INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

and suffer from physical or mental ill-health. Common typologies of rituals among
scholars, such as rites of passage, calendric rites, rituals of affliction, and the like,
sometimes give the impression that any of the given categories refer to a single ritual
act, while the enactment of a certain type of ritual usually encompasses a cluster of
acts that are performed simultaneously and/or successively to co-jointly constitute the
external structure of a ceremonial happening. The chapter treats the traditional typologies
of rituals as different examples of context-specific events, which provide the
social settings for worship acts that render and implement the Guru’s words and
teaching.
The last chapter of the study is theoretical in character and raises questions
concerning the meanings of religious acts and worship. Starting from the general
assumption that meanings are human constructions drawn from contextual and situational
elements, rather than being intrinsic elements of formalized acts, the chapter
will discuss how people may derive multiple meanings – spiritual, symbolic, social,
and other – from discourses and events surrounding their religious actions. People
superimpose their acts with meanings, which they represent to themselves and to
others. While some social and religious meanings are highly stipulated by the Sikh
tradition, others are constantly changing depending on altering contexts and discourses.
To religious Sikhs, the Guru Granth Sahib is also considered to be a treasure
of all the meanings that could ever be relevant in the human life. Gurbani hymns are
sometimes interpreted as instructions on the meaning or the result which a certain
religious act can be expected to have or bring about. The scripture, the tradition, and
the different performance situations, in which the Sikhs venerate the physical text
and utilize its words, are thus foundational for the construction of individual and
collective meanings. Both the text and the context in continuing processes of interaction
make religious worship meaningful. As the final part of the study will also illustrate,
lay Sikhs at Varanasi do not necessarily consider liberation from the cycle of
rebirth as the ultimate goal or a “higher” meaning of their devotional activities, but to
sincerely commit to the sacred words of Guru Granth Sahib and sustain an intimate
relationship to the Guru becomes the means and the end in itself.
The disposition of the chapters aims at unfolding a structure, which firstly
paints the broader historical and social picture of the Sikh community at Varanasi
(Chapter 1) and then focuses on the religious acts by which devotees venerate the
scriptural embodiment of the Guru (Chapter 2) and render, explore, and implement
its interior teaching in religious performances (Chapter 3). The latter part of the study
describes how local Sikhs may perform these religious acts in different contexts of
ceremonies and times of need (Chapter 4), in order to analyze how they may derive
multiple meanings of their devotional activities from the sacred texts and the everchanging
contexts (Chapter 5).
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008