American style

Connolly is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University, but he is a political scientist with a difference; everything human is grist to his mill. This relatively short book constitutes a virtuoso performance. Its central argument is simple enough: a combination of cowboy capitalism, evangelical Christianity and a providential view of history constitutes a malign influence in present day North America, promoting a bellicose ethos resonating through sermons, Fox News, practices of consumption, investment priorities and state policies. These resonances diminish diversity, short-change future generations, ignore urban poverty and promote extensive economic inequality. They must be countered by a coalition of both religious and secular forces. Even those whose politics are different or more weakly espoused will learn a great deal from this book, especially concerning method in the social sciences. There are no pure form of realities like Capitalism and Christianity. There is a ‘capitalist axiomatic’, ‘a set of elements knotted together in a way that resists capture by a formal analysis. Once so knotted it creates constraints and possibilities as it bumps along, adding new components here, dropping others there and facing unexpected obstacles at other moments’. The particularities of a particular age give rise to a remarkably contingent ‘capitalist assemblage’. Christianity is just as complex a reality. Christianity ‘is both a long-term shifting constellation of existential experiments and a set of contending spiritual dispositions informing to various degrees the lives of about one-third of the world’s population’. Spirituality indicates ‘individual and collective dispositions to judgement and action that have some degree of independence from the formal creeds or beliefs of which they are a part. The relationship between creed and spirituality is real but loose . . . (containing) a variety of possible nuances’. In any particular ‘state-capital-Christian imbrication’, all these diverse elements are imbricated, intercalated, infused, incorporated (words Connolly likes) in their own special way. Connolly addresses the notion of causality within these complexes head-on. State-capital-Christian imbrications preclude attempts to define each component autonomously. ‘Each element sometimes forms a volatile force, variously surging into the others and containing energetic uncertainties within itself that might agitate its companion. The stability of each, thus depends significantly upon the balance that each element maintains with several others; the emergence of disequilibrium in one is apt to bump or jump into the others too.’ ‘Causality,

The story of Sayf al-Muluk in South Asia

Seyf-el-Mulook answered him, May God (whose name be exalted!) make it [thy country] ever to be honoured by thy rule, O King! And the King Faghfoor Shah said, Nought hath brought thee hither save some affair that hath occurred to thee; and whatever thing thou desirest to obtain from my country, I will accomplish it for thee. Most English readers may not remember the story these lines from Edward Lanes translation relate to, but the sub-Biblical language in which the exotically named characters converse should be enough to site the story of Sayf al-Mulūk in the magically Oriental world of the Thousand and One Nights as it was conceived in the Victorian imagination.

Four generations of Sikh studies: A personal view1

This perspective on the development of Sikh Studies over the twentieth century intersperses personal reminiscences from the past four decades with a chronological overview of the modern development of the subject. Beginning with an outline of some of the pioneering achievements of the great Singh Sabha scholars and of subsequent developments in the Punjab in the succeeding generations, it then discusses some of the tensions between traditional scholarship and the different emphases which have typically marked the work of western academics. While critical of some of the infighting which has characterized Sikh Studies in the West, it concludes with an overview of the exciting contemporary developments of the subject by young Sikh scholars working in North America and Britain (of which the appearance of Sikh Formations is itself such an encouraging sign), and with a plea for the urgent necessity of informed interfaith understandings.