INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

y which they can re-invoke the contexts of which these objects once were a part. 222
Objects become the material aspects of a collective memory. The ways in which material
things are intentionally ordered within demarcated spaces are social definitions
that instruct people on what and how they should remember and invite them to engage
with these objects in special ways, often through ritualized practices that aim to
ensure unbroken relationships with the past. To identify, re-arrange and engage with
these objects can be looked upon as strategies through which Sikhs commemorate
and establish a continuing presence of the historical human Gurus.
RELICS AND SEATS OF THE GURUS
Like many other historical Sikh shrines, the gurdwaras in Varanasi accommodate
religious “things” that can be divided into two broad categories: historical relics that
claim the status of being corporeal belongings of the human Gurus and memorable
artifacts that are manmade in modern times, such oil-paintings and framed bazaar
posters portraying the Gurus, martyrs, pilgrimage sites and significant events in Sikh
history. The former category of relics includes clothes and letters of the Gurus, that is,
objects charged with sacred status because they have been in physical contact with
the Sikh Gurus, but also particular geographical sites that are held to be asan ‒ the
“seat” of Guru Nanak and Tegh Bahadur during their visits in Varanasi. The Sanskrit
noun asan bears several connotations; in general the term signifies a seat, and more
particularly the seat of an ascetic, a yoga posture, or even the mat to sit on in
prayers. 223 The word indicates a space of spiritual power and authority.
The local narrative recounts how the Gurus occupied physical sites in Varanasi,
at which they sat down, and marked out their “seats” by entering into meditative
states: Guru Nanak more spontaneously when he reached the city and gazed the
beautiful garden, and Guru Tegh Bahadur in his daily routines of meditation. By
assuming sitting postures for meditation the Gurus identified spaces of their authoritative
presences, which came to be locative and spatial deictics of sanctity. Due to
these occurrences, the devotees who owned the grounds on which the seats were
sited – a garden and a room ‒ could no longer keep their property under private
ownership, but transferred it to the Gurus. 224 Accordingly, when the Gurus left Varanasi
their presences were established at particular sites in the city that would come to
function as religious meeting places for followers.
When the Sikh community, in the end of the 1960s, decided to construct a new
gurdwara hall in Gurubagh a major challenge of the building plan was to determine
the exact location of Guru Nanak’s seat. It was considered crucial to specify this spot
since the Guru Granth Sahib was to be installed on the same seat. The existing shrine
in the garden, built by Nirmala sants at some point in time, was of some guiding
222
Radley 1990: 54.
223
McGregor 1997: 97.
224
In the twentieth century the Gurus’ were registered as legal proprietors of the gurdwara in
official records. See the first section of this chapter.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008