INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

variations with the eternal “canonical messages” in the Sikh religious life and tradition.
Yet Sikhs maintain that Ardas is a petition or a request addressed to a divine interlocutor.
It is a means to communicate one’s personal and collective wishes to the
formless God. Furthermore, the ways by which the performance of Ardas is interconnected
with the taking and reciting of Hukam in Sikh ceremonies emphasize that this
communication is not always considered monologic (Sikhs sending messages to a
divine recipient), but dialogic and interactive in character. For instance, when Ardas is
read to gain divine protection for a family member suffering from a disease the verbal
report in the opening of the text will mention the physical condition of the sufferer
and ask for divine assistance. Immediately after, the granthi or some other attendant
will take a Hukam from the Guru Granth Sahib which will be perceived to transmit
divine blessings and guidance to the conditions that were mentioned in the preceding
supplication. The relationship between the enactment of Ardas and Hukam makes
people interpret the former as a human request and the latter as a divine answer
through the mediating agency of the Guru Granth Sahib. It becomes a dialogic and
interactive event during which the invisible divine is directly communicating to humans
through the verses of the sacred scripture. Thus, the performance of Ardas has
the capacity to personalize, contextualize, and clarify the expected effects of formalized
acts and ceremonies by transporting self-referential messages into performance
and being positioned as a frame to other acts. From its interritual relation to the enactment
of a Hukam, it assumes the identity of a performative act that brings about
interaction between humans and the invisible divine being.
“MEANING TO MEAN IT”
Over and again my Sikh interlocutors at Varanasi stressed the importance of having
true and pure intentions when conducting worship acts. A recitation of gurbani can be
conducted for almost any prior reason, but what distinguishes a favourable recitation,
believed to generate powerful effects, from a recitation performed out of formality is
the sincere intent which the worshipper feels in his or her heart in the moment of
reciting. The devotee performing religious worship acts should “mean” and “feel”
what he or she is doing. The individual and emotionally felt sincerity in any worship
act is a devotional device which determines the benefits one might gain from it.
When unfolding their theory of ritual, Humphrey & Laidlaw dedicate a whole
chapter to, what they call, “meaning to mean it” ‒ the act of intending to carry out
ritual acts. Paradoxically, they strongly argue that ritualized acts are non-intentional
and cannot be identified by the actor’s intentions. The different types of “intentions”
contemplated in their theoretical model involve, firstly, the reasons and motives people
may have for conducting acts and which they attribute action and, secondly, the
intention “in the doing of action” which ceases to identify acts which have assumed a
ritualized and stipulated character. By the notion of “meaning to mean it”, Humphrey
& Laidlaw introduce yet another and third type of intentions that needs clarifi-
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Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008