ABSTRACT
In the social and religious life of Sikhs various types of procession have been a traditional means to honour community members and collectively celebrate a fortunate event that has happened or is about to occur.2 Perhaps the most spectacular form of religious processions in the Sikh community today is Nagar Kirtan, or ‘town praising’, which is staged as the main attraction of gurpurubs, festivals commemorating the ten historical Sikh Gurus and the Sikh scripture, the Guru Granth Sahib.3 For a whole day a large number of devotees take the scripture in procession and go through different neighbourhoods of their city or village, singing devotional hymns and participating in communal activities. The eye-catching parade permits important symbolic elements of the community to be seen and worshipped, and has become a popular way of creating public awareness of the Sikh religion. Despite a recognized increase in the number of Sikh religious processions in India and the diaspora during the twentieth century, the topic in general and Nagar Kirtan in particular have not attracted due attention from scholars. An analysis of contemporary Sikh processions in India will demonstrate the centrality of the Guru Granth Sahib, in religious performances. The ritual acts and regal symbols used in solemnized transportations of the Guru Granth Sahib, and processions like Nagar Kirtan in which the Guru Granth Sahib plays a significant role, are not merely means to symbolically represent the spiritual superiority of the scripture. The arrangement of spaces and ritualized acts in any procession that involves moving the Guru Granth Sahib can be viewed as strategies by which participants invest the scripture with the agency and authority of a Guru. Within the framework of an enduring social relationship to the Guru-scripture, disciples personify the text and treat it as a social being who is present in and interacting with the world. Before describing how this attribution of agency is accomplished in the transportations and processions of the Guru Granth Sahib, a few basic religious beliefs about the text must be considered.
