INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

hold and use property that has been given in acts of charity. The verdict was the
outcome of a legal dispute over land properties between local villagers in Patiala and
the SGPC. While villagers claimed the land was their ancestral property, the SGPC
alleged it belonged to the Sikh scripture and a local gurdwara. When the Punjab and
Haryana High Court initially declared that Guru Granth Sahib cannot be granted the
status of a “juristic person”, the SGPC successfully appealed to the Supreme Court. In
an explanatory statement the Supreme Court alleged that Sikh perceptions of Guru
Granth Sahib justified the resolution to consider the text a legal person. Arguments
against the proposition highlighted that if Guru Granth Sahib indeed was to be
treated as a “juristic person” the scripture could also sue or be sued. In response the
Supreme Court clarified that the Sikh scripture can act as a legal person only through
human representatives, whose acts will be treated within the range of law. Human
custodians of the text would hence work like its legal guardians. Notably the verdict
specified that the status of a juristic person would not be assigned all scriptures, but
only those which are properly installed in gurdwaras and thereby treated by the
Sikhs as a living Guru. 313 The following section of this chapter will particularly focus
on how contemporary Sikhs in Varanasi create the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib
by means of arranging spaces and performing ritual acts.
2.2. SACRED SPACES AND DEVOTIONAL ACTS
When religious specialists and community members are to verbally articulate their
motives for performing various acts and ceremonies in the gurdwara they quite often
recourse to brief statements, like it is “to give respect” (sanman dena), “for respect”
(saman ke lie), “because of respect” (satkar), or sometimes say it is for “veneration”
(shraddha). These acts of reverence are constrained by the presence of Guru Granth
Sahib for reasons that appear self-evident to local Sikhs: “You have to give respect to
Guru Granth Sahib because it is the present Guru... servants do the same to a king... it
is for respect,” one of the local granthis once put it in plain words. Similar concise
statements emanate from values and perceptions related to the scripture, which are
more often reflected in devotional behaviors of gurdwara visitors, rather than being
articulated words in conversations.
In order to understand how local Sikhs perceive the Guru Granth Sahib and the
space of a gurdwara, one must take into consideration these nonverbal activities and
firstly the spatial features, that is, the ways in which physical places are manipulated
and transformed into sacred spaces by means of action and symbols. It is through the
dynamic organization and designation of particular locations in the gurdwaras considered
pure and sacred that the Sikhs construct a religiously significant environment.
Equally important is the temporal aspects, in other words, how Sikhs mould
ceremonies and ritualized acts to create experiences of a daily royal court around the
313
The Times of India, 2000-04-03; The Tribune, 2000-04-03.
152
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008