This textbook gives an overview of the languages of the Guru Granth Sahib, the Gurmukhi script, its pronunciation, and grammar. Since grammar serves as an important tool for producing meaningful interpretations of Gurbani, this textbook seeks to introduce a basic approach for accessing the linguistics of the Guru Granth Sahib.

In Volume Four of It Is The Same Light series (SGGS pages 601-800), author Daljit Singh Jawa continues to share the beauty of the SGGS with those who have limited familiarity with the language (Gurumukhi), history, or context. The following are some of the comments received on volume 1 of this series. This translation of Guru Granth Sahib is one of the best English translations in my view, as it is in simple understandable English, each shabads summary message is given, there is connection between the shabads to reveal continuity of thought process in Guru jis message. Thanks to S Daljit Singh ji for the great work which will benefit future generations understand Guru Jis message easily. -Amarjit Singh, M.D., University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York A monumental undertaking, reflecting a lifetime of devotion to the Sri Guru Granth Sahib and to the scholarly study of its voluminous texts. Both its rendition of the original Gurmukhi script, with accompanying English transliteration, and its erudite commentary on each of the Granths many hymns mark this work as a stunning achievement which will benefit all serious students of the Sikh religion and of world religions in general. -Barry Crawford, Ph.D., Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas

The eclectic mix of personal essays, poems and scholarly articles and the teachings of Guru Nanak that form this volume have come from contributors of not only the Sikh community in India, Pakistan and the diaspora, but also from people belonging to other faiths who have been touched by the mystique of the faith of Baba Nanak. By placing the personal records alongside with the scholarly insights into His teachings, what we have understood is that there is a Nanak for each one of us – a Nanak within each one of us – and it is this Nanak which abides in our consciousness and whom we need to seek out and discover. This book is, therefore, meant both for the initiated as well as the uninitiated. The lay readers will get a glimpse into the richness of thought and experience that an acquaintance with Guru Nanak brings with it. For the scholarly, the insights by the contributors who have dedicated their lives to an understanding of Sikhi will help in opening newer vistas of the Gurbani. The plurality of views expressed mirrors the free thinking and the respect for human beings and the upholding of human dignity that Nanakji propagated, practiced and stood for.

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.

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.