Sri Guru Granth Sahib

The Radical Voice of Interfaith Coexistence

Interfaith dialogue has become a popular phrase, hasn’t it? We see it rolled out everywhere from the workplace to parliaments, community roundtables and academic panels. In my view these gestures towards community cohesion are symbolic at best, and superficial at worst, because they celebrate coexistence without ever confronting the deeper exclusivist undercurrents within the very texts and traditions they seek to harmonise.

I say this because Sikhs often seek out these spaces, but seldom do they provide a powerful enough account that truly honours the radical positionality of the Guru Granth Sahib, which is not simply a call to interfaith respect, but the actual embodiment of it. Not through token inclusion or abstract universalism, but through the lived voices, languages, and experiences of the thirty-six contributors from diverse backgrounds: Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, poet, farmer, mystic, noble, cobbler, and the so-called ‘untouchable.’

This fact alone should showcase how the Guru Granth Sahib is not merely a religious scripture amongst world scriptures. It is a singular, coherent sound current composed through shabad, representing a divine plurality revealed by the Guru, which is why Sikhs revere shabad as the living Guru. It is testimony to the conviction that divine wisdom is not the monopoly of one belief, language, caste or tradition.

The Guru Granth Sahib, by its very composition, is inclusivist in nature, but this inclusivity expands further that the shabad; it is grounded and embodied in revolutionary Sikh praxis. Before expanding on that, let me briefly contrast this inherent inclusivity with the inherent exclusivity of other major texts commonly cited in interfaith efforts.

Let’s start with the Qur'an. While expressing moments of respect, albeit for the “People of the Book”, it ultimately makes clear distinctions about its exclusive legitimacy. For example, “Certainly, Allah’s only way is Islam.” (Qur'an 3:19), or “Whoever seeks a way other than Islam, it will never be accepted from them, and in the Hereafter, they will be among the losers.” (Qur'an 3:85). Additional verses deepen this framework of exclusivity, for example, “O believers, take neither the Jews nor the Christians as guardians.” (Qur'an 5:51), and “Those who say, “Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary,” have certainly fallen into disbelief.” (Qur'an 5:72)

The Bible is similarly unambiguous in this regard. For example, “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6). Elsewhere we read, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

The Torah roots its divine covenant in a specific lineage, confining the chosen status to a defined group, for example, “For you are a holy people to the Lord, your God: the Lord your God has chosen you to be His treasured people, out of all the peoples upon the face of the earth.” (Deuteronomy 7:6). There are many other references throughout the Torah that exemplify this exclusivity.

The Bhagavad Gita, for all its mystical insight, centres devotion around Krishna as the singular ultimate truth: “Abandon all varieties of dharmas and simply surrender unto Me alone. I shall liberate you from all sinful reactions; do not fear.” (Gita 18:66), and “Of all yogis, those whose minds are always absorbed in Me, and who engage in devotion to Me with great faith, them I consider to be the highest of all.” (Gita 6:47)

These texts, while profound and meaningful to billions around the world, reflect frameworks grounded in exclusivity, be it of belief, identity, lineage, or revelation. That said, these traditions do contain occasional but limited gestures toward broader inclusion. The Qur'an, for example, acknowledges moral worth in other communities: “Indeed, the believers, Jews, Christians, and Sabians—whoever ˹truly˺ believes in Allah and the Last Day and does good will have their reward with their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor will they grieve.” (Qur'an 2:62). Similarly, the Hebrew prophets sometimes envision a future where nations come together in peace under God's law, and the New Testament speaks of “neither Jew nor Greek... for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28), though the unity remains contingent on Christian belief. In Hindu texts, the concept of satya (truth) and dharma is occasionally presented as transcendent, but still filters through a Brahmanical cosmology, often privileging caste.

Gurmat, the Sikh spiritual paradigm as revealed in the shabad of Guru Granth Sahib, sits outside both the Abrahamic and Brahmanical frameworks. It does not hinge salvation on a single historical revelation or ethnic identity, nor does it locate divine access within a hereditary priesthood or caste. Divine connection is not mediated through dogma, but through naam, seva, and the Guru's Grace, accessible to all in any moment. Where other systems often delineate who is “in” and who is “out,” Gurmat collapses these binaries in favour of a direct, personal, and universal relationship with the Divine, grounded in ethical living and inner transformation.

This unique aspect of the Gurmat paradigm intrigues me, especially as a philosophy post-graduate, and particularly through the lens of religious pluralism, the idea of the coexistence and tolerance of diverse religious traditions. Without getting too technical, I want to distinguish here between three terms: exclusivism, in which truth is claimed to lie solely within one tradition; inclusivism, where one accepts others, but only through a dominant framework; and pluralism, in which multiple paths are valid. Many of the examples from the Qur'an, Bible, Torah, and Gita demonstrate strong exclusivist orientations, and when they do acknowledge others, it is often by subsuming them into a central doctrinal axis, for example "they are saved through Christ" or "they ultimately serve Krishna".

Gurmat does not conform neatly to any of these categories. It is not merely pluralistic in a modern liberal sense, it asserts that the Divine is beyond name, form, and creed, and yet accessible through naam, which transcends linguistic and cultural limitations. Take for example, Guru Nanak Patshah’s words, “there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim”. This assertion from the Guru is not a call for syncretism, as scholars from both the Islamic and Hindu traditions have invariably claimed, but a profound ontological critique of religious identity itself. It challenges the essentialism of conventional belonging and reorients the spiritual quest toward being, rather than believing.

In this sense, Guru Granth Sahib articulates a radically different metaphysics: not exclusivist (only this path is true); not inclusivist (others are true only insofar as they resemble ours); and not even relativist (all paths are equally valid). Rather, it posits that truth is experiential, accessible through naam, shabad, and lived practice, regardless of background. This positions Gurmat as philosophically post-categorical: meaning it is a tradition that resists binary classifications and invites a fundamentally different engagement with the Divine.

For example, Bhagat Kabir ji writes "If the Allah lives only in the mosque, then to whom does the rest of the world belong? According to the Hindus, the Lord's Name abides in the idol, but there is no truth in either of these claims.” In the next pauri, he writes, “First, Allah created the Light; then, by His Creative Power, He made all mortal beings. From the One Light, the entire universe welled up. So, who is good, and who is bad?” (SGGS, Ang 1349)

This pangti refutes exclusive truth claims by asserting the common spiritual origin of all beings, regardless of religion, caste, or background.

Moreover, the Guru Granth Sahib does not ask anyone to convert. Nor does it treat its non-Sikh contributors as marginal voices. Their writings are not footnotes, they are centre stage, approved by Guru Arjan Patshah themselves, and then again by Guru Gobind Singh. This includes Bhagat Kabir ji, a weaver; Bhagat Ravidas ji, a leatherworker ostracised by caste; Baba Farid ji, a Sufi mystic; Bhagat Namdev ji, a Hindu saint. Each voice is treated with the same reverence as the Sikh Gurus. There is no reinterpretation or attempt to differentiate, and whilst the relevant contributions have been clearly attributed, Guru Granth Sahib is not an anthology. The Guru Granth Sahib is a collective divine utterance, which Sikhs bow in reverence to. They are not bowing to the individual tradition or background of the contributor, but to the broader truth that the root source of divine wisdom is One.

The Sikh political ethic flows directly from the foundational truth of the Guru Granth Sahib: that divinity is not institutional or theological, it is inherent. It emanates in all of creation. It does not emerge from the kind of universalistic morality seen in liberal traditions, nor does it just reference interfaith dialogue. It is interfaith dialogue. Not frozen in time, but dynamic, poetic and rhythmic. It dismantles the very idea that truth belongs to one tribe.

This unique nature is why the Guru Granth Sahib cannot be seen as just another religious text or scripture amongst many; however, this is often lost precisely because of how the Sikh tradition has been reframed and boxed within Western categories. As I’ve argued in Patshahi Mehima, “Sikhism” is a product of colonial taxonomy: a system designed to index traditions according to Christian categories, with a scripture, prophet, temple and rituals. Within that system, Sikhi becomes a religion “like the others,” a peer among peers. But Sikhi, as lived and transmitted, does not fit that framework for reasons provided above.

The Guru Granth Sahib cannot be compared to the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah or the Gita, because it is fundamentally different. Where they speak from within a single tradition, the Guru Granth Sahib speaks through many. Where they make space for the outsider, the Guru Granth Sahib is the outsider. Despite this reality, interfaith initiatives have the tendency to flatten all spiritual traditions into ‘universal values’, which stems from a well-worn Western liberal model of religion, as separate but equal, private but benign, parallel in meaning but distinct in ritual. Sikhs too get trapped in this paradigm; however this approach positions Sikh thought as merely another religion, called “Sikhism” with a holy book, a prophet, and a set of doctrines. A quick glance through school textbooks or the BBC Bitesize sections and more recently workplace DEI spaces, will affirm this position. But these framings obscure what the Guru Granth Sahib is: not a “scripture” in the Abrahamic sense, but a dynamic, polyphonic articulation of truth through shabad.

Tomoko Masuzawa, in her influential work The Invention of World Religions (2005), critiques the very concept of "world religions" as a product of European imperial and in particular Protestant Christian thinking. Masuzawa explains how the 19th-century construction of religious pluralism served to reinforce Christian superiority by assimilating other traditions into a universal schema based on Christian theological and institutional norms. In this system, traditions were granted visibility only if they could be measured against categories like scripture, belief, founder, and orthodoxy.

This analysis strongly supports the point that Sikhi, when reduced to "Sikhism," is misread through these foreign lenses. The Guru Granth Sahib is not merely scripture, it is Guru, presence, and divine voice embodied in shabad. To force it into comparative categories alongside the Bible, Torah, Qur'an, or Gita is to misunderstand its nature entirely. To attempt to offer English-only translations as “hymns” in the name of modernity and mass appeal is equally disingenuous. To proudly claim “Sikhism” as the world’s fifth largest religion is to reinforce the universal schema based on Christian theology that Masuzawa so brilliantly highlights.

Unlike texts that serve as representations of divine will, the Guru Granth Sahib is considered the eternal Guru. It is not a book about God, it is God in the form of revealed shabad. The reading, listening, and singing of the Guru Granth Sahib is an encounter with divine presence. This challenges Western dichotomies between word and being, or between symbol and substance. Furthermore, the divine in Sikhi is neither a tribal god nor a denominational deity. Vaheguru is all-pervasive, formless, and limitless. Thus, the Guru Granth Sahib cannot be understood through the comparative theology of scriptures. Crucially, I would argue, the Guru Granth Sahib is not superior by measure of doctrine or argument, but singular in its ontological and relational orientation.

Considering this, one could be forgiven for assuming that Sikhi's rejection of normative religious categories implies a disinterest in political or worldly engagement. Earlier I mentioned that the very composition of the Guru Granth Sahib challenges the essentialism of conventional belonging, however it is preciely this challenge that gives rise to a new existsnce. This distinctiveness, what we refer to as the niarapan of the Sikh Panth, requires sovereignty to be realised, not a sovereignty that seeks world domination, but one rooted in hukam (divine order) and the liberation of all beings. Sovereignty in Sikhi is ethical, not ethnic; spiritual, not supremacist. It emerges from divine presence in the world, not from haumai-driven exclusivist identity politics.

All of this makes Sikhi an ongoing challenge to the colonial logic that prefers “Sikhism” the religion, which not only privatises faith and separates it from power but presents it as but another within modern-day interfaith dialogue. For Sikhs, to live by the Guru’s word is to live as sovereign beings, responsible, free, and devoted to truth. The Guru Granth Sahib stands not as a counterpart to other scriptures but as a singular expression of the divine voice, relational, plural, and sovereign. As Masuzawa shows, the colonial category of "religion" was never meant to accommodate such a tradition, which is why it is important to push back against this categorisation.

We do not need more empty interfaith panel discussions. We do not need more cautious statements about shared values. And we certainly don’t need community leaders pandering to seek an audience with the Pope for the sake of relevance or visibility. We need to be brave enough to ask where exclusivity lives, and where inclusivity is truly lived. The Guru Granth Sahib is what interfaith could be, if it had the courage to let go of control. It teaches us that wisdom does not wear one face, and that the divine is not waiting to be discovered through agreement, but through shared experience, and in a world desperate for unity, but terrified of difference, that might just be the most revolutionary message of all.

-Ranveer Singh (Scotland, UK), author, editor and publisher.