Kanwar Ranvir Singh: A Study in Joy

Takeaways

• A focus on the exploration on the divine as the driving force of Sikh renaissance
• An integration of personal experience with Sikh theology. Mysticism, intellectual integrity and activism live in unity. Orthopraxis — godly choices reveal orthodoxy — real knowing
• A working out of Sikh thought to transform international law in the form of paragraph 67 of the 2001 United Nations Declaration Against Racism and UK educational practice through the introduction of ‘worldviews’ into Religious Education in secondary schooling

Woken out of a slumber about Sikh identity by the tensions and crisis of 1984 I found myself interviewed by the World Service of the BBC in 1989, first at an Amnesty International conference and later as a young person — I was a teenager at that time — speaking about the coming decade. I spoke about how the Gurus anticipated many social and political ideals in the sixteenth and seventeenth century so they should be examined as historical actors and political thinkers as much as religious figures. I also claimed that Sikh theology was about the tension between the force of Grace lived as Love versus the power and security-seeking of the ego. These ideas have developed over the years, not in the sense of change, but of unfolding. At the Parliament of World Religions in 1999 I noted that…