Contributed articles.

The first to appear in Curzon's well respected 'Popular Dictionary' series.

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.

Teach Yourself Sikhism is a comprehensive guide to the faith itself and to Sikh society. It looks at all aspects of Sikhism including: - worship and festivals - Sikh initiation - the Gurus and the beginnings of Sikhism - the Sikh scriptures and teachings about God - the family - marriage and death - Sikh names and the naming ceremony - ethics - Sikhism in the modern period. The 'Teach Yourself World Faiths' series aims to present all the essential information required by a reader who has no previous knowledge of the religion, but who wants to feel confident in dealing with members of the faith community - in terms of their beliefs and attitudes, and also of the practical details of their culture, ceremony, diet and moral views. As such it is relevant to the needs of police, social workers, solicitors, businessmen, teachers and all who require sensitivity and insight in dealing with the public in a multi-faith and multi-ethnic society. "Teach Yourself Sikhism" is an introduction to the history, beliefs, religious practices and social customs of Sikhism. It is suitable for A-level students, as background reading for undergraduate students in Religious Studies, and for the general reader.

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.

Sikhism's short but relatively eventful history provides a fascinating insight into the working of misunderstood and seemingly contradictory themes such as politics and religion, violence and mysticism, culture and spirituality, orality and textuality, public sphere versus private sphere, tradition and modernity. This book presents students with a careful analysis of these complex themes as they have manifested themselves in the historical evolution of the Sikh traditions and the encounter of Sikhs with modernity and the West, in the philosophical teachings of its founders and their interpretation by Sikh exegetes, and in Sikh ethical and intellectual responses to contemporary issues in an increasingly secular and pluralistic world. Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed serves as an ideal guide to Sikhism, and also for students of Asian studies, Sociology of Religion and World Religions.