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Journal of the American Academy of Religion Advance Access originally published online on December 15, 2005
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2006 74(3):646-673; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfj002
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Politics of Nonduality: Reassessing the Work of Transcendence in Modern Sikh Theology

Arvind Mandair

Arvind Mandair can be reached at phiasm{at}hofstra.edu.

This article interrogates the ideological foundations of modern Sikh theology as found in the exegetical commentaries on Sikh scripture written by scholars belonging to the neocolonial reformist movement, the Singh Sabha. Drawing on post-structuralist critiques of transcendence, I argue that attempts by the Singh Sabha’s leading ideologue, Bhai Vir Singh (BVS), to construct a hermeneutic faithful to scripture could not avoid transforming what can be termed as the "middle ground" of Sikhism, a ground that is broadly continuous with Indic patterns of time and ontology. Breaking with earlier traditions of exegesis, the form of BVS’s commentary on the nature of the nondual One begins to resemble an ontological proof for God’s existence. Deploying a strategy in which all links to time and sense are systematically erased allows BVS to disguise the work of theological transcendence as a process that’s entirely natural to the meaning of Sikh scripture and by implication continuous with a tradition which claims to reproduce the original teachings of the Sikh Gurus (gurmat). By eclipsing the paradoxical notion of the One common to premodern Indic traditions with a consistent and systematic concept of God, BVS not only lays the foundations for modern "Sikh theology," he also helps to underwrite the future master narrative of Sikhism as a "world religion."


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