INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

formance has been located to the domain of specialists, whereas individual families
act as sponsors in a patronage relationship to reciters: they either book and pay for an
Akhand path in the gurdwara or invite paid reciters to their homes, shop or wherever
the recitations is to be undertaken. In domestic settings individual lay Sikhs with
sound knowledge of Gurmukhi may complete parts of the reading, but it is paid
reciters who assume the final responsibility for the proper performance of an Akhand
path.
To control the monetary transactions of these services the gurdwara committee
in Varanasi has organized an administrative system according to which the sponsoring
family only needs to advance book a recitation that will be carried out by professional
reciters in the gurdwara. The manager of the gurdwara keeps a special log
book in which he registers the name of the sponsor, the time schedule of the performance,
and sometimes notes down the reasons for which the readings is conducted.
The sponsor will pay a fixed price for a performance and receive a written receipt in
return. With all expenses included, a sponsorship of Akhand path may turn out to be a
costly project, which poorer families only reserved for major life events, such as at the
time of birth, marriage and death. In 2001 the fixed “price” (bheta) of an Akhand path
in the gurdwaras of Varanasi amounted 1300 rupees, which included salaries for
pathis (200 rupees each), coverings to Guru Granth Sahib, and the cost for public distribution
of the sacred pudding (karah prashad). The expenses would be considerably
heavier if the recitation was arranged in a private house. 465 A few of my interviewees
with a variable financial situation over the past years told me they desisted from
arranging yearly recitations in memory of deceased parents, but as soon as they got
the domestic economy straight resumed the custom. One elder man said he did not
stage the annual Akhand path in memory of his departed father for nineteen years due
to pecuniary worries. In a state of destitution another man said he had promised God
to arrange monthly Akhand path if his business would run at a profit again. The
chairman of the gurdwara committee in Varanasi, on the other hand, used to organize
two performances of Akhand path at his house every month in memory of his deceased
wife and daughter.
Among the wealthier urban middle-class the sponsorship of Akhand path has
become a popular opportunity to engage in a religious activity which requires minimal
personal involvement and bestows the maximum of merits and social prestige,
especially to those who can afford to invite the whole community to partake in the
event. Many of my interlocutors used to advance book one or more readings in the
thirty or forty days long series of Akhand path which the gurdwara committee arranged
before festivals commemorating the Sikh Gurus. Some of the families kept a
custom of sponsoring one or more numbered readings in the chain performance, such
the first or the last Akhand path, in honor of an ancestor and thus combined family
motives for arranging readings with the collective celebration of a Sikh Guru. The
465
In 2005 the “price” for an Akhand path at Harimandir Sahib in Amritsar amounted to 3100
rupees and the waiting list for sponsorship was 11 years. The Indian Express, 2005-10-27.
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008