Download entire Journal volume [PDF] - Global and International ...

28 JPS 17:1&2
University, 1974). In my view, Ganda Singh’s evaluation raises
important questions regarding the issue of academic responsibility of a
senior scholar toward new research. It seems clear that Ganda Singh had
fundamental differences with McLeod’s research results, but he did not
want to bring them to the forefront lest they provide fuel to the fire
already gathering around the book; see note 3. His argument that
McLeod’s work needs “sympathy,” not “carping criticism,” hurt the rise
of a healthy debate so essential for a field at an early stage of growth. For
positive assessment of his work on the Janam Sakhis, see Surjit Hans, A
Reconstruction of Sikh History from Sikh Literature (Jalandhar: ABS
publications, 1988), 198–199; and Nripinder Singh, The Sikh Moral
Tradition (New Delhi: Manohar, 1990), 79.
8 For McLeod’s translations, see The B–40 Janam Sakhi (Amritsar: Guru
Nanak Dev University, 1980); The Textual Sources for the Study of
Sikhism (Totowa: Barnes and Nobel, 1984); The Chaupa Singh Rahit-
Nama (University of Otago, 1987); Sikhs of the Khalsa Rahit (Oxford
University Press, 2003); and The Prem Sumarag (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 2006).
The legitimacy of McLeod’s use of an historical approach has also
come under attack from diverse quarters; see Noel Q. King’s essay in
Gurdev Singh, ed., Perspectives on the Sikh Tradition; and Jasbir Singh
Mann et al., eds., Advanced Studies in Sikhism (Irvine: Sikh Community
of North America, 1989). For a recent critique, see the relevant sections
in Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2010).
It seems to me that the historical approach synchronizes well with
Sikh understanding of the past. For instance, the Sikh view of time is
linear, and Sikhs believe their history to be an integral part of the divine
design for human history. For Guru Nanak, the universe rose as a result
of the divine command (hukam/bhanha) and follows a course set in
historical time (see his cosmology hymn GG, 1035–1036). The Sikhs
began to record their own history soon after the community’s founding,
and the Puratan Janam Sakhi registers a reasonably good consciousness
of issues such as that of historical chronology. The daily ardas (Sikh
supplication) is essentially a thanksgiving prayer for the divine support
through various phases of the community’s sociopolitical and ideological
development from the beginnings to the present day. References to
historical events begin to appear in the writings that are included in the
Guru Granth; see Balwand and Satta, GG, 966, for the developments
during the sixteenth century; for a discussion of this issue in Guru
Arjan’s time, see Surjit Hans, A Reconstruction of Sikh History, 137–177.
The earliest manuscript of Sakhi Babe Nanak ki Adi to Ant tak, dated