INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

texualization can be achieved through formal and meta-pragmatic devices that are
manifested in the performance of the text. For instance, the use of reported speech or
quotations in story-telling ‒ religious or secular ‒ is an explicit strategy to separate the
text from the immediate social contexts of listeners and the story-telling as well. In
addition to this, ritual theorists would probably also add that nonverbal ritual behaviour,
which has assumed a stipulated character, appears with a similar entextualized
identity of being already made, detachable, and socially shareable, independent of
changing situational influences.
Since the detachment of a text (or ritualized act) from one interactive setting
usually implies that it will be re-situated in another, recontextualization is the other
process. 724 The recognition of a stretch of speech as having an independent existence
involves a re-embedding of it in a specific way that mobilizes discursive elements. In
the Sikh world the Guru Granth Sahib and other gurbani texts come out with a clear
entexualized character. Whenever the Sikhs are reciting the Gurus’ utterances as
quotations uttered in a particular social setting, an instance of recontextualization
occurs. Because linguistic and paralinguistic acts are always moving in and out of
different social frameworks, entextualization and recontextualization can be viewed
as two inseparable and mutually transformational aspects of the same process. When
the contextualization process involves religious language and texts it can also be
interpreted as evoking a divine presence. As Keane (1997) suggests: “When scripture
is believed to report the actual words of a divine revelation, the act of reading aloud
effectively closes the circuit from utterance in context to written text and back to utterance
again. To the extent that a scriptural text merges with a context, it can be
taken as making divinity present.” 725
MEDIATING WORDS
That local Sikhs believe the different worship acts have a primary function to communicate
(noteworthy from the Latin word communicare ‒ “to make common”) an
eternal and true teaching through the mediating agency of Guru Granth Sahib, appears
to stand as an undeniable fact. The worship acts are modes to reproduce divine
messages through recitations (path) and devotional singing (kirtan). These messages
will be explicated and interpreted in oral discourses (katha) in order to comprehend
subtler meanings and accommodate the Guru’s teaching to contemporary human
conditions. The divine name and knowledge should be repeated and reflected upon
in the human interior (simran) and expressed in actions (seva) that will benefit others
in the social world. Altogether the different means of engaging in gurbani establish a
continued revelation of a teaching that should be incorporated into people’s minds,
hearts, bodies, and deeds; they constitute a spiritual discipline to communicate, make
manifest, and act out a divine plan in the social world for and together with others.
724
Bauman & Briggs 1990: 74.
725
Keane 1997a: 63.
457
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008