Sikh & Christianity

Who Determines Spiritual Authority in Sikhism?

truthsikhers

January 9, 2026

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Why Sikhism Lacks a Binding Doctrinal Authority

Sikhism has no functioning institutional body of spiritual authority capable of defining, adjudicating, or enforcing orthodox doctrine in a binding manner.
This structural absence lies at the core of Sikhism’s persistent doctrinal fragmentation and its resistance to the development of systematic theology.

1. Akal Takht – Temporal Authority, Not Doctrinal

The Akal Takht was established by Baba Nanak’s successor as a seat of temporal authority (miri), dealing with:

• Political decisions
• Community discipline
• Excommunications (tankhah)
• Panthic edicts (hukamnamas)

It was never constituted as a doctrinal council tasked with defining theology, resolving metaphysical disputes, or issuing binding creeds.

In practice, its authority today is reactive and political, not systematic or theological.

2. No Sikh Equivalent of a Spiritual Magisterium

Sikhism lacks an institutional counterpart to:

• Church councils (e.g., Nicaea, Chalcedon)
• A magisterium (Catholicism)
• A recognized scholarly authority that adjudicates doctrinal disputes

There is no standing body that can definitively rule on:

• The nature of God (personal vs. impersonal)
• Pantheism vs. theism
• Determinism vs. Freewill
• The ontological meaning of nirgun/sargun
• Whether Sikh theology is monistic, dualistic, or incoherent

As a result, contradictory interpretations coexist with no mechanism for resolution.

3. Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) – Administrative, Not Theological

The SGPC:

• Manages gurdwaras
• Controls finances
• Oversees publications
• Appoints granthis

It does not function as a doctrinal authority and has no mandate or competence to define orthodoxy in theology or metaphysics.

Its role is bureaucratic, not magisterial.

4. Guru Granth Sahib (AG) – Text Without an Authoritative Interpreter

Sikhs are often told:

“The Guru Granth Sahib is the living Guru.”

However:

• A text cannot interpret itself
• The AG contains multiple voices, metaphors, and tensions
• There is no authorized hermeneutical authority to settle meaning

This leads to:

• Radical interpretive pluralism
• Postmodern subjectivism
• “My understanding of Gurbani” replacing orthodoxy

Appeals to “the Guru” become rhetorical, not doctrinally decisive.

5. The Result: No Enforceable Orthodoxy

Because there is:

• No spiritual magisterium
• No binding creed
• No authoritative hermeneutic body

Sikhism functions with:

• Doctrinal indeterminacy
• Competing metaphysical claims
• No objective mechanism to declare one view orthodox and another heretical

Anyone can claim their interpretation is “true Sikhi,” and there is no institutional authority capable of settling the dispute.

6. Bottom Line

• Akal Takht → Temporal authority
• SGPC → Administrative control
• AG → Scripture without an authoritative interpreter

There is no Sikh institution that determines orthodox doctrine in a binding, systematic way.

This is not incidental.
It is a structural feature of Sikhism—and it explains why Sikh theology remains internally contested, philosophically unstable, and doctrinally unresolved to this day and therefore has no systematic theology.

7. The Empirical Proof: Competing “Authorities” With No Adjudicator

The absence of a Sikh spiritual magisterium is not theoretical. It is empirically verifiable by simply observing who claims authority and how radically they disagree—without any binding mechanism to arbitrate truth.

Just look at the self-professed authorities and influential voices who all claim fidelity to Sikhism while advancing mutually incompatible interpretations:

• Karminder Singh Dhillon
  Positions himself as a corrective authority on AG interpretation, frequently dismissing traditional readings while offering highly idiosyncratic linguistic and philosophical reconstructions—without accountability to any doctrinal body.
• Harjot Oberoi
  Famously destabilized the notion of Sikh orthodoxy itself by arguing that early Sikh identity was fluid, plural, and non-exclusive—undermining any claim that a fixed doctrinal core ever existed.
• Pashaura Singh
  His critical textual work on AG manuscripts provoked outrage and accusations of heresy, yet no authoritative theological court existed to adjudicate the matter definitively—only protests, politics, and pressure.
• The innumerable babas, deras, and self-appointed preachers
  Each claims divine insight, authentic gurmat, or exclusive understanding of AG—often teaching contradictory metaphysics, soteriology, and ethics—yet remaining “Sikh” by self-designation alone.
• Scholars and commentators on GLZ, such as:
  • Sukhraj Singh Dhillon
  • Devinder Singh Chahal

These figures openly disagree not only with you, but with each other, on foundational issues: the nature of God, revelation, authority, incarnation, determinism, and scripture—yet all claim to represent authentic Sikh thought.

• And finally, the many influential Sikh voices no longer with us, whose interpretations continue to circulate posthumously, selectively cited when convenient and ignored when not—again, with no authoritative body to determine which views are orthodox, peripheral, or erroneous.

8. Arvind Mandair and the Illusion of “Sikh Philosophy”

This structural vacuum of doctrinal authority is further exposed by the way figures such as Arvind Mandair are promoted as the “rising star of Sikh philosophy.”

Mandair is frequently presented as providing Sikhism with a long-overdue philosophical foundation. In reality, his work demonstrates the problem, not the solution.

Rather than articulating a coherent Sikh systematic theology, Mandair:

• Explicitly rejects classical metaphysics, including stable ontology and substance-based God-talk
• Recasts Sikh categories through postmodern, continental philosophy (Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze)
• Treats Sikh thought as a discursive tradition rather than a truth-claiming theological system
• Undermines the very notion of doctrinal orthodoxy by dissolving it into language, power, and interpretation

In short, Mandair does not construct Sikh theology—he deconstructs the possibility of theology itself.

Yet he is widely touted as authoritative.

Why?

Because in the absence of:

• a magisterium,
• a binding creed, or
• an authoritative metaphysical framework,

philosophical novelty substitutes for doctrinal authority.

Mandair’s prominence illustrates a crucial point:

In Sikhism, influence is mistaken for authority, and academic sophistication is mistaken for orthodoxy.

His work is not adjudicated, received, or rejected by any recognized doctrinal body. It simply circulates—embraced by some, rejected by others, ignored by many—while remaining equally “Sikh” by default.

9. Integrative Conclusion

Taken together—
the Akal Takht,
the SGPC,
the AG without an authoritative interpreter,
the self-appointed exegetes,
the controversial scholars,
the babas and deras,
the GLZ commentators,
and now the postmodern philosophers—

the conclusion is unavoidable:

Sikhism lacks the structural conditions necessary for producing a binding, coherent systematic theology.

What is repeatedly presented as “Sikh philosophy” is, in practice:

• interpretive pluralism without adjudication, or
• postmodern discourse without doctrinal commitments

Neither can sustain orthodoxy.

This is not an accidental failure.
It is the logical outcome of a tradition with no institutional mechanism for defining, preserving, or enforcing theological truth.

10. The Key Point: Disagreement Is Not the Problem — Authority Is

The existence of disagreement is normal in any intellectual tradition.

The problem is this:
Sikhism possesses no institutional mechanism capable of saying:

• “This interpretation is correct.”
• “That interpretation is incompatible with Sikh doctrine.”
• “This view falls outside the bounds of Sikh orthodoxy.”

As a result:

• Scholarly prestige replaces doctrinal authority
• Popularity replaces orthodoxy
• Loudness replaces legitimacy
• Politics replaces theology

The Akal Takht cannot resolve these matters.
The SGPC does not address them.
The AG, as a text, cannot adjudicate its own meaning.

11. Conclusion

When every interpreter is functionally autonomous, when no creed exists, when no magisterium adjudicates doctrine, and when “the Guru says” simply means “my interpretation says”,

orthodoxy becomes impossible by definition.

What remains is not a coherent doctrinal tradition, but a marketplace of competing voices, all invoking authority that no Sikh institution is structurally equipped to grant or enforce.That is not polemic. That is simply how Sikh religious authority actually functions.