INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

ises do not satisfy these requirements, since tenants cannot protect domestic spaces
properly nor afford the scripture proprietorship of a room in the full. The second
most central feature is the obligatory ministration of Guru Granth Sahib, colloquially
referred to as seva to the scripture. In practice, this implies the daily order to carry out
the Prakash and Sukhasan ceremonies and offer a symbolic portion of all meals prepared
in the household to the Guru-scripture for blessings. Without doubt local Sikhs
take the obligation of service in all seriousness. As exemplified above, one informant
(answer 4) confessed that she forgot to carry out the Sukhasan ceremony on two occasions
and on that account decided to not establish a gurdwara when she moved to a
new house. A negligence of seva is considered as blasphemous acts that will incur
sins, while a regular devotional tending pleases the Guru and will bestow merits to
the individual and the family. A prospective ministrant of Guru Granth Sahib does
not have to be an Amritdhari Sikh and follow the Khalsa discipline in the personal life,
but he or she is expected to keep the Sikh code of conduct within the spaces of the
house. As this rule is pragmatically interpreted, the family should uphold a certain
degree of spatial purity by keeping the house clean and not bring tobacco, alcohol or
other intoxicants into the house. Altogether the attitudes of local Sikhs mirror that
when the Guru Granth Sahib arrives at a private house people believe the text is already
invested with agency of a Guru.
Far away from the Sikh centre of Amritsar, devotees in Varanasi may procure
volumes of Guru Granth Sahib by different means. The eleven interviewees who
hosted Guru Granth Sahib at their houses had inherited folios from their parents and
acquired new ones either directly from Amritsar or through the local gurdwara. With
great affection families kept old texts as heirlooms to remember their ancestral origin.
A Sindhi family, for instance, safeguarded a translation of the scripture into Sindhi
language, which their parents brought along when they migrated from Pakistan in
1947. For the children brought up in Varanasi, the text functioned as a memento and
representation of their ethnic belonging. To honor a scripture of historical value the
family may construct a gurdwara and publicly display the text during festivals or
other solemnized occasion. Nearby the village Ahraura outside of Varanasi a Sikh
family occasionally receive pilgrims to gaze upon a mini-sized scripture that was
printed for Sikh soldiers who served for the British in the First World War. For some
reason the grandfather of the house had the text given to him by a Nirmala sant in the
city of Mirzapur. The scripture was only 1.4 square inches (3.5 cm) with microscopic
typeface in Gurmukhi script and carefully packed in an original rounded copper tin
containing small robes and a magnifying glass to tuck in the turban after readings in
the field. The lid was decorated with an impression portraying a contemplating
Nanak in yogic posture, holding a sable in the left hand and rolling a rosary with the
right. The family preserved the miniature Guru Granth Sahib as a precious historical
object to commemorate the heroic deeds of Sikh soldiers and kept their private house
open to visitors seeking darshan of the text.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008