UC Santa Cruz

This article focuses on how Sikhism developed a unique historical trajectory in early modernity by coining and cultivating a distinct system of signification, making itself later vulnerable to mistranslation under the weight of Western imperial philology. The potentialities of early Sikhism became manifest through new usages in the Guru Granth of longstanding terms within Indian traditions. Steeped in pluralism, dialogism, musicality, and secularity, the orientations toward newness were undermined by the intervention of Ernst Trumpp’s colonially commissioned philology and the ramifications of his mistranslation of Sikh scripture, triggering diverse predicaments premised on the politics of recognition in late colonial India.