Chapter iv. "Hymns from the Grnth Sahib, and from the Granth of the tenth guru: p. 63-114.

This text presents an overview of Sikh history and religiosity by firmly placing it against the backdrop of other religious traditions of the world. It includes a basic introduction to the faith, its history, beliefs, practices and modern developments.

Contains 125 questions about Sikh religion. This book also features quotations from Guru Granth Sahib.

An accessible introduction to the world's fifth largest religion, this work presents Sikhism's meanings and myths, and its practices, rituals, and festivals, also addressing ongoing social issues such as the relationship with the Indian state, the diaspora, and caste.

"McLeod is a renowned scholar of Sikhism. . . . [This book] confirms my view that there is nothing about the Sikhs or their religion that McLeod does not know and there is no one who can put it across with as much clarity and brevity as he can. In his latest work he has compressed in under 150 pages the principal sources of the Sikh religion, the Khalsa tradition and the beliefs of breakaway sects like the Nirankaris and Namdharis. . . . As often happens, an outsider has sharper insight into the workings of a community than insiders whose visions are perforce restricted."—Khushwant Singh, Hindustan Times

This fully revised and up-to-date edition has taken into account the comments of many academics. All major aspects of the religion are covered: its history and development, the Sikh scriptures, worship, ceremonies and festivals, religious thought, daily life and ethics.

Arguing that intellectual movements, such as deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology, have different implications for cultures and societies that live with the debilitating effects of past imperialisms, Arvind Mandair unsettles the politics of knowledge construction in which the category of "religion" continues to be central. Through a case study of Sikhism, he launches an extended critique of religion as a cultural universal. At the same time, he presents a portrait of how certain aspects of Sikh tradition were reinvented as "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. India's imperial elite subtly recast Sikh tradition as a sui generis religion, which robbed its teachings of their political force. In turn, Sikhs began to define themselves as a "nation" and a "world religion" that was separate from, but parallel to, the rise of the Indian state and global Hinduism. Rather than investigate these processes in isolation from Europe, Mandair shifts the focus closer to the political history of ideas, thereby recovering part of Europe's repressed colonial memory. Mandair rethinks the intersection of religion and the secular in discourses such as history of religions, postcolonial theory, and recent continental philosophy. Though seemingly unconnected, these discourses are shown to be linked to a philosophy of "generalized translation" that emerged as a key conceptual matrix in the colonial encounter between India and the West. In this riveting study, Mandair demonstrates how this philosophy of translation continues to influence the repetitions of religion and identity politics in the lives of South Asians, and the way the academy, state, and media have analyzed such phenomena.

Introduction to the Sikh religion, its history, scriptures and practice.