The Guru Granth Sahib: Canon, Meaning and Authority

Rating:
Summary: Sikhs Must Learn to Encourage Critical Scholarship
Review: Pashaura Singh, along with several other scholars of Sikh studies - including W.H. McLeod, Harjot Oberoi, and Gurinder Singh Mann - has been the recipient of much unfair criticism for authoring scholarship that dares to run counter to Sikh tradition.

Sikhs desperately need to realize that scholarship is of little value unless it is free to disagree with tradition.

The hostility with which scholars of Sikh studies have been greeted every time they deviate from tradition threatens to repel scholars of repute from the area of Sikh studies. Sadly, such a trend is already visible today.

Criticism of scholars must be aimed at assessing rather than silencing.

This book is based on Pashaura Singh's Ph.D. thesis, completed at the University of Toronto under the direction of W. Hew McLeod.

The thesis generated some controversy and, it would appear, was subsequently disappeared from the University of Toronto library.

Although the library's computer system confirms the volume as being available, The Sikh Times has been unable to locate the thesis at the library in order to verify claims that the book omits several of the thesis's controversial sections.

Pashaura Singh has declined requests for a copy of the original thesis.