![]() ![]() Claiming he was acting for the greater glory of Islam, he donned the garb of purist Islamic piety. To hide his insatiable personal lust for power and wealth, and to cover up for the misdeeds of his accession he had to win over the clergy and the ruling class. ![]() 'Aurangzeb, an evil man, and a failed emperor. India was traumatized, by this misguided, cruel, incompetent, power-hungry man. He then proclaimed himself the new Moghul emperor. To develop and sustain a devotional and didactical relationship, even a social relationship, to the scripture is what makes people Sikhs - disciples of the Guru.AirforceAssociation India - Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib: "Hind Di Chaadar" (Shield Of Hindustan) In 1658, during the life of the 9th Sikh Guru, 'Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji' (1621 - 1675), a ruthless young prince 'Aurangzeb' (1618 -1707) imprisoned his own father Emperor Shahjahan and killed all other male family members. The study argues that ritual uses of the Guru Granth Sahib and the living performance traditions of mediating the scriptural words are the means by which the Sikhs personify and bring the scripture to life, as an agentive Guru, and make its teaching perpetually alive and relevant to changing contexts in a human and socially conditioned world. Since Guru Granth Sahib belongs to a succession line of human Gurus it has inherited anthropomorphic habits and even has its own life-cycle rituals that mark important events and stages in the worldly life of the text. By arranging spaces and enacting ritual acts in the gurdwara, the Sikhs enmesh the Guru Granth Sahib in daily routines and stage the scripture as a worldly sovereign with capacity to provide spiritual guidance, transmit the divine revelation it enshrines, and make it possible for devotees to gain spiritual knowledge and experiences. Local discourses on the Guru Granth Sahib situate the scripture in a web of relationships - onto-theological relationships to the invisible divine, historical relationships to the human Gurus, and social relationships to contemporary disciples - that legitimize both its worldly and otherworldly identity and power. From the perspective of ritual and anthropological theories, the study analyzes the discursive and ritual means by which local Sikhs create and confirm conceptions of the Guru's presence and agency in the world. ![]() ![]() words being uttered by their human Gurus, through a wide spectrum of practices. Based on field work in a Sikh congregation at Varanasi (Northern India), the study investigates how local Sikhs perceive, use and interact with the Guru Granth Sahib and other religious texts accredited gurbani status, i.e. "Inside the Guru's Gate: Ritual Uses of Texts among the Sikhs in Varanasi" aims to direct the focus towards a deeper understanding of contemporary religious worship and oral performance traditions in Sikhism. ![]()
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