CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF GURU GRANTH SAHIB
By: Dr. N. Muthu Mohan
ABSTRACT
1.The present paper intents to bring out the points of relevance of Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh Scripture to the contemporary world society. The points that are focused by us as relevant, as it could be expected, are intimately related with our understanding of contemporary society. The crisis of modernity and the response of existentialists and post-modernist are focused as the conditions of contemporary society. The search for alternatives forms the background of the paper.
2.The return of religions in recent times too has been identified as an aspect of contemporary society. However, it is argue that the return of religions have assumed a modernist political form, to mobilize the majoritarian identity and to dominate the total space of the public sphere.
3.The historical period of the appearance of Guru Granth Sahib is in certain aspects compared with the contemporary situations. The Sikh Gurus addressed to the deep-ridden crisis of Indian society during the later medieval period. The reinterpreted the boundaries of sacred and profane, the Meeri and Piri.
4.Reinterpreting the boundaries of sacred and profane led the Sikh Gurus to decenter the traditional ontological ends of philosophy and religions namely the transcendental reality, the self and the world. Guru Granth Sahib achieves the unity of ethical and ontological. It proposes an ontology of becoming relations.
5.The ethical note that emerges from the philosophical position of Guru Granth Sahib leaves its essential mark in Sikh devotionalism. Guru Granth Sahib contains a unique synthetic message of devotionalism and ethics that was unknown in Indian history.
6.The ethico-philosophical standpoint of Guru Granth Sahib has its social implications too. It is aimed at mobilizing and constructing a public sphere for actively transforming the existing conditions of life in favour of justice and humanism.
7.The fluid ontology or the ontology of becoming of Guru Granth Sahib leaves its structural impact on the construction of cordial inter-religious and inter-communal relations. Guru Granth Sahib proposes an untraditional inter-religious spirituality.