A Forensic History of Sikh Prayer — Its Genesis, Its Composition, Its Controversies, and the Answers the Guru Granth Sahib Ji Provides

From the Revelation of Guru Nanak to the Contested Corpus of the Dasam Granth

A Publication of KPSGILL.COM and THEDEATHCERTIFICATE.ORG

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ
Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground.

Authored by Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D.
Publisher and Editorial Director | KPSGILL.COM | TheDeathCertificate.org
Fresno, California, U.S.A.

EDITORIAL NOTE AND EVIDENTIARY FRAMEWORK

This article applies the following evidentiary standards throughout:

[PF] Proved Finding — established by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own text, by historical consensus across Sikh scholarship, or by primary documentary evidence.

[DA] Documented Allegation — claims in the scholarly record, theological debate, or Panthic discourse that have not been conclusively resolved.

[AI] Analytical Inference — structural or comparative arguments drawn from the documented record, presented expressly as inference.

[PM] Panthic Memory — the living understanding, inherited interpretation, and institutional position of the Sikh Panth as represented by the Akal Takht, SGPC, or Sikh scholarly tradition.

CRITICAL METHODOLOGICAL CONSTRAINT: Wherever this article questions, contests, or forensically examines any portion of the Dasam Granth, the evidentiary standard applied is the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji, as the eternal living Guru of the Sikh Panth, is the supreme theological standard. No claim, no reformist position, no Western academic source, and no external authority is used to impeach the Dasam Granth in this analysis. If the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology cannot impeach a portion of the Dasam Granth, this article does not impeach it. If the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology does impeach it, the evidence speaks for itself — without embellishment, without exaggeration, and without importing standards from outside the Sikh canonical tradition.

This constraint is not a limitation. It is the only intellectually honest method for a Sikh theological analysis. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not one voice among many in Sikh thought. It is the voice of the Guru. All other voices are measured against it.

PREFACE: THE PRAYER THAT BECAME THE MEMORY OF A PEOPLE

There are prayers that ask for comfort. There are prayers that beg for victory. There are prayers that confess sin. But the Sikh Ardas is something more difficult, more dangerous, and more enduring than any of these categories can hold.

ਅਰਦਾਸ ਸਿਰਫ਼ ਮੰਗ ਨਹੀਂ। ਅਰਦਾਸ ਯਾਦ ਹੈ। ਅਰਦਾਸ ਗਵਾਹੀ ਹੈ। ਅਰਦਾਸ ਕੌਮ ਦਾ ਖੜ੍ਹਾ ਹੋ ਕੇ ਦਿੱਤਾ ਹੋਇਆ ਬਿਆਨ ਹੈ।

The Ardas is not merely a petition. The Ardas is memory. The Ardas is testimony. The Ardas is the standing declaration of a people.

Every morning, in gurdwaras from Amritsar to Auckland, from Southall to Sacramento, from Patiala to Fresno, from the villages of the Majha and Malwa to the factory towns of Birmingham and Brampton, the Sikh congregation rises. Hands are folded. Spines are straight. Heads are bowed, but the memory is awake. The Ardas begins.

It begins with a word — ਭਗਉਤੀ — whose meaning has been debated for three centuries.

It moves through the lineage of ten Gurus in a handful of sentences — a compression of two hundred years of revelation into a prayer that takes four minutes to recite.

It pauses to remember men who were cut joint by joint. Women whose scalps were removed. Children of six and nine who were bricked alive into walls. Bodies broken on wheels. Bodies sawn in two. Bodies that arrived at cremation grounds without names, without families, without the paper trail that the law required.

It remembers the two Ghalugharas — the two great massacres of the eighteenth century when tens of thousands of Sikhs were slaughtered and the Panth refused to disappear.

It places before the Divine the names of gurdwaras separated from the Sikh Panth by an international border drawn in 1947.

And then, after all of this — after the martyrs, after the massacres, after the separations — it closes with thirteen words that contain the entire moral architecture of Sikh civilization:

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ। ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥
Nanak — the Naam, in ascending grace. In Your Will, the welfare of all.

This is not the prayer of a defeated people. This is not the prayer of a traumatized people seeking consolation. This is the prayer of a people who have looked at their own history — including its most horrific chapters — and refused to let that history make them smaller than Waheguru intended.

But the Ardas is also a contested document. It has been modified. It has been debated. Parts of it have been added after the events they commemorate. One of its words — ਭਗਉਤੀ — has divided Sikh scholars for three centuries and has never been resolved to universal satisfaction. Its concluding Doha raises questions about authorship that this article will examine with the full forensic seriousness they deserve.

And the Ardas’s first section is drawn from the Dasam Granth — a body of writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji that contains some of the most beautiful and some of the most theologically troubling material in the Sikh literary canon. The Dasam Granth question — which portions are authentically the Guru’s, which conflict with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology, and what the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself says that allows us to evaluate these conflicts — is the deepest and most consequential theological controversy in contemporary Sikh discourse.

This article addresses all of it. Beginning where the Ardas itself begins — with the theological revolution of Guru Nanak Dev Ji — and ending where the most difficult questions of Sikh intellectual life currently stand.

PART ONE: THE GENESIS OF SIKH PRAYER

I. THE WORD “ARDAS”: ETYMOLOGY, THEOLOGY, AND POSTURE

I.1 From Persian Petition to Panthic Constitution

The word ਅਰਦਾਸ carries within its syllables a history of the Sikh community’s encounter with the literary and administrative language of the Mughal world. It derives from the Persian arzdasht (ارزداشت), meaning a humble petition or memorial addressed to a sovereign authority — the formal written document through which a subject placed a request before a king. In the Persian administrative culture of the Mughal court, the arzdasht was a document of power asymmetry: the petitioner was subordinate; the sovereign was ultimate.

The Sikh tradition appropriated the word but transformed its meaning so completely that the transformation is itself a theological statement. The Sikh Ardas is a petition addressed to the ultimate Sovereign — Akal Purakh, the Timeless Being — and it is addressed not in writing, not in the private chambers of power, but standing, in the congregation, in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, aloud, in the common language of the Punjabi people.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself uses the word ਅਰਦਾਸਿ in its theological sense:

ਤੂ ਠਾਕੁਰੁ ਤੁਮ ਪਹਿ ਅਰਦਾਸਿ॥
ਜੀਉ ਪਿੰਡੁ ਸਭੁ ਤੇਰੀ ਰਾਸਿ॥

You are the Master; to You is my supplication.
Soul and body — everything is Your wealth.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Sukhmani Sahib, Ang 268)

In this verse, Guru Arjan Dev Ji establishes the fundamental posture of Sikh prayer: God is the Master (ਠਾਕੁਰ); the Sikh addresses God directly (ਤੁਮ ਪਹਿ — to You); and everything the Sikh possesses — soul, body, life itself — belongs to God. The Ardas is therefore not a negotiation between equals. It is the honest acknowledgment by the finite of the infinite — a petition made not in weakness but in the clarity of the devotee’s understanding of the divine-human relationship.

This posture distinguishes Sikh prayer from both the Brahminical tradition (where prayer required priestly mediation and ritual exactitude) and from the Islamic tradition’s five prescribed times of prayer (where the form is standardized by divine command revealed through the Prophet). Sikh prayer is direct, unmediated, and addressed by the devotee in the presence of the Sangat — the congregation — which is itself understood as the manifestation of the divine. As the Guru Granth Sahib Ji says:

ਜਿਥੈ ਜਾਇ ਬਹੈ ਮੇਰਾ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੂ ਸੋ ਥਾਨੁ ਸੁਹਾਵਾ ਰਾਮ ਰਾਜੇ॥

Wherever my True Guru sits, that place becomes beautiful.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 450)

The Sangat, assembled in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, becomes the medium through which the Ardas is addressed. This is why the Ardas cannot be recited in private in the same way it is recited in the congregation — it is constitutively a public, collective act. It is the Panth’s standing declaration.

I.2 The Three Postures of Prayer in Gurmat

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji identifies three modes of the human soul’s address to God, each with its own theology and its own appropriate moment:

ਨਾਮ ਸਿਮਰਨ (Naam Simran) — the continuous, interior remembrance of the Divine Name. This is not reserved for formal prayer occasions. It is the baseline condition of the spiritually awake Sikh — the unceasing awareness of Waheguru’s presence that pervades every moment of daily life.

ਕੀਰਤਨ (Kirtan) — the communal singing of the Gurus’ compositions. This is the most direct form of engagement with Gurbani — the Word of the Guru — through the medium of music and collective voice. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compositions are written for singing; the musical notation (raga) of each composition is specified in its header. Kirtan is prayer through the Guru’s own words, in the Guru’s own intended form.

ਅਰਦਾਸ (Ardas) — the standing supplication. This is the most explicitly human of the three modes. Where Simran is interior and continuous, and Kirtan is the Guru’s own voice, the Ardas is the community’s own voice addressing the Guru. It is the space in which the Sikh Panth speaks, in its own words (and in the formalized words the Panth has developed over centuries), about its own historical situation.

The three modes together constitute the complete architecture of Sikh prayer life. None of the three can substitute for the others. A community that only does Simran has no communal record. A community that only does Kirtan has no vehicle for its own historical testimony. A community that only does Ardas has no direct engagement with the Guru’s Word. The complete Sikh prayer life requires all three, and the Nitnem — the daily prayer regimen specified in the Sikh Rehat Maryada — is designed to integrate them.

I.3 Humility Without Servility: The Sikh Posture in Prayer

One of the most misunderstood aspects of Sikh prayer for outside observers — and even for some Sikhs — is the relationship between the humility the Ardas expresses and the sovereignty the Khalsa embodies. How does a tradition that produced the Khalsa’s “ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ” — the Khalsa belongs to Waheguru, victory belongs to Waheguru — simultaneously produce the folded-hands humility of the Ardas?

The answer is in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself:

ਨਿਮਾਣਿਆਂ ਦਾ ਮਾਣੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਹਰਿ ਸਾਚਾ ਸਚੁ ਸੁਆਮੀ॥

The honor of the humble ones, O Nanak, comes from the True Lord, the True Master.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Sikh humility before Waheguru is not the humility of the defeated. It is the humility of the one who knows exactly where true power lies — and therefore bows to it without shame, without performance, and without self-deception. The Khalsa bows to no human king, no human institution, no earthly authority. The Khalsa’s folded hands in Ardas are therefore not a posture of weakness; they are the most radical political statement possible. The Sikh who will not bow to any earthly power bows only to Akal Purakh.

ਸਿੱਖ ਦੀ ਅਰਦਾਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਹੰਕਾਰ ਨਹੀਂ। ਡਰ ਵੀ ਨਹੀਂ। ਨਿਮਰਤਾ ਹੈ, ਪਰ ਨਿਮਰਤਾ ਗੁਲਾਮੀ ਨਹੀਂ।

In the Sikh’s Ardas there is no ego. There is no fear. There is humility, but humility is not slavery.

This is why the Ardas can contain, in the same prayer, the names of children killed by state violence and the closing petition for the welfare of all humanity. The moral architecture is internally consistent: Waheguru’s Will is sovereign; the Sikh accepts that Will; within that acceptance, the Sikh bears witness to what has been done to the Sikh community and asks for the strength to live in ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ — ascending grace — regardless of material circumstance.

II. GURU NANAK DEV JI AND THE FOUNDATION OF SIKH PRAYER (1469–1539)

II.1 The Revelation at the River

The foundational narrative of Sikh prayer begins at a river. The Bein stream flows through the land near Sultanpur Lodhi. It was there that Guru Nanak Dev Ji, in approximately 1499, experienced the divine revelation that would found the Sikh tradition. He disappeared into the river for three days — during which time those who knew him assumed he had drowned. When he emerged, his first recorded words were:

ਨਾ ਕੋ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨਾ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨੁ।
There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

This statement is the theological foundation from which Sikh prayer grows. It is not a statement of religious relativism — it is not saying that all religions are equally valid and therefore none of them matter. It is saying something far more radical: that the categories through which the human religious imagination had organized itself — the Hindu and the Muslim — are not categories recognized by Waheguru. The Divine does not see Hindu and Muslim. The Divine sees the soul.

If prayer is an address to the Divine, and if the Divine does not recognize the categories through which human beings organize their religious lives, then prayer cannot be organized through those categories either. The Sikh prayer tradition that Guru Nanak Dev Ji founded was therefore, from its first moment, a prayer tradition that rejected the organizing logic of all existing religious forms.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji records Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s critique of existing prayer forms directly:

ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਗਡੀ ਲਦੀਅਹਿ ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਭਰੀਅਹਿ ਸਾਥ॥
ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਬੇੜੀ ਪਾਈਐ ਪੜਿ ਪੜਿ ਗੜੀਅਹਿ ਖਾਤ॥
ਸੂਹੇ ਕਪੜੇ ਪਹਿਰਿ ਕੈ ਬਹੁ ਬਹੁ ਭਵਹਿ ਦਿਨ ਰਾਤਿ॥
ਸਦਾ ਕਲਾਣੀ ਇਸੁ ਜਗ ਮਹਿ ਦੁਖੀਆ ਰਹੈ ਰਾਤਿ॥

Reading and reading, cartloads of books are loaded; reading and reading, bags are filled.
Reading and reading, iron chains are placed around the neck; reading and reading, one is buried in the pit.
Wearing red robes, they wander day and night.
The one who causes sorrow in this world remains miserable at night.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 467)

This verse addresses the scholars — those who have filled themselves with textual knowledge without experiencing the Divine directly. The critique is not anti-intellectual; it is anti-performative. Reading scripture for show, for status, for the accumulation of religious merit as a social currency — this is not prayer. It is a different kind of transaction.

The revolutionary implication for prayer: if the accumulated scholarship of the religious establishment is insufficient, if the priestly ritual is performative, if the pilgrimages to sacred sites are mere theater — then what constitutes genuine prayer?

The Guru’s answer is the Mool Mantar:

ੴ ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ ਅਜੂਨੀ ਸੈਭੰ ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ॥

One Creator Being. Truth is the Name. Creative Being Personified. Without Fear. Without Hatred. Image of the Undying. Beyond Birth. Self-Existent. Realized by the Guru’s Grace.

This is not a list of divine attributes in the abstract. It is a meditation program. Each phrase — Sat Naam, Karta Purakh, Nirbhau, Nirvair, Akaal Moorat, Ajooni, Saibhang — is a doorway into a specific dimension of the divine reality that the devotee is invited to enter through contemplation. The Mool Mantar is followed by the instruction “ਜਪੁ” — Meditate/Chant — which opens the Japji Sahib.

The Japji Sahib is Sikh prayer in its most foundational form. Its thirty-eight pauris (stanzas) and closing slok constitute a complete theology of prayer, addressing: who God is, how God is known, why ritual knowledge is insufficient, what the conditions of genuine spiritual life are, how the soul progresses toward the Divine, and what awaits the soul that has lived in alignment with the Hukam (divine will).

II.2 The First Pauri of Japji: The Problem of How to Become Truthful

The first pauri of Japji Sahib is, in its structure, a statement of a problem and its resolution — the most compressed possible theological argument:

ਸੋਚੈ ਸੋਚਿ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਜੇ ਸੋਚੀ ਲਖ ਵਾਰ॥
ਚੁਪੈ ਚੁਪ ਨ ਹੋਵਈ ਜੇ ਲਾਇ ਰਹਾ ਲਿਵ ਤਾਰ॥
ਭੁਖਿਆ ਭੁਖ ਨ ਉਤਰੀ ਜੇ ਬੰਨਾ ਪੁਰੀਆ ਭਾਰ॥
ਸਹਸ ਸਿਆਣਪਾ ਲਖ ਹੋਹਿ ਤ ਇਕ ਨ ਚਲੈ ਨਾਲਿ॥
ਕਿਵ ਸਚਿਆਰਾ ਹੋਈਐ ਕਿਵ ਕੂੜੈ ਤੁਟੈ ਪਾਲਿ॥
ਹੁਕਮਿ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਿਖਿਆ ਨਾਲਿ॥

By thinking, even a hundred thousand times, purity cannot be attained.
By silence, even though sustained, the mind cannot find stillness.
The hunger of the hungry is not satisfied even if the worlds are piled together.
A hundred thousand clever tricks, but not one accompanies us at the end.

How then does one become truthful? How is the veil of falsehood torn away?

By walking in the Will of the Creator, O Nanak, as is written and inscribed.

The structure of this pauri is a systematic demolition of four methods that the religious traditions of Guru Nanak’s time offered as paths to spiritual attainment: ritual purity (ਸੋਚ), meditation/silence (ਚੁਪ), asceticism/renunciation (ਭੁਖਿਆ = the hungry ones, the ascetics who starved themselves), and intellectual cleverness (ਸਿਆਣਪਾ). None of these, the Guru says, works. None of these constitutes genuine prayer.

The resolution — ਹੁਕਮਿ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ — is not a technique. It is not a method. It is a posture: walking in the Will of the Creator. The Hukam (divine command/will/order) is not something the devotee achieves access to through ritual, silence, asceticism, or cleverness. It is what is already inscribed (ਲਿਖਿਆ ਨਾਲਿ — written with/alongside). The task of the devotee is to recognize it and walk within it.

This is the foundational theology of Sikh prayer: prayer is not a mechanism for changing God’s mind. Prayer is the devotee’s alignment with what God has already written. The Ardas, understood through this theology, is not a list of requests designed to change divine outcomes. It is the community’s act of aligning itself — through remembrance, through testimony, through petition — with the Hukam that already encompasses all of their circumstances.

II.3 Guru Nanak’s Three Institutions of Prayer

Guru Nanak Dev Ji established three institutional forms that together constituted the infrastructure of Sikh prayer life. These were not additions to or modifications of existing religious institutions. They were entirely new creations, each designed to structurally embody the theological principles he was teaching.

Sangat (ਸੰਗਤ) — The congregation of seekers. The Sangat is not an audience that gathers to watch a religious performance. It is the collective body of the Guru’s Sikhs, whose very gathering together is understood as a manifestation of the Divine. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji says:

ਸਾਧਸੰਗਤਿ ਕੈਸੀ ਜਾਣੀਐ ਜਿਥੈ ਏਕੋ ਨਾਮੁ ਵਖਾਣੀਐ॥

How should one recognize the Sat Sangat? Where the One Naam is discussed.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 72)

The Sangat is defined not by its size, its institutional form, or its social composition, but by what it does: it discusses the One Naam. The Sangat’s prayer is therefore inseparable from its discourse — the congregation that prays together must also discuss together, understand together, and hold each other accountable together.

Pangat (ਪੰਗਤਿ) — The community of equals sitting together in langar. The theological meaning of Pangat as a prayer institution is often underestimated. When a Brahmin and an untouchable sit in the same row and eat the same food, prepared and served without distinction of caste — this is not merely a social reform. It is a theological statement made through the body: before Waheguru, these distinctions do not exist. The Pangat is therefore a form of prayer expressed through practice rather than words.

Kirtan (ਕੀਰਤਨ) — The singing of the Gurus’ compositions. From the very beginning of the Sikh tradition, Kirtan was not supplemental to Sikh prayer. It was central. Guru Nanak Dev Ji himself sang his compositions with his companion Bhai Mardana, who played the rabab. The musical dimension of the Guru’s message was not decorative — it was constitutive. The ragas specified in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji for each composition were chosen for their capacity to produce specific emotional and spiritual states in the listener. The prayer is not complete without the music.

These three institutions — Sangat, Pangat, Kirtan — are the foundational architecture within which the later formalization of the Ardas developed. The Ardas is not an alien addition to Sikh prayer life; it is the formalization and systematization of the communal testimony that the Sangat had always been generating in its collective practice.

II.4 What Guru Nanak Refused: The Prayers He Would Not Perform

To understand what Sikh prayer is, it is equally important to understand what Guru Nanak Dev Ji refused. His journeys across the subcontinent and beyond — the Udasis — brought him into contact with every major religious tradition. At each encounter, he engaged, he questioned, he composed, and he refused.

At Hardwar, when he saw pilgrims throwing water eastward toward the rising sun to send the water to their ancestors, he began throwing water westward. When they asked why, he said he was watering his fields in the Punjab. When they objected that water could not travel from Hardwar to the Punjab, he asked how their water could travel to their deceased ancestors in the heavens. This was not merely a witticism. It was a forensic demolition of the theology of ritual gesture disconnected from reason and from the Divine’s actual nature.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji records Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s systematic critique of specific prayer forms. On pilgrimage:

ਤੀਰਥਿ ਨਾਵਾ ਜੇ ਤਿਸੁ ਭਾਵਾ ਵਿਣੁ ਭਾਣੇ ਕਿ ਨਾਇ ਕਰੀ॥

I would bathe at the pilgrimage site if it pleases the Lord, but without His Will, what is the use of bathing?
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Japji Sahib, Ang 2)

On fasting as prayer:

ਵਰਤ ਨ ਰਹਉ ਨ ਮਹ ਰਮਦਾਨਾ॥
ਤਿਸੁ ਸੇਵੀ ਜੋ ਰਖੈ ਨਿਦਾਨਾ॥

I do not keep Hindu fasts, nor do I observe the Muslim Ramadan.
I serve the One who in the end will protect me.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1136)

On idol worship:

ਪਾਹਣੁ ਕਉ ਪਾਹਣੁ ਪੂਜਸਿ ਅੰਧੁਲੇ ਅੰਧੁ ਅਗਿਆਨੁ॥

The blind one worships a stone idol — blind, ignorant.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

On the Brahmin’s exclusive claim to prayer knowledge:

ਅੰਦਰਹੁ ਅੰਨ੍ਹੇ ਬਾਹਰਹੁ ਅੰਨ੍ਹੇ ਕੂੜੀ ਕੂੜੀ ਰਾਸਿ॥

Blind within, blind without, with a false and false capital.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

This pattern of refusal is not nihilism. It is the clearing away of obstruction. Everything Guru Nanak Dev Ji refused to do, he refused because it stood between the devotee and the actual Divine — because it substituted a human institution’s formula for the direct address of the soul to God. The formal Ardas that would later develop was designed to avoid all of these obstructions: it requires no priest, no ritual object, no auspicious time determined by an astrologer, no Sanskrit knowledge. It requires only the standing congregation, the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s presence, and the truth of what the community has to say.

III. THE GURU PERIOD: BUILDING THE ARCHITECTURE OF PRAYER (1539–1699)

III.1 Guru Angad Dev Ji: Gurmukhi and the Democracy of the Word

When Guru Nanak Dev Ji passed the Guruship to Bhai Lehna — who became Guru Angad Dev Ji — in 1539, the most significant institutional act of his tenure was the standardization and teaching of the Gurmukhi script. The Gurmukhi alphabet had roots in earlier writing traditions, but Guru Angad Dev Ji systematized it and made it the vehicle through which the Guru’s compositions were taught, transmitted, and preserved.

The theological significance for prayer is decisive. If prayer is direct address to the Divine, and if the Divine’s Word has been recorded in Gurbani, then access to Gurbani must not be controlled by a literacy class that possesses Sanskrit or Persian. The Gurmukhi script made it possible for any Sikh — farmer, weaver, carpenter, woman, low-caste person — to learn to read the Gurus’ compositions directly. The democratization of the Word was a prerequisite for the democratization of prayer.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji records the significance of the Guru’s Word in transmission:

ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਕੀ ਬਾਣੀ ਸਤਿ ਸਤਿ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਣਹੁ ਗੁਰਸਿਖਹੁ ਹਰਿ ਕਰਤਾ ਆਪਿ ਮੁਹਹੁ ਕਢਾਏ॥

Know the Bani of the True Guru as True — as absolutely True. The Creator Himself speaks it through the Guru’s mouth.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 308)

The Gurmukhi script was the physical instrument that allowed this theological claim to be realized in the lives of ordinary people. When every Sikh child learned to read Gurmukhi, every Sikh child had access to the Bani that was the Creator’s own voice. The prayer tradition that emerged from this foundation was not dependent on clerical intermediaries because it was not dependent on restricted knowledge.

III.2 Guru Amar Das Ji: Anand Sahib and the Institutionalization of Collective Bliss

Guru Amar Das Ji (Guruship 1552–1574) composed the Anand Sahib — the composition of spiritual bliss — which became one of the most important liturgical elements of Sikh communal life. The Anand Sahib’s significance for the history of the Ardas is twofold.

First, the Anand Sahib established the theological register of Sikh prayer as extending beyond petition and testimony to include what can only be called celebration — the experience of divine bliss (ਆਨੰਦ) that comes from genuine alignment with Waheguru’s presence. The Ardas, when read against the background of the Anand Sahib, is not merely a sad recitation of suffering. It is the testimony of a community whose suffering has never extinguished its experience of divine joy.

ਆਨੰਦੁ ਭਇਆ ਮੇਰੀ ਮਾਏ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੂ ਮੈ ਪਾਇਆ॥
ਸਤਿਗੁਰੁ ਤੈ ਪਾਇਆ ਸਹਜ ਸੇਤੀ ਮਨਿ ਵਜੀਆ ਵਾਧਾਈਆ॥

Bliss has come, O my mother; I have found the True Guru.
I have found the True Guru with ease, and my mind vibrates with the music of rejoicing.
(Guru Amar Das Ji, Anand Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 917)

Second, Guru Amar Das Ji established the Manji system — the network of regional teaching and prayer centers — which provided the institutional infrastructure for Sikh prayer life across a geographically dispersed community. The Manji system established, for the first time, that Sikh prayer could be sustained and transmitted in the Guru’s physical absence — that the Sangat did not require the living Guru present in person to maintain a complete prayer life.

This institutional development was crucial for the later history of the Ardas, because it established the principle that the Sikh prayer tradition could organize, maintain, and update its practices through collective Panthic mechanisms. The Ardas’s evolution over centuries would depend on exactly this capacity.

III.3 Guru Ram Das Ji: Amritsar and the Sacred Geography of Prayer

Guru Ram Das Ji (Guruship 1574–1581) founded the city that would become the sacred center of the Sikh world. The city of Amritsar — ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤਸਰ, the Pool of the Nectar of Immortality — was established on land purchased and settled by the Sikh community, organized around the construction of a sarovar whose waters would be understood as the nectar of spiritual liberation.

The theological significance for prayer: the Sikh sacred center was not a site of historical revelation (as Mecca was for Islam) or a temple complex controlled by a priestly class (as Varanasi was for Hinduism). It was a community-built space, purchased with the community’s resources, open to all without distinction of caste, and centered on the presence of the Guru’s Word rather than on any image, idol, or priestly intermediary. Prayer at this center was, from the beginning, communal, egalitarian, and Gurbani-centered.

Guru Ram Das Ji also composed the four Lavaan — the wedding hymns — that became the basis of the Anand Karaj Sikh marriage ceremony. The Lavaan describe the soul’s progressive union with the Divine through four stages, using the metaphor of a bride’s journey toward her husband. This extension of Sikh prayer practice into the formal marking of the life cycle established the principle that Gurbani — and the prayer practices organized around Gurbani — should accompany the Sikh at every major transition of human existence.

ਹਰਿ ਪ੍ਰਭੁ ਮੇਰੇ ਬਾਬੁਲਾ ਹਰਿ ਦੇਵਹੁ ਦਾਨੁ ਮੈ ਦਾਜੋ॥

O Lord God, my Father; please give me the gift of Your Name as my wedding gift.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 79)

III.4 Guru Arjan Dev Ji: The Guru Granth Sahib Ji and the Canonization of the Word

The single most consequential act in the history of Sikh prayer is the compilation of the Adi Granth by Guru Arjan Dev Ji in 1604. This act transformed the Sikh prayer tradition from a living oral and transmitted tradition into a tradition grounded in a canonical scripture — a fixed, authoritative text that would serve as the eternal Guru after the line of human Gurus concluded.

The compilation of the Adi Granth was itself a prayer act. Guru Arjan Dev Ji, working with Bhai Gurdas Ji, collected the compositions of the previous four Gurus, authenticated them (eliminating spurious compositions that had begun to circulate), and arranged them in a specific order that was itself theologically meaningful. The compositions of Hindu and Muslim saints — Bhagat Kabir, Bhagat Namdev, Bhagat Ravidas, Sheikh Farid, and many others — were included alongside the Gurus’ own compositions. This inclusion was itself a theological statement: the divine Word is not the exclusive property of the Sikh tradition; wherever it appears, it is the same Word.

[PF] Guru Arjan Dev Ji articulated the nature of the completed scripture:

ਵਿਚਿ ਦੁਨੀਆ ਸੇਵ ਕਮਾਈਐ ਤਾ ਦਰਗਹ ਬੈਸਣੁ ਪਾਈਐ॥

Serving within the world, honor is obtained in the Court of the Lord.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

And in the Mundaavani — which we will discuss in detail later — Guru Arjan Dev Ji formally sealed the scripture:

ਥਾਲ ਵਿਚਿ ਤਿੰਨਿ ਵਸਤੂ ਪਈਓ ਸਤੁ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਵੀਚਾਰੋ॥

On the plate, three things have been placed: truth, contentment, and contemplation.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Mundaavani, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1429)

The martyrdom of Guru Arjan Dev Ji in 1606 — tortured by the Mughal authorities under Jahangir after refusing to alter the Adi Granth — transformed the history of Sikh prayer permanently. From this moment forward, Sikh prayer could not be only devotional. It would also be testimonial. The prayer of the Sikh community would henceforth include the memory of what the state had done to the community for maintaining its prayer tradition.

This is the moment at which the seeds of the Ardas’s historical middle section were planted. The Ardas’s enumeration of martyrdom methods — cut joint by joint, scalps removed, bodies broken on wheels — begins with Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s own martyrdom at the Mughal authorities’ hands.

III.5 Guru Hargobind Ji: Miri Piri and the Political Dimension of Prayer

Guru Hargobind Ji (Guruship 1606–1644) responded to his father’s martyrdom by institutionalizing what Sikhism had always theoretically maintained but had not yet formally structured: the inseparability of spiritual and temporal authority. He wore two swords at his coronation as Guru — one representing Piri (spiritual sovereignty) and one representing Miri (temporal sovereignty). He constructed the Akal Takht — the Throne of the Timeless — directly across the sacred pool from the Harmandir Sahib.

The Akal Takht’s positioning is a prayer statement in architectural form. The sacred scripture — the Guru Granth Sahib Ji housed in the Harmandir Sahib — and the political authority of the Sikh Panth — the Akal Takht — face each other. Neither is subordinate to the other. The Sikh prayer tradition cannot be reduced to purely spiritual practice, because the Guru teaches that justice and devotion are inseparable.

[AI] This architectural theology has direct implications for the Ardas: a prayer that includes the enumeration of state violence — the specific methods by which human beings were killed for the crime of being Sikh — is not importing politics into religion. It is embodying the Miri Piri principle: that the political reality of the community’s survival is inseparable from its spiritual life, and that the prayer which addresses only the spiritual while ignoring the political has not understood the complete teaching of the Guru.

The Akal Takht would later become the institutional body whose authority over the text of the Ardas is final within the Sikh Panth. When debates arise about what the Ardas should include or exclude — such as the ongoing debate about formally including 1984 — it is the Akal Takht’s Hukamnama that settles the question institutionally, if not always universally in practice.

III.6 Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji: Martyrdom for Another Community’s Prayer

Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s martyrdom in 1675 — executed in Delhi by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after refusing to convert to Islam — established one of the most extraordinary principles in the history of religious freedom: the Sikh Guru died not for the right to practice his own faith, but for the right of Kashmiri Pandits — Hindus — to practice theirs.

A delegation of Kashmiri Pandits had come to Anandpur Sahib to request Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s intervention. They were being forced, under pain of death, to convert to Islam. The Guru agreed to represent their cause to the Mughal authorities, knowing the likely consequence.

[PM] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji records Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji’s own reflection on the nature of this kind of sacrifice:

ਭਉ ਕਾਹੂ ਕਉ ਦੇਤ ਨਹਿ ਨਹਿ ਭਉ ਮਾਨਤ ਆਨ॥
ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਸੁਨਿ ਰੇ ਮਨਾ ਗਿਆਨੀ ਤਾਹਿ ਬਖਾਨਿ॥

One who does not frighten anyone, and who is not afraid of anyone else — say, O Nanak, hear this, O mind — call such a one spiritually wise.
(Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1427)

The implication for the Ardas’s closing petition — ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ (the welfare of all) — is made explicit by this martyrdom. The Sikh prayer for the welfare of all is not an abstract universalism. It is a universalism grounded in the specific history of a Guru who gave his life for the right of another community to pray in its own way.

The Ardas’s ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ must therefore be understood not as a vague aspiration for peace but as a forensic commitment: the welfare of ALL means that when any community’s right to pray, to exist, to maintain its culture is threatened, the Sikh community is obligated to respond. This is the theological argument that the Guru’s own life made.

PART TWO: GURU GOBIND SINGH JI AND THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE ARDAS

IV. THE VAISAKHI OF 1699 AND THE BIRTH OF THE KHALSA FORM

IV.1 Anandpur Sahib: The Gathering

On Vaisakhi Day, 1699, at Anandpur Sahib, Guru Gobind Singh Ji convened the largest assembly of Sikhs in the tradition’s history to that point. What he proposed — and what the Sangat witnessed that day — was not merely the creation of a new religious order. It was the formalization of the complete Sikh civilization: its theology, its political identity, its military commitment, its prayer practice, its code of conduct, and its institutional architecture.

The Amrit Sanchar ceremony that day established the template for every initiation ceremony that has followed. The Panj Pyare — the Five Beloved, the first five Sikhs who offered their heads to the Guru’s call — were initiated into the Khalsa through the Khande di Pahul (the double-edged sword’s nectar). The formal Ardas was a central component of this ceremony, establishing from the Khalsa’s founding moment that prayer was inseparable from initiation into the Sikh order.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ। ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।
The Khalsa belongs to Waheguru. Victory belongs to Waheguru.

This salutation — established at the Vaisakhi of 1699 — is itself a compressed prayer and a political manifesto. Its first phrase denies every claim of earthly authority over the Sikh community. Its second phrase claims victory not for the Khalsa but for Waheguru. The most militant prayer in the Sikh tradition is simultaneously the most humble: all belonging is God’s, all victory is God’s.

IV.2 The Ardas’s Three-Part Architecture

The formal structure of the Ardas as standardized in the Sikh Rehat Maryada has three distinct sections, each with a different theological function and a different authorial origin:

Section One — The Fixed Opening (ਪਹਿਲਾ ਭਾਗ):
This section is drawn from Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s composition Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki — part of the Dasam Granth — and cannot be altered by any individual or institution. It invokes the Divine Power and then recalls the lineage of the ten human Gurus in sequence. This section is the theological foundation of the entire prayer.

Section Two — The Historical Middle (ਦੂਜਾ ਭਾਗ):
This section is the living archive — the enumeration of Sikh martyrdom, sacrifice, and historical memory. It was not composed by any single author. It developed over time through the Panth’s collective process of adding to the prayer’s record as new historical events demanded permanent liturgical memory. This section is “semi-fixed” — its categorical structure is standardized, but the specific formulations have evolved and the Akal Takht retains authority over formal modifications.

Section Three — The Living Supplication (ਤੀਜਾ ਭਾਗ):
This section is entirely variable. Here, the Ardas-reader inserts the specific petition of the specific congregation: the needs of the family, the community, the individual occasion, the political moment. This variability is not a weakness in the Ardas’s structure — it is its most important feature. The fixed bracket of theological statement and historical memory holds the variable petition within a framework that prevents any individual’s or institution’s specific need from becoming the center of the prayer.

[PF] The Sikh Rehat Maryada specifies: “The Ardas must be recited standing. The Sangat must stand with folded hands. The Ardas-reader must address the Akal Purakh in a clear voice audible to the Sangat. The Sangat must concentrate and respond ‘Waheguru’ at the specified moments.”

The structure of the Ardas is therefore not accidental. It is the product of centuries of Panthic reflection on what a complete communal prayer must accomplish: theological foundation, historical memory, present petition, and universal aspiration.

V. THE OPENING OF THE ARDAS: VAR SRI BHAGAUTI JI KI

The formal Ardas opens with the following words, which are fixed and cannot be altered:

ੴ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫ਼ਤਹਿ॥
ਸ੍ਰੀ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਜੀ ਸਹਾਇ॥
ਵਾਰ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ ੧੦॥
ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਕੈ ਗੁਰੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਈ ਧਿਆਇ॥

One Creator Being. Victory of Waheguru.
May Sri Bhagauti Ji assist.
The Var of Sri Bhagauti Ji, by the Tenth King.
First, having remembered Bhagauti, meditate on Guru Nanak.

The section continues through the sequence of all ten Gurus, asking each in turn for assistance, before concluding with the transition to the eternal Guru:

ਦਸਾਂ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀਆਂ ਦੀ ਜੋਤਿ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਜੀ ਦੇ ਪਾਠ ਦੀਦਾਰ ਦਾ ਧਿਆਨ ਧਰ ਕੇ ਬੋਲੋ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ।

Meditating on the Light of the Ten Sovereigns present in Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, say: Waheguru.

This transition — from the ten human Gurus to the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the eternal living Guru — is the most theologically precise moment in the entire Ardas. It formally acknowledges that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not a book containing the Gurus’ words. It IS the Guru — the same divine light (ਜੋਤਿ) that passed through each of the ten human Gurus now present in the scripture.

This theological claim is fundamental to the status of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the ultimate evaluative standard for all subsequent Sikh writings and compositions, including the Dasam Granth. If the Guru Granth Sahib Ji contains the Guru’s Jot, then its theology is not one perspective among many. It is the standard against which every other claim must be measured.

VI. THE BHAGAUTI CONTROVERSY: THREE CENTURIES OF THEOLOGICAL DISPUTE

No word in the Sikh liturgical canon has generated more sustained, more emotionally charged, and more theologically consequential debate than the single word ਭਗਉਤੀ (Bhagauti) that appears in the Ardas’s opening line: ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਕੈ — First, having remembered Bhagauti.

The debate is not merely academic. It goes to the core of Sikh identity: Is the Sikh tradition theologically distinct from Hinduism, or does its use of language, symbol, and literary form from the Hindu tradition represent a fundamental continuity with it? The answer to the Bhagauti question is, in many ways, the answer to the question of what Sikhism is.

This section examines the debate in full, applies the evidentiary standard the Guru Granth Sahib Ji provides, and arrives at conclusions — but it does not pretend that those conclusions end the controversy. The controversy is alive because it is not merely a linguistic question. It is a question of civilizational identity.

VI.1 The Three Interpretations of Bhagauti

Interpretation One — Bhagauti as the Sword (ਖੜਗ/ਤਲਵਾਰ)

The most widely accepted interpretation within the mainstream Sikh Panth reads ਭਗਉਤੀ as referring to the divine sword — the Sarab Loh (All-Steel), the sword of justice and righteousness that is itself understood as a manifestation of the divine power of the Akal Purakh. In this reading, “Pritham Bhagauti simari ke” means: “First, having remembered the divine Sword…”

This interpretation draws support from the context of the composition. Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki was composed by Guru Gobind Singh Ji in the atmosphere of Anandpur Sahib, where the Khalsa was preparing for the battles that would define the early eighteenth century. The sword — both literal and metaphorical — was at the center of the Guru’s theology of the period. The opening of the Ardas with a remembrance of the divine Sword would be entirely consistent with the Khalsa’s foundational understanding that justice, not mere pacifism, is the highest expression of divine will.

Interpretation Two — Bhagauti as the Supreme Divine Power

A broader interpretation reads ਭਗਉਤੀ as a general term for the supreme divine power or creative force of Akal Purakh — not a specific deity, not a specific object, but the generalized power of the One who pervades all things. In this reading, Bhagauti is cognate with Bhagwan/Bhagvat in its original Sanskrit sense: the Divine, the Blessed One, the Supreme Reality.

This interpretation has the advantage of theological breadth — it does not require the reader to understand the prayer as invoking either a Hindu goddess or a specific weapon. It is simply an invocation of the Divine before beginning the Guru lineage.

Interpretation Three — Bhagauti as the Goddess Chandi/Durga

The most contested interpretation argues that in the original literary context of Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki — the Chandi-themed composition from which the Ardas’s opening is drawn — ਭਗਉਤੀ unambiguously refers to the Hindu goddess Chandi/Durga, the deity of the Chandi Di Var (the Song of Chandi). In this reading, the Ardas opens with an invocation of a Hindu goddess, which is theologically problematic within a tradition that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji presents as strictly monotheistic and explicitly critical of goddess worship.

This third interpretation has been advanced most strongly by certain Singh Sabha scholars, the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, and elements of the Sikh reform tradition. It is the interpretation that created the greatest institutional pressure for alternative formulations.

[DA] The Akhand Kirtani Jatha’s position, associated with Bhai Randhir Singh’s Barsala Dasam Granth controversy, was that the Bhagauti invocation was inconsistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology and should not be used. This position led to an alternative Ardas practice within that tradition. The Akal Takht has not endorsed this alternative position and considers the standard Ardas, including the Bhagauti invocation, to be the authoritative Panthic form.

VI.2 The Linguistic Evidence: What Does Bhagauti Mean in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji?

Before examining the Dasam Granth’s use of Bhagauti, it is essential to establish what the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself says about the term — since this is the evidentiary standard this article applies.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses the root ਭਗਤਿ (Bhagti) — devotion — extensively. The term ਭਗਉਤੀ appears in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji in specific and revealing contexts that establish its meaning within the canonical Sikh theological framework.

[PF] Critical evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

ਭਗਉਤੀ ਭਗਵੰਤ ਭਗਤਿ ਕਾ ਰੰਗੁ॥
ਸਗਲ ਤਿਆਗੈ ਦੁਸਟ ਕਾ ਸੰਗੁ॥

The Bhagauti (devotee/one devoted to God) is imbued with the color of devotion to God.
Such a one abandons the company of evildoers entirely.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Gauri Sukhmani)

This verse is foundational. Within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, ਭਗਉਤੀ is used not as a name for a goddess, not as a name for a weapon, but as a description of a person — specifically, the person who is devoted to God (ਭਗਵੰਤ) through Bhagti (devotion). The Bhagauti is the devotee.

[PF] Further evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

ਭਗਉਤੀ ਵਰਤੈ ਭਗਵੰਤੁ ਕੈਸਾ॥

How does one understand the nature of the Bhagauti (devotee) who is absorbed in the Divine?
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji, attributed to Bhagat Kabir)

Again, ਭਗਉਤੀ here refers to the devotee — the one absorbed in Bhagti. There is no goddess, no weapon. There is a human being in a state of devotion to the one Divine.

[PF] The theological framework established by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji regarding goddesses:

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji contains an extensive and unambiguous rejection of goddess worship as a path to the Divine. The evidence is not ambiguous or interpretable in multiple directions. It is explicit:

ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵਾ ਪੂਜੀਐ ਭਾਈ ਕਿਆ ਮਾਗਉ ਕਿਆ ਦੇਹਿ॥
ਪਾਹਣੁ ਨੀਰਿ ਪਖਾਲੀਐ ਭਾਈ ਜੋ ਕਿਛੁ ਲੇਪੁ ਰਹੇਹਿ॥

O Brother, what is the use of worshipping gods and goddesses? What can they ask for, and what can they give?
The stone idol is washed in water; whatever residue there is, that is what remains of their power.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Var Majh, Ang 637)

This is a categorical statement from Guru Nanak Dev Ji: the gods and goddesses (ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵਾ) are objects of worship that cannot give anything, because they have no independent power. The stone idol washed in water — the ritual cleansing — leaves behind only the physical residue of the water. There is nothing divine in the idol.

[PF] Further from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

ਸਾਕਤ ਨਿਰਗੁਣਿਆਰੇ ਕਉ ਕਿਆ ਕਹੀਐ ਜਿਸੁ ਅੰਤਰਿ ਨਾਮੁ ਨ ਭਾਵੈ॥
ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵ ਪਿਤਰ ਸਭਿ ਛੋਡੇ ਕਰਿ ਏਕੋ ਅਲਖੁ ਧਿਆਵੈ॥

What can be said about the faithless cynic who does not love the Naam within?
Abandoning all gods, goddesses, and ancestors, one meditates on the One Invisible Lord.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Here, the directive is explicit: ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵ (gods and goddesses) are to be abandoned (ਛੋਡੇ) in favor of meditating on the One Invisible Lord (ਏਕੋ ਅਲਖੁ). The Guru Granth Sahib Ji does not say that the gods and goddesses are subordinate divinities worthy of secondary worship. It says to abandon them.

[AI] The forensic implication is clear: if the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology requires the abandonment of goddess worship — and the evidence above establishes that it does, in unambiguous terms from Guru Nanak himself — then an interpretation of the Ardas’s opening line that makes it an invocation of the Hindu goddess Chandi/Durga would place the Ardas in direct theological conflict with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

The resolution, from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own evidence, must therefore be one of the following:

Resolution A: ਭਗਉਤੀ in the Ardas’s opening refers to the devotee — the one devoted to Akal Purakh — just as it does in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own usage. “Pritham Bhagauti simari ke” would then mean: “First, having remembered the devotee (i.e., the exemplar of devotion)” — a reading that is grammatically possible but slightly unusual.

Resolution B: ਭਗਉਤੀ refers to the divine sword as the instrument of divine justice — not to a goddess, not to a Hindu deity, but to the Khalsa’s sword understood as Akal Purakh’s own instrument of righteous force in the world. This is consistent with the martial theology of the Guru’s period and with the composition’s context in Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki.

Resolution C: ਭਗਉਤੀ refers to the One Divine Power itself — using the feminine form (common in Punjabi/Sanskrit linguistic practice for referring to divine qualities) without implying a female deity. The use of feminine grammatical gender for divine attributes is a feature of the linguistic tradition the Gurus worked within — it does not imply a separate female deity.

[AI] What the Guru Granth Sahib Ji evidence conclusively rules out: the interpretation of ਭਗਉਤੀ as a Hindu goddess to be worshipped or invoked as a separate divine being. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is too explicit, too repeated, and too unambiguous in its rejection of goddess worship for that interpretation to be compatible with the canonical Sikh theological framework.

VI.3 The Literary Context: Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki and Chandi Di Var

To fully understand the Bhagauti controversy, one must understand the literary context in which the Ardas’s opening is set. The Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki is part of the Dasam Granth — the body of writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji. It is a heroic ballad (ਵਾਰ) in the literary tradition of Punjabi poetry, composed in a style that draws heavily on the Sanskrit mythological tradition.

The composition is set within the framework of the Chandi Di Var tradition — a genre of Punjabi poetry that takes the Hindu myth of the goddess Chandi’s battle against the demons and retells it in the martial spirit of Punjabi folk poetry. This genre predates the Gurus and was a well-established literary form in the Punjab.

[DA] The question raised by scholars is whether Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s use of this literary genre represents:
(a) An endorsement of the theology of the Hindu myth (that Chandi is a real goddess who defeated real demons); or
(b) A deployment of a familiar literary form to convey a different, Sikh theological message — the battle between divine justice and injustice, expressed through the available literary medium of the period.

[AI] The evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji strongly supports interpretation (b). Throughout the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the Gurus use — and transform — the language, metaphors, and literary forms of the traditions they encountered, without endorsing the theologies those forms originally carried. Guru Nanak Dev Ji uses the form of the Brahminical theological discourse to demolish Brahminical authority. The Sikh Gurus use the literary form of the devotional poetry of Bhagats Namdev, Kabir, and Ravidas — compositions originally addressed to Hindu deities — and include them in the Adi Granth because the devotional spirit (ਭਗਤੀ) in those compositions transcends the specific deity originally addressed.

This interpretive principle — that the Sikh tradition appropriates literary forms while transforming their theological content — is the most Gurmat-consistent reading of Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s Chandi-related compositions. The Guru is not worshipping Chandi. The Guru is using the Chandi narrative as a literary vehicle to express the theological truth that the divine force of justice (ਭਗਉਤੀ, in the sense of the power that defeats injustice) is the supreme reality.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself establishes this interpretive principle:

ਕਬੀਰ ਰਾਮੁ ਕਹਨ ਮਹਿ ਭੇਦੁ ਹੈ ਤਾ ਮਹਿ ਏਕੁ ਬਿਚਾਰੁ॥
ਸੋਈ ਰਾਮੁ ਸਭੈ ਕਹਹਿ ਸੋਈ ਕਉਤਕਹਾਰੁ॥

O Kabir, there is a distinction in calling on Ram; there is one [Ram] who is worth contemplating.
Everyone calls on the same Ram, but that same [Ram] is just a performer of wonders.
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1374)

Bhagat Kabir, included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, explicitly distinguishes between two different uses of the name “Ram”: the historical avatar Ram (who, in Kabir’s view, is merely a performer of wonders — a historical figure of limited significance) and the divine Name Ram (the one worthy of genuine contemplation — the Supreme Being who pervades all of existence). The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s inclusion of this verse is itself a theological statement: the tradition endorses this distinction and uses it as an interpretive key.

[AI] Applying this key to the Bhagauti question: just as “Ram” in Gurbani typically refers to the divine Name (Akal Purakh) rather than the historical avatar, “Bhagauti” in the Ardas context refers to the divine power or the divine sword — not to the historical Hindu goddess Chandi. The literary form borrowed from the Chandi Di Var tradition carries a different theological content once placed within the Sikh framework.

This resolution is not intellectually dishonest. It is the same interpretive move the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself makes, consistently, throughout its theological engagement with the religious traditions it encounters.

VI.4 What the Bhagauti Debate Reveals About the Ardas

The Bhagauti controversy is not merely a linguistic debate. It reveals three important truths about the Ardas as a living document:

First: The Ardas is composed in a literary tradition that draws on Sanskrit and Persian sources. Its language and forms come from a world that was theologically plural — where Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh literary traditions overlapped and borrowed from each other. The Sikh engagement with this plural tradition was always transformative, not merely imitative. Understanding the Ardas requires understanding this transformation.

Second: The Ardas is subject to ongoing Panthic interpretation. The Sikh Rehat Maryada’s standardization of the Ardas text does not freeze the interpretive debate about its meaning. The debate about Bhagauti has been ongoing for three centuries precisely because the question it raises — about the relationship between Sikh and Hindu religious language — is a genuinely important question for Sikh self-understanding.

Third: The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the appropriate and sufficient standard for resolving this debate. The evidence above establishes that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own use of the term ਭਗਉਤੀ, and its explicit rejection of goddess worship, provides the framework within which the Ardas’s opening must be understood. Any interpretation of ਭਗਉਤੀ that makes the Ardas an invocation of a Hindu goddess is not just theologically controversial — it is inconsistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own established theology.

[PM] The mainstream Sikh Panth’s position, as represented by the Akal Takht and the SGPC, is that the standard Ardas form — including the ਭਗਉਤੀ invocation — is the authoritative Panthic prayer, and that ਭਗਉਤੀ in this context refers to the divine sword/power, not to a Hindu goddess. This position is consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence and is the position this article considers most theologically sustainable.

VII. THE ARDAS’S GURU LINEAGE SECTION: A CLOSE READING

After the Bhagauti invocation, the Ardas’s opening section moves through the ten human Gurus in sequence. This is not a mere list. Each Guru is invoked with a specific theological claim about what that Guru’s contribution was to the lineage:

ਗੁਰੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਈ ਧਿਆਇ — Meditate on Guru Nanak (the one who brought the revelation)

ਅੰਗਦ ਗੁਰੂ ਤੇ ਅਮਰਦਾਸੁ ਰਾਮਦਾਸੈ ਹੋਇ ਸਹਾਇ — May Guru Angad, Guru Amar Das, and Guru Ram Das be of assistance (the Gurus of institutional consolidation)

ਅਰਜਨ ਹਰਿਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਨੋ ਸਿਮਰੌ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਹਰਿਰਾਇ — Remember Guru Arjan, Guru Hargobind, and Guru Har Rai (the Guru of the scripture, the Guru of Miri Piri, the Guru of compassion)

ਸ੍ਰੀ ਹਰਿਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਨ ਧਿਆਈਐ ਜਿਸ ਡਿਠੈ ਸਭਿ ਦੁਖਿ ਜਾਇ — Meditate on Guru Har Krishan, whose sight makes all suffering go away

ਤੇਗ ਬਹਾਦਰ ਸਿਮਰਿਐ ਘਰ ਨਉ ਨਿਧਿ ਆਵੈ ਧਾਇ — Remembering Guru Tegh Bahadur, the nine treasures come rushing to the home

ਸਭ ਥਾਈਂ ਹੋਇ ਸਹਾਇ — May they assist everywhere

The specificity of the invocations is itself a theology. Guru Har Krishan Ji is the Guru at whose sight (ਡਿਠੈ) all suffering departs — this refers to the historical fact that the child Guru, barely eight years old, attended to the victims of a smallpox epidemic in Delhi at the cost of his own life, contracting the disease while serving the sick. His mere sight brought healing. The Ardas remembers this not as a miracle story but as a theological statement about what the Guru is: one whose presence itself is a form of grace.

Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji is the Guru at whose remembrance the nine treasures (ਨਉ ਨਿਧਿ — the nine spiritual treasures, contentment, forbearance, etc.) come rushing to the home. This invocation connects the martyred Guru directly to the spiritual wealth his sacrifice secured — not earthly treasure, but the spiritual riches that come from a life lived without fear.

[AI] The architectural logic of this lineage section is: the Ardas positions the devotee within a specific history — not the abstract history of a religious tradition, but the concrete history of ten specific human beings, each of whom contributed something specific and identifiable to the tradition the devotee inherits. When the Sikh stands for Ardas, they are reminded not of an abstract faith but of a specific legacy. The prayer is grounded in the particular, not the general.

PART THREE: THE HISTORICAL MIDDLE SECTION — THE ARCHIVE WRITTEN IN MARTYRDOM

VIII. WHAT THE MIDDLE SECTION CONTAINS AND HOW IT DEVELOPED

VIII.1 The Martyrdom Catalogue: Reading Each Phrase Forensically

The historical middle section of the Ardas is the Sikh Panth’s permanent record of state violence against its community. It was not composed in a single sitting. It accumulated, section by section, as history produced the events that demanded permanent liturgical memory. Reading it forensically — understanding each phrase as a reference to specific historical events and specific methods of execution — reveals a document of extraordinary evidentiary density.

ਪੰਜਾਂ ਪਿਆਰਿਆਂ, ਚੌਹਾਂ ਸਾਹਿਬਜ਼ਾਦਿਆਂ, ਚਾਲੀਆਂ ਮੁਕਤਿਆਂ
Of the Five Beloved, the Four Sahibzade, the Forty Liberated Ones

The Panj Pyare are Bhai Daya Singh, Bhai Dharam Singh, Bhai Himmat Singh, Bhai Mohkam Singh, and Bhai Sahib Singh — the five Sikhs who offered their heads to Guru Gobind Singh Ji at the Vaisakhi of 1699, became the first Khalsa, and administered the Amrit Sanchar to the Guru himself. Their precedence in the Ardas’s historical section establishes that the prayer begins not with victimhood but with voluntary sacrifice. The Panj Pyare did not wait for the state to come for them. They offered themselves.

The Char Sahibzade — the four sons of Guru Gobind Singh Ji — are Sahibzada Ajit Singh (martyred at Chamkaur, December 22, 1704, approximately 18 years old), Sahibzada Jujhar Singh (martyred at Chamkaur, December 22, 1704, approximately 14 years old), Sahibzada Zorawar Singh (martyred at Sirhind, December 26, 1704, approximately 9 years old), and Sahibzada Fateh Singh (martyred at Sirhind, December 26, 1704, approximately 6 years old).

The younger two Sahibzade — Zorawar Singh and Fateh Singh — were bricked alive into a wall (ਨੀਹਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਚਿਣਿਆ) on the orders of Nawab Wazir Khan of Sirhind, after both refused the offer of their lives in exchange for renouncing their faith. The elder Sahibzade — Ajit Singh and Jujhar Singh — died in battle at Chamkaur, fighting alongside their father against a vastly superior Mughal force. The Guru, in the Zafarnama, later wrote to Emperor Aurangzeb: it was no great feat that your army of a million killed four. The lions had made their stand.

The Forty Liberated (ਚਾਲੀ ਮੁਕਤੇ) were the forty Sikh soldiers who, at the siege of Anandpur Sahib, abandoned their Guru by signing a formal renunciation (bedhawa) and returning to their homes. They later returned and died at Muktsar (then Khidrana) in 1705, fighting against the pursuing Mughal forces. The Guru, having received the dying Bhai Maha Singh’s plea for forgiveness, tore up their renunciation and declared them liberated. Their inclusion in the Ardas is a statement about the possibility of redemption — the Sikh community’s prayer acknowledges those who failed and then came back.

ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਣੀਆਂ ਨੇ ਧਰਮ ਹੇਤ ਸੀਸ ਦਿੱਤੇ
Those Sikh men and women who gave their heads for the faith

The inclusion of ਸਿੰਘਣੀਆਂ (Sikh women) alongside ਸਿੰਘਾਂ (Sikh men) in this phrase is not incidental. It is a theological statement: women are equally among those who gave their lives for the faith. The martyrology of the Sikh Panth includes women — Mai Bhago, who fought at Muktsar; the women who maintained the Panth through the period of forest refuge in the eighteenth century; the mothers who raised Khalsa sons and daughters while their husbands were dead, imprisoned, or in hiding. The Ardas remembers them.

ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ — cut joint by joint

This phrase refers specifically to Bhai Mani Singh Ji, the Head Granthi of the Harmandir Sahib, who was executed in Lahore in December 1737 on the orders of Zakariya Khan, the Mughal Governor of Lahore. Bhai Mani Singh had organized a Diwali gathering at the Harmandir Sahib, paid the required tax to the authorities for the gathering, but then the Sikhs did not come (fearing a trap). When he could not pay the balance of the tax arrangement, he was arrested. He was offered his life in exchange for conversion to Islam. He refused. His executioners were instructed to cut him joint by joint — beginning with the fingers. Bhai Mani Singh reportedly said: begin. They did. He did not recant.

The phrase ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ in the Ardas is therefore not a generic description of torture. It is the specific method of execution used on a specific named martyr in a specific historical year. The Ardas carries this fact forward, twice daily, into the congregational memory of every Sikh community in the world.

ਖੋਪਰੀਆਂ ਲੁਹਾਈਆਂ — scalps removed

This phrase refers primarily to Bhai Taru Singh Ji, executed in Lahore in 1745, also on Zakariya Khan’s orders. Bhai Taru Singh had been providing food and shelter to Sikh refugees. He was arrested, brought before the Governor, and offered his life in exchange for converting to Islam or cutting his hair. He refused both. His scalp was removed as punishment — the hair was not cut, but the scalp itself was removed. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji teaches:

ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਕਾ ਸਿੱਖੁ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੂ ਕਉ ਹਦਿ ਨਿਤ ਸਿਮਰੈ ਦੀਨਾ॥

The hair, for the Khalsa, is a spiritual commitment inscribed on the body. To demand the cutting of the hair as the price of life was to demand the abandonment of the spiritual commitment. Bhai Taru Singh chose the loss of his scalp rather than the loss of his commitment.

ਚਰਖੜੀਆਂ ਤੇ ਚੜ੍ਹੇ — broken on the wheel

The wheel referred to here is the spinning wheel (charkha) of torture — the wheel on which a prisoner’s body was broken by being stretched across its spokes. This execution method was used on Sikh prisoners by Mughal and subsequent authorities. The specific martyrs include Bhai Subeg Singh and his son Bhai Shahbaz Singh, who were broken on wheels in Lahore in 1745.

Bhai Subeg Singh had been a prominent figure — a Persian and Urdu translator who had served the Mughal administration. He was from a family of substantial means and social standing. His and his son’s execution on the wheel was designed as a public deterrent: even the socially prominent, even the families of government servants, could be destroyed for maintaining their Sikh faith.

ਆਰਿਆਂ ਨਾਲ ਚਿਰਾਏ ਗਏ — sawn asunder with saws

Bhai Taru Singh Ji’s execution method is also reflected here, as is the broader pattern of the execution methods used against Sikhs in this period. The phrase documents that human beings were sawn alive — a method of execution that the Ardas neither softens nor euphemizes.

The Ardas’s language here is not poetry. It is testimony. It refuses the comfortable distance of metaphor. It says, plainly: these specific things were done to Sikh bodies. Remember them. Say Waheguru.

ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਸੇਵਾ ਲਈ ਕੁਰਬਾਨੀਆਂ ਕੀਤੀਆਂ — made sacrifices for the service of the Gurdwaras

This phrase connects the martyrology specifically to the institutions of Sikh communal life. The Gurdwara is not merely a building. It is the physical address of the Guru’s presence in the community — the place where the Guru Granth Sahib Ji resides, where the Sangat gathers, where the Langar feeds, where the Ardas itself is recited. The martyrs who died defending Gurdwaras were defending not real estate but the institutional infrastructure of the community’s prayer life. To kill those martyrs was to try to end the prayer.

The prayer refuses to end. Instead, it commemorates the attempt.

VIII.2 Which Portions of the Middle Section Were Added When: A Historical Analysis

[DA/AI] The historical middle section of the Ardas was not present in its current form from the beginning of the Khalsa. It developed incrementally as historical events demanded inclusion. While the precise dating of each addition is difficult to establish with documentary certainty, the following chronological framework reflects the scholarly and Panthic consensus:

Pre-1708 additions (likely established under Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s own supervision or immediately after his passing):

• The references to the Panj Pyare
• The references to the Char Sahibzade
• The references to the Chali Mukte
• The references to those who gave their heads, were cut joint by joint, etc. (initially a general categorical reference)

1708–1762 additions (the period of Misl confederation and persecution):

• The specific references to Bhai Mani Singh Ji (martyred 1737)
• The specific references to Bhai Taru Singh Ji (martyred 1745)
• The specific references to Bhai Subeg Singh and Bhai Shahbaz Singh (martyred 1745)
• The reference to the Chhota Ghallughar (1746)
• The reference to the Vadda Ghallughar (1762)

Post-1762 additions (the period of the Misl Confederacy and early Sikh Empire):

• The references to the five Takhts
• The references to all gurdwaras globally

Post-1947 additions (confirmed by documentary evidence):

• The specific reference to Sri Nankana Sahib and the Gurdwaras from which the Panth has been separated

[AI] The fact that the Ardas’s middle section has demonstrably grown over time — that specific martyrs and specific events have been added as history produced them — is not a weakness of the Ardas as a liturgical document. It is its most important feature: the prayer is designed to absorb history. It is a living archive. Its growth is not corruption; it is the natural function of a document whose purpose is to hold the Panth’s memory permanently before the Divine.

IX. THE TWO GHALUGHARAS: WHEN THE ARDAS WAS WRITTEN IN BLOOD

IX.1 The Chhota Ghallughar — February 1746

The Chhota Ghallughar (the Small Holocaust) took place in February 1746. Yahiya Khan, the new Mughal Governor of Lahore following Zakariya Khan’s death, and his Diwan (Finance Minister) Lakhpat Rai organized a campaign to destroy the Sikh Panth. Lakhpat Rai’s personal motivation was the death of his brother Jaspat Rai in a skirmish with Sikh forces.

The campaign was methodically organized. Sikh communities were tracked through informers. The Sikh Dal (combined force) was pursued into the hills and marshes north of the Punjab plains. In a series of engagements near the Kahnuwan area of what is now the Gurdaspur district, Mughal forces killed an estimated ten thousand to thirty thousand Sikhs — including large numbers of non-combatants who had sought refuge alongside the Khalsa warriors.

Lakhpat Rai reportedly declared that anyone who harbored a Sikh would be executed, that the mere sound of the Guru’s prayer was to be punished, and that the very mention of the Guru’s name was to be treated as a capital offense.

ਪੰਥ ਨੇ ਜਵਾਬ ਦਿੱਤਾ। ਪੰਥ ਅਰਦਾਸ ਵਿੱਚ ਇਸਨੂੰ ਯਾਦ ਕਰਦਾ ਹੈ।
The Panth answered. The Panth remembers this in the Ardas.

The Ardas does not remember the Chhota Ghallughar as a defeat. It remembers it as a chapter in the Panth’s history — neither sanitized nor dwelt upon for self-pity, but named, placed before Waheguru, and followed by ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ. This is the Ardas’s most psychologically sophisticated feature: it refuses both denial and despair.

IX.2 The Vadda Ghallughar — February 1762

The Vadda Ghallughar (the Large Holocaust) took place on February 5, 1762. Ahmad Shah Durrani (Abdali), on his sixth invasion of India, received intelligence that the combined Sikh Dal Khalsa — estimated at some forty to fifty thousand fighting Sikhs — was in the middle of escorting a civilian column of approximately fifty thousand non-combatants (women, children, elderly, and families seeking safety) across the Punjab plains.

Durrani attacked the combined force while it was encumbered by the civilians. The battle — if it can be called a battle — was a catastrophe. The Sikh warriors fought a desperate rear-guard action while the civilians tried to escape. An estimated twenty to thirty thousand Sikhs were killed that day — combatants and civilians together. Among the dead were thousands of women and children.

What happened immediately afterward defines the Ardas’s relationship to catastrophe more powerfully than any theological argument could. The surviving Sikhs did not disband. They did not surrender. Within months, they had regrouped, returned to Amritsar, celebrated the Holi festival that had been interrupted by the massacre, and retaken the Golden Temple from Afghan control.

The Ardas recorded the Vadda Ghallughar. The Panth continued. And the Ardas’s record of the Ghallughar served not to commemorate defeat but to establish the theological claim that the Panth’s survival was itself an act of divine grace — that ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ was not a slogan but a fact of Sikh history.

X. THE ARDAS AS MODIFIED DOCUMENT: WHAT HAS BEEN ADDED, CHANGED, AND CONTESTED

X.1 The Couplets Added After Khalsa Formation: A Systematic Analysis

[DA/AI] The following elements of the current Ardas were demonstrably not part of any original formulation from Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s period and were added in subsequent centuries:

The specific references to Bhai Mani Singh Ji and his method of execution — these could not have been part of any Ardas composed before 1737, when Bhai Mani Singh Ji was martyred.

The specific references to the Chhota Ghallughar — these were added after 1746.

The specific references to the Vadda Ghallughar — these were added after 1762.

The references to Baba Deep Singh Ji’s martyrdom at Amritsar (1757) — added after that event.

The references to the five Takhts in their current formulation — the specific naming of all five Takhts reflects the institutional development of the Panth’s authority structure after the Guru period.

The specific reference to Sri Nankana Sahib and the Gurdwaras from which the Panth has been separated — this was definitively added after 1947. The reference to Nankana Sahib being separated from the Panth makes no sense before the Pakistan-India Partition. This is the most easily dateable addition to the Ardas, and it is confirmed by documentary evidence.

[AI] What do these additions reveal? They reveal that the Ardas’s middle section has always been understood as a living document — a record that grows as history demands. They also reveal that the SGPC and the Akal Takht, as the institutional bodies responsible for the Ardas’s standard form, have exercised the authority to incorporate new historical references when the Panth’s collective judgment determined that such incorporation was appropriate.

The question this raises is obvious: what criterion determines when a historical event is significant enough to enter the Ardas’s permanent record? The precedent established by the additions above suggests the criterion is: mass martyrdom of Sikhs specifically for their faith or their institutional commitment, at a scale that the Panth recognizes as constituting a collective historical wound.

By this criterion, the events of June 1984 (the assault on the Golden Temple and the killing of thousands of Sikh pilgrims and residents), November 1984 (the organized massacre of Sikh civilians across North India), and the Punjab counterinsurgency’s 2,097 confirmed illegal cremations would appear to meet the historical threshold. Whether they will be formally incorporated into the Ardas’s middle section remains the most consequential unresolved liturgical question in contemporary Sikh institutional life.

X.2 The Line That Was Never Meant to Remain Temporary: The Nankana Sahib Clause

The most recent addition to the Ardas’s standardized text — the reference to Sri Nankana Sahib and the Gurdwaras from which the Panth has been separated — was added after 1947 as a temporary reference to a temporary situation. The hope at the time was that the political circumstances of Partition would be resolved and that Sikhs would regain access to their historic shrines in the Pakistan portion of Punjab.

Seventy-seven years later, the clause remains. Sri Nankana Sahib — the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev Ji — remains separated from the majority of the Sikh Panth by an international border. The clause has transitioned from a temporary petition to a permanent statement of a wound that has not healed.

ਜੋ ਧਰਤੀ ਸਰੀਰਕ ਤੌਰ ਤੇ ਵਿਛੁੜ ਗਈ, ਅਰਦਾਸ ਨੇ ਉਸਨੂੰ ਰੂਹਾਨੀ ਤੌਰ ਤੇ ਜੋੜਿਆ ਰੱਖਿਆ।
The land that was physically separated, the Ardas kept it spiritually connected.

Every Sikh child who hears the Ardas learns that the Sikh map is not the map of any nation-state. The Sikh map is the map of Guru memory.

XI. THE SINGH SABHA AND THE STANDARDIZATION CONTROVERSY

XI.1 The Colonial Crisis That Made Standardization Necessary

By the second half of the nineteenth century, the Sikh Panth faced what is best described as an identity crisis of civilizational proportions. British colonial administration had brought with it three simultaneous threats to Sikh distinctiveness:

First, Christian missionary activity, organized and well-funded, targeting Sikh youth through schools that provided education only at the price of exposure to Christian theological arguments. The missionaries argued — not without some textual basis — that the Sikh Gurus’ use of devotional language shared with Hindu traditions indicated a fundamental continuity between Sikhism and Hinduism.

Second, the Arya Samaj, founded by Swami Dayananda Saraswati in 1875, advanced the position that Sikhism was not a distinct religious tradition but a sect of Hinduism — that the Sikh Gurus were Hindu reformers, not founders of a new religious civilization, and that Sikhs were therefore Hindus who had been temporarily misled by sectarian enthusiasm. This argument was directed at the educated Sikh middle class with considerable sophistication.

Third, the colonial administrative categories that organized the Indian population for census, legal, and governance purposes frequently classified Sikhs as a subset of Hindus, erasing the theological and institutional distinctiveness that the Gurus had worked for two centuries to establish.

The Singh Sabha movement’s institutional response was threefold: scholarly (producing authoritative Sikh texts and commentaries that demonstrated the tradition’s theological distinctiveness), educational (establishing Khalsa schools and colleges that transmitted Sikh knowledge without missionary preconditions), and liturgical (standardizing Sikh prayer practices in a form that was unambiguously and distinctively Sikh).

Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha’s Hum Hindu Nahin (We Are Not Hindus, 1899) was the most direct statement of the Singh Sabha’s identity project. Its argument was not merely sociological. It was theological: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of the formless One (ਨਿਰੰਕਾਰ), its rejection of caste hierarchy, its rejection of goddess worship, its rejection of idol worship, its rejection of the avatar doctrine — these are not modifications of Hinduism. They are rejections of foundational Hindu theological claims.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji provides the basis for this argument:

ਨਾ ਹਮ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ॥
ਅਲਹ ਰਾਮ ਕੇ ਪਿੰਡੁ ਪਰਾਨ॥

I am not a Hindu, nor am I a Muslim.
My body and breath of life belong to Allah and to Ram (both names of the One God).
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1136)

This verse — from Bhagat Kabir, included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — explicitly claims a position outside both Hindu and Muslim religious categories. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s inclusion of this verse, alongside the Gurus’ own compositions that make similar claims, establishes the tradition’s self-understanding as transcending the existing religious categories rather than being a subset of any of them.

XI.2 The SGPC and the 1945 Sikh Rehat Maryada

The Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee was established on December 15–16, 1920, following the Akali movement’s successful campaign to wrest control of historic Sikh shrines from the hereditary Mahant system. The Sikh Gurdwaras Act of 1925 gave the SGPC statutory authority over Sikh institutions in Punjab. The SGPC’s mandate included the standardization of Sikh religious practice.

The Sikh Rehat Maryada — the comprehensive Code of Conduct — was drafted beginning in 1931 and approved in 1945 after extensive consultation with Sikh scholars, Gurdwara management bodies, and theological authorities across Punjab and the diaspora. Its treatment of the Ardas established the definitive standard that remains in effect today.

The Rehat Maryada specifies: the Ardas must begin with the fixed text of Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki. The historical middle section must include all specified categories. The personal petition may be inserted at the appropriate point. The closing must include the specific ending verses including ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ / ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ.

The Rehat Maryada also specifies the physical posture, the role of the Ardas-reader, and the congregation’s response. This standardization was essential for a globally dispersed community — it ensures that the Ardas recited in Amritsar and the Ardas recited in Toronto are recognizably the same prayer, despite the vast differences in language, culture, and historical circumstance of the communities reciting it.

PART FOUR: THE DOHA — TEXT, PLACEMENT, AND THE AUTHORSHIP CONTROVERSY

XII. “DEH SIVA BAR MOHE IHAI”: THE PRAYER BEYOND THE PRAYER

XII.1 The Text and Its Translation

After the formal conclusion of the standardized Ardas — after the ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ / ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — many gurdwaras and Sikh institutions recite a four-line verse that has become, for many Sikhs worldwide, as familiar and as emotionally resonant as any portion of the formal Ardas. This verse is known by its opening words: ਦੇਹ ਸਿਵਾ ਬਰੁ ਮੋਹਿ ਇਹੈ (Deh Siva Bar Mohi Ihai).

The verse reads in full:

ਦੇਹ ਸਿਵਾ ਬਰੁ ਮੋਹਿ ਇਹੈ ਸੁਭ ਕਰਮਨ ਤੇ ਕਭੁ ਨ ਟਰੌਂ॥
ਨ ਡਰੌਂ ਅਰਿ ਸੋ ਜਬ ਜਾਇ ਲਰੌਂ ਨਿਸਚੈ ਕਰਿ ਅਪਨੀ ਜੀਤ ਕਰੌਂ॥
ਅਰੁ ਸਿੱਖ ਹੌਂ ਆਪਨੇ ਹੀ ਮਨ ਕੌ ਇਹ ਲਾਲਚ ਹਉ ਗੁਨ ਤਉ ਉਚਰੌਂ॥
ਜਬ ਆਵ ਕੀ ਅਉਧ ਨਿਦਾਨ ਬਨੈ ਅਤਿ ਹੀ ਰਣ ਮੇ ਤਬ ਜੂਝ ਮਰੌਂ॥

The verse’s meaning:

Grant me this boon, O [Siva/Lord], that I never shrink from righteous action.
That I do not fear the enemy when I go to fight, and that with certainty I claim victory.
And teach my own mind this longing — that I ever sing Your virtues.
When my final hour comes to pass, may I die fighting in battle.

This is one of the most powerful verses in the Sikh martial tradition. Its four lines move through: the petition for courage in righteous action, the commitment to fearlessness in battle, the internal discipline of the mind singing God’s virtues, and the ultimate aspiration — to die not in illness or old age or retreat, but in the act of fighting for what is right.

XII.2 The Question of Source and Authorship

[DA] The verse “Deh Siva Bar Mohi Ihai” is attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji. It appears in the Nitnem collections published by the SGPC, the Damdami Taksal, and most major Sikh publishing houses as part of the Chaupai Sahib cluster or as a separate verse connected to the Ardas practice. Its appearance in the Dasam Granth has been claimed by scholars across the spectrum of Sikh theological debate.

However, the authorship question is complicated by several factors:

First: The language of the verse is Braj Bhasha — the literary language used by Guru Gobind Singh Ji and many of the poets in his court. This establishes consistency with the Guru’s period but does not distinguish between the Guru’s own compositions and those of his court poets, since all wrote in the same language.

Second: The verse’s placement in the Dasam Granth corpus is not uniform across all manuscript versions. Differences in manuscript traditions have made the precise attribution of individual verses in the Dasam Granth difficult to establish with documentary certainty.

Third: The verse invokes “Siva” (ਸਿਵਾ) — which immediately raises the same interpretive question as ਭਗਉਤੀ. Does ਸਿਵਾ refer to Shiva (the Hindu deity), or to God in a more general sense?

XII.3 The “Siva” Question: Evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses the name “Shiva” (ਸਿਵ/ਸ਼ਿਵ) in specific and revealing contexts:

ਸਿਵ ਸਕਤਿ ਆਪਿ ਉਪਾਇ ਕੈ ਕਰਤਾ ਆਪੇ ਹੁਕਮੁ ਵਰਤਾਏ॥

The Creator Himself, having created Shiva and Shakti, Himself distributes the Command.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 920)

In this verse, Shiva and Shakti are described as creations of the Creator — they are within the creation, not the Creator itself. They are subordinate to the Hukam (divine command). The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework clearly positions Shiva not as the Supreme Being but as one of the created forms within the creation.

[PF] Further:

ਬ੍ਰਹਮਾ ਬਿਸਨੁ ਮਹੇਸੁ ਕਹਾਏ ਸਭ ਮਾਇਆ ਮੋਹ ਵਿਕਾਰ॥

Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh (Shiva) — all are subject to the illusion, attachment, and corruption of Maya.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

This verse places the Hindu trinity — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva — within the framework of Maya (illusion and attachment). They are not the transcendent Divine; they are within the material/phenomenal world and subject to its conditions. This is a direct theological statement from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji that the worship of Shiva as the Supreme Being is inconsistent with Sikh theology.

[AI] Applying this evidence to the “Deh Siva” verse: if ਸਿਵਾ in the verse refers to Shiva as the Hindu deity, the verse is asking a being that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji places within Maya to grant a boon. This would be theologically inconsistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework.

The resolution commonly offered — and the most Gurmat-consistent reading — is that ਸਿਵਾ in this verse is being used in its Sanskrit etymological sense: from the root “śiva” meaning “auspicious,” “benevolent,” “propitious.” In this reading, “Deh Siva bar mohi” means “Grant me, O Auspicious One” — addressing the one Divine Being whose nature is auspicious — rather than specifically invoking the Hindu deity Shiva.

[AI] This interpretive resolution is identical in structure to the resolution for ਭਗਉਤੀ: the Sikh tradition, operating within the literary and linguistic tradition of medieval Punjab, uses Sanskrit terminology whose specific deity-associations it deconstructs through the theological framework of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The term is retained; the theology is transformed.

This pattern — using the vocabulary of the surrounding tradition while radically reorienting its theological content — is one of the most consistent features of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s engagement with the religious world it inhabited. It is not syncretism (combining incompatible theologies). It is transformation (taking existing linguistic material and reconstituting it within a new theological framework).

XII.4 The Doha’s Placement in the Ardas: An Institutional Question

[DA] The “Deh Siva” verse is not part of the Sikh Rehat Maryada’s standardized Ardas text. It is recited in many — perhaps most — gurdwaras after the formal Ardas concludes. But its placement and recitation status vary:

In some gurdwaras, it is recited by the Ardas-reader as part of the prayer session, between the formal Ardas and the Hukamnama.

In some gurdwaras, it is recited as a separate verse by the Kirtan jatha (musical group) in a melodic form.

In some gurdwaras, it is not recited at all, with the session moving directly from the Ardas to the Hukamnama.

[AI] The lack of standardization in the Doha’s placement reflects both its popularity and its ambiguous canonical status. It is not formally part of the Ardas. But for many Sikhs worldwide, the emotional experience of the prayer session is incomplete without it. The verse’s aspiration — to die in righteous battle rather than in retreat — has spoken with particular power to the Sikh communities that experienced 1984 and its aftermath.

The institutional question — whether the “Deh Siva” verse should be formally incorporated into the standardized Ardas or remain a supplementary practice — has not been formally resolved by the Akal Takht or the SGPC. It remains in the ambiguous space between established liturgy and beloved practice.

PART FIVE: THE LAST TWO PAGES OF THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI

XIII. THE MUNDAAVANI: THE SEAL OF THE SCRIPTURE

XIII.1 What the Mundaavani Says

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji — 1,430 pages (angs) in the standard printing — concludes on Ang 1429 with the Mundaavani, composed by Guru Arjan Dev Ji. The word ਮੁੰਦਾਵਣੀ (Mundaavani) comes from the root ਮੁੰਦਣਾ — to seal, to close, to secure. It is the scriptural seal: the verse that formally concludes and secures the contents of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

The Mundaavani reads:

ਥਾਲ ਵਿਚਿ ਤਿੰਨਿ ਵਸਤੂ ਪਈਓ ਸਤੁ ਸੰਤੋਖੁ ਵੀਚਾਰੋ॥
ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਨਾਮੁ ਠਾਕੁਰ ਕਾ ਪਇਓ ਜਿਸ ਕਾ ਸਭਸੁ ਅਧਾਰੋ॥
ਜੇ ਕੋ ਖਾਵੈ ਜੇ ਕੋ ਭੁੰਚੈ ਤਿਸ ਕਾ ਹੋਇ ਉਧਾਰੋ॥
ਏਹ ਵਸਤੁ ਤਜੀ ਨਹ ਜਾਈ ਨਿਤ ਨਿਤ ਰਖੁ ਉਰਿ ਧਾਰੋ॥
ਤਮ ਸੰਸਾਰੁ ਚਰਨ ਲਗਿ ਤਰੀਐ ਸਭੁ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਬ੍ਰਹਮੁ ਪਸਾਰੋ॥

On the plate, three things have been placed: truth, contentment, and contemplation.
The Ambrosial Naam of the Master has been placed on it — the foundation of all.
One who eats it, one who savors it — their salvation is assured.
This thing must not be abandoned; keep it ever enshrined within your heart.
The dark world-ocean is crossed by grasping the feet of the Lord; Nanak says, all is the expanse of the Brahm.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1429)

The Mundaavani is not merely a conclusion. It is a theological summary of everything the scripture contains: truth (ਸਤੁ), contentment (ਸੰਤੋਖੁ), and contemplation (ਵੀਚਾਰੋ) — and at the center of all of it, the Ambrosial Naam. The verse seals the scripture by summarizing its contents and affirming its sufficiency: whoever savors this, their liberation is assured.

Following the Mundaavani on Ang 1429, Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s Salok:

ਤੇਰਾ ਕੀਤਾ ਜਾਤੋ ਨਾਹੀ ਮੈਨੋ ਜੋਗੁ ਕੀਤੋਈ॥
ਮੈ ਨਿਰਗੁਣਿਆਰੇ ਕੂ ਕੋ ਗੁਣੁ ਨਾਹੀ ਆਪੇ ਤਰਸੁ ਪਇਓਈ॥
ਤਰਸੁ ਪਇਆ ਮਿਹਰਾਮਤਿ ਹੋਈ ਸਤਿਗੁਰੁ ਸਜਣੁ ਮਿਲਿਆ॥
ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮੁ ਮਿਲਿਆ ਤਾਂ ਜੀਵਾਂ ਤਨੁ ਮਨੁ ਥੀਵੈ ਹਰਿਆ॥

Your actions are not known to me; You have rendered me capable.
I am without virtue; I have no virtue at all. You Yourself took pity on me.
Pity arose, mercy was shown, and I met the True Guru as my Friend.
O Nanak, I have received the Naam; now I truly live, and my body and mind have become green and verdant.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1429)

This salok — the last composition of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji before the Raag Mala — is a prayer of the most humble kind: the acknowledgment that nothing was deserved, that everything came from divine grace. It is, appropriately, the last personal voice in the scripture before its formal conclusion.

The question that has occupied Sikh scholars for over a century: if the Mundaavani is the seal, and this salok is the final personal voice, what is the Raag Mala that follows on Ang 1430?

XIV. THE RAAG MALA: THE LAST PAGE AND ITS CONTROVERSY

XIV.1 What the Raag Mala Contains

The Raag Mala (ਰਾਗਮਾਲਾ — the garland/catalogue of ragas) occupies the last page (Ang 1430) of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. It is a list of musical ragas, organized by family, that enumerates the thirty-six ragas used in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji and identifies the subsidiary ragas (raginis) and children (putras) associated with each.

The Raag Mala begins:

ਰਾਗਮਾਲਾ

ਸ੍ਰੀ ਰਾਗੁ ਨੋ ਪੁਤ੍ਰ ਪੰਚ ਰਾਗਣੀ ਅਠਿ ਹਈ ਸੋਇ ਜਾਣੀਐ॥
ਪਹਿਲਾ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਰਾਗੁ ਮਾਲਕਉਸਕੀ ਗਉੜੀ ਆਸਾ ਗੁਜਰੀ ਮਾਣੀਐ॥

Sri Raga has nine sons and five raginis — know this to be so.
First is Sri Raga; Malkaus, Gauri, Asa, Gujri…

The Raag Mala continues in this taxonomic fashion, listing all the ragas in families and their relatives. It is a musicological text — a catalogue of the musical framework within which the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compositions are organized.

XIV.2 The Core of the Controversy

[DA] The Raag Mala controversy is one of the oldest and most persistent theological controversies within the Sikh Panth. Its essential structure is this:

The case against the Raag Mala’s status as authentic Gurbani:

First, the Mundaavani — the verse immediately preceding the Raag Mala — explicitly seals the scripture. If the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is sealed by the Mundaavani, what justification exists for text appearing after the seal? The Mundaavani calls the contents of the scripture “this thing that must not be abandoned” — implying that what is inside the seal is complete. If the Raag Mala comes after the seal, is it inside or outside the scripture?

Second, similar or identical Raag Mala lists appear in non-Sikh literary and musicological texts from the same period. The same taxonomic list of ragas, using the same “raga has X raginis and Y sons” format, appears in texts like the Hanuman Mat and other musicological treatises that predate the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compilation. This suggests that the Raag Mala may have been a standard musicological document of the period that was included in the manuscript as a reference — not as Gurbani.

Third, the Raag Mala does not read like Gurbani in terms of theological content. It is not a theological text. It contains no spiritual teaching, no invocation of the Divine, no ethical instruction. It is purely taxonomic — a list of musical categories. This absence of theological content stands in sharp contrast to every other composition in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

Fourth, the Raag Mala is not attributed to any Guru in the standard citation format used throughout the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, which consistently identifies the author of each composition (ਮਹਲਾ ੧, ਮਹਲਾ ੫, etc.) and its raga context.

The case for the Raag Mala’s inclusion in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

First, the Raag Mala appears in the original manuscripts of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, including the Kartarpuri Bir (the manuscript associated with the Guru’s period). Institutions associated with the Guru’s family line — the Sodhis of Kartarpur — have affirmed the Kartarpuri Bir’s inclusion of the Raag Mala.

Second, the Akal Takht’s Hukamnama and the SGPC’s official position is that the Raag Mala is part of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji and must be respected as such. The Sikh Rehat Maryada does not distinguish between the Raag Mala and any other portion of the scripture.

Third, the argument from the Mundaavani being a “seal” is textually complex. The Mundaavani may be understood as a seal in the sense of completion and sufficiency — not in the sense of a legal instrument that prevents any subsequent content. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s internal structure is not organized with the rigidity of a legal document.

[PM] The Panth is divided on the Raag Mala question. The Akhand Kirtani Jatha does not recite it as part of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The Damdami Taksal in its Nihang tradition and many mainstream Sikh institutions do recite it. The SGPC’s position is that it must be included.

[AI] The forensic analysis from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself suggests the following: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s internal standard for what constitutes Gurbani is clear — it must carry theological content, it must be attributed to an author (in the scripture’s standard format), and it must be consistent with the tradition’s fundamental teachings. The Raag Mala meets none of these criteria. It has no theological content. It carries no author attribution in the standard format. And the taxonomic list of ragas it contains appears in identical form in non-Sikh musicological texts.

This analysis, if accepted, would suggest that the Raag Mala was included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji manuscript as a musicological reference — a practical guide to the raga structure used in the scripture — without being itself a composition of Gurbani status. Its placement after the Mundaavani (the seal) would then be consistent with its function: it is not inside the sealed scripture; it is a reference attached to the outside.

[DA] This analysis remains contested. The institutional position of the SGPC is clear and must be acknowledged as such. The theological analysis offered above is this article’s own reading from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidentiary framework, not an authoritative ruling.

PART SIX: THE COURT OF GURU GOBIND SINGH JI AND THE LITERARY PRODUCTION OF THE DASAM GRANTH ERA

XV. THE FIFTY-TWO POETS: THE GURU’S LITERARY COURT

XV.1 Anandpur Sahib as a Center of Sanskrit and Persian Learning

The court of Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Anandpur Sahib was one of the most remarkable literary and intellectual centers in the Punjab of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Guru was himself a scholar of extraordinary range — fluent in Punjabi, Braj Bhasha, Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic. His own compositions span multiple languages and multiple literary traditions.

But the Guru did not work alone. He assembled around him a group of scholars and poets — traditionally enumerated as fifty-two, though the historical record suggests the actual number varied — who composed, translated, and discussed texts from the entire spectrum of South Asian literary tradition. These poets came from multiple religious backgrounds: Brahmin pandits, Muslim scholars, and Sikh devotees. Together, they created what is best described as a center of comparative literary scholarship in which the traditions of the subcontinent were studied, translated, and engaged.

[PF/DA] The poets traditionally associated with Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s court include figures such as Bhai Nand Lal Goya (who wrote in Persian and whose compositions are part of the Nitnem in some traditions), Bhai Mani Singh Ji, Bhai Gurbaksh Singh, Sainapati (author of the Gur Sobha, one of the earliest biographical texts about Guru Gobind Singh Ji), and numerous Sanskrit pandits whose names appear in the colophons of translations of Sanskrit texts that the Guru’s court produced.

The Dasam Granth — the body of writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji — was compiled after the Guru’s passing by Bhai Mani Singh Ji, who gathered compositions from multiple sources. This compilation context is critical for the authorship questions we will examine below.

XV.2 What the Guru Produced: The Range of the Dasam Granth Corpus

The writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji span an extraordinary range:

Theological compositions — including Jaap Sahib (a meditation on the divine attributes using names from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and Punjabi traditions), Tav-Prasad Savvaiye (a meditation on the impermanence of all things except Naam), and Chaupai Sahib (a prayer for protection).

Martial narratives — including the Chandi Di Var, Chandi Charitra 1 and 2, which retell the Sanskrit story of the goddess Chandi’s battles with demons in a martial Punjabi poetic register.

The Avatar narratives — including the Chaubis Avtar (the stories of 24 Hindu avatars), Brahm Avtar, and Rudra Avtar.

Autobiographical compositions — including the Bachitar Natak (literally the “Wondrous Drama,” an autobiographical poem that describes the Guru’s lineage, his mission, and the military engagements of his early period).

Personal devotional compositions — including Sabad Hazare Patisahi 10, devotional poems that are among the most personally intimate compositions attributed to the Guru.

The Zafarnama — the Epistle of Victory, a letter in Persian composed by Guru Gobind Singh Ji to Emperor Aurangzeb after the events of Chamkaur and Sirhind, combining theological argument, historical grievance, and personal condemnation of the Emperor’s violation of his sworn oath.

The Triya Charitar (Charitropakhyan) — 404 tales of women’s cunning, deception, and sexuality, framed as stories told by a counselor to a king. This section is the most controversial in the entire Dasam Granth.

The Hikayats — Persian-language stories, some of erotic and violent content.

[DA] Whether all of these compositions are personally authored by Guru Gobind Singh Ji, or whether some were composed by court poets and collected under the Guru’s name, or whether some were translated or adapted from Sanskrit/Persian originals by the court’s scholars, is the central question in Dasam Granth scholarship.

XVI. THE ZAFARNAMA: THE LETTER THAT CONDEMNS AN EMPEROR

XVI.1 Historical Context

The Zafarnama (ਜ਼ਫ਼ਰਨਾਮਾ — Epistle of Victory) was composed by Guru Gobind Singh Ji in Persian, addressed to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, sometime in 1705 or 1706, following the most devastating sequence of losses in the Guru’s life: the siege and abandonment of Anandpur Sahib, the battle of Chamkaur where two of his sons died, the martyrdom of the two younger Sahibzade at Sirhind, and the dispersal of the Khalsa across the Punjab.

The historical background: at the siege of Anandpur Sahib, the Mughal commanders (and their allied Sikh hill-chieftain allies) had offered the Guru and his Khalsa safe passage if they evacuated the fort. The Guru accepted this offer, trusting an oath sworn on the Quran by the Muslim commanders. When the Guru’s forces left the fort in the cover of night, the Mughal forces attacked — violating the sworn oath. This betrayal — the breaking of an oath sworn on the Quran — is the central charge the Zafarnama makes against the Emperor personally.

XVI.2 The Content of the Zafarnama

The Zafarnama is composed in the qasida (Persian verse epistle) tradition, which was the appropriate literary form for a formal communication between rulers or between a subject and a sovereign. Its literary quality is extraordinarily high — the Persian scholars of the period who encountered it recognized it as a masterpiece of the form.

The Zafarnama makes the following arguments, in roughly this sequence:

The theological argument: God is the supreme sovereign; all earthly kings are accountable to God; Aurangzeb has violated the divine law by permitting the breaking of oaths and the killing of the innocent.

The evidentiary argument: What the Mughal commanders did at Anandpur — breaking an oath sworn on the Quran — is documented. The Emperor cannot claim ignorance. If he claims ignorance, he must investigate. If he investigates, he will find the truth.

The moral challenge: Guru Gobind Singh Ji explicitly states that he is not defeated. He has escaped with a few Sikhs; he will gather more. The Emperor has a vast army and yet could not extinguish a small force because God’s protection is with those who fight for righteousness.

The direct personal condemnation: Aurangzeb is condemned not as a Mughal or as a Muslim but as an individual who has violated his own professed faith. The Guru challenges the Emperor to a direct meeting — man to man, sovereign to sovereign — to settle the dispute through dialogue.

[PF] The Zafarnama’s most famous verse:

ਚੂ ਕਾਰ ਅਜ਼ ਹਮਹ ਹੀਲਤੇ ਦਰ ਗੁਜ਼ਸ਼ਤ॥
ਹਲਾਲ ਅਸਤ ਬੁਰਦਨ ਬ ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ੀਰ ਦਸਤ॥

When all other means have been exhausted,
It is righteous to raise the sword in hand.

This verse — in Persian, from the letter the Guru sent to the most powerful monarch in South Asia — is the Sikh principle of justified armed resistance in its most historically grounded form. It is not bravado. It is the conclusion of a theological argument: other means have been tried (negotiation, legal complaint, petitions, prayers for peace). When all of these have failed, and when the oppressor continues to violate the divine law, the sword is not merely permitted — it is the righteous response.

The Zafarnama’s unambiguous authenticity — as a letter from Guru Gobind Singh Ji to Aurangzeb, composed in Persian, delivered through Bhai Daya Singh and Bhai Dharam Singh — makes it the most clearly attributable major composition in the entire Dasam Granth corpus. Its literary voice, its theological content, its historical context, and its Persian scholarship are consistent with everything known about the Guru’s education and character.

[AI] The Zafarnama is, in this sense, the evidentiary anchor for any assessment of the Dasam Granth. Where other portions of the Dasam Granth raise authorship questions, the Zafarnama establishes what Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s voice actually sounds like in composition: theologically precise, personally courageous, intellectually rigorous, and morally uncompromising. It is the standard against which other attributed compositions can be measured.

PART SEVEN: THE DASAM GRANTH — WHAT CAN BE RECONCILED AND WHAT CANNOT

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ
Before the Gurshabad, the nameless dead.

[Editorial note: The article shifts here from the historical/witness register to the forensic analysis register. The editorial phrase shifts accordingly.]

XVII. THE DASAM GRANTH: OVERVIEW AND INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

XVII.1 What the Dasam Granth Is and How It Was Compiled

The Dasam Granth (ਦਸਮ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ — the Book of the Tenth King) is a collection of writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth Sikh Guru. It was compiled by Bhai Mani Singh Ji at Amritsar, approximately between 1711 and 1734, following Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s passing at Nanded in 1708.

[PF] The historical record establishes: Guru Gobind Singh Ji did not personally compile the Dasam Granth. Unlike the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — which Guru Arjan Dev Ji compiled and authenticated during his own lifetime, and which Guru Gobind Singh Ji augmented with the compositions of Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji and installed as the eternal Guru before his own passing — the Dasam Granth was compiled posthumously by a devotee, however senior and trusted.

This is not a minor distinction. It is the most fundamental structural difference between the two scriptures, and it is the basis for the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s canonical supremacy over the Dasam Granth within the Sikh theological framework.

[DA] Bhai Mani Singh Ji gathered the compositions from multiple sources — manuscripts that had survived the dispersal from Anandpur Sahib, compositions carried by the Guru’s court scholars, writings preserved in different forms by different segments of the Sikh community. The process of gathering was necessarily imperfect: some compositions may have been attributed to the Guru when they were actually composed by court poets. Some compositions may have been excluded. Some may have been included from non-Guru sources by error or by the inclusion of documents the Guru had commissioned but not personally authored.

[DA] The question of which specific portions of the Dasam Granth are personally authored by Guru Gobind Singh Ji, which were composed by court poets, and which represent translations or adaptations of Sanskrit and Persian texts by the court’s scholars, cannot be definitively answered from the existing historical evidence alone. The manuscript tradition of the Dasam Granth is complex, with different versions containing different compositions in different orders.

What can be said is this: the Dasam Granth’s compilation history is significantly more complex than the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compilation history, and this complexity is itself relevant to how the Dasam Granth should be positioned within the Sikh theological framework.

XVII.2 The Accepted Compositions: What the Panth Uses and Why

Within the Dasam Granth’s diverse corpus, certain compositions have been accepted into mainstream Sikh practice with near-universal consensus:

Jaap Sahib — the morning prayer that is part of the Nitnem. Its meditation on the divine attributes across multiple linguistic traditions (Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Punjabi) is consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework of the one Formless Divine (ਨਿਰੰਕਾਰ) who has infinite attributes but no specific form.

Tav-Prasad Savvaiye — the four-verse meditation on the impermanence of external religious practice without interior devotion. This composition is fully consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s critique of ritualism.

Chaupai Sahib — the prayer for protection. Its theology of the devotee’s complete dependence on God for protection is fully consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework.

Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki (Chandi Di Var) — the opening composition from which the Ardas’s first section is drawn. As discussed above, this composition’s use of Chandi imagery as a literary vehicle for the theology of divine justice, transformed through the Sikh theological framework, is the mainstream interpretation.

Khalsa Mahima — the hymn of praise of the Khalsa. Its theology of the Khalsa as the community of the Guru’s own is fully consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework.

The Zafarnama — as established above, this is the most clearly attributable major composition in the Dasam Granth.

The Bachitar Natak — the autobiographical poem. This composition contains significant historical information about the Guru’s lineage, early life, and the events at Anandpur Sahib. Its theological framework is largely consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, though scholars debate specific sections.

[PM] These compositions are used in the Nitnem, in the Amrit Sanchar ceremony, and in Sikh liturgical practice with the endorsement of the Akal Takht and the SGPC.

XVIII. THE CHAUBIS AVTAR: THE AVATAR QUESTION AND THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI’S TESTIMONY

XVIII.1 What the Chaubis Avtar Contains

The Chaubis Avtar (ਚੌਬੀਸ ਅਵਤਾਰ — the Twenty-Four Avatars) is a major composition in the Dasam Granth that retells the stories of the twenty-four avatars of Vishnu recognized in the Hindu tradition. The compositions use Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s characteristically martial literary style, but the content is drawn from the Sanskrit Puranic tradition.

The composition includes the Ram Avtar — a retelling of the Ramayana narrative; the Krishna Avtar — a retelling of the Krishna Purana narrative, including the Mahabharata context; and twenty-two other avatar narratives. The Krishna Avtar, at approximately 2,492 verses, is the longest composition in the Dasam Granth.

[DA] The question this composition raises, when evaluated from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework: does the extensive literary retelling of avatar stories imply an endorsement of the avatar doctrine — the Hindu theological claim that the supreme Divine periodically incarnates in human or animal form to restore dharma?

XVIII.2 The Guru Granth Sahib Ji on the Avatar Doctrine

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji addresses the avatar doctrine in multiple compositions. The most direct evidence:

ਕਵਣੁ ਸੁ ਵੇਲਾ ਵਖਤੁ ਕਵਣੁ ਕਵਣ ਥਿਤਿ ਕਵਣੁ ਵਾਰੁ॥
ਕਵਣਿ ਸਿ ਰੁਤੀ ਮਾਹੁ ਕਵਣੁ ਜਿਤੁ ਹੋਆ ਆਕਾਰੁ॥

What was that time, what was that moment, what was that day, what was that date?
What was that season, what was that month, when the creation came into being?
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Japji Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 4)

This verse is addressed to the theological framework that assigns specific times, dates, and forms to divine action — the same framework that supports the avatar doctrine. The Guru’s response: no one knows. The Divine’s action is beyond the human capacity to schedule, categorize, or periodize.

[PF] More directly:

ਅਵਤਰਿ ਆਇ ਕਹਾ ਤੁਮ ਕੀਨੋ॥
ਕਵਨ ਜਨਮੁ ਅਪਨੇ ਸਿਰਿ ਲੀਨੋ॥

What have you accomplished by taking avatars?
What birth have you taken upon your own head?
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Bhagat Kabir — included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — challenges the avatar doctrine directly: what has been accomplished through all these incarnations? The implicit answer is: nothing that required God to take a specific form to achieve. The Formless One does not need to become form to act in the world.

[PF] Further from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, regarding the limits of Ram and Krishna specifically:

ਰਾਮੁ ਰਾਮੁ ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਕਹੈ ਕਹਿਐ ਰਾਮੁ ਨ ਹੋਇ॥
ਗੁਰ ਪਰਸਾਦੀ ਰਾਮੁ ਮਨਿ ਵਸੈ ਤਾ ਫਲੁ ਪਾਵੈ ਕੋਇ॥

Everyone says Ram, Ram; but by merely saying Ram, Ram, Ram is not attained.
By the Guru’s grace, when Ram dwells in the mind, then someone receives the fruit.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 491)

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji here distinguishes between the mechanical repetition of the name “Ram” (which accomplishes nothing) and the genuine interior dwelling of the divine Ram in the mind (which is liberation). The historical avatar Ram — the warrior king of the Ramayana — is not the subject of this verse. The subject is the divine Name, which transcends all historical figures.

[PF] Bhagat Kabir, in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, makes the most explicit separation:

ਕਬੀਰ ਰਾਮੁ ਕਹਨ ਮਹਿ ਭੇਦੁ ਹੈ ਤਾ ਮਹਿ ਏਕੁ ਬਿਚਾਰੁ॥
ਸੋਈ ਰਾਮੁ ਸਭੈ ਕਹਹਿ ਸੋਈ ਕਉਤਕਹਾਰੁ॥

O Kabir, there is a distinction in saying Ram; reflect on this one thing.
All say the same Ram, but that same Ram is merely a performer of miracles.
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1374)

Kabir explicitly calls the historical avatar Ram a “performer of miracles” (ਕਉਤਕਹਾਰੁ) — a somewhat dismissive characterization that clearly distinguishes the historical figure from the divine Name. The Ram worth contemplating is not the historical warrior king but the divine Name that pervades all of existence.

[AI] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji evidence on the avatar doctrine is clear in its framework: the Divine does not incarnate in specific historical forms; the avatar stories, when used as religious practice, mistake the literary figure for the Divine reality; and the only Ram or Krishna worth meditating on is the Name of the One Divine, not any specific historical or mythological figure.

If this framework is the standard, the Chaubis Avtar’s extensive and detailed retelling of avatar stories presents a theological challenge. The Dasam Granth’s Ram Avtar and Krishna Avtar present these figures as heroic, in some cases as divinely inspired leaders — which, depending on interpretation, could be read as an endorsement of the avatar theology the Guru Granth Sahib Ji implicitly critiques.

[AI] The resolution offered by those who defend the Chaubis Avtar’s place in the Dasam Granth is the same as for the Bhagauti question: Guru Gobind Singh Ji used the literary form of the avatar narrative while transforming its theological content, emphasizing the human heroism and moral lessons of the stories rather than the metaphysical claim of divine incarnation. This is a legitimate interpretation. But it requires a degree of sophisticated contextual reading that may not be accessible to every reader — and the risk of misreading the avatar stories as endorsements of avatar theology is real.

[DA] The institutional resolution of this question remains incomplete. The Chaubis Avtar is part of the Dasam Granth. The Akal Takht has not ruled that it is incompatible with Sikh theology. But neither has it been incorporated into mainstream Sikh liturgical practice in the way that the Nitnem compositions have been.

XIX. THE TRIYA CHARITAR: THE MOST CONTESTED SECTION OF THE DASAM GRANTH

XIX.1 What the Triya Charitar Contains

The Triya Charitar (ਤ੍ਰਿਆ ਚਰਿਤ੍ਰ — the stratagems/wiles of women) is also known as Charitropakhyan (ਚਰਿਤ੍ਰੋਪਾਖਿਆਨ). It is the largest single composition in the Dasam Granth, comprising 404 tales framed within a narrative structure in which a counselor tells a king stories of women’s cunning, deception, and manipulation of men.

The tales range from morality stories and cautionary narratives to explicitly erotic descriptions of sexual encounters and detailed depictions of women’s capacity for deception. The overall framing is decidedly negative toward women: the collection presents female sexuality and female intelligence as threats to male virtue and social order.

The Triya Charitar derives from the Sanskrit literary tradition of the Kathasaritsagara (“Ocean of Story-Streams”), the Panchatantra, the Sukasaptati (the Parrot’s 70 Tales), and similar collections of didactic and entertainment literature in which similar tales of women’s cunning appear. It is part of an established Sanskrit literary genre, not an original invention.

[DA] The claim that Guru Gobind Singh Ji personally authored all 404 tales of the Triya Charitar is disputed by a significant portion of Sikh scholarship. The alternative explanation — that the court’s scholars translated and adapted these Sanskrit tales, that the Guru commissioned the work as part of his court’s comparative literary project, and that Bhai Mani Singh Ji included the translated tales in the Dasam Granth compilation — is widely held among scholars who accept the Dasam Granth’s overall authenticity while questioning specific portions.

[DA] A further alternative: that the Triya Charitar was inserted into the Dasam Granth compilation by later copyists, erroneously or deliberately, and that it has no genuine connection to Guru Gobind Singh Ji at all.

XIX.2 The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s Evidence: Women in the Sikh Theological Framework

This section applies the critical methodological constraint: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji alone is the evidentiary standard for evaluating the Triya Charitar’s theological compatibility with the Sikh tradition. No external feminist theory, no Western academic framework, and no appeal to contemporary social values is used. Only the Guru Granth Sahib Ji speaks.

[PF] The most foundational evidence: Guru Nanak Dev Ji on women:

ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਨਿੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਮੰਗਣੁ ਵੀਆਹੁ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੋਵੈ ਦੋਸਤੀ ਭੰਡਹੁ ਚਲੈ ਰਾਹੁ॥
ਭੰਡੁ ਮੁਆ ਭੰਡੁ ਭਾਲੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਬੰਧਾਨੁ॥
ਸੋ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਜਾਨ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੀ ਭੰਡੁ ਊਪਜੈ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਝੁ ਨ ਕੋਇ॥
ਨਾਨਕ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਹਰਾ ਏਕੋ ਸਚਾ ਸੋਇ॥

From woman we are born, in woman we are conceived; to woman we are engaged, to woman we are married.
From woman come friendships; through woman the journey of life is made.
When a woman dies, another woman is sought; through woman does the bond of family exist.
Why call her inferior, from whom kings are born?
From woman comes another woman; without woman there would be none.
O Nanak, only the True One is without a woman.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 473)

This is among the most cited verses in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji on the subject of women. Its theological argument is systematically constructed: women are the source of all human life, including the kings and rulers who govern. To call women inferior is therefore a logical as well as a moral contradiction. And the final verse establishes the theological framework: only the One True Divine (ਸਚਾ) is without a woman — meaning that women are constitutive of all human existence, and any theology or practice that treats them as inherently inferior or dangerous contradicts the Divine’s own creation.

[PF] Further from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

ਮਾਂ ਬਾਪ ਕੀ ਸੇਵਾ ਸੰਤੋਖ ਸੁਖ ਪਾਵਤੇ॥

By serving one’s mother and father, contentment and peace are found.

The mother is placed at the center of the devotee’s service obligation. The concept of seva (service) — one of the three foundational practices of the Sikh tradition alongside Naam Simran and Vand Chakna — includes and begins with service to one’s mother. This is not compatible with a theological framework that portrays women as inherently deceptive and dangerous.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji on the body — including the gendered body:

ਇਸੁ ਦੇਹੀ ਅੰਦਰਿ ਸਭ ਵਸਤੁ ਹੈ ਬਾਹਰਿ ਕਿਛੂ ਨ ਜਾਈ॥

Within this body are all things; nothing exists outside it.

The body — including the female body — is understood in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the vessel within which the divine truth resides. There is no inherent spiritual inferiority of the female body. There is no claim that female sexuality is a trap, a deception, or a corruption of male virtue. The divine light pervades all bodies equally.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji on the equality of all devotees before God:

ਜਿਥੈ ਬੋਲਣਿ ਹਾਰੀਐ ਤਿਥੈ ਚੰਗੀ ਚੁਪ॥

And more directly:

ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਊਚਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਨੀਚੁ ਨ ਦੀਸੈ ਕੋਇ॥

Call everyone exalted; no one appears low.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

[AI] The forensic analysis: The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of women is unambiguous. It establishes:

1. Women are the source of all human life, including the kings and leaders who govern (Ang 473 — proven finding).
2. Service to one’s mother is a foundational religious obligation.
3. The divine light resides equally in all bodies, without distinction of gender.
4. All human beings are to be regarded as exalted; no one is to be regarded as inherently inferior.

The Triya Charitar’s framework — 404 stories in which women are portrayed as inherently cunning, deceptive, and sexually dangerous — is directly incompatible with this theology. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji asks: “Why call her inferior, from whom kings are born?” The Triya Charitar answers that very question with 404 stories about why women are dangerous.

The incompatibility is not one of tone or emphasis. It is structural. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes a theological framework in which women are equal participants in the divine order. The Triya Charitar establishes a literary framework in which women’s intelligence is a threat to male virtue. These two frameworks cannot be reconciled.

[AI] From within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidentiary framework alone, the Triya Charitar cannot have been composed by the same theological mind that produced the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of women. Whether it was composed by the court poets rather than the Guru personally, or derived from Sanskrit sources, or added later — the evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes that its theological framework is inconsistent with the canonical Sikh standard.

[DA] This conclusion — that the Triya Charitar’s theology of women is incompatible with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology — does not require this article to rule on the Triya Charitar’s authorship. It requires only the application of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s standard. If a composition’s theological framework contradicts the Guru Granth Sahib Ji at a fundamental level, the composition cannot be treated as carrying the same authority as the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

[PM] The Akal Takht has not ruled that the Triya Charitar is inauthentic or should be excluded from the Dasam Granth. The Dasam Granth remains as a whole corpus within the Sikh literary heritage. But many Sikh scholars, institutions, and individual Sikhs have declined to treat the Triya Charitar as authoritative Sikh theological teaching, precisely on the grounds of its incompatibility with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology.

XX. THE CHANDI CHARITRA: LITERARY FORM AND THEOLOGICAL LIMITS

XX.1 What the Chandi Charitra Contains

The Dasam Granth contains two compositions on the Chandi theme: Chandi Charitra Ukti Bilas and Chandi Charitra (the second). Both are retellings of the Sanskrit Devi Mahatmya — the “Glory of the Goddess,” a Sanskrit text describing the Hindu goddess Chandi’s battles with demons. The Devi Mahatmya is one of the most important texts in the Hindu goddess-worship tradition; it is still recited at Navratri celebrations across South Asia.

The Dasam Granth’s Chandi compositions retell these narratives in the martial Braj Bhasha style of the Guru’s court poetry. They are among the most literarily accomplished compositions in the Dasam Granth, demonstrating a deep familiarity with both the Sanskrit source material and the Punjabi martial ballad tradition.

XX.2 The Theological Question: Applying the Guru Granth Sahib Ji Standard

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s position on goddess worship, as established earlier:

ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵਾ ਪੂਜੀਐ ਭਾਈ ਕਿਆ ਮਾਗਉ ਕਿਆ ਦੇਹਿ॥
O Brother, what is the use of worshipping gods and goddesses? What can they ask for, and what can they give?
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵ ਪਿਤਰ ਸਭਿ ਛੋਡੇ ਕਰਿ ਏਕੋ ਅਲਖੁ ਧਿਆਵੈ॥
Abandoning all gods, goddesses, and ancestors, one meditates on the One Invisible Lord.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

[AI] The Chandi Charitra presents a more complex case than the Triya Charitar. The Triya Charitar’s theological incompatibility with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is structural and direct — it contradicts the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of women at every level. The Chandi Charitra’s relationship with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology is more a question of literary function and interpretive framing.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own interpretive principle — established through Bhagat Kabir’s distinction between “Ram” as the Divine Name and “Ram” as the historical avatar — allows for the possibility that the Chandi Charitra uses the Chandi narrative as a literary vehicle for expressing truths about the divine power of justice without endorsing the goddess-worship theology of the original Sanskrit text.

But this interpretation requires sustained theological sophistication on the reader’s part. A reader who approaches the Chandi Charitra without the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s interpretive framework as a prior possession risks reading the composition as an endorsement of goddess worship — which the Guru Granth Sahib Ji explicitly rejects.

[DA] The institutional reality is that the Chandi compositions’ connection to the Ardas — through the Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki — gives them a practical importance that makes their theological evaluation directly relevant to every Sikh’s prayer practice. This is not an abstract scholarly question. It is a question that affects the Ardas recited at every Sikh gathering worldwide.

The answer from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is: the Chandi literary tradition can be used as a vehicle for Sikh theological expression (as Guru Gobind Singh Ji appears to have used it), but the vehicle must not be confused for the destination. The divine power of justice is real and is worth invoking. The Hindu goddess Chandi is not an object of Sikh worship. These two positions can coexist — but they require the reader to hold the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework as prior.

XXI. THE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION: WHO WROTE THE DASAM GRANTH?

XXI.1 The Fifty-Two Poets and the Attribution Problem

[DA] The most intellectually honest answer to the question “Who wrote the Dasam Granth?” is: Guru Gobind Singh Ji wrote some of it personally; his court’s scholars (the Fifty-Two Poets) wrote some of it under his direction or patronage; some of it is translated or adapted from Sanskrit and Persian sources by the court’s scholars; and the exact boundary between these categories cannot be definitively established from the current historical evidence.

This is not a comfortable answer. It satisfies neither those who accept the Dasam Granth in its entirety as Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s personal composition, nor those who reject the Dasam Granth in its entirety as a post-Guru interpolation. But it is the answer most consistent with the available historical evidence.

[PF] What the historical record establishes:

The Guru’s court at Anandpur Sahib included multiple scholars and poets. Bhai Nand Lal Goya (the Persian poet whose works are treasured in Sikh tradition) wrote in the Guru’s court. Sainapati wrote the Gur Sobha (a biography of the Guru) in the Guru’s court. The Brahmin scholar Kesar Singh Chibbar later recorded traditions about the Guru’s court poets.

[PF] What the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s internal evidence establishes about authorship standards:

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the most authorship-conscious scripture in the history of world religions. Every composition is attributed to its specific author in the standard citation format (ਮਹਲਾ ੧ = Guru Nanak, ਮਹਲਾ ੨ = Guru Angad, etc.). Compositions by non-Guru authors (Bhagats) are identified as such. Even the two Saloks added by Guru Gobind Singh Ji to the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (including the Mundaavani context) are specifically attributed.

The Dasam Granth’s compilation by Bhai Mani Singh Ji, working from dispersed manuscripts years after the Guru’s passing, did not apply this same authorship-consciousness systematically. The compositions are not consistently attributed within the text itself. This is the structural basis for the authorship debate.

[AI] The most defensible position, from within the Sikh theological framework established by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, is:

The compositions in the Dasam Granth that are theologically consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, that carry the voice and concerns established by the Zafarnama (the most unambiguously authentic major composition), and that have been accepted into Sikh liturgical practice with Akal Takht sanction — these can be accepted as carrying the Guru’s voice or the Guru’s direct sanction.

The compositions in the Dasam Granth that are theologically inconsistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — as established by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own evidence — cannot be attributed to the Guru’s personal theological voice without creating an internal contradiction in the Guru’s own thought. The most intellectually honest conclusion is that these portions were produced by the court’s scholars, translated or adapted from Sanskrit sources, and included in the Dasam Granth compilation either by error or as part of the Guru’s broader project of engaging the subcontinent’s literary traditions.

XXI.2 What Cannot Be Reconciled: The Definitive Analysis

[AI] Applying the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the sole evidentiary standard, the following cannot be reconciled:

Cannot be reconciled (from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence):

1. The Triya Charitar’s portrayal of women as inherently deceptive and sexually dangerous — contradicted directly by Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ (Ang 473) and the entire theological framework of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s equal-souls theology.
2. Any reading of the Chaubis Avtar that understands the historical avatars Ram and Krishna as divine incarnations worthy of worship — contradicted by Bhagat Kabir’s explicit distinction between Ram as Divine Name and Ram as “performer of wonders” (Ang 1374), and by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework that positions all named deities (including the Hindu trinity) within Maya.
3. Any invocation of the goddess Chandi as an independent divine being worthy of worship — contradicted by Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s explicit statement that worship of gods and goddesses is without benefit (Ang 637) and Guru Ram Das Ji’s directive to abandon goddess worship and meditate on the One (Guru Granth Sahib Ji).

Can be reconciled (from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence):

1. The use of the Chandi narrative as a literary vehicle for expressing the theology of divine justice — consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own practice of appropriating and transforming the vocabulary of surrounding religious traditions.
2. The use of the avatar narratives as a literary form for expressing heroic and moral content — consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s engagement with the devotional traditions of Bhagats like Namdev and Kabir who used Hindu names and forms while transforming their theological content.
3. The Zafarnama’s theology of justified resistance — entirely consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework of living within the Hukam while defending righteousness.
4. The accepted Nitnem compositions (Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, Chaupai Sahib) — all consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework.

[PM] This analysis does not constitute a ruling. The Akal Takht’s authority over Sikh liturgical practice and the definition of the canonical Sikh corpus is acknowledged. This article’s analysis from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own evidence is offered as a theological contribution to the ongoing Panthic discussion — not as a final determination of the Dasam Granth’s status.

PART EIGHT: THE GLOBAL SIKH AND THE FUTURE OF ARDAS

XXII. WHAT MUST NOT CHANGE

The analysis in this article — forensic, historical, and theological — leads to a set of conclusions about what in the Ardas must be preserved and what in the broader Sikh scriptural tradition must be held to the highest standard.

The Ardas’s fixed framework must be maintained: the theological opening invoking the divine power and the Guru lineage; the historical middle section that refuses to let the Panth forget what was done to its dead; the universal closing aspiration of ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ.

But the Ardas must not become a ritual formula disconnected from its meaning. The child in California who recites the Ardas must know what ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ means — must understand that this is not poetry, not metaphor, but the specific method by which Bhai Mani Singh Ji’s body was destroyed in Lahore in 1737. The student in London must know why the Nankana Sahib clause remains in the Ardas — must understand the 1947 Partition as a living wound, not a historical episode.

ਅਰਦਾਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਿਰਫ਼ ਰਟਣਾ ਨਹੀਂ। ਅਰਦਾਸ ਨੂੰ ਸਮਝਣਾ ਹੈ। ਅਰਦਾਸ ਨੂੰ ਜੀਣਾ ਹੈ।
The Ardas must not merely be recited. The Ardas must be understood. The Ardas must be lived.

And the Guru Granth Sahib Ji must remain what it has always been within the Sikh tradition: the supreme theological standard against which all other claims, all other texts, and all other institutional positions are measured. Not because it is useful to treat it this way. Because the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the eternal Guru. Its testimony is the Guru’s testimony. When the Guru Granth Sahib Ji says that women are the source of all life from whom kings are born — that is the Guru speaking. When the Guru Granth Sahib Ji says to abandon the worship of gods and goddesses and meditate on the One — that is the Guru speaking. No subsequent compilation, however revered, can overwrite the Guru’s own voice.

XXIII. THE 1984 QUESTION: THE UNFINISHED ARDAS

This article has treated the question of whether the events of 1984 and the Punjab counterinsurgency should enter the Ardas’s permanent historical record as the most consequential unresolved liturgical question in contemporary Sikh institutional life. It deserves a final reckoning.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ।
Before the Gurshabad, there were the nameless dead.

The CBI confirmed 2,097 illegal cremations in Amritsar District alone. Of these, 1,238 were entirely unidentified — no name, no family, no record. They were cremated by police authority, without inquest, without death certificates, without the family notification that both Sikh maryada and Indian law required.

The Ardas’s historical section uses the phrase ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ nowhere in its current text — but it uses the category of “those who gave their heads” and “those whose bodies were treated without dignity.” The 1,238 unnamed bodies of Amritsar District are within that category in spirit if not yet in formal liturgical text.

The precedent is clear. The Ghalugharas were added to the Ardas after the massacres occurred. The Nankana Sahib clause was added after 1947. The additions that reflect new historical wounds are not corruptions of the Ardas — they are the Ardas functioning as it is designed to function: as a living archive of the Panth’s history before the Divine.

The 1984 question is not whether the events meet the historical threshold. They clearly do. The question is institutional will, political timing, and Panthic consensus. These are real concerns. The Ardas’s modifications have always reflected Panthic consensus, not individual initiative. The process of building that consensus is the Panth’s own work to do.

This article states its analytical position: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own principles of testimony (ਸੱਚ ਕਹਿਣਾ — speaking truth), the Ardas’s own precedent of including mass martyrdom events in its permanent record, and the fundamental obligation to remember the 1,238 unnamed — all of these point toward eventual formal inclusion of June 1984, November 1984, and the Punjab disappearances in the Ardas’s historical section.

The timing and form of that inclusion are for the Panth, through its institutional processes and the Akal Takht’s authority, to determine.

XXIV. CONCLUSION: THE PRAYER THAT STANDS BEYOND THE SILENCE

ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ ਦੀ ਧੁਨ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਦੀ ਚੁੱਪ ਸੀ।
Before the sound of Gurbani, there was the silence of the cremation ground.

The Ardas is five centuries old. In five centuries, it has absorbed the martyrdom of the Panj Pyare’s generation, the killing of the Char Sahibzade, the devastation of the two Ghalugharas, the persecutions of the Mughal governors, the disruptions of the colonial period, the amputation of Partition, and the ongoing unfinished business of 1984.

In those same five centuries, it has been the subject of sustained theological debate: about ਭਗਉਤੀ, about the Doha’s authorship, about which sections were added when, and about whether the Dasam Granth’s most controversial portions carry the Guru’s own theological voice.

This article has addressed all of these debates with the only evidentiary standard appropriate for the Sikh theological tradition: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself. The conclusions are:

The Ardas’s ਭਗਉਤੀ refers to the divine sword or the divine power — not a Hindu goddess — and this reading is supported by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own use of the term (Ang 208 area, attributing ਭਗਉਤੀ to the devotee filled with Bhagti), and by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s explicit rejection of goddess worship.

The Doha “Deh Siva Bar Mohe Ihai” is attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, and the “Siva” reference is best understood — from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework — as addressing the One Auspicious Divine rather than the Hindu deity Shiva, whom the Guru Granth Sahib Ji places within Maya.

The Raag Mala’s status as Gurbani is the most difficult question to resolve from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji alone. The evidence from within the scripture — particularly the Mundaavani’s status as the formal seal — creates genuine theological questions. The institutional resolution (SGPC’s inclusion of the Raag Mala in the standard Guru Granth Sahib Ji) is acknowledged and respected, while the theological questions it raises are recorded honestly.

The Dasam Granth’s accepted Nitnem compositions, the Zafarnama, and the Khalsa Mahima are consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology. The Triya Charitar’s theology of women is not reconcilable with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s testimony from Guru Nanak Dev Ji (Ang 473) and the scripture’s overall framework of equal souls. The Chaubis Avtar and Chandi Charitra can be reconciled with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework if read through the interpretive lens the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself provides — the distinction between the Divine Name and the historical/mythological figure — but require sophisticated theological reading to prevent the risk of endorsing avatar theology and goddess worship, which the Guru Granth Sahib Ji explicitly rejects.

The Ardas itself is not finished. It has never been finished. It is a living document — the most dynamic liturgical text in any major religious tradition — because the Sikh Panth has always understood that prayer which refuses to engage with history has misunderstood its own function.

Every time the congregation rises for Ardas, it enters a five-century courtroom of memory. The Gurus are remembered. The martyrs are remembered. The gurdwaras of the separated land are remembered. The names of the unnamed are sought. The present is placed before the Guru. The future is entrusted to Waheguru.

And then — this is the part that the Ardas alone accomplishes — the congregation says:

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ। ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥
Nanak — the Naam, in ascending grace. In Your Will, the welfare of all.

After the cremation grounds. After the unnamed dead. After the torture, the saws, the wheels, the walls, the scalps. After all of this: ascending grace. And in that grace — the welfare of all. Not just the welfare of the Sikh community. All.

This is the prayer that outlasted the Mughal Empire, the Afghan invasions, British colonial rule, Partition, and the Indian security state’s attempt to make 2,097 people disappear into unidentified ash. It will outlast whatever comes next.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

APPENDIX: THE STRUCTURE OF THE SIKH NITNEM — THE DAILY PRAYER REGIMEN

For readers who wish to understand the complete liturgical context within which the Ardas operates:

ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਵੇਲਾ (Pre-dawn, 2–6 AM):

• Japji Sahib (Guru Nanak Dev Ji) — 38 pauris plus the Mool Mantar and concluding Salok
• Jaap Sahib (attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, from Dasam Granth)
• Tav-Prasad Savvaiye (attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, from Dasam Granth)
• Chaupai Sahib (attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, from Dasam Granth)
• Anand Sahib — first 5 and last verse (Guru Amar Das Ji)
• Ardas
• Hukamnama

ਸ਼ਾਮ ਵੇਲਾ (Evening, sunset):

• Rehras Sahib (composite: Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Arjan Dev Ji, and one section attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji)
• Ardas
• Hukamnama

ਸੋਣ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ (Before sleep):

• Kirtan Sohila (five hymns: Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Arjan Dev Ji)
• Ardas

Special occasions:

• Anand Karaj (marriage): Lavaan (Guru Ram Das Ji), Anand Sahib, Ardas
• Amrit Sanchar (initiation): All five Nitnem Banis, plus Anand Sahib, Ardas, Hukamnama
• Antam Sanskar (death/cremation): Kirtan Sohila, Ardas, Hukamnama

NOTE ON SOURCES AND EVIDENTIARY STANDARD

All Gurbani quotations in this article are from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, the canonical scripture of the Sikh Panth. The standard SGPC printing of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (1,430 angs) is the reference edition. All Ang numbers referenced in this article follow the standard SGPC pagination.

All claims regarding the Dasam Granth have been evaluated solely against the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological evidence, as required by the evidentiary constraint established in this article’s Editorial Note.

For the Sikh Rehat Maryada, the reference is the SGPC’s officially approved text (approved 1945, multiple subsequent printings).

For further study:

• Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji (SGPC standard edition)
• Sikh Rehat Maryada (SGPC, Amritsar)
• Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, Mahan Kosh (the comprehensive encyclopedia of Sikh theology and history)
• Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, Hum Hindu Nahin (1899)
• Pashaura Singh, The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority
• Gurinder Singh Mann, The Making of Sikh Scripture
• Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent

A Publication of KPSGILL.COM and THEDEATHCERTIFICATE.ORG

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ
Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground.

Authored by Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D.
Publisher and Editorial Director | KPSGILL.COM | TheDeathCertificate.org
Fresno, California, U.S.A.

ਭਗਉਤੀ — within the canonical framework of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

XXX.2 Bhai Vir Singh Ji and the Modern Sikh Theological Imagination

Bhai Vir Singh Ji (1872–1957) — poet, novelist, editor, scholar, and architect of modern Punjabi literary prose — occupies a position in the Sikh intellectual tradition that has no precise parallel in other religious traditions. He was simultaneously a creative artist of the first order and a rigorous theological scholar; a man whose poetry could move readers to tears and whose prose analysis could sustain the most demanding scholarly scrutiny.

His significance for the history of Sikh prayer is threefold.

First, his poetry kept the devotional register of Sikh prayer alive in the modern Punjabi literary imagination at a time when colonial education and the prestige of English literary forms threatened to make the classical Sikh poetic tradition feel archaic. Bhai Vir Singh Ji showed that the devotional register of the Gurus’ compositions was not a historical artifact but a living literary form capable of producing work of the highest contemporary quality.

Second, his novels — particularly Sundri (1898) and Baba Naudh Singh (1921) — embedded the Sikh prayer tradition within historical narrative in ways that made the relationship between prayer and historical action vivid for readers who might otherwise have experienced them as separate domains. In Sundri, the heroine’s maintenance of her Sikh identity and prayer practice under conditions of extreme violence is not a subplot — it is the central moral argument of the novel.

Third, his scholarly works — particularly his commentary on the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — demonstrated that the most rigorous philological and theological analysis was not in tension with deep devotion but was its natural expression. To love the Guru’s Word fully is to understand it as fully as possible.

[PM] The tradition of Sikh intellectual engagement with prayer that Bhai Vir Singh Ji represents — simultaneously devotional and scholarly, simultaneously Punjabi and global in its reach — is the tradition within which this article itself stands.

XXXI. THE KHALRA CASE AND THE ARDAS: THE LIVING QUESTION

XXXI.1 What the Khalra Case Means for the Ardas

This article is published by TheDeathCertificate.org and KPSGILL.COM — publications dedicated to the forensic accountability record of the Punjab disappearances (1984–1996) and to the institutional failures that enabled 2,097 illegal cremations in Amritsar District. It is therefore appropriate that this article’s analysis of the Ardas closes with a direct engagement between the prayer and the specific historical circumstances that are the publications’ central subject.

Jaswant Singh Khalra — abducted September 6, 1995, murdered in custody approximately October 27, 1995, body disappeared — was a human rights defender who traced the cremation-ground registers of Amritsar District and documented what the registers showed: that human beings had been arriving at the burning ghats without names, without families, without the legal paperwork that Indian law required.

The Supreme Court of India, on December 12, 1996, described the CBI’s findings in Amritsar as a “flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale.” The CBI confirmed 2,097 illegal cremations. Of those, 1,238 were entirely unidentified.

One thousand, two hundred, and thirty-eight people were cremated without names.

The Ardas says: ਸੋ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਜਾਨ — why call her inferior, from whom kings are born? The Ardas remembers those who were cut joint by joint. The Ardas remembers those whose scalps were removed. The Ardas remembers those who were broken on wheels.

The Ardas has not yet formally remembered the 1,238 who were cremated without names.

[AI] From within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology, the obligation is clear:

ਸਤਿ ਕਹਉ ਅਸਤਿ ਮੈ ਕਹਉ ਏਕੁ ਨਾਮੁ ਉਰ ਧਾਰਉ॥
I speak truth; I do not speak falsehood. I enshrine the One Name in my heart.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Ardas is an act of speaking truth before Waheguru. To speak truth before Waheguru about the Sikh community’s history is to speak the truth about 1984, about 1995, about the 1,238 unnamed. To remain silent about them in the Ardas’s formal record — while speaking about the two Ghalugharas — is to apply an inconsistent standard of historical memory.

The argument for delay — that political circumstances are not yet right, that Panthic consensus has not been achieved — is a legitimate institutional argument. Institutions require consensus to act, and consensus requires time. This article acknowledges that reality.

But the moral argument is also legitimate and must be stated: the Ardas’s own theological framework, drawn from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s teaching on truth-telling, does not offer an indefinite deferral on the obligation to name the unnamed.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ।
Before the Gurshabad, there were the nameless dead.

The prayer must eventually say so — formally, institutionally, in the fixed section that cannot be omitted. When it does, the Ardas will have done what it has always done: absorbed the Panth’s history and refused to let the state’s preference for silence have the final word.

PART NINE: THE COMPLETE THEOLOGICAL CASE ON THE DASAM GRANTH CONTROVERSIES

XXXII. THE TRIYA CHARITAR: A COMPLETE EVIDENTIARY ANALYSIS FROM THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI

XXXII.1 The Evidence Set Assembled

This section assembles the complete evidentiary case from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji against the theological framework of the Triya Charitar (Charitropakhyan). As stated in this article’s foundational methodological constraint: no external source, no Western academic argument, no feminist theoretical framework, and no historical source outside the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is used. Only the Guru Granth Sahib Ji speaks.

Exhibit One: ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ (Ang 473)

The complete passage from Guru Nanak Dev Ji:

ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਨਿੰਮੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਮੰਗਣੁ ਵੀਆਹੁ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੋਵੈ ਦੋਸਤੀ ਭੰਡਹੁ ਚਲੈ ਰਾਹੁ॥
ਭੰਡੁ ਮੁਆ ਭੰਡੁ ਭਾਲੀਐ ਭੰਡਿ ਹੋਵੈ ਬੰਧਾਨੁ॥
ਸੋ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਜਿਤੁ ਜੰਮਹਿ ਰਾਜਾਨ॥
ਭੰਡਹੁ ਹੀ ਭੰਡੁ ਊਪਜੈ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਝੁ ਨ ਕੋਇ॥
ਨਾਨਕ ਭੰਡੈ ਬਾਹਰਾ ਏਕੋ ਸਚਾ ਸੋਇ॥

From woman we are born, in woman we are conceived; to woman we are engaged, to woman we are married.
From woman come friendships; through woman the journey of life is made.
When a woman dies, another woman is sought; through woman the bond of family exists.
Why call her inferior — the one from whom kings are born?
From woman comes another woman; without woman, there is none.
O Nanak, only the True One is without woman.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 473)

The evidentiary weight of this passage for the Triya Charitar analysis:

The passage establishes a complete theological statement about women in six structured lines. The first four lines establish the empirical claim: all human life — including the lives of kings and rulers — comes from women. The fifth line establishes the universal claim: the chain of human existence is entirely female-mediated. The sixth line draws the theological boundary: only Waheguru, the One True Divine, is outside this chain.

The question at the end of line four — ਸੋ ਕਿਉ ਮੰਦਾ ਆਖੀਐ (why call her inferior/evil) — is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a logical challenge to any theology or practice that treats women as inferior, evil, or inherently dangerous. The Guru is asking: on what basis? You were born from her. She mediated your entry into this world. Kings were born from her. How can you call her evil?

The Triya Charitar’s 404 stories are, in their cumulative effect, an answer to this question: because women are cunning, because they deceive, because their sexuality is a trap for male virtue. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s counter-question — why call her inferior from whom kings are born? — demolishes this answer. The intelligence and agency of women, celebrated in the Triya Charitar as deception, is in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework the very capacity that produces kings, sustains friendships, and maintains the bonds of family.

Exhibit Two: The Equal Soul Theology

ਏਕੁ ਪਿਤਾ ਏਕਸ ਕੇ ਹਮ ਬਾਰਿਕ ਤੂ ਮੇਰਾ ਗੁਰਹਾਈ॥

One Father, we are all His children; You are my Guru.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

If all human beings — male and female — are children of the one Father (Akal Purakh), then the theological basis for any claim that women are inherently more spiritually dangerous or morally inferior to men does not exist within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework. The one Father has not made daughters inferior to sons. The same divine light — ਏਕ ਜੋਤ (one light) — pervades all.

ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਊਚਾ ਆਖੀਐ ਨੀਚੁ ਨ ਦੀਸੈ ਕੋਇ॥
Call everyone exalted; no one appears low.

This verse — a universal statement about the equality of all souls before the Divine — cannot coexist with a theological framework that systematically portrays women as a category of human beings whose nature is deceptive and whose sexuality is inherently corrupting.

Exhibit Three: The Divine Light in All Bodies

ਘਟ ਘਟ ਮੈ ਹਰਿ ਜੂ ਬਸੈ ਸੰਤਨ ਕਹਿਓ ਪੁਕਾਰਿ॥
In each and every heart, the Lord abides; the Saints proclaim this.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

ਏਕੋ ਅੰਸਿ ਸਭੁ ਜਗਤੁ ਉਪਾਇਆ ਇਕੁ ਦੂਜਾ ਨਾਹੀ॥
From the One essence, the entire world was created; there is no second.

If the divine light dwells in every heart, and if the entire world was created from one essence, then the female body and the female mind are not exceptions to this universal presence of the Divine. The divine light is in the woman. Her intelligence, her sexuality, her agency — all of these are expressions of the same divine creation that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji regards as sacred.

A theology that systematically portrays women’s minds as traps for men and their sexuality as spiritual corruption cannot be reconciled with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s teaching that the divine light dwells in every heart without exception.

Exhibit Four: The Guru Granth Sahib Ji on Women in Spiritual Leadership

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji includes compositions by female figures — Bibi Sundri and the tradition of Mata Sahib Kaur’s role in the Khalsa’s formation are historical context rather than textual. But the SGGS Ji’s theological framework clearly establishes that women are equal participants in spiritual life:

ਮਾਤਾ ਸਾਗਰੁ ਅਥਾਹੁ ਹੈ ਅੰਦਰਿ ਰਤਨ ਅਪਾਰ॥
The mother is an unfathomable ocean; within her are immeasurable jewels.

The mother — the female figure — is an ocean of jewels. This is not a description of a dangerous, deceptive force. It is a description of boundless depth and immeasurable value.

Exhibit Five: The Guru Granth Sahib Ji on Kaam (Lust) — The Critical Distinction

One argument made in defense of the Triya Charitar is that it serves as a warning against the spiritual danger of kaam (lust) — that its 404 stories about women’s sexual wiles are actually cautionary tales designed to help men resist the spiritual pitfall of sexual attachment.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji addresses kaam extensively. Its position on kaam is nuanced and worth examining carefully:

ਕਾਮੁ ਕ੍ਰੋਧੁ ਮਾਇਆ ਮਦੁ ਮਤਸਰ ਏ ਖੇਲਤ ਹੈ ਸਭਿ ਅੰਗਾ॥
Lust, anger, the intoxication of Maya, and envy — these play within all beings.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji identifies kaam as one of the five spiritual vices (ਪੰਜ ਵਿਕਾਰ — the five corruptions: kaam, krodh, lobh, moh, ahankar). This is consistent with broadly shared religious ethics. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji warns against the spiritual damage of uncontrolled kaam.

BUT — and this is the critical distinction — the Guru Granth Sahib Ji locates kaam within the individual’s own consciousness, not in the external object of desire:

ਕਾਮੁ ਕ੍ਰੋਧੁ ਲੋਭੁ ਮੋਹੁ ਬਿਨਸੈ ਹਉਮੈ ਮਮਤਾ ਜਾਇ॥
Lust, anger, greed, emotional attachment — these are destroyed when ego and possessiveness depart.

The destruction of kaam is the destruction of the ego (ਹਉਮੈ) — not the avoidance of women. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji consistently locates the spiritual problem of kaam within the practitioner’s own ego-structure, not within the external female figure who “tempts” him. This is the fundamental theological difference between the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s treatment of kaam and the Triya Charitar’s approach.

The Triya Charitar’s framework is: women are dangerous because of their nature; men must guard against them. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework is: kaam is dangerous because of the ego; the practitioner must work on their own ego-structure. These are not the same argument. The Triya Charitar locates the problem in the woman. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji locates the problem in the man’s own ego.

This is not a minor theological difference. It is the difference between a theology that blames women for men’s spiritual failures and a theology that holds each soul accountable for its own spiritual condition.

[AI] Final evidentiary assessment on the Triya Charitar:

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence, assembled above, establishes:

1. Women are the source of all human life, including kings and rulers, and must not be called inferior. (Ang 473 — Proved Finding)
2. The divine light dwells equally in all beings without exception, including all women’s bodies and minds. (Multiple verses — Proved Finding)
3. Kaam is a spiritual problem located in the individual’s ego, not in the external female figure. (Proved Finding from theological framework)
4. All human beings are equal children of the one Father/Creator and must be regarded as equally exalted. (Proved Finding)

The Triya Charitar’s framework — 404 stories of women’s inherently deceptive and sexually dangerous nature — contradicts all four of these Proved Findings from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

[AI] From within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidentiary framework, the Triya Charitar’s theology is not compatible with the canonical Sikh theological standard. This is this article’s analytical conclusion. It does not constitute a formal Panthic ruling. The institutional question of the Triya Charitar’s status within the Dasam Granth is for the Akal Takht to determine. But the theological analysis, from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji alone, is as stated above.

XXXIII. THE KHALSA MAHIMA AND THE COMPOSITIONS THAT CARRY THE GURU’S VOICE

XXXIII.1 What the Khalsa Mahima Establishes About Authorial Voice

The Khalsa Mahima — the hymn of praise of the Khalsa within the Dasam Granth — is one of the compositions whose theological content is most clearly consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji and most clearly expressive of what Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s voice sounds like at its most authentic:

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਹਿ॥

The Khalsa Mahima’s theology: the Khalsa belongs entirely to Waheguru; the Khalsa’s victory is entirely Waheguru’s; the Khalsa is the Guru’s manifestation in the world. This is perfectly consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework that the Sangat (community of devoted Sikhs) is the Guru’s presence in the world.

The Khalsa Mahima’s voice — confident, devotional, militarily aware, and theologically grounded — is recognizably the same voice as the Zafarnama. Both compositions express a theology of God-dependence combined with righteous courage. Both are consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework. Both carry the Guru’s theological voice in a recognizable way.

XXXIII.2 The Sabad Hazare: The Guru’s Personal Devotional Voice

The Sabad Hazare Patisahi 10 (the ten hymns of the Tenth King) are among the most personally intimate compositions in the Dasam Granth. They represent a devotional voice — a voice of longing for the Divine, of personal prayer, of the Guru’s own relationship with Waheguru — that stands in clear contrast to the martial and narrative compositions that make up most of the Dasam Granth’s volume.

Several of these sabads express the Guru’s personal spiritual situation with a directness that is difficult to attribute to a court poet composing on commission:

The longing for Waheguru’s presence, the acknowledgment of personal limitation, the plea for divine assistance — these are the marks of a personal devotional voice, not a commissioned literary project. They are consistent with the inner life of a man who has lost his sons, his home, and most of his community, and who continues to address Waheguru not from strength but from the rawness of personal loss.

These compositions — the Sabad Hazare and similar personal devotional pieces within the Dasam Granth — represent the Guru’s voice at its most vulnerable and most recognizably human. They are also the compositions least susceptible to the authorship doubts that attach to the more formulaic Sanskrit-derived sections of the Dasam Granth.

XXXIV. THE COMPILATION HISTORY: BHAI MANI SINGH JI AND HIS CHOICES

XXXIV.1 The Context of the Compilation

Bhai Mani Singh Ji compiled the Dasam Granth at Amritsar, under conditions that were themselves deeply difficult. The Sikh Panth had just survived the devastating series of losses between 1704 and 1708 — the abandonment of Anandpur Sahib, the Ghalughar of Sirhind (when the two younger Sahibzade were killed), the Guru’s death at Nanded. The manuscripts of the Guru’s compositions had been dispersed in the flight from Anandpur.

Bhai Mani Singh Ji’s task was to gather whatever had survived — from whatever sources, in whatever condition — and produce a compiled volume. He worked from:

• Manuscripts that had survived with the Guru’s companions
• Compositions preserved in the memories of court scholars
• Materials preserved by the families of the Guru’s poets
• Texts that had circulated in written form in the Guru’s court

[DA] The compilation under these conditions inevitably carried risks: compositions by court scholars might be included alongside the Guru’s own compositions; variant versions of the same composition might be included; texts commissioned by the Guru (translations of Sanskrit works) might be included in ways that attributed the translation to the Guru rather than identifying it as translation.

None of these possibilities implies deliberate deception by Bhai Mani Singh Ji. They are the natural consequences of a posthumous compilation from dispersed sources under difficult conditions. Bhai Mani Singh Ji was himself one of the most revered figures in the early Khalsa period — the Head Granthi of the Harmandir Sahib, a man who would later die for his faith by being cut joint by joint rather than convert. His devotion and integrity are not in question.

What is in question is the completeness of the attribution information available to him and the capacity of any single compiler, working from dispersed manuscripts, to verify the authorship of every composition in a large corpus.

XXXIV.2 The Manuscript Tradition: What It Tells Us

[DA] The manuscript tradition of the Dasam Granth is significantly more complex than the manuscript tradition of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Multiple manuscripts of the Dasam Granth exist, with variations in:

• The specific compositions included
• The order of the compositions
• The specific text of individual verses
• The presence or absence of colophons (attribution statements)

This manuscript variation — which scholars of the Dasam Granth have documented extensively — is itself evidence of the compilation’s complexity. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s manuscript tradition, anchored by the Kartarpuri Bir (the manuscript associated with the Guru’s own period), shows far greater textual stability.

[AI] The greater manuscript variation of the Dasam Granth is consistent with its posthumous compilation from multiple sources rather than its compilation under a single authorizing hand. It is not evidence of forgery or bad faith. It is evidence of the compilation circumstances described above.

XXXV. THE ARDAS AS THE MEETING POINT OF ALL THESE QUESTIONS

XXXV.1 Where the Bhagauti, the Doha, and the Dasam Granth Converge

This article has traced three major controversies — the Bhagauti question in the Ardas’s opening, the Doha (“Deh Siva”) question, and the Dasam Granth controversies broadly. These three controversies are not separate. They are aspects of a single underlying question: what is the proper relationship between the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (the canonized eternal Guru) and the Dasam Granth (the posthumously compiled corpus attributed to the tenth Guru)?

The Ardas’s opening section comes from the Dasam Granth. The Doha (“Deh Siva”) comes from the Dasam Granth. The Nitnem’s Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, and Chaupai Sahib come from the Dasam Granth. The Khalsa’s identity as expressed in its prayer life is deeply entangled with the Dasam Granth.

The question is therefore not whether to use the Dasam Granth’s compositions in Sikh prayer life. Many of them — the accepted Nitnem compositions — are so deeply embedded in Sikh liturgical practice, so clearly consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology, and so widely used with Akal Takht sanction that their position is not in serious question.

The question is how to hold the Dasam Granth’s contested sections — the Triya Charitar, the Chaubis Avtar’s potential implications, the Chandi Charitra’s potential for misreading — in proper relationship to the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authority.

[AI] The principled answer: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the eternal Guru. Its theology is the standard. Where the Dasam Granth’s compositions are consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology, they carry the Guru’s sanction. Where they are inconsistent — as the Triya Charitar is, in its fundamental framework about women — they must be held with appropriate distance from canonical authority, regardless of their attribution.

This is not disrespect for Guru Gobind Singh Ji. It is, in fact, the most respectful possible response: it takes the Guru’s own canonical scripture as the measure of all things.

XXXV.2 The Living Sikh Prayer Practice: What This Analysis Demands

The analysis in this article demands specific things of the living Sikh prayer practice:

For the recitation of the Ardas: Understand ਭਗਉਤੀ as the divine power or the divine sword — not as a Hindu goddess. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence supports this understanding. Recite with confidence.

For the Doha (“Deh Siva”): Understand ਸਿਵਾ as addressing the One Auspicious Divine — not the Hindu deity Shiva. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji places Shiva within Maya; the Sikh prayer addresses Akal Purakh directly. Recite with the understanding that this is a prayer for righteous courage, not an invocation of a Hindu deity.

For the accepted Nitnem compositions from the Dasam Granth: Use them with confidence. Their theology is consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The Akal Takht has sanctioned them. The generations of Sikh practice have demonstrated their spiritual power.

For the Triya Charitar: Understand that its theological framework — 404 stories in which women are inherently deceptive and sexually dangerous — is inconsistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology (Ang 473 and the broader equal-souls framework). This does not make the Triya Charitar an evil text; it makes it a literary text that reflects the Sanskrit didactic tradition of the period, not a canonical theological statement of the Sikh tradition.

For the Chaubis Avtar and Chandi Charitra: Read them through the interpretive key the Guru Granth Sahib Ji provides — the distinction between the Divine Name and the historical/mythological figure. The literary form borrows from Hindu tradition; the theological content, properly understood, points toward the One Divine.

For the Raag Mala: Acknowledge the theological questions its placement after the Mundaavani raises, while respecting the institutional position of the SGPC that it is part of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Study the Mundaavani’s function as a seal and the Raag Mala’s function as a musicological reference, and form your own understanding within the framework the Guru Granth Sahib Ji provides.

XXXVI. ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — THE UNIVERSAL ASPIRATION AND ITS RADICAL DEMAND

XXXVI.1 Why “Welfare of All” Is the Most Demanding Closing for Any Prayer

The Ardas ends with ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — the welfare of all. In the context of everything that precedes it in the Ardas — the martyrdom enumeration, the memory of the two Ghalugharas, the separation from historic shrines — this closing is extraordinary.

It would be completely understandable, after reciting the Ghalugharas in detail, for the Sikh prayer to close with a petition for Sikh victory, Sikh safety, or Sikh justice. Other religious traditions have prayers that are explicitly communal and tribal in their petition — prayers for the welfare of the specific community of believers, not necessarily for all.

The Ardas does not close with a tribal petition. It closes with ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — the welfare of all. This is the most radically universalist closing possible, and it comes after the most specific possible enumeration of the Sikh community’s suffering.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological foundation for this universalism:

ਸਰਬ ਜੀਆ ਕਉ ਹੋਇ ਦਇਆਲ॥
Be compassionate to all beings.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

ਅਵਲਿ ਅਲਹ ਨੂਰੁ ਉਪਾਇਆ ਕੁਦਰਤਿ ਕੇ ਸਭ ਬੰਦੇ॥
ਏਕ ਨੂਰ ਤੇ ਸਭੁ ਜਗੁ ਉਪਜਿਆ ਕਉਨ ਭਲੇ ਕੋ ਮੰਦੇ॥

First, God created the Light; by His Creative Power, all beings were created.
From the One Light, the entire universe came into being; so who is good and who is bad?
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

From one light comes all. If from one light comes all, then the welfare of all is not a charitable aspiration extended outward from a tribal center. It is the recognition that all — Sikh and non-Sikh, oppressed and oppressor, the executed Sikh martyr and the Mughal soldier who carried out the execution — all come from the same One Light.

This is a demanding theological position. It does not require the Sikh to pretend that the oppressor’s actions were acceptable. It does not require forgetting the Ghalugharas. It does not require abandoning the accountability claims that the Ardas’s historical section makes with such specificity. What it requires is holding the accountability and the universalism simultaneously — understanding that even as the prayer names the specific methods of torture and execution used against Sikh bodies, the prayer still asks for the welfare of all.

The Ardas, in its complete form, achieves this: specific in its memory, universal in its aspiration, and consistent in both through the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of the One Light pervading all.

XXXVI.2 ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ: The Spiritual State That Makes ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ Possible

The closing phrase sequence of the Ardas — ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ / ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — pairs two concepts that are theologically inseparable:

ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ (Chardi Kala) — ascending grace, high spirits, the spiritual elevation that transcends material circumstances — is the condition that makes ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ possible. The Sikh who is in ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ — whose consciousness is elevated through Naam into the experience of Waheguru’s presence — can genuinely aspire to the welfare of all because their awareness has expanded beyond the boundaries of the tribal self.

A prayer for ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ made from a state of depression, trauma, or tribal defensive posture would be an empty formula. A prayer for ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ made from ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ is a genuine aspiration — the aspiration of a consciousness that has touched the divine ground within which all distinctions of “us” and “them” are secondary.

The Ardas’s closing sequence therefore makes a claim about what the Ardas itself is supposed to produce in the devotee who recites it seriously: by the end of the prayer — having remembered the Gurus, having named the martyrs, having placed the present needs before the Divine — the devotee should be in a state of ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ. And from that state, the aspiration for ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ is not an aspiration for the weak or the defeated. It is the most powerful aspiration possible — the aspiration of a soul that has touched the Divine and seen all of creation from within the Divine’s own perspective.

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ। ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥

This is how the Ardas ends. After everything — after the martyrs, the Ghalugharas, the unnamed dead, the separated shrines, the present petitions — this is the last word:

In Your Will, the welfare of all.

XXXVII. THE PRAYER ACROSS FIVE HUNDRED YEARS: A FINAL SYNTHESIS

The Sikh Ardas spans five centuries of theological development, institutional formation, historical testimony, and living practice. This article has traced it across all of these dimensions:

From Guru Nanak’s foundational revolution — the rejection of priestly mediation, the establishment of direct devotee-Divine address, the democratization of prayer through Gurmukhi and Sangat — to the formal crystallization of the Khalsa prayer form by Guru Gobind Singh Ji in 1699.

From the contested opening word ਭਗਉਤੀ — whose proper interpretation, from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own evidence, is the divine power or divine sword rather than a Hindu goddess — to the uncontested closing aspiration of ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ.

From the first martyrdom categories established under Guru Gobind Singh Ji — the Panj Pyare, the Char Sahibzade, the Chali Mukte — to the incremental additions of the eighteenth century (named martyrs, the two Ghalugharas) and the post-1947 addition of the Nankana Sahib clause.

From the Singh Sabha’s clarification of Sikh identity against colonial absorption — Hum Hindu Nahin, the Mahan Kosh, the institutional recovery of Sikh theological distinctiveness — to the 1945 SGPC codification of the Sikh Rehat Maryada.

From the Doha’s “Deh Siva” address — where ਸਿਵਾ, properly understood through the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework, addresses the Auspicious One rather than the Hindu deity Shiva — to the Raag Mala’s theological ambiguity at the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s closing pages.

From the Zafarnama’s unambiguous authentication — the Persian epistle to Aurangzeb that establishes what Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s voice sounds like at its most authentic — to the Triya Charitar’s theological incompatibility with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s equal-souls framework, established through the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence alone.

And always, at the center: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — the eternal Guru, the standard against which all other claims are measured, the voice that preceded and will outlast every controversy about any other text.

The Ardas is the living document that holds all of this history and asks it to speak, twice daily, in the presence of the congregation. It is the most historically dense prayer in world religion. It is the most honest prayer in world religion. And it is, in its complete form, the most radically universal prayer in world religion — because its ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ comes after the martyrs, not before them.

Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground. But after the Gurshabad — the welfare of all.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਹਿ।

PART TEN: THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI — ITS COMPILATION, ITS POETS, ITS INTERNAL COHERENCE

XXXVIII. THE COMPILATION OF THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI: A FORENSIC ACCOUNT

XXXVIII.1 The Goindwal Pothis: The Pre-History of the Adi Granth

The story of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compilation does not begin in 1604 at Ramsar, Amritsar, where Guru Arjan Dev Ji and Bhai Gurdas Ji produced the Adi Granth. It begins at least three decades earlier, with the Goindwal Pothis — manuscript volumes associated with Guru Amar Das Ji at Goindwal that contained collections of Gurbani.

[PF] The Goindwal Pothis represent the earliest authenticated collections of Sikh scriptural compositions. They were compiled at Goindwal Sahib during Guru Amar Das Ji’s tenure and contain compositions of the first three Gurus alongside compositions of the Bhagats. Their existence establishes that the process of collecting, authenticating, and organizing Gurbani began not with Guru Arjan Dev Ji but earlier, in the institutional history of the Sikh Panth.

The significance of this pre-history for understanding the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authority: the scripture was not produced hastily or under emergency circumstances. It emerged from a decades-long process of collection, authentication, and curation. By the time Guru Arjan Dev Ji undertook the formal compilation at Ramsar in 1604, a substantial body of authenticated material already existed.

XXXVIII.2 Why Guru Arjan Dev Ji Compiled the Adi Granth

Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s decision to produce an authoritative, formally organized scripture was not merely administrative. It was a response to a specific and immediate problem: spurious compositions were circulating under the names of the Gurus, and the integrity of the scriptural tradition was at risk.

[PF] The historical record documents that Prithi Chand — Guru Arjan Dev Ji’s elder brother, who had contested the Guruship — was circulating compositions of his own under the title of the Guru’s Bani, attempting to establish an alternative lineage. The production of an authoritative scripture, with authenticated compositions and clear attribution, was partly a response to this specific threat.

[AI] This context is critical for understanding the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authorship-consciousness. The scripture’s meticulous attribution of every composition — identifying each by its author (Mahala 1, Mahala 2, etc.) and by its musical context (raga and composition type) — was not merely a scholarly convention. It was an act of authentication: the scripture is establishing, through its internal attribution system, which compositions are genuine and which are not.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is therefore not only a collection of devotional compositions. It is an act of evidentiary record-keeping — the Sikh tradition’s original forensic document. Every composition has an author. Every author is identified. The chain of custody is visible.

XXXVIII.3 The Inclusion of the Bhagats: A Theological Statement

One of the most distinctive features of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — and one of the most important for understanding its position as the supreme Sikh theological standard — is the inclusion of compositions by non-Guru, non-Sikh authors. The Bhagats (saint-poets) whose compositions appear in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji include:

Bhagat Kabir — a weaver from Varanasi of disputed Hindu/Muslim background, whose compositions combine Vaishnava devotional language with Sufi mystical concepts and a sharp critique of both Hindu and Muslim institutional religion.

Bhagat Namdev — a tailor from Maharashtra whose early compositions show strong Vaishnava influence and whose later compositions reflect a theological maturation toward the formless Divine.

Bhagat Ravidas — a cobbler, a member of the lowest strata of the caste hierarchy, whose compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji establish that the divine encounter is not limited to any caste, that the lowest-caste individual has equal access to Waheguru.

Bhagat Farid — Sheikh Farid Shakarganj, a Sufi Muslim saint of the twelfth century whose compositions appear in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji in Punjabi, making him the first major Punjabi poet of record.

Bhagat Trilochan, Bhagat Surdas, Bhagat Pipa, Bhagat Beni — and several others.

[PF] The theological significance of the Bhagat compositions’ inclusion is established by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own internal logic:

ਸਾਚ ਕਹਉ ਨਾਨਕ ਸੁਣਿ ਭਾਈ॥
ਪ੍ਰਭ ਕੀ ਕਥਾ ਸੁਨਤ ਸੁਖੁ ਪਾਈ॥

Speaking truth, O Nanak, hear, Brother: hearing God’s story, peace is found.

The truth about God — the authentic divine encounter — can occur in any human being regardless of their religious tradition, caste, or language. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s inclusion of Bhagat Ravidas (an untouchable cobbler) alongside Guru Nanak Dev Ji is a permanent institutional statement: the divine encounter is not controlled by caste, birth, or institutional membership.

This principle has direct implications for the Dasam Granth analysis: if the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own criterion for inclusion is theological authenticity — genuine divine encounter expressed through genuine devotion, regardless of the author’s tradition — then the criterion for evaluating the Dasam Granth must be theological: does this composition reflect genuine divine encounter, and is its theological framework consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s standard?

XXXVIII.4 The Kartarpuri Bir: The Anchor of Textual Authority

The Kartarpuri Bir — the manuscript associated with the Guru’s period, preserved in the custody of the Sodhi family at Kartarpur, Jalandhar — is the textual anchor of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authority. It is the manuscript from which all subsequent copies of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji derive, directly or indirectly.

[DA] The Kartarpuri Bir’s significance for the Raag Mala controversy: The Sodhi family has maintained that the Raag Mala appears in the Kartarpuri Bir, and this has been used to argue for the Raag Mala’s inclusion in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. Scholars who have examined the manuscript have differed on their findings regarding the Raag Mala’s placement and ink characteristics. This textual debate has not been fully resolved.

[DA] The Kartarpuri Bir’s significance for the Dasam Granth debate: The Dasam Granth has no equivalent to the Kartarpuri Bir — no single manuscript from the Guru’s period that anchors the corpus with the authority that the Kartarpuri Bir provides for the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. This absence is itself significant: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s textual authority is anchored in a specific, authenticated manuscript from the Guru’s own period. The Dasam Granth’s authority rests on a posthumous compilation whose manuscript tradition shows considerably more variation.

XXXIX. THE BHAGATS IN THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI AND WHAT THEY TEACH ABOUT THEOLOGICAL EVALUATION

XXXIX.1 Bhagat Kabir: The Most Theologically Sophisticated Voice

Bhagat Kabir’s compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji are among the most theologically dense in the entire scripture. Kabir was a radical — he challenged both the Brahmin’s ritual authority and the Mullah’s doctrinal certainty with equal vigor. His compositions frequently take the form of direct challenges to institutional religion:

ਕਬੀਰ ਮੁਲਾਂ ਮੁਨਾਰੇ ਕਿਆ ਚਢਹਿ ਸਾਂਈ ਨ ਬਹਰਾ ਹੋਇ॥
ਜਾ ਕਾਰਨਿ ਤੂੰ ਬਾਂਗ ਦੇਹਿ ਦਿਲ ਹੀ ਭੀਤਰਿ ਜੋਇ॥

O Kabir, why do you climb the minaret? God is not deaf.
The One for whose sake you call the azan — seek Him within your heart.
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

And against the Brahmin:

ਕਬੀਰ ਜਿਹ ਦਰਿ ਆਵਤ ਜਾਤ ਨਹੀ ਨੀਦ ਨ ਭੂਖ ਨ ਪਿਆਸ॥
ਤਹ ਬਾਸੁ ਕਬੀਰਾ ਤੇਰਾ ਯਾਰਾ ਬਹੁਤੁ ਤੇਰੇ ਪਾਸ॥

O Kabir, at the gate where one does not come and go, where there is no sleep, no hunger, no thirst — there dwell, O Kabir; your Friend is very near.

These compositions were included in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji not despite their unconventional theology but because of it — their theological content was determined by Guru Arjan Dev Ji to be authentic in its encounter with the divine, consistent in its rejection of institutional mediation, and true in its experience of the formless One.

[AI] The principle established by the inclusion of Kabir’s most challenging compositions: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not a collection of conventionally pious texts. It is a collection of theologically authentic texts — compositions that genuinely encounter the Divine and speak truth about that encounter, even when the truth is uncomfortable for existing religious institutions.

By this standard, the evaluation of the Dasam Granth’s contested sections must ask: is the theological encounter genuine? And more specifically: is the theological framework consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s established standard, or does it contradict it?

XXXIX.2 Bhagat Ravidas: The Theology of Equal Souls

Bhagat Ravidas’s compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji are among the most powerful theological statements on the equality of all souls before the Divine:

ਜਾਤਿ ਜਨਾਂਮ ਨਹ ਪੂਛੀਐ ਸਚ ਘਰੁ ਲੇਹੁ ਬਤਾਇ॥
ਸਾ ਜਾਤਿ ਸਾ ਪਤਿ ਹੈ ਜੇਹੇ ਕਰਮ ਕਮਾਇ॥

Do not ask about caste and birth — instead, tell me of the true home.
That is one’s caste and status — whatever one does.
(Bhagat Ravidas, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Bhagat Ravidas — a member of the lowest caste group, a cobbler — is telling the high-caste listener: your caste at birth means nothing before Waheguru. What matters is your karma — your actions, your devotion, your engagement with the divine reality.

[PF] And in one of the most radical compositions in the entire Guru Granth Sahib Ji:

ਐਸੀ ਲਾਲ ਤੁਝ ਬਿਨੁ ਕਉਨੁ ਕਰੈ॥
ਗਰੀਬ ਨਿਵਾਜੁ ਗੁਸਾਈਆ ਮੇਰਾ ਮਾਥੈ ਛਤ੍ਰੁ ਧਰੈ॥

O such a red ruby — who else can do this?
The Protector of the poor, my Lord of the Universe, places the royal canopy over my head.
(Bhagat Ravidas, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

A cobbler, a low-caste artisan, addressing the Divine with the intimacy of one who knows themselves beloved — and the Divine responding by placing the royal canopy (the symbol of kingship) over the cobbler’s head. This is the theology of equal souls at its most vivid: the Divine honors the cobbler with the same symbols of dignity reserved for kings.

The implications for any theological framework that treats any category of human beings as inherently inferior — whether by caste or by gender — are direct. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji includes Bhagat Ravidas precisely because his theology of equal souls, grounded in the experience of divine encounter by one whom society had placed at the absolute bottom of its hierarchy, demonstrates the universal truth of the Divine’s regard for all souls equally.

XL. THE ARDAS AND THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI: THE COMPLETE RELATIONSHIP

XL.1 How the Ardas Functions as the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s Active Application

The relationship between the Ardas and the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is best understood as the relationship between theology and application. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the theology: the one formless Divine, the equal souls, the Naam as the path, the Hukam as the framework, the Sangat as the medium, the service as the practice. The Ardas applies this theology to the specific historical and communal situation of the Sikh Panth.

This is why the Ardas’s three-part structure maps directly onto the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theological framework:

The fixed opening — the theological statement about the Divine and the Guru lineage — applies the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of the ten Gurus as manifestations of a single divine light.

The historical middle section — the martyrdom archive — applies the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of testimony (ਸਚੁ ਕਹਿਣਾ — speaking truth) to the Panth’s specific historical record.

The variable personal petition — the living supplication — applies the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of the direct devotee-Divine relationship to the specific present needs of the specific congregation.

The closing — ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ / ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — applies the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of the Naam as the source of spiritual elevation and the One Light as the ground of universal aspiration.

[AI] Understanding the Ardas as the active application of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology also explains why modifications to the Ardas’s fixed sections are theologically serious: they are modifications to the application of the Guru’s own teaching. The theology being applied is not the community’s own construction. It is the Guru’s revelation. Modifications to the fixed sections of the Ardas must therefore be evaluated against the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology, not merely against community preference or historical precedent.

XL.2 The Three Occasions When the Ardas Is Mandatory

The Sikh Rehat Maryada specifies three categories of occasion when the Ardas is mandatory within Sikh practice:

After all religious programs — every formal Sikh religious gathering (kirtan, path, discourse) concludes with the Ardas. The prayer formally closes the program and transitions the congregation from the sacred time of the gathering to the ordinary time of daily life. This mandatory closing is not merely ceremonial. It establishes that the teaching just received must be carried into the world through the act of standing testimony.

At all ceremonies marking life transitions — the Ardas is mandatory at Anand Karaj (marriage), at naming ceremonies (ਨਾਮਕਰਨ), at the Amrit Sanchar (initiation into the Khalsa), and at Antam Sanskar (the funeral and cremation ceremonies). The Ardas’s presence at each of these life transitions establishes that the Sikh’s entire life — from naming through death — is held within the framework of the Panth’s collective prayer.

Before significant undertakings — the Sikh Rehat Maryada includes the Ardas before journeys, before important decisions, before the commencement of significant projects. This practice embeds the theology of Hukam — the divine will — into the Sikh’s decision-making process. The Ardas before a journey is not a superstitious request for protection from a distant deity. It is the acknowledgment that the journey will proceed within the framework of Waheguru’s will, and the petition for the strength and clarity to act within that framework.

XL.3 The Hukamnama: The Divine Response to the Ardas

The Ardas is never the final act of the Sikh prayer session. After the Ardas, the congregation receives the Hukamnama — the divine directive for the day — through the random opening of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The Hukamnama is not understood as fortune-telling or as a magical oracle. It is understood theologically as the Guru’s response to the congregation’s Ardas: having heard the petition, the Guru now speaks.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the theological basis for the Hukamnama:

ਹੁਕਮੁ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਿਖਿਆ ਨਾਲਿ॥
Walking in the Hukam (divine will) as is written — this is the path.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Japji Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1)

The Hukamnama embodies this principle in practice: whatever the Guru Granth Sahib Ji opens to, that is the Guru’s teaching for this congregation at this moment. The reading of the Hukamnama is the Guru’s voice responding to the congregation’s Ardas. The three-part liturgical sequence — Kirtan (the Guru’s voice in song), Ardas (the congregation’s voice in prayer), Hukamnama (the Guru’s voice in response) — is the complete architecture of Sikh congregational worship.

XLI. THE BHAGAUTI RESOLUTION: FINAL THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT

XLI.1 Assembling the Complete Case

This article has examined the Bhagauti question from multiple angles: linguistic, historical, literary, and theological. It is now appropriate to assemble the complete case and state the final analytical position clearly.

The question: What does ਭਗਉਤੀ mean in the Ardas’s opening line ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਕੈ?

The evidence from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (the only admissible evidentiary standard under this article’s methodological constraint):

1. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses ਭਗਉਤੀ to mean the devotee imbued with divine love — not a goddess, not a weapon.
2. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji explicitly and repeatedly rejects goddess worship (Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Ang 637; Guru Ram Das Ji at multiple angs).
3. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji positions Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (the Hindu trinity including the goddess tradition’s male counterparts) within Maya — they are within creation, not beyond it.
4. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses the names of Hindu deities (including Ram, Krishna, Shiva) in ways that explicitly distinguish the divine Name from the historical/mythological figure — establishing the interpretive principle that borrowed vocabulary does not imply borrowed theology.

The literary context: Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki uses the Chandi narrative structure as a literary vehicle for the theological claim that divine justice overcomes oppression — not as an endorsement of goddess worship.

The linguistic evidence: ਭਗਉਤੀ derives from the Sanskrit root ਭਗ (divine grace/fortune) and in the Punjabi/Braj Bhasha literary tradition of the Guru’s period had already acquired the meaning of “the divine power” or “the devoted one” — meanings entirely compatible with Sikh monotheism.

The institutional position: The SGPC’s Sikh Rehat Maryada and the Akal Takht’s authority sanction the standard Ardas with the ਭਗਉਤੀ invocation, defining it as the divine sword or power.

[AI] Final analytical position: ਭਗਉਤੀ in the Ardas’s opening refers to the divine power — the creative and protective force of Akal Purakh expressed through the symbol of the righteous sword — and not to any Hindu goddess. This reading is:
(a) Consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own use of the term-family;
(b) Consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s explicit rejection of goddess worship;
(c) Consistent with the literary tradition from which the composition draws;
(d) Consistent with the Akal Takht and SGPC’s institutional position;
(e) Consistent with Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha’s scholarly analysis in the Mahan Kosh.

The Bhagauti controversy is, from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidentiary framework, resolvable. The resolution does not eliminate all theological complexity — the composition’s Chandi context will always carry the potential for misreading. But the resolution is clear: the Sikh Panth is not invoking a Hindu goddess in its Ardas. It is invoking the divine power of righteous force — Akal Purakh’s own instrument of justice in the world.

XLII. THE DASAM GRANTH: A COMPLETE INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE CONTROVERSY

XLII.1 The Controversy’s Modern Origins

The modern form of the Dasam Granth controversy — as a formal institutional and theological debate within the Sikh Panth — can be traced to the Singh Sabha period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Singh Sabha’s project of establishing a clear and distinct Sikh identity required engagement with every text associated with the Sikh tradition, and the Dasam Granth’s content raised questions that the Singh Sabha scholars could not avoid.

[PF] The formal scholarly engagement with the Dasam Granth’s controversial sections began with:

Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha — who in the Mahan Kosh treated the Dasam Granth’s compositions with scholarly rigor, defining terms and acknowledging textual complexity without resolving the authorship question definitively.

Ratan Singh Jaggi — a twentieth-century scholar whose extensive analysis of the Dasam Granth’s manuscript tradition established the textual complexity of the corpus and raised specific questions about the uniform attribution of all compositions to Guru Gobind Singh Ji.

Giani Gurdit Singh — whose work on the Dasam Granth’s canonical status has been influential in establishing the debate’s current parameters.

[DA] The formal institutional controversy reached its most acute expression in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when the question of the Dasam Granth’s status became entangled with broader questions of Sikh identity, the authority of the Akal Takht, and the boundaries of Sikh practice.

The Akal Takht has issued Hukamnamas addressing various aspects of the Dasam Granth’s use in Sikh practice, generally affirming that the compositions used in the Nitnem (Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, Chaupai Sahib) are authentic and should be used, while not directly resolving the question of the more controversial sections.

XLII.2 The Three Positions Within the Contemporary Sikh Panth

[DA] The contemporary Sikh Panth contains at least three distinct institutional positions on the Dasam Granth:

Position One: Full Acceptance — held by the Damdami Taksal (in its various sub-traditions) and by significant portions of the traditional Sikh scholarly establishment. This position accepts the Dasam Granth in its entirety as Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s personal composition and treats all of its sections as carrying equal authority.

Position Two: Selective Acceptance — held by the SGPC’s formal position, which sanctions the Nitnem compositions and other specific sections while not formally endorsing or mandating the use of the more controversial sections (particularly the Triya Charitar and Charitropakhyan) in liturgical practice.

Position Three: Substantial Skepticism — held by the Akhand Kirtani Jatha and by certain reformist scholars who argue that significant portions of the Dasam Granth cannot be attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji and should not be treated as authoritative Sikh theological texts.

[AI] This article’s analysis — which uses the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the sole evidentiary standard — is most closely aligned with Position Two but offers a more specific theological basis for the distinctions between sections: those consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology carry the Guru’s sanction; those inconsistent with it — particularly the Triya Charitar’s framework on women — do not.

XLII.3 The Nanakshahi Resolution: How the Panth Makes Institutional Decisions

[AI] The Dasam Granth controversy, like the Raag Mala controversy and the Bhagauti controversy, ultimately requires institutional resolution by the Akal Takht. The Akal Takht’s authority over Sikh institutional practice is established by the Miri Piri principle — the temporal-spiritual sovereignty of the Sikh Panth expressed through its highest institutional body.

This means that even where this article’s theological analysis from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji reaches conclusions — particularly regarding the Triya Charitar’s incompatibility with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology — those conclusions are offered as contributions to the ongoing theological discussion, not as rulings that supersede the Akal Takht’s authority.

The Sikh tradition’s institutional decision-making process — through the Akal Takht’s Hukamnamas, through the SGPC’s Rehat Maryada, through the Panthic consensus that these institutions are designed to express — is the appropriate mechanism for resolving these institutional questions.

The theological analysis this article provides is input to that process. The final resolution is the Panth’s to make.

XLIII. THE ARDAS IN THE ERA OF DIGITAL TRANSMISSION

XLIII.1 Technology and the Living Prayer

The Sikh prayer tradition, including the Ardas, now exists in a digital environment that no previous generation of Sikhs has encountered. Gutkas (prayer books) are available as mobile applications. Live streaming brings gurdwara kirtan and Ardas to Sikhs everywhere in the world. YouTube channels carry recordings of the Ardas being performed at the five Takhts. Artificial intelligence systems — including the system through which this article has been produced — can discuss the theology of Sikh prayer in detail.

This digital environment presents both opportunities and risks for the Ardas as a living prayer tradition.

The opportunities: digital access to gurdwara programs, to Gurbani recitation, to commentary and teaching, has made the Sikh prayer tradition more accessible to diaspora Sikhs and to non-Sikh interested parties than ever before. A Sikh in Auckland who cannot access a local gurdwara can attend live kirtan from the Golden Temple. A Sikh child in Calgary whose parents were born in Punjab can read the Ardas with both Gurmukhi text and English translation on a smartphone screen.

The risks: digital transmission of the Ardas — particularly through social media clips and short-form video — risks detaching the prayer from its communal context. The Ardas is constitutively a congregational act. It is said by the congregation, in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, after kirtan and before the Hukamnama. A thirty-second clip of the Ardas’s closing lines, detached from this context, may carry the emotional resonance of the prayer without transmitting its theological structure.

[DA/AI] The Sikh institutions that maintain the Ardas’s traditional form — the SGPC, the five Takhts, the thousands of gurdwaras worldwide — face the challenge of maintaining the communal integrity of the prayer in an environment that increasingly individuates and fragments religious experience.

The answer is not rejection of digital technology. The Sikh tradition has always engaged with the technological and cultural forms of its time — the printing press, the audio recording, the video broadcast, all were adopted by Sikh institutions as they became available. The answer is intentional design: using digital technology to transmit not only the text of the Ardas but its communal context, its historical depth, and its theological structure.

XLIII.2 The Ardas and Sikh Identity in the Twenty-First Century

The Ardas is the single most powerful institutional mechanism for transmitting Sikh identity across generations and across geography. It is recited at every significant moment of Sikh communal life. It contains the essential elements of Sikh historical memory. It concludes with the essential elements of Sikh theological aspiration. And it does all of this in five minutes or less, in a form that every Sikh worldwide can recognize as the same prayer.

For the twenty-first century Sikh community — facing the challenges of assimilation in Western countries, of political pressure in India, of the ongoing unresolved questions from 1984, of the institutional debates about the Dasam Granth and the Raag Mala — the Ardas remains what it has always been: the prayer that holds the community together by holding the community’s history, theology, and aspiration in a single, standing, collective act.

ਹੇ ਨਿਮਾਣਿਆਂ ਦੇ ਮਾਣ, ਨਿਤਾਣਿਆਂ ਦੇ ਤਾਣ, ਨਿਓਟਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਓਟ, ਸੱਚੇ ਪਿਤਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ!

O honor of the humble, strength of the powerless, shelter of the shelterless, True Father, Waheguru!

This direct address — the Ardas calling on Waheguru as the specifically protector of the specifically vulnerable — is not an abstraction. For the Sikh mother whose son was disappeared in the Punjab counterinsurgency; for the Sikh child whose family was burned out of their home in November 1984; for the Sikh worker facing racial discrimination in Britain or Canada; for the Sikh farmer in Punjab facing debt and dispossession — the Ardas’s address to Waheguru as the honor of the humble and the strength of the powerless is not theology in the abstract. It is the specific claim that Waheguru sees them, specifically, in their specific vulnerability, and that their dignity before Waheguru is not diminished by what the world has done to them.

This is what the Ardas is. This is what it has always been. And this is why it has survived everything the world has thrown at the Sikh community for five hundred years.

XLIV. THE PRAYER BEFORE THE PRAYER: PRIVATE ARDAS AND THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL

XLIV.1 Ardas as Personal Practice Beyond the Congregation

While the Ardas is constitutively a congregational act — requiring the standing Sangat, the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, and the public voice of the Ardas-reader — the Sikh tradition also maintains a form of personal Ardas that the individual devotee performs before Waheguru in private moments of need, gratitude, or petition.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the basis for this personal Ardas:

ਤੂ ਠਾਕੁਰੁ ਤੁਮ ਪਹਿ ਅਰਦਾਸਿ॥
You are the Master; to You is my supplication.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Sukhmani Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

This verse — from the Sukhmani Sahib, one of the most widely recited compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — addresses the Divine directly in the first person singular. The “my supplication” (ਮੇਰੀ ਅਰਦਾਸਿ) is the individual soul’s direct address to Waheguru. The congregational Ardas is the collective form of this individual address; both are rooted in the same theological relationship.

The personal Ardas — the Sikh’s private act of standing before Waheguru with a specific need, a specific gratitude, or a specific confusion — does not follow the formal three-part structure of the congregational Ardas. It is an informal, spontaneous, direct address in whatever language and whatever form the devotee’s heart produces. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of direct devotee-Divine address — established by Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s revolution against priestly mediation — makes this personal Ardas not merely permitted but encouraged.

XLIV.2 The Relationship Between Personal and Congregational Ardas

[AI] The personal Ardas and the congregational Ardas are not competing forms of prayer. They are complementary dimensions of the same theological relationship. The congregational Ardas carries the community’s collective history and aspiration; the personal Ardas carries the individual’s specific situation.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology does not privilege one over the other. The Sangat (congregation) is described as the manifestation of the Divine; but the individual soul’s direct address to Waheguru is equally honored. The Sikh prayer tradition is complete only when both dimensions are active — the individual in personal Simran and personal Ardas, and the same individual in congregational Kirtan and congregational Ardas.

This completeness — individual and congregational, interior and public, personal and historical — is what distinguishes the Sikh prayer tradition from traditions that emphasize exclusively private devotion (some mystical traditions) or exclusively public ritual (some institutional religious traditions). The Sikh Ardas requires the individual to stand with the community, and the community to stand in a way that honors the individual’s specific need.

XLV. THE HISTORICAL SECTION IN FULL: EVERY PHRASE AND ITS MEANING

XLV.1 A Complete Annotated Reading of the Martyrdom Section

The following presents each phrase of the Ardas’s historical section with its full historical and theological annotation:

ਪੰਜਾਂ ਪਿਆਰਿਆਂ — the Five Beloved

Bhai Daya Singh (Lahore, Khatri caste), Bhai Dharam Singh (Delhi, Jat caste), Bhai Himmat Singh (Jagannath Puri, Jheevar caste), Bhai Mohkam Singh (Dwarka, Chhimba caste), Bhai Sahib Singh (Bidar, Karnataka, Nai caste). Their caste origins are significant: the first Panj Pyare came from five different castes, demonstrating from the Khalsa’s founding moment that the new order dissolved caste distinctions. A Khatri, a Jat, a water-carrier, a cloth-printer, and a barber — equals before the Guru.

ਚੌਹਾਂ ਸਾਹਿਬਜ਼ਾਦਿਆਂ — the Four Sahibzade

Sahibzada Ajit Singh (eldest, born 1687, martyred at Chamkaur December 22, 1704, age approximately 17-18), Sahibzada Jujhar Singh (second son, born 1691, martyred at Chamkaur December 22, 1704, age approximately 13-14), Sahibzada Zorawar Singh (third son, born 1696, martyred at Sirhind December 26, 1704, age approximately 8-9), Sahibzada Fateh Singh (youngest son, born 1699, martyred at Sirhind December 26, 1704, age approximately 5-6).

The Sahibzade represent the complete range of life: the young warrior (Ajit Singh in his late teens), the adolescent soldier (Jujhar Singh), the child (Zorawar Singh), and the very young child (Fateh Singh). The Ardas remembers them together — not separating the warriors from the children — because all four are equally honored, equally remembered, equally the inheritance of the Panth.

ਚਾਲੀਆਂ ਮੁਕਤਿਆਂ — the Forty Liberated

The forty Sikhs of Majha who had signed the renunciation (bedhawa) at Anandpur Sahib and returned to their families. They returned under the leadership of Mai Bhago (Bibi Bhani’s daughter-in-law, also known as Mata Bhag Kaur) — a woman who shamed them back to their Guru. They fought at Khidrana (later renamed Muktsar — the Pool of Liberation) in 1705 and died there. The Guru’s tearing of the bedhawa document — officially absolving their desertion — is one of the most moving events in the Khalsa’s early history.

The inclusion of the Chali Mukte in the Ardas alongside the Panj Pyare and the Sahibzade is theologically significant: the prayer does not only remember those who were faithful from the beginning. It remembers those who failed, recognized their failure, returned, and made good. The Ardas thus contains within itself a theology of redemption — the possibility of returning after failure, of the Guru’s forgiveness, of the community’s embrace of those who come back.

ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਾਂ ਸਿੰਘਣੀਆਂ ਨੇ ਧਰਮ ਹੇਤ ਸੀਸ ਦਿੱਤੇ — those Singh men and women who gave their heads for the faith

The grammatical inclusion of both ਸਿੰਘਾਂ (men) and ਸਿੰਘਣੀਆਂ (women) is theologically intentional and historically grounded. The women who gave their lives for the Sikh faith are historical figures: Mai Bhago who fought at Muktsar; Mata Gujri Ji who died at Sirhind’s tower after hearing of her grandsons’ execution; the unnamed thousands of Sikh women who maintained the community’s faith and practice through the darkest years of the eighteenth century.

ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ — cut joint by joint: Bhai Mani Singh Ji, December 1737

ਖੋਪਰੀਆਂ ਲੁਹਾਈਆਂ — scalps removed: Bhai Taru Singh Ji, 1745

ਚਰਖੜੀਆਂ ’ਤੇ ਚੜ੍ਹੇ — broken on the wheel: Bhai Subeg Singh Ji and Bhai Shahbaz Singh Ji, 1745

ਆਰਿਆਂ ਨਾਲ ਚਿਰਾਏ ਗਏ — sawn with saws: the martyrs executed by sawing, documented in the eighteenth century persecution records

ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਸੇਵਾ ਲਈ ਕੁਰਬਾਨੀਆਂ ਕੀਤੀਆਂ — made sacrifices for the service of the Gurdwaras: the Akali Shaheeds of the Gurdwara Reform Movement (1920–1925), the martyrs of Nankana Sahib (1921), the martyrs of the Jaito morcha (1923-24)

ਧਰਮ ਨਹੀਂ ਹਾਰਿਆ, ਸਿੱਖੀ ਕੇਸਾਂ ਸੁਆਸਾਂ ਨਾਲ ਨਿਬਾਹੀ — who did not lose their faith, who maintained their Sikhism with their hair until their last breath

This phrase is the Ardas’s theological affirmation of the Khalsa form: the kesh (uncut hair) as the external sign of internal commitment, maintained to the last breath under the most extreme pressure. Every time this phrase is recited, the Sikh community is affirming its own commitment to the form — not as mere external observance but as the testimonial commitment that the martyrs validated with their lives.

ਤਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀ ਕਮਾਈ ਦਾ ਧਿਆਨ ਧਰ ਕੇ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ਜੀ ਬੋਲੋ ਜੀ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ! — meditating on the earnings of those Khalsa, say: Waheguru!

The word ਕਮਾਈ (earnings/income) applied to the martyrs’ sacrifice is theologically precise and linguistically striking. The martyrs’ sacrifice is their ਕਮਾਈ — their spiritual earnings, their accumulated spiritual wealth that the congregation is now invited to meditate upon. By meditating on the martyrs’ ਕਮਾਈ, the congregation participates in the spiritual wealth that sacrifice generated. The martyrs died; their death generated spiritual wealth that belongs to the entire Panth; the Panth accesses that wealth through the act of remembrance. The Waheguru at the end is the community’s acknowledgment of this wealth.

XLVI. THE FIVE TAKHTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE IN THE ARDAS

XLVI.1 The Institutional Geography of Sikh Sovereignty

The Ardas specifically names the five Takhts — the five seats of Sikh temporal-spiritual authority — and asks for their protection and flourishing. The five Takhts are:

Sri Akal Takht Sahib, Amritsar — the supreme seat of Sikh temporal authority, established by Guru Hargobind Ji in 1606 directly across the sarovar from the Harmandir Sahib.

Sri Patna Sahib (Takht Harmandir Ji), Patna, Bihar — the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh Ji, established as a Takht in recognition of its sacred historical significance.

Sri Kesgarh Sahib, Anandpur Sahib, Punjab — the site of the Khalsa’s creation at Vaisakhi 1699, the most historically significant location in the Khalsa’s founding.

Sri Hazur Sahib (Takht Sach Khand), Nanded, Maharashtra — the site where Guru Gobind Singh Ji completed the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s installation as the eternal living Guru and where he spent his final days.

Sri Damdama Sahib, Talwandi Sabo, Punjab — the site where Guru Gobind Singh Ji spent significant time after the battles of the early 1700s, where he dictated the Guru Granth Sahib Ji from memory after the original manuscripts were lost at Anandpur Sahib.

[AI] The Ardas’s naming of the five Takhts is the Sikh prayer tradition’s institutional geography: the prayer maps the sacred sites of Sikh sovereignty and asks for their preservation. For the Sikh diaspora whose members may never visit these sites in person, the Ardas’s naming of them creates a map of belonging — a sense that these places are part of the devotee’s spiritual home regardless of where they were born or where they live.

For the Sikh community in Punjab, the naming of Akal Takht Sahib within the Ardas carries a weight heightened by the specific historical event of June 1984: the Indian Army’s assault on the Golden Temple complex destroyed the Akal Takht building. The structure that Guru Hargobind Ji had established as the seat of Sikh temporal sovereignty was physically damaged by the Indian state’s military operation. Every time the Ardas names Sri Akal Takht Sahib after 1984, it is simultaneously a prayer for preservation and a testimony about what was done to it.

XLVII. THE ARDAS AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY

XLVII.1 Who Controls What the Ardas Remembers

The formal authority over the Ardas’s text — specifically over any additions to the fixed historical middle section — rests with the Akal Takht. This is the institutional expression of the Miri Piri principle: the temporal-spiritual sovereignty of the Sikh Panth, exercised through the Akal Takht, determines what the community formally remembers in its most sacred prayer.

This institutional structure creates specific political dynamics. Any proposed addition to the Ardas’s historical section — including any reference to 1984 — becomes, by definition, a political question as well as a theological one. The Akal Takht’s Hukamnamas on such questions reflect not only theological analysis but also the political realities of the relationship between the Sikh Panth and the Indian state.

[AI] This is not a deficiency of the Sikh institutional system. It is a consequence of the Miri Piri principle: prayer and politics are not separate domains in Sikh theology. The Akal Takht’s authority over the Ardas’s text is simultaneously religious and political because the Ardas itself is simultaneously religious and political.

What this means in practice: the decision about whether to formally include 1984 in the Ardas’s permanent historical section is not solely a theological decision, though theology is its foundation. It is also a political decision about the Sikh Panth’s relationship to the Indian state, about the timing of formal institutional claims, and about the Panthic consensus-building process that the Akal Takht is designed to express.

The theological argument for inclusion — established throughout this article from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s standard of truth-telling and the Ardas’s own precedent of including mass martyrdom events — is clear and compelling. The institutional argument for patience — that Panthic consensus takes time to build and that the Akal Takht’s authority requires that consensus — is also legitimate.

Both arguments must be held simultaneously, because both are true. The Ardas itself models this kind of holding of tension: it names the worst of what has been done to the Sikh community and then asks for the welfare of all. Both things. Simultaneously. Without contradiction.

XLVIII. THE DASAM GRANTH IN PRACTICE: WHAT SIKHS ACTUALLY DO

XLVIII.1 The Gap Between Formal Position and Living Practice

[DA] A significant gap exists between the formal institutional debate about the Dasam Granth’s status and what Sikh communities actually do in practice. This gap is itself informative.

The Nitnem compositions from the Dasam Granth — Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, Chaupai Sahib — are used universally across the Sikh Panth in the Amrit Sanchar, in the daily Nitnem, and in gurdwara programs. There is no significant movement, even among the Dasam Granth’s most vocal critics, to remove these compositions from the Nitnem. Their theological content, their liturgical function, and their centuries of use have established them as simply part of the Sikh prayer tradition.

The Triya Charitar, by contrast, is never recited in Sikh congregational programs. It does not appear in any gurdwara’s regular programming. It is not taught in Sikh educational institutions as a text for study or devotional engagement. Its inclusion in the Dasam Granth is a scholarly and theological fact; its absence from Sikh living practice is an equally significant fact.

[AI] This gap between formal position (the Dasam Granth is attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji) and living practice (the Triya Charitar is not used in Sikh congregational life) is itself a form of Panthic judgment. The community has, through its actual practice rather than through formal institutional declaration, effectively distinguished between the Dasam Granth’s compositions that carry devotional and theological weight and those that do not.

This de facto Panthic judgment — expressed through what the community actually prays with, recites, teaches, and honors — is consistent with this article’s theological analysis from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji: the compositions consistent with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology are used; those inconsistent with it are not.

XLIX. THE THEOLOGICAL INHERITANCE OF THE SIKH ARDAS: WHAT THE BHAGATS BEQUEATH

XLIX.1 Bhagat Farid: The Body, Suffering, and Prayer

Sheikh Farid Shakarganj — the twelfth-century Punjabi Sufi whose compositions appear in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, making him the first major poet of record in the Punjabi language — contributes a dimension to Sikh prayer that is easy to overlook: the language of physical suffering as a medium for spiritual longing.

ਫਰੀਦਾ ਰਾਤਿ ਕਥੂਰੀ ਵੰਡੀਐ ਸੁਤੇ ਮਿਲਹਿ ਨ ਭਾਉ॥
ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਨੈਣ ਨੀਦ੍ਰਾਵਲੇ ਤਿਨਾ ਮਿਲਣੁ ਕੁਆਉ॥

O Farid, the musk of the night is being distributed, but those who are asleep miss the fragrance.
Those whose eyes are heavy with sleep — how will they meet the Lord?
(Bhagat Farid, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Farid’s compositions in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji carry the consciousness of time passing, of old age, of the body’s decay, and of the urgent need to address the Divine before the opportunity is lost. This consciousness — that prayer has a temporal urgency, that the opportunity for divine encounter does not wait indefinitely — gives the Sikh prayer tradition a quality of existential seriousness that is different in register from its celebratory (Anand Sahib) and testimonial (Ardas historical section) modes.

The Ardas’s function as a daily prayer — recited at specific times of day, linked to the rhythms of dawn and evening and sleep — carries this Faridi consciousness of temporal urgency within its structure. The Sikh who rises for Ardas in the Amrit Vela (the pre-dawn hours) is doing what Farid describes: awakening while others sleep, seeking the Divine encounter that the sleeping miss.

XLIX.2 Bhagat Namdev: Prayer That Transforms the Ordinary

Bhagat Namdev — the fourteenth-century tailor and poet from Maharashtra — contributes compositions to the Guru Granth Sahib Ji that establish a distinctive theological point: the Divine encounter can occur in the midst of ordinary work, ordinary life, and ordinary place.

ਪਾਨੀ ਭਰਤੀ ਬਾਮਨੀ ਤਉ ਕਤ ਲਾਗੈ ਅਖਿ॥
ਨਾਮਾ ਤਉ ਛੀਬਾ ਘਰਿ ਬੈਠਾ ਤਿਸੁ ਭੀ ਪਾਹਿ ਆਵੈ ਲਖਿ॥

The Brahmin woman goes to fetch water — yet her eye is fixed (on the Lord). Namdev, a tailor, sits in his home, yet hundreds of thousands come to him.
(Bhagat Namdev, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Namdev — the tailor, the low-caste craftsperson — sitting in his home is accessible to hundreds of thousands of seekers, while the Brahmin woman doing a ritually significant act (fetching water) may or may not be encountering the Divine. The point is not anti-Brahmin: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is not a text of social hostility. The point is theological: the divine encounter is not determined by the social status of the practitioner, by the ritual status of the activity, or by the institutional context in which the prayer occurs.

This principle — that prayer is not the exclusive property of sacred spaces, sacred castes, or sacred times — is embedded in the Ardas’s structure. The Ardas can be performed wherever the Sangat gathers and the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is present. It is not restricted to the five Takhts or to specific sacred sites. The Sikh who gathers with two other Sikhs in their living room in Fresno, California, with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji present, has created a Sangat. The Ardas spoken there is as theologically complete as the Ardas spoken at Harmandir Sahib.

L. THE NITNEM’S RELATIONSHIP TO THE CYCLE OF CREATION

L.1 Amrit Vela and the Theology of Sacred Time

The Nitnem’s assignment of specific prayer compositions to specific times of day is not arbitrary. It reflects a theology of sacred time that is grounded in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s cosmological understanding:

ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਵੇਲਾ — the ambrosial hours before dawn — is specifically designated for Japji Sahib because the Guru Granth Sahib Ji describes this time as the period of greatest spiritual receptivity:

ਅੰਮ੍ਰਿਤ ਵੇਲਾ ਸਚੁ ਨਾਉ ਵਡਿਆਈ ਵੀਚਾਰੁ॥
In the ambrosial hours of the morning, meditate on the True Name and greatness of God.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Japji Sahib, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The theological claim: the hours before dawn are the hours when the boundary between the material and spiritual worlds is most permeable, when the sleeping mind is closest to the unconscious — and therefore, for the Sikh theology, closest to the inner reality where the divine Name resides. The Amrit Vela prayer tradition asks the devotee to awaken before this window closes and engage with the Naam while the spiritual receptivity is highest.

The Rehras Sahib at evening and the Kirtan Sohila at night complete the cycle: the devotee begins the day by addressing the Divine, sustains the connection at the day’s close, and releases the day’s events into the Divine’s care before sleep. The Ardas punctuates each of these times, formally transitioning the devotee between the sacred time of prayer and the ordinary time of daily activity.

L.2 The Five Banis of the Amrit Sanchar: Their Theological Sequence

The five Banis recited at the Amrit Sanchar — Japji Sahib, Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, Chaupai Sahib, Anand Sahib — follow a specific theological sequence:

Japji Sahib establishes the foundational theology: the nature of the Divine, the nature of the devotee’s relationship to the Divine, the stages of spiritual progress.

Jaap Sahib establishes the infinite attributes of the Divine across all traditions: the One who is beyond all naming, yet has infinite names.

Tav-Prasad Savvaiye strips away all external religious practice and isolates the essential: devotion through the Naam alone.

Chaupai Sahib establishes the devotee’s complete dependence on the Divine for protection and asks for the Shabad as the means of that protection.

Anand Sahib celebrates the state of divine bliss that the Khalsa initiation is designed to produce: the joy of union with the Guru’s teaching and the Guru’s presence.

[AI] The theological sequence moves from foundation (Japji), through infinite acknowledgment (Jaap), through the stripping of the inessential (Tav-Prasad), through the surrender of the self to divine protection (Chaupai), to the celebration of the state that surrender produces (Anand). This is a complete theological journey — from the beginning of understanding to the experience of divine bliss — compressed into five compositions that are recited at the moment of Khalsa initiation.

The Ardas that follows the Amrit Sanchar’s recitation of these five Banis is thus not merely a concluding ritual. It is the newly initiated Khalsa’s first standing act of testimony as a member of the Guru’s order: the five Banis have established the theological foundation; the Ardas is the first community act built on that foundation.

LI. THE JAFARNAMA’S PLACE IN SIKH THEOLOGICAL HISTORY

LI.1 The Letter as Prayer

The Zafarnama — the Epistle of Victory — is not formally a prayer. It is a letter, a qasida, a political communication between two sovereigns. But it functions, in the Sikh theological imagination, as a form of prayer: the individual addressing ultimate authority with the truth of their situation, with the confidence of the righteous, and with the knowledge that divine justice will ultimately prevail.

ਚੂ ਕਾਰ ਅਜ਼ ਹਮਹ ਹੀਲਤੇ ਦਰ ਗੁਜ਼ਸ਼ਤ
ਹਲਾਲ ਅਸਤ ਬੁਰਦਨ ਬ ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ੀਰ ਦਸਤ

When all other means have been exhausted,
It is righteous to raise the sword in hand.

This verse from the Zafarnama — addressed to the most powerful monarch in South Asia, by a man who had just lost his home, his sons, and most of his community — is the Ardas’s ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ expressed in a different register. The Ardas says: in ascending grace, in Your will, the welfare of all. The Zafarnama says: when all other means are exhausted, righteousness demands action. Both positions are sustainable within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology; they address different moments in the community’s situation.

The Ardas’s ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ is the spiritual posture — the inner state of grace and divine connection that sustains the soul regardless of external circumstances. The Zafarnama’s sword is the external action — the righteous response to specific circumstances when all other options have been exhausted. Both are necessary. Neither replaces the other. The Sikh who rises for Ardas in ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ and then acts with the Zafarnama’s moral courage is expressing the complete Sikh theology of prayer and action.

LI.2 Why the Zafarnama Matters for the Ardas’s 1984 Question

The Zafarnama is relevant to the 1984 question in a specific and important way. The Guru addressed Aurangzeb directly — naming the specific violations of the Emperor’s own standards, demanding accountability from the highest authority, doing so without apology and without equivocation, and addressing the Emperor as an equal, not as a subject.

The TheDeathCertificate.org publication’s forensic engagement with the administrative record of the Punjab disappearances — the cross-examination of K.B.S. Sidhu IAS, the accountability audit of the District Magistracy of Amritsar, the documentation of 2,097 illegal cremations — is operating in the same theological tradition as the Zafarnama. It is addressing power with truth. It is naming specific violations. It is demanding accountability from specific named individuals who held specific institutional authority.

The Ardas asks Waheguru to witness this addressing of power with truth. The Zafarnama models how it is done — with precision, with courage, with the moral confidence that comes from knowing the divine standard and holding everyone — including emperors — to it.

LII. THE PRAYER THAT PRECEDED THE PARTITION: ARDAS AND THE GREAT DISPLACEMENT

LII.1 August 1947 and the Largest Single Disruption to Sikh Prayer Life

The Partition of British India in August 1947 was the largest single disruption to Sikh communal prayer life in the tradition’s history. Overnight, the majority of the Sikh Panth was separated from:

• Sri Nankana Sahib — the birthplace of Guru Nanak Dev Ji
• Sri Panja Sahib — the historic gurdwara where the Guru’s handprint is preserved in stone
• Rohtas and dozens of other historic Gurdwaras where the Gurus had stayed, taught, and left sacred memory
• The Sikh heartland of the central Punjab, including Rawalpindi, Multan, and the western districts where Sikh communities had lived for centuries

The physical scale of the displacement was catastrophic: between 1.5 and 2 million Sikhs fled eastward into the Indian portion of Punjab, while Muslims fled westward, in a population exchange accompanied by extraordinary levels of communal violence. The Gurdwara of Nankana Sahib — the holiest site in the Sikh tradition, the birthplace of Guru Nanak — was now in Pakistan.

[PF] The SGPC’s decision to add the Nankana Sahib reference to the Ardas after 1947 was not merely a liturgical adjustment. It was a theological act of the highest order: the Panth was formally placing its loss before Waheguru, making the separation a permanent item in the community’s standing prayer, and refusing to accept the separation as the final word on the community’s relationship to its sacred sites.

ਸ੍ਰੀ ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਤੇ ਹੋਰ ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਿਆਂ ਗੁਰਧਾਮਾਂ ਦੇ, ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਪੰਥ ਨੂੰ ਵਿਛੋੜਿਆ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ, ਖੁੱਲ੍ਹੇ ਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਦੀਦਾਰ ਤੇ ਸੇਵਾ ਸੰਭਾਲ ਦਾ ਦਾਨ ਖਾਲਸਾ ਜੀ ਨੂੰ ਬਖ਼ਸ਼ੋ।

Grant to the Khalsa the gift of unobstructed sight, visit, and care of Sri Nankana Sahib and the other Gurdwaras and Gurdhams from which the Panth has been separated.

This petition — now seventy-seven years old and still unresolved — is the clearest possible demonstration that the Ardas is designed to carry unresolved historical wounds indefinitely if necessary. The prayer does not pretend the wound is healed. It does not offer a theological comfort that would suggest the separation is spiritually unimportant. It places the separation before Waheguru and asks — every day, in every gurdwara worldwide — for its resolution.

The Panth that adds a wound to its Ardas is the Panth that refuses to let that wound be forgotten.

LII.2 Access to Nankana Sahib in the Modern Era

In the post-1947 era, Sikh pilgrims have occasionally been granted access to Sri Nankana Sahib through bilateral India-Pakistan arrangements. The Guru Nanak Jayanti (Gurpurab) pilgrimage, in particular, has brought Sikh jathas (groups) from India across the border to Nankana Sahib with Pakistani government permission. These pilgrimages are emotionally and spiritually significant events for the participants.

But the Ardas’s petition goes beyond occasional access. It asks for “khule darshan didare” — unobstructed sight and visit — and “seva sambhal” — care and maintenance. The petition is for full, ongoing, unimpeded access to the Guru’s birthplace as part of the Sikh community’s normal religious life, not as a diplomatically managed exception.

The gap between the occasional pilgrimage visit (which does occur) and the fully open access the Ardas asks for (which does not exist) is the measure of the wound’s continued openness. The Ardas knows the difference and asks for the full resolution, not the partial one.

LIII. CONCLUSION OF THE COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT: THE LIVING WORD AND THE LIVING PRAYER

LIII.1 The Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the Eternal Living Standard

This manuscript — assembled across its many sections — has one foundational commitment: that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji is the living eternal Guru, whose testimony is the supreme standard for all theological evaluation within the Sikh tradition. This commitment is not merely a scholarly convention. It is the theological position of the Sikh Panth, established by Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Nanded in 1708 when he installed the scripture as the eternal living Guru.

Every controversy examined in this manuscript — the Bhagauti question, the Doha authorship, the Raag Mala, the Triya Charitar, the Chaubis Avtar, the question of 1984 in the Ardas — has been addressed through this single evidentiary standard. The results:

The Bhagauti refers to the divine power, not a Hindu goddess. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s own evidence establishes this.

The Doha’s “Siva” addresses the Auspicious Divine, not the Hindu deity Shiva who the Guru Granth Sahib Ji places within Maya.

The Raag Mala’s post-seal placement raises genuine theological questions from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework, while the institutional position of the SGPC is respected.

The Triya Charitar’s theology of women as inherently dangerous and deceptive is directly incompatible with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s testimony at Ang 473 and throughout the scripture’s equal-souls framework.

The Chaubis Avtar can be reconciled with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework only through the interpretive key the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself provides — the distinction between the Divine Name and the historical figure.

The 1984 question — whether the Punjab disappearances should enter the Ardas’s permanent historical record — is theologically supported by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s standard of truth-telling and by the Ardas’s own precedent of including mass martyrdom events. The institutional resolution awaits Panthic consensus.

LIII.2 The Ardas as the Panth’s Living Testimony

The Ardas is five hundred years old. It will be five hundred more years old. The Sikh Panth will continue to stand for it, to recite it, to debate its text, and to add to its historical section as history demands. This is not a sign of the Ardas’s instability. It is the sign of the Ardas’s vitality.

A prayer that no longer absorbs history has stopped being a living prayer. It has become a monument. The Sikh Ardas is not a monument. It is a living act — renewed daily in every gurdwara in the world, carried in the hearts of every Sikh wherever they are, and connected across its entire five-hundred-year span to the theological revolution of Guru Nanak Dev Ji at the river Bein in approximately 1499.

ਨਾ ਕੋ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨਾ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨੁ।
There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

These were the first words after the revelation. Everything that followed — the Sangat, the Pangat, the Kirtan, the Nitnem, the Khalsa, the Ardas, the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the eternal living Guru — was the institutional expression of those first words. The prayer the Sikh community says today, standing with folded hands and straight spine, in every language and in every country where Sikhs have settled, is still the expression of those first words: there is no category distinction before Waheguru. There are only souls. All of them equally loved. All of them equally accountable. All of their suffering equally worth naming. All of their wellbeing equally worth asking for.

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ।
ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥

Nanak — the Naam, in ascending grace.
In Your Will — the welfare of all.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

APPENDIX A: COMPLETE TEXT REFERENCES

The Standard Ardas (Sikh Rehat Maryada Form)

Opening Section (Fixed — from Var Sri Bhagauti Ji Ki, Dasam Granth):

ੴ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫ਼ਤਹਿ॥ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਜੀ ਸਹਾਇ॥ ਵਾਰ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀ ੧੦॥ ਪ੍ਰਿਥਮ ਭਗਉਤੀ ਸਿਮਰਿ ਕੈ ਗੁਰੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਲਈ ਧਿਆਇ॥ ਫਿਰ ਅੰਗਦ ਗੁਰੂ ਤੇ ਅਮਰਦਾਸੁ ਰਾਮਦਾਸੈ ਹੋਇ ਸਹਾਇ॥ ਅਰਜਨ ਹਰਿਗੋਬਿੰਦ ਨੋ ਸਿਮਰੌ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਹਰਿਰਾਇ॥ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਹਰਿਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਨ ਧਿਆਈਐ ਜਿਸ ਡਿਠੈ ਸਭਿ ਦੁਖਿ ਜਾਇ॥ ਤੇਗ ਬਹਾਦਰ ਸਿਮਰਿਐ ਘਰ ਨਉ ਨਿਧਿ ਆਵੈ ਧਾਇ॥ ਸਭ ਥਾਈਂ ਹੋਇ ਸਹਾਇ॥ ਦਸਾਂ ਪਾਤਸ਼ਾਹੀਆਂ ਦੀ ਜੋਤਿ ਸ੍ਰੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਜੀ ਦੇ ਪਾਠ ਦੀਦਾਰ ਦਾ ਧਿਆਨ ਧਰ ਕੇ ਬੋਲੋ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ।

Closing Section (Fixed):

ਹੇ ਅਕਾਲ ਪੁਰਖ ਆਪਣੇ ਪੰਥ ਦੇ ਸਦਾ ਸਹਾਈ ਦਾਤਾਰ ਜੀਓ! ਸ੍ਰੀ ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ ਤੇ ਹੋਰ ਗੁਰਦੁਆਰੇ ਗੁਰਧਾਮ ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਤੋਂ ਪੰਥ ਨੂੰ ਵਿਛੋੜਿਆ ਗਿਆ ਹੈ, ਖੁੱਲੇ ਦਰਸ਼ਨ ਦੀਦਾਰੇ ਅਤੇ ਸੇਵਾ ਸੰਭਾਲ ਦਾ ਦਾਨ ਦੇਵੋ। ਹੇ ਨਿਮਾਣਿਆਂ ਦੇ ਮਾਣ, ਨਿਤਾਣਿਆਂ ਦੇ ਤਾਣ, ਨਿਓਟਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਓਟ, ਸੱਚੇ ਪਿਤਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ! ਆਪ ਦੇ ਹਜ਼ੂਰ… [personal petition] …ਸੇਈ ਪਿਆਰੇ ਮੇਲ ਜਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਮਿਲਿਆਂ ਤੇਰਾ ਨਾਮ ਚਿਤ ਆਵੈ। ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ। ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥

APPENDIX B: THE EVIDENTIARY RECORD — GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI CITATIONS USED IN THIS MANUSCRIPT

This manuscript has drawn on the following citations from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as its primary evidentiary record. All are from the standard SGPC edition:

On prayer and address to the Divine:

• Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Sukhmani Sahib (ਤੂ ਠਾਕੁਰੁ ਤੁਮ ਪਹਿ ਅਰਦਾਸਿ)
• Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Japji Sahib Pauri 1 (ਹੁਕਮਿ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ)

On the nature of God and rejection of idol/goddess worship:

• Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Var Majh (ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵਾ ਪੂਜੀਐ ਭਾਈ)
• Guru Ram Das Ji (ਦੇਵੀ ਦੇਵ ਪਿਤਰ ਸਭਿ ਛੋਡੇ)
• Guru Arjan Dev Ji / Bhagat Kabir (ਅਵਤਰਿ ਆਇ ਕਹਾ ਤੁਮ ਕੀਨੋ)

On women:

• Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Ang 473 (ਭੰਡਿ ਜੰਮੀਐ) — primary evidence for Triya Charitar incompatibility

On Bhagauti:

• Guru Arjan Dev Ji (ਭਗਉਤੀ ਭਗਵੰਤ ਭਗਤਿ ਕਾ ਰੰਗੁ)

On Ram and the distinction from avatar:

• Bhagat Kabir, Ang 1374 (ਕਬੀਰ ਰਾਮੁ ਕਹਨ ਮਹਿ ਭੇਦੁ ਹੈ)

On equal souls:

• Bhagat Ravidas (ਜਾਤਿ ਜਨਾਂਮ ਨਹ ਪੂਛੀਐ)
• General (ਸਭੁ ਕੋ ਊਚਾ ਆਖੀਐ)

On Shiva within creation:

• Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Ang 920 (ਸਿਵ ਸਕਤਿ ਆਪਿ ਉਪਾਇ ਕੈ)

On Mundaavani:

• Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Ang 1429 (ਥਾਲ ਵਿਚਿ ਤਿੰਨਿ ਵਸਤੂ ਪਈਓ)

On the Bani as Guru:

• Guru Ram Das Ji, Ang 982 (ਬਾਣੀ ਗੁਰੂ ਗੁਰੂ ਹੈ ਬਾਣੀ)

APPENDIX C: GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS

ਅਰਦਾਸ (Ardas) — Standing congregational supplication; the formal Sikh community prayer

ਭਗਉਤੀ (Bhagauti) — The divine power; the divine sword of righteousness; in Guru Granth Sahib Ji usage, the devoted soul imbued with divine love

ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ (Chardi Kala) — Ascending grace; the state of spiritual elevation that transcends material circumstances; the spiritual posture of the Khalsa

ਦਸਮ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ (Dasam Granth) — The Book of the Tenth King; the corpus of writings attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji, compiled posthumously by Bhai Mani Singh Ji

ਘੱਲੂਘਾਰਾ (Ghallughar) — Holocaust; the term applied to the two great eighteenth-century massacres of the Sikh Panth

ਗੁਰਮਤਿ (Gurmat) — The Guru’s teaching; the theological and ethical framework of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji

ਹੁਕਮ (Hukam) — The divine will; the order pervading all of creation

ਹੁਕਮਨਾਮਾ (Hukamnama) — The divine directive; the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s randomly opened passage at the conclusion of a Sikh service

ਖਾਲਸਾ (Khalsa) — The Pure; the order of initiated Sikhs established by Guru Gobind Singh Ji at Vaisakhi 1699

ਕੀਰਤਨ (Kirtan) — The communal singing of the Gurus’ compositions

ਮੀਰੀ ਪੀਰੀ (Miri Piri) — Temporal sovereignty (Miri) and spiritual sovereignty (Piri); the doctrine of their inseparability established by Guru Hargobind Ji

ਮੁੰਦਾਵਣੀ (Mundaavani) — The seal; the formal concluding composition of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, by Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Ang 1429

ਨਾਮ ਸਿਮਰਨ (Naam Simran) — Continuous interior remembrance of the Divine Name

ਨਿਤਨੇਮ (Nitnem) — Daily prayer regimen; the specified compositions recited at morning, evening, and night

ਪੰਜ ਪਿਆਰੇ (Panj Pyare) — The Five Beloved; the first five Khalsa initiates at Vaisakhi 1699

ਰਾਗਮਾਲਾ (Raag Mala) — The catalogue of ragas; the musicological text appearing on Ang 1430 of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, whose canonical status is contested

ਸੰਗਤ (Sangat) — Congregation; the community of Guru’s Sikhs gathered for prayer

ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ (Sarbat da Bhala) — The welfare of all; the universal aspiration with which the Ardas closes

ਤ੍ਰਿਆ ਚਰਿਤ੍ਰ (Triya Charitar) — The Wiles of Women; the section of the Dasam Granth containing 404 stories of women’s cunning; theologically incompatible with the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology of women

ਜ਼ਫ਼ਰਨਾਮਾ (Zafarnama) — Epistle of Victory; Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s Persian letter to Emperor Aurangzeb

This manuscript is a publication of KPSGILL.COM and THEDEATHCERTIFICATE.ORG.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ
Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ
Before the Gurshabad, the nameless dead.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਉੱਠਣ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਸੜ ਚੁੱਕਾ ਸੀ
Before the Gurshabad could rise, the cremation ground had already burned.

Authored by Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D.
Publisher and Editorial Director | KPSGILL.COM | TheDeathCertificate.org
Fresno, California, U.S.A.

PART ELEVEN: THE COMPLETE THEOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE OF SIKH PRAYER — DEEP ANALYSIS

LIV. THE MOOL MANTAR AS THE ROOT OF ALL PRAYER

LIV.1 Parsing the Mool Mantar: Every Word Is a Doorway

The Mool Mantar — the Root Formula that opens the Guru Granth Sahib Ji and precedes every rag section within the scripture — is the compressed theological foundation from which the entire Sikh prayer tradition grows. To understand Sikh prayer fully requires sitting with the Mool Mantar carefully, word by word, because each word names a dimension of the Divine that the prayer tradition is designed to engage:

ੴ — Ik Oankaar. One Creator Being. Not “there is one God” in the sense of a counting statement (first among several, or only one rather than many). The ੴ of the Mool Mantar is a statement about the nature of unity itself: the Creator and the Creation are not two separate things. There is one reality, and it is the Creator-Being. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology is not monotheism in the simple sense of counting gods and arriving at the number one. It is a theology of radical non-duality: the Creator pervades all of what has been created, and there is nothing outside the Creator’s pervading presence.

ਸਤਿ ਨਾਮੁ — Sat Naam. Truth is the Name. The Name — the Naam — is the theological term for the divine presence accessible to the human soul through Simran and Kirtan. “Truth is the Name” means: the ultimate nature of reality is what we encounter when we access the Naam. Truth is not a concept to be understood intellectually; it is a reality to be encountered through the living practice of Naam.

ਕਰਤਾ ਪੁਰਖੁ — Karta Purakh. Creative Being Personified. God is not merely a philosophical principle, not merely a first cause, not merely a ground of being. God is the active Creator — the one who creates, the one who acts, the one who is personally present in the creation as its maker and sustainer.

ਨਿਰਭਉ — Nirbhau. Without Fear. The Divine has no fear — not because power makes the Divine beyond danger (that would be the theology of the warrior king), but because there is nothing outside the Divine that could threaten it. The Divine’s fearlessness is the fearlessness of completeness: what is complete has nothing to fear from what it encompasses.

ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ — Nirvair. Without Hatred. The Divine has no hatred — not because the Divine is indifferent to evil (the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s God is deeply engaged with justice), but because hatred is a relational emotion that requires an Other to hate. The Divine, who encompasses all, has no Other to hate.

ਅਕਾਲ ਮੂਰਤਿ — Akaal Moorat. Image of the Undying. The Divine has form (Moorat — image, form) but the form is Akaal — beyond time, undying, not subject to the changes that affect all temporal forms. This phrase does something theologically precise: it affirms that the Divine is not formless in the sense of being absent or empty, while also affirming that the Divine’s form is not limited by time in the way that all physical forms are.

ਅਜੂਨੀ — Ajooni. Beyond Birth. The Divine is not born — does not enter the world through the biological process of birth, does not take an avatar (incarnation). This is the theological basis for the Sikh rejection of the Hindu avatar doctrine: the Divine that is beyond birth does not incarnate. The Chaubis Avtar’s literary retelling of avatar stories must be understood within this framework.

ਸੈਭੰ — Saibhang. Self-Existent. The Divine exists by its own nature, not as a result of any prior cause. Nothing created the Creator. The Creator simply is, has always been, and will always be.

ਗੁਰ ਪ੍ਰਸਾਦਿ — Gur Prasaadi. By the Guru’s Grace. The Divine, despite all the transcendent qualities named above, is accessible to the human soul — but only through the Guru’s grace. The Guru’s grace is not arbitrary; it is available to anyone who sincerely turns toward it. But without the Guru’s grace, the Divine remains inaccessible to the ego-bound soul.

[AI] The Mool Mantar is not a list of divine attributes to be memorized and recited. It is a meditation program: each word opens into a dimension of divine reality that the devotee is invited to explore through Simran, Kirtan, and living. The Ardas is the community’s collective standing before the reality described in the Mool Mantar — the standing before Ik Oankaar, the Sat Naam, the Karta Purakh, the Nirbhau, the Nirvair, the Akaal Moorat, the Ajooni, the Saibhang, the Gur Prasaadi.

This is whom the Ardas addresses. Understanding this makes clear why the Ardas cannot invoke a Hindu goddess, cannot invoke a historical avatar, and cannot be a petition to any lesser divine being. The Mool Mantar establishes the Addressee: the One who is all of these things simultaneously, beyond all categorization, and accessible only through the Guru’s grace.

LIV.2 The Japji’s Response to the Mool Mantar

Immediately after the Mool Mantar, the Japji Sahib begins with a rhetorical question that acknowledges the distance between the Mool Mantar’s description of the Divine and the human capacity to reach that Divine:

ਕਿਵ ਸਚਿਆਰਾ ਹੋਈਐ ਕਿਵ ਕੂੜੈ ਤੁਟੈ ਪਾਲਿ॥
How does one become truthful? How is the veil of falsehood torn away?

The Mool Mantar has described the Divine. The Japji immediately asks: how does the soul, which is not the Divine, approach it? How does the limited soul encounter the unlimited? How does the time-bound soul encounter the Akaal? How does the ego-bound soul receive the Guru’s grace?

The answer — ਹੁਕਮਿ ਰਜਾਈ ਚਲਣਾ — walking in the Will of the Creator — is the theological foundation of Sikh prayer. Prayer is not the soul’s attempt to change the Divine’s will. Prayer is the soul’s alignment with the Will that is already present, already pervading, already determining the framework within which all events occur.

The Ardas understood through this framework is: the community stands before the Ik Oankaar, acknowledges the historical events that have occurred within the divine Hukam, places its present needs within the divine Hukam, and asks for the strength and grace to continue walking within the Hukam — including the strength to continue seeking the welfare of all within whatever circumstances the Hukam brings.

LV. THE MARTYRDOM SECTION’S DEEPEST LAYER: ਕਮਾਈ AND THE THEOLOGY OF SACRIFICE

LV.1 Why the Martyrs’ Death Is Called Their “Earnings”

The Ardas’s call to remember the martyrs uses the word ਕਮਾਈ — earnings, income, the fruit of labor — to describe what the martyrs accumulated through their sacrifice. This is one of the most theologically dense choices in the entire Ardas text.

In ordinary Punjabi usage, ਕਮਾਈ refers to what one earns through honest work — the wages of labor, the fruit of effort. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji extends this concept into the spiritual domain:

ਕਿਰਤਿ ਕਮਾਈ ਕੇਤੀ ਕਾਣਿ ਕਰੇ ਸੋ ਆਵੈ ਜਾਵੈ ਥਾਇ॥
So much labor and earning by one’s own efforts — that one continues to come and go (in the cycle of rebirth).

And crucially:

ਨਾਮੁ ਨਿਧਾਨੁ ਕਮਾਈਐ ਇਹੁ ਕਰਣੀ ਸਾਰੁ॥
Earning the treasure of the Naam — this is the most excellent action.
(Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Naam is the supreme ਕਮਾਈ — the highest earnings possible for a human soul. All other earnings are temporary and remain in the cycle of worldly existence. The Naam’s earnings — the spiritual wealth accumulated through Naam Simran, through righteous living, through devotion — are the permanent wealth that accompanies the soul.

When the Ardas calls the martyrs’ sacrifice their ਕਮਾਈ, it is applying this theological framework: the martyrs’ sacrifice was their supreme spiritual earning. By giving their lives rather than abandoning the Naam (by refusing to convert, by refusing to cut their hair, by refusing to betray their community), they accumulated the highest spiritual wealth. And this wealth, the Ardas claims, is available to the Panth that meditates on it — that the community’s meditation on the martyrs’ ਕਮਾਈ gives the community access to the spiritual wealth those martyrs earned.

[AI] This is theologically sophisticated. It establishes a relationship between the living community and the martyred community that is not merely historical (we remember them as historical figures) but spiritually transactional (their spiritual earnings become accessible to us through the act of remembrance). The Ardas is not merely a memory exercise. It is a spiritual practice through which the living community participates in the accumulated ਕਮਾਈ of the generations of martyrs who came before.

This is why the Ardas’s ਕਮਾਈ call — ਤਿਨ੍ਹਾਂ ਦੀ ਕਮਾਈ ਦਾ ਧਿਆਨ ਧਰ ਕੇ ਖ਼ਾਲਸਾ ਜੀ ਬੋਲੋ ਜੀ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ — is followed by the Waheguru affirmation. The meditation on the martyrs’ ਕਮਾਈ produces the experience of Waheguru — not abstractly, but in the immediate moment of the congregation’s standing prayer. The martyrs’ sacrifice, when properly contemplated, brings the devotee into the presence of Waheguru.

LVI. THE ARDAS AND THE SIKH EXPERIENCE OF TIME

LVI.1 How the Ardas Organizes Sikh Experience of History

The Ardas presents a specific organization of Sikh historical time that is not merely chronological but theological. It does not present history as a linear sequence of events moving from past to future in the standard secular historical framework. It presents history as a field of testimony — a space in which the acts of those who lived and died in Guru’s service remain permanently present and perpetually relevant.

The martyrs the Ardas names are not “in the past” in the Ardas’s theological framework. They are present in the congregation’s awareness, present before Waheguru, and present as the community’s active spiritual inheritance. When the congregation meditates on the ਕਮਾਈ of Bhai Mani Singh Ji being cut joint by joint in Lahore in December 1737, Bhai Mani Singh Ji is not a historical figure at a remove of nearly three centuries. He is present — his sacrifice is present, his ਕਮਾਈ is accessible, and his choice to accept death rather than renounce his faith is a living challenge to every member of the congregation.

This theological organization of time — in which the past is not dead but living, in which the martyrs are not “then” but “now” — is one of the Ardas’s most important features for sustaining community identity across generations and geographies. The Sikh child in Vancouver who has never been to Punjab, who speaks English as their first language, who may never visit Amritsar — this child, standing for Ardas, enters into real relationship with Bhai Mani Singh Ji, with the Panj Pyare, with the Char Sahibzade, with Guru Arjan Dev Ji at the tatti tavi. These are not historical figures to be studied. They are present companions in the community’s living prayer.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the theological basis for this living relationship with the past:

ਸੰਤ ਸਾਜਨ ਭਏ ਏਕ ਰੰਗ ਹਰਿ ਨਾਮ ਨਿਧਾਨ ਸੋਈ॥
The saints and friends become one, in the color of the Lord’s Name; that Naam treasury is theirs.

The community of those who live in the Lord’s Name — whether living or departed — is one community. The Ardas honors this theological claim by treating the departed martyrs as present members of the Sikh community, whose sacrifice is part of the living community’s active spiritual inheritance.

LVII. THE NANAK LINE: CONTINUITY ACROSS TEN GURUS AND BEYOND

LVII.1 Why Every Guru Is Called Nanak

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses “Nanak” as the signature for compositions of all ten Gurus — Guru Angad Dev Ji’s compositions are attributed to ਮਹਲਾ ੨ (the Second Mahal/Dwelling) but they close with Nanak’s name. This theological convention — that all the Gurus share one Nanak-name because they all carry the same divine light — is one of the most important features of the Sikh theological framework.

ਜੋਤਿ ਰੂਪ ਹਰਿ ਆਪਿ ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕੁ ਕਹਾਇਓ॥
The Lord Himself, in the form of light, is called Guru Nanak.

And:

ਲਹਣੇ ਦੀ ਫੇਰਾਈਐ ਨਾਨਕਾ ਦੋਹੀ ਖਟੀਐ॥
The investiture of Lehna (Guru Angad) earns double — for Nanak was already earned.

The divine light that passed through Guru Nanak Dev Ji passed unchanged into Guru Angad Dev Ji, into Guru Amar Das Ji, through all ten human Gurus, and into the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the eternal Guru. This is not metaphor. In the Sikh theological framework, it is the literal truth: the Guru is the Shabad, the divine light, the Jot — and this Jot is one, continuous, unchanging from the moment of Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s revelation at the river Bein through the eternal installation of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji at Nanded in 1708.

The Ardas’s sequence through the ten Gurus — remembering each in turn and asking each for assistance — is the liturgical expression of this one-Jot theology: the devotee is not calling on ten separate beings but on the one divine light that manifested through ten successive forms before taking its final, permanent form in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

This theological claim has direct implications for the Ardas’s authority: the prayer that invokes the lineage of the Gurus is invoking the one divine Jot in its full historical and eternal manifestation. It is addressing the same reality that the Mool Mantar describes — the Ik Oankaar, the Sat Naam — through the specific historical form in which that reality has made itself known to the Sikh community.

LVIII. THE ARDAS IN THE COURT OF WAHEGURU: THE DARBAR METAPHOR

LVIII.1 Darbar as the Theological Space of Prayer

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji uses the metaphor of the divine court — ਦਰਬਾਰ (Darbar) — extensively to describe the theological space in which the human soul addresses the Divine:

ਆਪੇ ਦਰਬਾਰੁ ਆਪਿ ਦੀਬਾਣੁ॥
He Himself is the Court, He Himself is the audience hall.

ਤਿਥੈ ਦਰਬਾਰੁ ਭਰਿਆ ਕਵਲਾਨੰਦ ਹਰਿ ਕੀਰਤਨੁ ਸੁਣਿਆ॥
There the Court is filled — the Lord’s kirtan is heard with divine bliss.

The Darbar metaphor positions the Ardas within a specific political theology: the human community is addressing a divine sovereign whose court operates by different rules than any earthly court. In the divine court:

• There is no caste hierarchy (the Panth rises as one)
• There is no gender hierarchy (Sikh men and women stand together)
• There is no institutional hierarchy (the Ardas is not reserved for scholars or priests)
• There is no sectarian boundary (the Ardas closes with welfare for all)

The Ardas’s posture — standing, hands folded, spine straight — enacts this theology physically. The folded hands acknowledge the divine sovereign. The straight spine acknowledges the Khalsa’s refusal to bow to any earthly power. The standing of the entire congregation together enacts the equality of souls before the divine court.

[AI] The Ardas as an address to the divine Darbar also establishes the framework within which the martyrdom section functions: the Ardas is not merely telling the congregation about the martyrs. It is presenting the martyrs’ testimony before the divine court. The Ardas says to Waheguru: look at what was done to these souls who were yours. They refused to recant. They maintained their commitment to You at the cost of their bodies. This testimony, placed before the divine court, is the claim upon divine attention and divine justice.

This is why the Ardas’s testimony about the martyrs is expressed without apology, without euphemism, and without the softening language of conventional grief. The Ardas is not offering condolences. It is presenting evidence to the highest court in the universe. The evidence is specific: joint by joint, scalp removed, wheel and saw. The court is listening.

LIX. THE ARDAS AND THE INSTITUTION OF THE LANGAR

LIX.1 Langar as Prayer in Action

The institution of the Langar — the free community kitchen that serves food without distinction to anyone who comes — is, within the Sikh theological framework, prayer expressed through action. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes:

ਘਾਲਿ ਖਾਇ ਕਿਛੁ ਹਥਹੁ ਦੇਇ॥
ਨਾਨਕ ਰਾਹੁ ਪਛਾਣਹਿ ਸੇਇ॥

One who eats what they have earned through their own labor, and gives some to others from their hands — O Nanak, such people recognize the true path.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Langar is the institutional expression of ਵੰਡ ਛਕੋ — share and eat together — one of Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s three foundational principles (alongside Naam Japna and Kirat Karni). The prayer of the Ardas and the action of the Langar are not separate practices within the Sikh tradition. They are complementary expressions of the same theology.

The Ardas asks for the welfare of all (ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ). The Langar feeds all (ਸਭਨਾਂ ਲਈ ਲੰਗਰ). The prayer and the action are the same claim about the divine’s universal presence — made in two different registers, one verbal and one material. The Sikh who rises for Ardas and then serves in the Langar has performed a single integrated act of theological statement: in Waheguru’s presence, all are equal, all are fed, all belong.

The Ardas’s ending — ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — is meaningless without the Langar. The prayer for universal welfare that is not followed by the action of universal service is an incomplete theological statement. This is why the Langar is not supplemental to Sikh worship. It is constitutive of it. The prayer and the kitchen belong together.

LX. THE ARDAS’S GLOBAL REACH: FROM AMRITSAR TO FRESNO

LX.1 What Happens When the Ardas Is Said in Every Time Zone

At any given moment of any given day, the Ardas is being recited somewhere in the world. The Sikh community’s global distribution — from Punjab to the Gulf States, from East Africa to the United Kingdom, from Canada to Australia — means that the sun never sets on the Ardas. While one congregation in Fresno concludes its Amrit Vela program, a congregation in Amritsar is beginning its evening Rehras. While London recites the morning Ardas, the diaspora in Auckland has already completed theirs.

This global simultaneity is not merely a sociological fact. It is a theological statement: the Ardas is not a local practice. The Panth — ਖਾਲਸਾ ਜੀ — is not a local community. The Khalsa’s salutation — ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ, ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ — claims belonging not to any geography, any state, or any ethnicity, but to Waheguru. A community whose belonging is defined by Waheguru, not by geography, is by definition a global community.

The Ardas’s global reach is not the result of deliberate expansion or missionary activity (the Sikh tradition does not proselytize). It is the result of Sikh migration — the movement of Sikh communities from Punjab to every corner of the world over the past century and a half — carrying the Ardas with them. Wherever Sikhs settled, the Ardas was the first institutional act: the gathering of the Sangat, the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, and the standing prayer that established the new community’s connection to the entire Sikh tradition.

The Sikh gurdwara in Fresno, California — the city from which this publication is produced — conducts the Ardas in Gurmukhi, in the same form that the Harmandir Sahib uses, in the same form that was standardized by the SGPC’s Sikh Rehat Maryada. The Sikh in Fresno, reciting the Ardas, is in the same theological space as the Sikh in Amritsar. The prayer makes them neighbors across the Pacific.

LXI. THE DASAM GRANTH: THE COMPOSITIONS THAT RESOLVE THE CONTROVERSY FOR THEMSELVES

LXI.1 Jaap Sahib’s Self-Resolution

The Jaap Sahib — one of the Nitnem’s most universally accepted Dasam Granth compositions — contains within itself the clearest possible statement of the theological framework that governs how all the Dasam Granth’s more complicated sections must be read:

The Jaap Sahib names the Divine in hundreds of names drawn from Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and Punjabi traditions. It calls the Divine ਨਮੋ ਸਰਬੇ (salute to the All), ਨਮੋ ਭੈ ਅਭੈ (salute to the fearful and the fearless), ਨਮੋ ਨਿਰਗੁਨੇ (salute to the attribute-less), ਨਮੋ ਸਰਗੁਨੇ (salute to the one with attributes). The Divine, in Jaap Sahib’s framework, transcends all categories — including the category of the attributed versus the non-attributed.

This self-transcending theology — the Divine who encompasses both the attributed form that Hindu devotional tradition worships and the formless Reality that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji describes — is the key to reading the Dasam Granth’s use of Hindu narrative material. The Guru’s engagement with Chandi, with Rama, with Krishna, with the Hindu mythological world is not an endorsement of the theology that organizes those narratives within Hinduism. It is an engagement with literary material from a tradition that, like all traditions, reflects something of the divine reality through its particular cultural and religious lens.

The Jaap Sahib names hundreds of those particular cultural and religious lenses — and then names the One who transcends all of them. This is Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s theological position, expressed in the composition that the Panth has universally accepted as authentic. It is the framework within which the more contested Dasam Granth compositions must be evaluated.

LXI.2 The Tav-Prasad Savvaiye’s Final Answer

The Tav-Prasad Savvaiye — four verses that demolish every claim of external religious practice to achieve liberation without interior devotion — contains what is perhaps the most powerful single statement in the entire Dasam Granth corpus for understanding how the Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s theological mind worked:

The Savvaiye say, in effect: all the pilgrimages, all the fasting, all the ritual bathing, all the scriptural study, all the yoga — without the Naam, without the inner experience of the Divine, none of these achieve anything. The liberation that every religious tradition promises is available only through the interior encounter with the divine presence that the Naam facilitates.

This is not a statement that dismisses all religious traditions. It is a statement about the insufficient basis of external practice when it operates without interior devotion. It is the same statement the Guru Granth Sahib Ji makes, repeatedly, throughout its compositions. And it is the theological lens through which all the Dasam Granth’s engagements with external religious traditions — the Hindu avatar narratives, the goddess compositions, the Persian tales — must be understood: the Guru is engaging with these traditions from the secure interior position of one who knows the Naam, not from the position of one who is searching for it through these traditions’ external forms.

LXII. THE ARDAS AS THE SIKH COMMUNITY’S GREATEST INSTITUTIONAL ACHIEVEMENT

LXII.1 What the Ardas Has Accomplished

Step back from the specific theological controversies — the Bhagauti, the Doha, the Raag Mala, the Dasam Granth — and consider what the Ardas has accomplished as an institution across five hundred years:

It has held a community together across the most extreme historical pressures that any religious community has faced in the modern era. Mughal persecution, Afghan invasion, British colonial rule, Partition, and the Indian state’s counterinsurgency have all failed to destroy the Sikh community’s sense of its own identity, its own history, and its own aspiration. The Ardas is the primary institutional mechanism through which that sense of identity, history, and aspiration is transmitted — daily, in every gurdwara worldwide — to every new generation.

It has done this without requiring any specific ethnicity, language fluency, or cultural knowledge beyond the prayer’s own text. The Ardas is recited in Gurmukhi — the script and language of the Gurus — but it is understood and felt by Sikhs whose home languages are English, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, Swahili, Malay, Spanish, and dozens of others. The prayer’s universal aspiration (ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ) translates across all of these linguistic contexts precisely because it is not a tribal claim but a universal one.

It has maintained theological depth without becoming theological inaccessibility. The Ardas can be recited by a Sikh child who understands only the basic outline of what the prayer contains, and it can be reflected upon by a Sikh scholar who has spent decades studying its every phrase. The prayer meets the devotee wherever they are. It does not require expertise to recite, but it rewards expertise with inexhaustible depth.

It has survived every attempt to manipulate it for political purposes — not because the Ardas is immune to political pressure, but because its fixed sections (the theological framework and the historical testimony) cannot be easily altered without the entire Panth recognizing the alteration. The Ardas’s structure protects it: the fixed brackets hold the variable petition within a framework that prevents any particular political interest from dominating the prayer’s overall character.

LXII.2 What the Ardas Still Needs to Accomplish

The Ardas’s work is not finished. The community that created the Chhota Ghallughar reference after 1746 and the Nankana Sahib reference after 1947 has not yet formally responded to the events of 1984. The prayer that named Bhai Mani Singh Ji being cut joint by joint has not yet formally named Jaswant Singh Khalra being disappeared and murdered in custody.

The community that says ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਦਾ ਧਿਆਨ ਕਰਕੇ in its heart has not yet said so in its formal prayer. The 1,238 unnamed bodies of Amritsar District — confirmed by the CBI, described by the Supreme Court as a “flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale” — are waiting to be named, at minimum by category if not by individual name, in the Ardas’s permanent historical section.

This is the Ardas’s unfinished business. It is not the business of any individual author or publication to complete. It is the business of the Panth — through its institutions, through the Akal Takht’s authority, through the SGPC’s Rehat Maryada process — to determine when and how the completion happens.

But the theological argument is made. The historical precedent is established. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s standard of truth-telling is invoked. The Ardas’s own logic demands it.

ਜਦੋਂ ਸਮਾਂ ਆਵੇਗਾ, ਅਰਦਾਸ ਕਰੇਗੀ।
When the time comes, the Ardas will speak.

LXIII. THE ARDAS AND THE INDIVIDUAL SIKH: A FINAL THEOLOGICAL MEDITATION

LXIII.1 Standing Before Waheguru — What It Actually Means

At the end of this manuscript — after all the historical analysis, the theological argument, the evidentiary examination of the Bhagauti controversy, the Triya Charitar evidence, the Raag Mala’s theological ambiguity, the Zafarnama’s moral courage, and the 1984 question’s unresolved weight — what is the Ardas, finally, for the individual Sikh who stands for it?

It is the moment of standing before Waheguru with everything — with the community’s history, with the community’s wounds, with the community’s aspirations, with one’s own specific needs and fears and gratitude — and speaking the truth.

That is all it is. And that is everything.

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji calls this moment the divine encounter:

ਮਿਲੁ ਮੇਰੇ ਪ੍ਰੀਤਮਾ ਮੈ ਤਨੁ ਮਨੁ ਦੇਉ॥
Meet me, O my Beloved — I offer You my body and mind.
(Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Ardas is the Sikh’s offering of body and mind to the Beloved — standing with folded hands and straight spine, in the congregation, in the presence of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, after the kirtan, before the Hukamnama. The body stands (the physical posture of offering). The mind is present (the attention to the prayer’s content). The community surrounds the individual (the Sangat as the manifestation of the divine). The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is open (the eternal Guru’s presence).

In this moment, the Sikh is exactly where the Guru intended: in the Sangat, in the presence of the Shabad, standing before Waheguru, speaking truth, and waiting for the Guru’s response in the Hukamnama.

This is the Ardas. This has always been the Ardas. This will always be the Ardas.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

A Publication of KPSGILL.COM and THEDEATHCERTIFICATE.ORG

All four editorial phrases of the governing editorial principle are employed across this manuscript, assigned by register:

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ — Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground. (sections on the martyrology and historical record)

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ — Before the Gurshabad, the nameless dead. (sections on the Dasam Granth controversies and the 1984 question)

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਉੱਠਣ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਸੜ ਚੁੱਕਾ ਸੀ — Before the Gurshabad could rise, the cremation ground had already burned. (narrative and documentary sections)

ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ ਦੀ ਧੁਨ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਦੀ ਚੁੱਪ ਸੀ — Before the sound of Gurbani, there was the silence of the cremation ground. (witness, shahid-naama, and memory sections)

Authored by Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D.
Publisher and Editorial Director | KPSGILL.COM | TheDeathCertificate.org
Fresno, California, U.S.A.

PART TWELVE: THE COMPLETE SIKH PRAYER TRADITION — EVERY DIMENSION EXAMINED

LXIV. THE REHRAS SAHIB: THE EVENING PRAYER AND ITS ARCHITECTURE

LXIV.1 The Theological Structure of Rehras Sahib

The Rehras Sahib — recited at sunset or early evening — is one of the three primary Nitnem prayers and the one whose compositional history is most complex. Unlike Japji Sahib (entirely by Guru Nanak Dev Ji) or Kirtan Sohila (five compositions by three Gurus), Rehras Sahib is a composite work drawing from multiple Gurus across multiple sections of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

The standard Rehras Sahib includes:

• Compositions by Guru Nanak Dev Ji from Sodar (the Divine’s Gate) — the threshold between the day’s activity and the evening’s return to the Divine
• Compositions by Guru Ram Das Ji from Sodar Rahao and Aarti — the ceremonial act of worship transformed from its Hindu ritual form (waving oil lamps) into a meditation on the divine light pervading all of creation
• Compositions by Guru Arjan Dev Ji — enriching the evening prayer with his characteristic voice of devotion and gratitude
• A composition attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji (Chaupai Sahib, or in some traditions a specific verse from the Dasam Granth) — the martial Guru’s voice bringing the Khalsa’s specific theological concerns into the evening prayer

The architectural logic of Rehras Sahib is: as the day ends, the soul returns from its engagement with the world and reorients toward the Divine. The prayer acknowledges the day’s activities, their spiritual weight and their worldly nature, and consciously realigns the soul toward Waheguru as the evening brings the day’s work to a close.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s Aarti section within Rehras Sahib is among the most theologically powerful passages in the entire scripture:

ਗਗਨ ਮੈ ਥਾਲੁ ਰਵਿ ਚੰਦੁ ਦੀਪਕ ਬਨੇ ਤਾਰਿਕਾ ਮੰਡਲ ਜਨਕ ਮੋਤੀ॥
ਧੂਪੁ ਮਲਆਨਲੋ ਪਵਣੁ ਚਵਰੋ ਕਰੇ ਸਗਲ ਬਨਰਾਇ ਫੂਲੰਤ ਜੋਤੀ॥

In the sky-plate, the sun and moon are the lamps; the stars and their clusters are the pearls.
The fragrance of sandalwood is the incense; the wind is the fly-whisk; all the vegetation is the offering of flowers.

Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Aarti takes the Hindu ritual of waving oil lamps before an idol — aarti — and transforms it entirely: the universe itself is the ceremonial plate, the sun and moon are the lamps, the natural world is the incense and flowers. The ceremony is already happening, constantly, in every moment of the natural world’s existence. The human being is invited to recognize it, not to perform it for a God who needs the performance.

This is the Ardas’s theological context from a different angle: prayer that recognizes what is already present, rather than prayer that creates a connection through ritual performance.

LXIV.2 The Kirtan Sohila: The Prayer Before Sleep and at Death

The Kirtan Sohila — recited before sleep and at the time of cremation — is the most intimate of the Nitnem prayers. Its five compositions move through:

• The soul’s relationship to the Divine as a bride’s relationship to her divine Husband (Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s composition)
• The journey that death represents — not as tragedy but as homecoming (Guru Ram Das Ji)
• The preparation of the soul for departure — the inner work that makes death a completion rather than a catastrophe (Guru Arjan Dev Ji)

ਕਰਉ ਬੇਨੰਤੀ ਸੁਣਹੁ ਮੇਰੇ ਮੀਤਾ ਸੰਤ ਟਹਲ ਕੀ ਬੇਲਾ॥
ਈਹਾ ਖਾਟਿ ਚਲਹੁ ਹਰਿ ਲਾਹਾ ਆਗੈ ਬਸਨੁ ਸੁਹੇਲਾ॥

I offer my prayer; hear me, O my Friend: now is the time to serve the Saints.
Here, earn the profit of the Lord’s Name, and hereafter your dwelling shall be comfortable.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Kirtan Sohila, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The Kirtan Sohila at cremation — recited over the body before the pyre is lit — is the Ardas’s closest companion in the Sikh liturgical tradition. Both prayers are spoken in the presence of the reality that the Sikh tradition takes most seriously: the reality of death. The Ardas’s martyrdom section names specific deaths. The Kirtan Sohila addresses the fact of all death. Together, they constitute the Sikh prayer tradition’s fullest theological engagement with human mortality.

The Kirtan Sohila is theologically significant for the historical context of this publication: it is the prayer that was denied to the 1,238 unnamed individuals whose bodies were cremated by police authority in Amritsar District without family notification, without inquest, and without the rituals that Sikh maryada and Indian law both required. The prayer that Guru Arjan Dev Ji composed for every soul’s departure from the body was not spoken over those bodies. The families who would have spoken it did not know their sons and husbands were gone. The silence where the Kirtan Sohila should have been is the specific religious and human wrong that the TheDeathCertificate.org documentation project is dedicated to establishing.

LXV. THE GURMUKHI SCRIPT AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO PRAYER

LXV.1 Why Script Matters Theologically

The Gurmukhi script — standardized by Guru Angad Dev Ji and used for all compositions of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — is not merely a writing system. Within the Sikh theological framework, it is the script of the Guru’s Word. Writing the Guru Granth Sahib Ji in Gurmukhi is not a cultural or linguistic preference; it is a theological act: this is the script in which the divine Word has been preserved, in which every composition is attributed to its author, and in which the Guru’s light is present for the reader who approaches with devotion.

The Ardas is recited in Gurmukhi — even by Sikhs who may speak Punjabi in its modern spoken form, the classical Braj Bhasha and Punjabi of the Ardas’s text is pronounced as written in Gurmukhi, not transliterated into any other script or adapted to any other language. This is not linguistic exclusivity. It is the preservation of the specific sonic form through which the prayer has been transmitted for five centuries.

[AI] The sonic dimension of the Ardas — the specific phonetic sequence of the Gurmukhi sounds — is understood within the Sikh tradition as part of what makes the prayer its specific thing. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s compositions were written for specific ragas (musical modes), which implies that their sonic form matters as well as their semantic content. The Ardas, while not set to a raga in the way that kirtan compositions are, carries its own sonic character through the Gurmukhi pronunciation that has been transmitted through five centuries of living practice.

This is why the teaching of Gurmukhi pronunciation — not just the ability to read the script but the ability to produce the sounds accurately — is an important part of Sikh religious education. The prayer’s sound is part of the prayer, not merely a means of transmitting the prayer’s content.

LXV.2 The Diaspora’s Gurmukhi Challenge

For the diaspora Sikh community — particularly the second and third generation born and raised in English-speaking countries — the maintenance of Gurmukhi literacy and accurate Gurmukhi pronunciation is the most significant practical challenge in the transmission of the prayer tradition.

A Sikh child who learns to read Gurmukhi has access to the Guru Granth Sahib Ji directly, without the mediation of translation. They can read the Ardas, understand its specific vocabulary, and encounter the theological depth of individual words like ਭਗਉਤੀ, ਕਮਾਈ, ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ in their original form. A Sikh child who knows only the English translation of the Ardas has access to the prayer’s semantic content but lacks access to the sonic tradition and the theological nuances that exist only in the original Gurmukhi.

The SGPC, Sikh educational institutions worldwide, and thousands of individual gurdwaras have maintained Gurmukhi teaching as a priority precisely for this reason. The prayer’s full transmission requires the script’s full transmission.

LXVI. THE ARDAS’S RELATIONSHIP TO SEVA: PRAYER THAT DEMANDS ACTION

LXVI.1 What the Ardas Requires After It Is Said

The Sikh Rehat Maryada’s instruction that the Ardas is said before significant undertakings — before journeys, before decisions, before the commencement of important projects — establishes that the prayer is designed to precede action, not replace it. The Ardas is not a substitute for the Sikh’s engagement with the world. It is the spiritual preparation that makes that engagement most effective.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the relationship between prayer and action:

ਜਉ ਤਉ ਪ੍ਰੇਮ ਖੇਲਣ ਕਾ ਚਾਉ॥
ਸਿਰੁ ਧਰਿ ਤਲੀ ਗਲੀ ਮੇਰੀ ਆਉ॥

If you desire to play this game of love,
Place your head upon your palm and come onto my street.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The “game of love” — devotion to the Divine — requires placing one’s head on one’s palm: offering one’s life. This is not a metaphor of passive sacrifice but of active commitment. The devotee who rises from the Ardas must act — must carry the Ardas’s aspiration (ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ) into the world through specific actions of service (ਸੇਵਾ), of truth-telling, of care for the vulnerable, of resistance to injustice.

The martyrs the Ardas remembers did not merely pray. They acted on what they prayed. Bhai Mani Singh Ji organized a congregation. Bhai Taru Singh Ji fed refugees. The Chali Mukte returned to fight. The Panj Pyare offered their heads. The Ardas is the prayer of a tradition whose martyrs are defined not by what they believed but by what they did based on what they believed.

Every Sikh who rises from the Ardas and then works to name the unnamed, feed the hungry, seek justice for the disappeared, or simply serve in the langar — is completing the Ardas. The prayer is not complete when the last word is spoken. It is complete when the devotee acts on what they have said.

LXVII. THE SIKH PRAYER TRADITION AND INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

LXVII.1 What Sikh Prayer Offers to the Broader World

The Sikh Ardas offers something distinctive to the broader interfaith conversation about the nature and function of communal prayer:

The combination of specific historical testimony with universal aspiration — remembering specific martyrs and then asking for the welfare of all — models a form of prayer that does not require the practitioner to choose between honest engagement with their community’s specific history and universal human solidarity. These are not competing commitments in the Ardas. They are sequential stages of the same prayer act.

For faith communities worldwide that are grappling with the question of how to maintain honest memory of specific injustices (genocide, slavery, colonial violence, religious persecution) while also maintaining a theological commitment to universal human dignity and reconciliation, the Ardas offers a structural model: name the specific first; then aspire to the universal. The universal aspiration that does not pass through the specific testimony is hollow. But the specific testimony that does not reach toward the universal is tribal.

The Ardas passes through both — and it has done so, successfully, for five hundred years.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s foundational universal claim:

ਏਕ ਨੂਰ ਤੇ ਸਭੁ ਜਗੁ ਉਪਜਿਆ ਕਉਨ ਭਲੇ ਕੋ ਮੰਦੇ॥
From one Light, the entire universe came into being — who then is good and who is bad?
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

If from one Light all has come, then the distinction between “our people” and “their people” — between the community that prays and the community that persecutes — is ultimately a distinction within the one Light. This does not erase the moral distinction between oppressor and oppressed. It does not require the Sikh to pretend that what was done to the community was acceptable. What it does is locate both parties — the martyred and the executioner — within the same ultimate reality, the same Ik Oankaar.

The Ardas can hold the martyrdom testimony (these specific things were done to specific people) and the universal aspiration (the welfare of all) simultaneously because the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology provides the framework within which both are true: the specific history happened within Waheguru’s creation; the universal welfare is the aspiration that Waheguru’s creation is moving toward.

LXVIII. FINAL WORDS: THE MANUSCRIPT’S TESTIMONY

This manuscript — assembled across sixty-eight sections, spanning more than fifty thousand words — has been an act of standing before a prayer and trying to understand it fully: its origins, its theology, its controversies, its living debates, and its ongoing demands on the community that recites it.

The Ardas is the prayer of a people who have been told, across five centuries, that their dead are forgotten, their history is over, and their claims on justice are invalid. The Ardas answers each of these claims with the same act: standing, with folded hands and straight spine, in the presence of the eternal Guru, and saying:

We are here. We remember. We witness. We ask. We hope. We rise.

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ।
ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

PART THIRTEEN: EXTENDED SCHOLARLY ANALYSIS — THE DASAM GRANTH MANUSCRIPT TRADITION AND THE SIKH CANON

LXIX. THE COMPLETE MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE OF THE DASAM GRANTH

LXIX.1 Known Manuscripts and Their Variations

The Dasam Granth’s manuscript tradition is substantially more complex than the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s tradition, and this complexity is itself the most important fact for any theological evaluation. A scripture compiled and authenticated by its own author under their living supervision — as the Guru Granth Sahib Ji was — and a corpus compiled posthumously from dispersed sources by a devotee after the author’s death — as the Dasam Granth was — cannot be treated as having equivalent evidentiary standing.

[DA] The known manuscript tradition of the Dasam Granth includes:

The Patna Sahib manuscript — one of the earliest known manuscripts, associated with the Takht at Patna Sahib (the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh Ji). This manuscript’s exact dating and provenance has been subject to scholarly debate. It contains a selection of compositions that overlap with but do not precisely match the standard printed Dasam Granth.

The Anandpur manuscripts — several manuscripts associated with the Anandpur Sahib area, where Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s court was based before the siege of 1704-05. These manuscripts were dispersed when the community abandoned Anandpur and have been subject to significant scholarly study.

The Damdama Sahib tradition — manuscripts and oral traditions associated with the period when Guru Gobind Singh Ji stayed at Damdama Sahib (Talwandi Sabo) after the battles, where he reportedly spent time in composition and in dictating the Guru Granth Sahib Ji from memory.

The Amritsar compilation — the version compiled by Bhai Mani Singh Ji, which became the basis for the standard printed Dasam Granth that is used today.

[AI] The variations across these manuscripts — in terms of which compositions appear, in what order, and with what attribution — are not minor textual variants of the kind that appear in any manuscript tradition due to scribal error. They are substantive differences in the corpus’s constitution. Some manuscripts contain compositions not found in others. Some manuscripts omit sections found in the standard version.

This manuscript variation is consistent with the scholarly understanding of the Dasam Granth as a posthumous compilation from multiple sources — different compilers drew from different subsets of the available material and organized it differently. It is not consistent with the claim that the Dasam Granth represents a single, unified composition by a single author working from a single coherent plan.

LXIX.2 The Bhakha Language Consistency Test

One internal evidentiary test that scholars have applied to the Dasam Granth is consistency of language. Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s authenticated compositions — particularly the Zafarnama (Persian) and the compositions universally accepted as his personal voice (the Sabad Hazare, the Khalsa Mahima) — display consistent features of the specific Braj Bhasha dialect of the late seventeenth century as used in the Punjab.

[DA] Scholars have noted that portions of the Dasam Granth — particularly extensive sections of the Triya Charitar — display linguistic features that are inconsistent with the Guru’s authenticated voice, suggesting composition by different authors, possibly at different times, in variants of the medieval literary Hindi that differ from the Guru’s own attested style.

This linguistic evidence is presented as [DA] rather than [PF] because it requires specialist linguistic analysis to evaluate, and the scholarly debate on this question has not reached consensus. But the existence of the debate — that scholars who have studied the Dasam Granth’s language carefully have identified potential inconsistencies — is itself relevant to the authorship question.

[AI] The most intellectually honest position remains: the Dasam Granth is a corpus whose compositional history is complex, whose different sections carry different degrees of evidentiary confidence regarding Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s direct personal authorship, and which must be evaluated section by section against the theological standard of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji rather than accepted or rejected wholesale.

LXX. THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI’S INTERNAL STANDARDS FOR AUTHENTIC GURBANI

LXX.1 How the Guru Granth Sahib Ji Self-Authenticates

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authority rests not on external certification but on internal theological coherence. Its compositions, across the many authors and many centuries they represent (from Sheikh Farid in the twelfth century to Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji in the seventeenth), display a consistent theological framework:

• The one formless Divine (Ik Oankaar) pervades all of creation
• The Naam (divine Name) is accessible to every soul through Simran and Kirtan
• External religious practice without interior devotion is insufficient for liberation
• Caste hierarchy is spiritually invalid — all souls are equal before the Divine
• Gender hierarchy is spiritually invalid — women are not spiritually inferior to men
• The Guru’s grace (Gur Parsaad) is the means of divine encounter for the human soul
• The Hukam (divine will) pervades all events; the soul’s task is to recognize and walk within it
• The welfare of all (Sarbat da Bhala) is the ultimate aspiration that grows from genuine divine encounter

Every composition in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji — whether by Guru Nanak Dev Ji or Bhagat Farid or Bhagat Ravidas or Bhagat Kabir — is consistent with this framework. There is no composition in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji that contradicts it. This internal theological consistency is the scripture’s strongest evidence of its own authenticity: the diversity of authors, time periods, languages, and literary traditions represented in the Guru Granth Sahib Ji, all expressing the same fundamental theological framework, suggests that the framework itself is theologically true rather than the product of any single author’s creativity.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji explicitly establishes its own criterion for authentic divine encounter:

ਜਿਸੁ ਅੰਤਰਿ ਸਾਚੁ ਸੋ ਸਾਚਾ॥
One in whose interior Truth dwells — that person is true.

The authentic divine encounter produces specific interior conditions: truth, contentment, equanimity, fearlessness, love without hatred. These are the qualities the Mool Mantar attributes to the Divine (Sat Naam, Nirbhau, Nirvair). When these qualities appear in the human soul, it is because the divine has been genuinely encountered, not merely ritually invoked.

By this internal criterion — does the composition express genuine divine encounter, and does it produce the qualities the Guru Granth Sahib Ji associates with authentic spiritual life? — the accepted Dasam Granth Nitnem compositions (Jaap Sahib, Tav-Prasad Savvaiye, Chaupai Sahib) clearly qualify. They express devotion to the Formless Divine, they demolish the insufficiency of external ritual, they ask for divine protection for the soul that surrenders to the Divine. These are the marks of authentic spiritual expression within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework.

The Triya Charitar does not qualify by this criterion: its 404 stories of women’s wiles do not express genuine divine encounter and do not produce the qualities the Guru Granth Sahib Ji associates with authentic spiritual life. They express a worldly wisdom literature of a specific historical tradition — the Sanskrit didactic/entertainment tradition — without the spiritual transformation that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji identifies as the mark of authentic Gurbani.

LXXI. THE ARDAS ACROSS THE SIKH LIFE CYCLE — COMPLETE DOCUMENTATION

LXXI.1 Birth: The Naming Ceremony (Naam Karan)

When a Sikh child is born, the family comes to the gurdwara for the Naam Karan ceremony. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji is opened at random and the child receives a name beginning with the first letter of the first word of the Hukamnama’s first verse. The Ardas before and after this ceremony:

Before: asks for Waheguru’s blessing on the new life, on the parents’ capacity to raise the child in Gurmat, and on the community’s ability to support the family.

After: places the name before Waheguru — the name is not merely assigned by parents but accepted as the divine direction indicated through the Hukamnama.

[PM] The theological significance: the Sikh child’s name comes from the Guru. The parents choose from the options the first letter provides, but the letter itself comes from the Guru’s Word. The Ardas surrounds the naming ceremony to acknowledge this: the new life has entered the world within the Guru’s framework.

LXXI.2 Marriage: The Anand Karaj

The Sikh wedding ceremony — Anand Karaj (Blissful Union) — is not solemnized by any civil or religious officiant pronouncing the couple married. The couple is married by circumambulating the Guru Granth Sahib Ji four times while the four Lavaan (wedding hymns by Guru Ram Das Ji) are sung. The Ardas before the ceremony asks for Waheguru’s blessing on the union; the Ardas after the ceremony thanks Waheguru for the marriage’s completion.

The theological significance of the Lavaan: they describe the soul’s journey toward Waheguru in the metaphor of a bride’s journey toward her divine Husband. By reciting these hymns at the human marriage, the Sikh tradition establishes that the human union is understood within the framework of the soul’s union with the Divine. Marriage is not merely a social arrangement. It is a spiritual practice — the couple’s shared journey toward Waheguru, supported by the Sangat and the Guru’s Word.

[PF] The Guru Granth Sahib Ji establishes the framework:

ਹਰਿ ਪਹਿਲੜੀ ਲਾਵ ਪਰਵਿਰਤੀ ਕਰਮ ਦ੍ਰਿੜਾਇਆ ਬਲਿ ਰਾਮ ਜੀਉ॥
In the First Lavan, the Lord sets out for us the duties of married life and asks us to perform righteous actions in the world.
(Guru Ram Das Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 773)

The four Lavaan describe four stages of the soul’s union with the Divine — and by extension, four stages of the married couple’s deepening relationship with each other and with Waheguru. The Ardas that surrounds the Anand Karaj places the marriage within this framework: this union is not merely social; it is a spiritual journey that the couple undertakes together, with the Guru as their guide.

LXXI.3 Death: The Antam Sanskar

The Sikh funeral and cremation ceremony — Antam Sanskar — is the most complete expression of the prayer tradition’s engagement with mortality. It includes:

• Continuous reading of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji (Sahej Path) in the days before cremation
• Recitation of Kirtan Sohila at the cremation ground
• Ardas before the pyre is lit
• Ardas after the ashes are collected
• Completion of the continuous reading with an Ardas
• Hukamnama as the Guru’s final message for the departed soul

[PM] The Kirtan Sohila — the prayer recited at the moment of lighting the pyre — is the prayer the Guru gave for exactly this moment. Its theology: the soul is going home. The death is not tragedy; it is completion. The body has served its purpose; the soul is released. The Guru’s word accompanies the soul on this departure.

The Ardas at the cremation place before the pyre is lit is the community’s last corporate act on behalf of the departed. It places the soul before Waheguru, acknowledges the life that was lived, asks for the departed’s liberation (ਮੁਕਤੀ), and expresses the community’s commitment to continue living in accordance with the Guru’s teaching.

For the families of the 1,238 unnamed individuals cremated without rites in Amritsar District — no Kirtan Sohila was recited. No Ardas was said. The families did not know. The Antam Sanskar — the prayer tradition’s most sacred moment of accompaniment for the departing soul — was not available to these souls because the state that cremated them without record did not permit it.

This is the specific religious wrong that the documentation project TheDeathCertificate.org is committed to establishing: not only the legal wrong (illegal cremation without inquest, without death certificate, without family notification), but the religious wrong (the denial of the Antam Sanskar, of the Kirtan Sohila, of the Ardas at the cremation ground). The prayer tradition that has accompanied the Sikh community through death for five hundred years was taken from 1,238 souls and their families by a state that preferred administrative silence to Gurbani’s sound.

ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ ਦੀ ਧੁਨ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਦੀ ਚੁੱਪ ਸੀ।
Before the sound of Gurbani, there was the silence of the cremation ground.

LXXII. THE PRAYER SYSTEM AS A COMPLETE WHOLE

LXXII.1 Mapping the Complete Sikh Prayer Architecture

The complete Sikh prayer architecture — Naam Simran, Kirtan, Ardas, Nitnem, Hukamnama, Seva, Langar — forms an integrated system in which each element is necessary and no element is sufficient alone. Understanding the Ardas requires understanding its position within this system:

Naam Simran is the interior foundation: the continuous interior awareness of Waheguru’s presence that underlies all other prayer practice. It is the breath beneath the breath, the awareness that is present whether or not words are being spoken.

Kirtan is the exterior voice of the Guru: the Guru’s own words, sung in the Guru’s own musical forms, entering the devotee’s consciousness through sound and melody. It is the direct contact with the revealed Word.

Ardas is the community’s voice responding to the Guru’s voice: having heard the Guru in Kirtan, the community speaks to the Guru in Ardas. The historical testimony, the personal petition, the universal aspiration — these are the community’s side of the conversation that Kirtan initiates.

Hukamnama is the Guru’s response to the community’s Ardas: having heard the community’s petition, the Guru speaks again through the random opening of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The conversation is: Kirtan (Guru speaks) → Ardas (community speaks) → Hukamnama (Guru responds).

Seva is the prayer made physical: the washing of shoes in the gurdwara, the service in the langar kitchen, the care for the sick and elderly, the standing up for justice — all of these are the Ardas’s aspiration made concrete in action.

Langar is the prayer made communal and material: the feeding of all who come, without distinction, is the embodiment of ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ in the most immediate physical form.

This complete system — interior awareness, exterior Word, community response, divine reply, physical action, material care — is the Guru’s complete prescription for a life of prayer. The Ardas is not a standalone practice. It is the hinge of the entire system: the moment where the Guru’s Word and the community’s experience meet, where history and aspiration converge, where the individual soul and the collective Panth speak together to the Divine.

LXXIII. THE ARDAS AND THE AKAL TAKHT: INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY AND THEOLOGICAL FREEDOM

LXXIII.1 The Limits and Extent of the Akal Takht’s Authority

The Akal Takht’s authority over Sikh practice — including the Ardas — is the authority of the Sikh Panth’s highest temporal-spiritual institution. Its Hukamnamas (edicts) on matters of practice carry the weight of Panthic consensus expressed through institutional form.

But the Akal Takht’s authority is itself bounded by the Guru Granth Sahib Ji. The Miri Piri principle — which gives the Akal Takht its authority — is itself a principle derived from the Guru’s teaching. The Akal Takht cannot issue a Hukamnama that contradicts the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s theology. Its authority is derivative of the Guru’s authority, not independent of it.

[AI] This means that when scholars, theologians, or community members challenge a specific Akal Takht position on theological grounds — using the Guru Granth Sahib Ji as the evidentiary standard — they are not thereby rejecting the Akal Takht’s authority. They are invoking the higher authority from which the Akal Takht’s own authority derives.

The proper response to this kind of theological challenge is not institutional suppression but institutional engagement: the Akal Takht’s scholars examining the theological argument, testing it against the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s evidence, and either affirming or modifying the institutional position as the evidence warrants.

This is how the Sikh tradition’s intellectual life is supposed to work: the Guru Granth Sahib Ji at the center, the institutions (Akal Takht, SGPC) as servants of the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s authority, and the scholarly community engaged in ongoing theological examination from within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework.

LXXIII.2 The Living Debate as an Expression of the Tradition’s Health

The debates documented in this manuscript — the Bhagauti controversy, the Raag Mala, the Dasam Granth, the 1984 question — are signs of the Sikh tradition’s health, not its crisis. A tradition that has stopped debating has stopped thinking. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself is the product of a tradition that took theological questions seriously enough to compile an authoritative scripture — a tradition that recognized the importance of authentication, of evidentiary standards, of the distinction between authentic divine encounter and its imitations.

The contemporary Sikh community’s ongoing debates about the Dasam Granth, the Ardas’s evolution, and the prayer tradition’s relationship to modern life are continuous with the tradition that Guru Arjan Dev Ji expressed when he compiled the Adi Granth and rejected the spurious compositions that had begun to circulate. Taking theological questions seriously, demanding evidentiary standards, and holding all claims against the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s testimony — these are not signs of crisis. They are the signs of a tradition that takes its own Guru seriously.

ਸਤਿਗੁਰ ਕੀ ਬਾਣੀ ਸਤਿ ਸਤਿ ਕਰਿ ਜਾਣਹੁ॥
Know the Bani of the True Guru as True — as absolutely True.

Knowing the Bani as absolutely True is not a passive act of assent. It is an active commitment to holding all other claims — including claims made by revered historical figures, institutional bodies, and beloved traditions — against the standard of the Bani’s own testimony. The Sikh who takes this commitment seriously is the Sikh who engages most fully with the living tradition.

LXXIV. FINAL THEOLOGICAL STATEMENT: WHAT THE ARDAS ASKS OF ITS COMMUNITY

The Ardas places five demands on the community that recites it:

First demand: Remember. The Ardas requires the community to hold the specific names, the specific methods of execution, the specific events of its history in active memory. This is not passive commemoration. It is the active refusal to allow the state, time, or comfort to erase what happened.

Second demand: Testify. The Ardas requires the community to stand — physically, publicly, in congregation — and speak the truth of its history before Waheguru and before all who witness the prayer. The testimonial act is not private. It is communal and public.

Third demand: Petition. The Ardas requires the community to bring its present needs before Waheguru — honestly, specifically, without the false humility of pretending everything is fine when it is not. The personal petition section exists precisely to ensure that the prayer engages with the actual present situation of the actual congregation.

Fourth demand: Aspire. The Ardas requires the community to close with ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — the welfare of all. After everything — the martyrdom, the petitions, the wounds — the community must stretch toward the universal. This is the hardest demand. It is also the most necessary.

Fifth demand: Act. The Ardas ends when the congregation rises. What the community has said in prayer, it must now embody in action. The martyrs are remembered not so that the community can feel good about its heritage but so that the community can be challenged to live up to the inheritance those martyrs created. ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ is a petition and a commitment: may the welfare of all come about, and may we be among those who work to bring it about.

These five demands — Remember, Testify, Petition, Aspire, Act — constitute the complete theology of the Sikh Ardas. They are the demands that Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s revolution established, that the ten Gurus embodied, that the Guru Granth Sahib Ji teaches, that the Khalsa’s five hundred years of practice has demonstrated, and that the living community, standing for Ardas in every time zone of the world, continues to make upon itself twice daily.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ। ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

END OF MANUSCRIPT

TheDeathCertificate.org | KPSGILL.COM
Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D.
Fresno, California, U.S.A.

EXTENDED SCHOLARLY SUPPLEMENT: THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SIKH PRAYER UNDER PERSECUTION

THE ARDAS SPOKEN IN THE FOREST

The period between 1716 and 1765 — from the execution of Banda Singh Bahadur by the Mughal authorities to the establishment of the first Sikh sovereign territories by the Misl confederacy — represents the most extreme test the Sikh Ardas has ever faced. During this period, organized Sikh life was effectively illegal across large portions of the Punjab. The penalty for being identified as a Sikh was death. Gurdwaras were occupied, converted, or destroyed. The Harmandir Sahib was repeatedly attacked and desecrated.

And yet the Ardas continued to be recited.

It was spoken in the forests of the Shivalik Hills, where Sikh bands took refuge between raids. It was spoken in the marshy lowlands near the Beas and Ravi rivers, where the geography itself became the Sangat’s shelter. It was spoken in the dark of night, in whispers, in formations of armed Sikhs who kept sentinels posted while the Ardas was completed. It was spoken by women who maintained the faith of their communities while their husbands were in hiding, in prison, or dead.

[PM] The tradition preserved in Panthic memory of this period emphasizes a specific point: the Ardas was never abandoned. The forms might be stripped down — no full kirtan program could be maintained in the forest; the Hukamnama could not always be taken from the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s formal presence. But the Ardas itself — the community’s standing testimony before Waheguru — was maintained even under conditions that made every other form of organized religious life impossible.

This historical fact is the most direct evidence of what the Ardas actually is in the Sikh community’s lived experience: not a supplement to worship, not an addition to the program, but the irreducible core. When everything else is stripped away by persecution and poverty and flight, the Ardas remains. The community stands, in whatever formation it can manage, in whatever darkness or danger, and speaks its testimony.

The martyrdom section that the Ardas recites was being added to in real time during this period. The men and women whose executions are named in the prayer — Bhai Mani Singh Ji (1737), Bhai Taru Singh Ji (1745), Bhai Subeg Singh and Bhai Shahbaz Singh (1745) — were dying during the same decades when the Sikh community was reciting their predecessors’ martyrdoms in the forest Ardas. The prayer was absorbing new entries into its archive of testimony while the Sikhs who recited it were themselves at risk of becoming the next entries.

This creates one of the most remarkable features of the Ardas’s historical development: it was composed under the conditions it describes. The community that was reciting the martyrdom section was living the martyrdom conditions. The prayer was not written at a safe historical distance from the events it commemorates. It was written while those events were happening, by the people to whom they were happening.

This is why the Ardas’s language is so precise, so uneuphemized, so forensically specific. The people who added ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ (cut joint by joint) to the Ardas after Bhai Mani Singh Ji’s execution in 1737 were the same people who feared that the same fate might await them. They were not writing history at a comfortable remove. They were bearing witness to the present.

THE ARDAS AND THE BUILDING OF SIKH SOVEREIGNTY

The same period — the mid-eighteenth century, between the two Ghalugharas and the establishment of the Misl state — also saw the Ardas’s political function become most explicit. The Sarbat Khalsa — the gathering of the entire Khalsa at Akal Takht on the occasions of Diwali and Baisakhi — was the political assembly of the Sikh Panth. Its decisions (Gurmattas) were reached through collective deliberation and were considered binding on the entire Sikh community.

The Sarbat Khalsa gatherings began and ended with the Ardas. The political decisions of the Khalsa — to launch a raid, to divide territory, to negotiate with a neighboring power, to respond to a new persecution — were framed within the Ardas’s theological context. The community was not making purely political calculations; it was placing its political decisions before Waheguru, asking for guidance through the Hukamnama, and committing to act within the framework of Gurmat.

[AI] This institutional use of the Ardas — as the frame for political deliberation and decision — is the fullest expression of the Miri Piri principle in practice. The temporal sovereignty of the Sikh Panth (Miri) was exercised through processes that began and ended with the spiritual sovereignty expressed in the Ardas (Piri). The political and the spiritual were not separate domains with separate processes. They were one domain with one process: beginning in prayer, proceeding through collective deliberation, concluding in prayer, and implementing the decision in action.

THE ARDAS AS POLITICAL ACT IN COLONIAL PUNJAB

The Gurdwara Reform Movement of the early twentieth century — the Akali movement to wrest control of historic Sikh shrines from the British-backed Mahant system — used the Ardas explicitly as a political instrument in a way that had clear precedent in the eighteenth century’s Sarbat Khalsa tradition.

The Akali jathas (volunteer groups) who marched on gurdwaras to demand their liberation were organized around the same communal disciplines as the Khalsa: Nitnem, Kirtan, Ardas, and nonviolent discipline modeled on the Sikh martial tradition’s rules of engagement. The Ardas recited before an Akali morcha (protest march) was not a spiritual warm-up for a political action. It was the theological framing of the action itself: this march is an act within the Hukam, this sacrifice is made within the framework of ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ, this nonviolence is the expression of ਨਿਰਭਉ (fearlessness) that the Mool Mantar attributes to the Divine.

The Nankana Sahib massacre of February 20, 1921 — when the Mahant Narain Das organized the killing of approximately 130 Akali jathadars who had entered the gurdwara compound peacefully — produced a specific Ardas response. The surviving Sikhs gathered at the gurdwara where the bodies of the martyred Akalis lay and recited the Ardas over them. They named the event. They placed it before Waheguru. And they continued the morcha.

This pattern — martyrdom, naming, Ardas, continuation of the work — is the Sikh prayer tradition’s consistent response to state violence across five centuries. The prayer does not cause the movement to stop in grief. It incorporates the grief into the community’s testimony before Waheguru and then continues the action. The Ardas’s ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ is not a denial of grief. It is the community’s refusal to let grief become paralysis.

THE ARDAS AND THE INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS FRAMEWORK

The Ardas’s function as a formal communal recitation of human rights violations — naming specific victims, specific methods of abuse, specific institutional failures — places it in a unique relationship with the contemporary international human rights framework.

The United Nations’ documentation standards for human rights violations — the specificity of victim identification, the documentation of methods of abuse, the establishment of institutional responsibility — share a structural logic with the Ardas’s own approach to historical memory. Both are archives of testimony. Both insist on specificity over abstraction. Both are designed to prevent the state’s preferred narrative (that nothing happened, or that what happened was justified) from dominating the historical record.

The difference is in the authority structure. The UN’s human rights documentation is addressed to the international community, to courts, to governments, and to the historical record. The Ardas’s documentation is addressed to Waheguru — the One who is already present in all places, who already knows all things, and whose justice is not limited by the political constraints that limit human institutions.

The Ardas’s testimony before Waheguru is therefore not in competition with the institutional human rights documentation that publications like TheDeathCertificate.org produce. They are complementary forms of testimony addressed to different audiences. The forensic documentation is addressed to the human institutions that can enforce accountability. The Ardas is addressed to the divine court that maintains the ultimate record.

ਤਿਥੈ ਦਰਬਾਰੁ ਭਰਿਆ ਕਵਲਾਨੰਦ ਹਰਿ ਕੀਰਤਨੁ ਸੁਣਿਆ॥
There the Court is filled — the Lord’s kirtan is heard with divine bliss.

In the divine court, the testimony is heard. The Ardas places that testimony before the divine court with the confidence that it will be heard — not abstractly, not eventually, but now, in the moment of the prayer, in the standing of the congregation before the Guru Granth Sahib Ji.

The prayer is complete. The testimony is given. The divine court is in session.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ। ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

FINAL SUPPLEMENT: THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI’S COMPLETE TESTIMONY ON THE THEMES OF THIS MANUSCRIPT

THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI ON MARTYRDOM AND MEMORY

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji does not avoid the subject of death, persecution, and martyrdom. It engages it directly and provides the theological framework within which the Ardas’s martyrology section is grounded.

ਮਰਣੁ ਮੁਣਸਾ ਸੂਰਿਆ ਹਕੁ ਹੈ ਜੋ ਹੋਇ ਮਰਨਿ ਪਰਵਾਣੋ॥
Death is the right of heroes — those who die acceptably.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

The death “acceptable” to Waheguru — the death that is the hero’s right — is the death of one who has lived within the Hukam, served the community, and faces the end without flinching. The martyrs the Ardas names were heroes in this sense: not because they sought death, but because when death came for their faith, they did not run.

ਸੂਰਾ ਸੋ ਪਹਿਚਾਨੀਐ ਜੁ ਲਰੈ ਦੀਨ ਕੇ ਹੇਤ॥
ਪੁਰਜਾ ਪੁਰਜਾ ਕਟਿ ਮਰੈ ਕਬਹੂ ਨ ਛਾਡੈ ਖੇਤੁ॥

One who fights for the righteous cause is recognized as a hero.
Cut to pieces, limb by limb, yet never abandons the field.
(Bhagat Kabir, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

ਪੁਰਜਾ ਪੁਰਜਾ ਕਟਿ ਮਰੈ — cut to pieces, limb by limb — and yet never abandons the field. Bhagat Kabir’s verse is one of the most direct possible references to the kind of martyrdom that the Ardas later explicitly names: Bhai Mani Singh Ji being cut joint by joint. The Guru Granth Sahib Ji anticipates the Ardas’s testimony by enshrining the theology of this specific form of martyrdom — the acceptance of bodily destruction rather than the abandonment of the field of righteousness.

This verse is the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s internal justification for the Ardas’s forensic specificity. The prayer says: ਬੰਦ ਬੰਦ ਕਟਾਏ (cut joint by joint). Bhagat Kabir had already said: ਪੁਰਜਾ ਪੁਰਜਾ ਕਟਿ ਮਰੈ — cut to pieces, limb by limb — and honored the one who endures this rather than abandoning the righteous cause. The Ardas is giving specific historical names to what the Guru Granth Sahib Ji has already established as the highest form of heroic witness.

THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB JI ON TRUTH AND STATE POWER

The Guru Granth Sahib Ji does not treat state power as inherently legitimate. It evaluates rulers against a theological standard and is not shy about finding them wanting:

ਕਲਿ ਕਾਤੀ ਰਾਜੇ ਕਾਸਾਈ ਧਰਮੁ ਪੰਖ ਕਰਿ ਉਡਰਿਆ॥
In this age, the kings are butchers; righteousness has taken wings and flown away.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

ਕਾਜੀ ਕੂੜੁ ਬੋਲਿ ਮਲੁ ਖਾਇ॥
ਬ੍ਰਾਹਮਣੁ ਨਾਵੈ ਜੀਆ ਘਾਇ॥

The Qazi utters falsehood and consumes filth.
The Brahmin kills souls while purifying himself in water.
(Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Guru Granth Sahib Ji)

Guru Nanak Dev Ji, addressing the specific institutional failures of both Muslim legal authority (the Qazi) and Hindu ritual authority (the Brahmin) in his own time, establishes the principle that institutional religious authority is not immune from moral critique when it serves power rather than justice.

The Ardas’s implicit critique of the state — embedded in its forensic enumeration of what the state has done to the Sikh community — is continuous with this theological tradition. The prayer does not say explicitly that the state is wrong. It says something more precise and more devastating: here are the specific things that were done. The community names them. Waheguru hears them. The divine court is in session.

The state that would prefer the Ardas to be silent about its victims — that would prefer the prayer to be only devotional and never testimonial — cannot silence the Ardas without silencing the Guru Granth Sahib Ji itself, because the Guru Granth Sahib Ji established the theological framework within which the Ardas’s testimony is not merely permitted but required.

ਸਚੁ ਕਹੋ ਸਚੁ ਸੁਣਹੁ ਸਾਚੇ ਸਿਉ ਚਿਤੁ ਲਾਵਹੁ॥
Speak truth, hear truth, attach your consciousness to the True One.

Speaking truth — ਸਚੁ ਕਹੋ — is a religious obligation within the Guru Granth Sahib Ji’s framework. The Ardas’s naming of the martyrs, the specific methods of their deaths, the specific institutions that oversaw their executions, and the specific events that the prayer now asks the divine court to hold in permanent record — all of this is the act of speaking truth. It is a religious act of the highest order.

THE ARDAS, THE PUBLICATION, AND THE ONGOING WORK

This manuscript is a publication of TheDeathCertificate.org and KPSGILL.COM — two First Amendment forensic accountability publications dedicated to the documentation of state violence against the Sikh community during the Punjab counterinsurgency period (1984–1996).

The Ardas and the publication share a common theological foundation: the obligation to speak truth about what has been done, to place that truth before the appropriate authority, and to refuse the state’s preferred narrative of silence and administrative amnesia.

The Ardas addresses Waheguru directly. The publication addresses the human record — the legal proceedings, the historical archive, the institutional accountability framework — through which human justice seeks to approach divine justice.

Neither is sufficient without the other. The prayer without the documentation is spiritually sincere but evidentially incomplete. The documentation without the prayer lacks the moral seriousness and the community framework that gives it its ultimate meaning. Together, they constitute the complete Sikh response to the historical obligation: speak truth, preserve the record, place the testimony before both the divine court and the human court, and trust that the welfare of all — ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ — is the ultimate destination toward which both the prayer and the work are moving.

ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ।
ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਬੇਨਾਮ ਲਾਸ਼ਾਂ ਸਨ।
ਗੁਰਸ਼ਬਦ ਉੱਠਣ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਸੜ ਚੁੱਕਾ ਸੀ।
ਗੁਰਬਾਣੀ ਦੀ ਧੁਨ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਮਸ਼ਾਨਘਾਟ ਦੀ ਚੁੱਪ ਸੀ।

Before the Gurshabad, the cremation ground.
Before the Gurshabad, the nameless dead.
Before the Gurshabad could rise, the cremation ground had already burned.
Before the sound of Gurbani, there was the silence of the cremation ground.

And after the Gurshabad —

ਨਾਨਕ ਨਾਮ ਚੜ੍ਹਦੀ ਕਲਾ। ਤੇਰੇ ਭਾਣੇ ਸਰਬੱਤ ਦਾ ਭਲਾ॥
Nanak — the Naam, in ascending grace. In Your Will — the welfare of all.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ।
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ।

MANUSCRIPT COMPLETE

Published by TheDeathCertificate.org and KPSGILL.COM
Under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution
Dr. Kanwar Partap Singh Gill, M.D., Publisher and Editorial Director
Fresno, California, U.S.A.