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the emergence of modern ‘sikh theology’: reassessing the passage of ideas from trumpp to bha¯i¯ vi¯r singh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2005

arvind-pal s. mandair
Affiliation:
hofstra university

Abstract

steering between opposing explanations of religion as either sui generis or sociological construction, this paper argues for an alternative way of conceptualizing the phenomenon called ‘sikh theology’. normally attributed to the interior religious experience of the founder of sikhism, ‘sikh theology’, it will be argued, can more usefully be envisaged as the product of a discursive regime, a regime of colonial translation, which effectively demarcated the conceptual framework of modern sikhism. this regime of translation contains an ideology about religion that made translators such as ernest trumpp imagine the work of translation as providing a remedy for a scripture perceived as lacking conceptual coherence, or in the case of trumpp's non-sikh protagonist m.a. macauliffe, as based on a ‘dialogical interaction’ with sikh native informants. the paper's main focus is to show how key theological concepts passed from trumpp to macauliffe, and were inadvertently imbibed by writers of the exegetical commentaries on scripture such as bha¯i¯ vi¯r singh, even as they were contesting trumpp's odium theologicum.

Type
articles
Copyright
school of oriental and african studies, university of london, 2005

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