INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

a method, which implies patience, humility, respect and learning on part of the student.
Throughout my field work I used this method, especially for interviews with
performers attached to the gurdwaras and other key informants. The flexible interviews
frequently developed to in-depth conversations extending over several hours.
At other times short conversations emerged spontaneously, often as commentaries to
ceremonies and acts performed. The free-formed method allowed the interlocutors to
decide the time and place for the interviews and give directions for which type of
discussions they felt most comfortable with. Seated in the gurdwara the performers,
for instance, would let me choose the general topics of discussions and then develop
interpretations in an instructive manner. The granthis in particular felt at ease to explain
details of religious ceremonies and thus continually provided valuable commentaries
to practices I observed and took part of. The granthis were frequently interrupted
by visiting devotees who requested them to read prayers and present offerings
to the Guru Granth Sahib. Temporarily they would leave the interview situation
to enact the acts before the installed scripture. Afterwards they returned, often in
company with the visitors, to explain what had just been performed. The themes
brought up for discussion by the employees and performers in the gurdwara often
became the subject for the next interview. I evoked many topics for discussion at
different occasions in order to double check my own interpretations and to see how
explanations were changing between individuals and conversational situations.
Anthropologists frequently pay attention to the tendency of informants to present
public representations of religious ideas and practices instead of conveying personal
views. Informants may shape discourses to their own preconceptions of the
field worker’s identity and what he or she should be told. 81 Self-appointed experts
may even meet the field worker with great skepticism and find his or her inquiries
political, misleading, or irrelevant. During my first visits in the Varanasi congregation
I was regularly directed to elder men regarded “knowledgeable”, such as the adherents
of the Nirmala order who were said to hold authoritative knowledge to talk
about Sikhism. The gurdwara employees also staged several meetings with male
interlocutors who had pursued university degrees and were fluent in the English
language. The selection of these interviewees was a matter of representing the Sikh
tradition to an inquiring outsider, presumed to have no previous knowledge. For
hours I would listen to stories about Guru Nanak as the “founder” of the Sikh religion,
the creation of Khalsa, and other acknowledged stories, while my inquires relating
to contemporary issues were either ignored or politely explained away. The tendency
to repeat public stories and overlook questions outside the dominant discourse
was typical of male interlocutors of high prestige. Women with less social status to
protect would, contrastingly, talk unrestrainedly about family matters and their private
worship. Only when the rather formal acquaintance transformed into personal
social relationships ‒ I got to know about their families and lives and they about mine
‒ the content and frames of conversations with both male and female interlocutors
81
See e.g. Haring 1972.
29
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008