As per a letter from Dr. Balbinder Singh Bhogal, associate professor of religion and chair of Sikh studies, The Chronicle would like to amend certain facts printed in the article titled, “New chair appointed to Sikh studies” in the Oct. 11 issue.
“I did not say ‘there is a notion of excluding truth in the Abrahamic religions’ – a rather ridiculous claim to make; I said “exclusive truth” where I detailed how the Bible is seen as a ‘New’ Testament above and beyond the ‘Old’ Testament, and likewise with the Quran being the latest revelation that supersedes the other two. Nor did I say ‘Other scriptures and traditions are almost relativism’…another odd and sloppy phrase. I was actually talking about the plurality of scriptures and how one is to come to terms with multiple sources of ‘truth/revelation’-pointing to how Guru Nanak viewed this multiplicity positively where one need not make an exclusive claim to truth over and above other traditions. And the point about the maturity of intellectual reflection a tradition gains through time was totally lost; worse, I’m made out to contradict myself..claiming maturity of the Sikh tradition, when I was actually saying that Sikh tradition is relatively very young but inherits the richness of reflection because it draws its understandings from both Abrahamic and Indic religious traditions given its context in northwest India-and it was this that made it a complex and rich tradition that has yet to really begin an intellectual tradition of reflection. Finally I did not just end with ‘it goes beyond’… the reference was to a redefinition of the human subject beyond contemporary understandings.
I come across in the article as uneducated and bigoted if not slightly inebriated, spouting my own Sikh tradition as better than the rest in a naive ‘clash of civilization’ rhetoric, when one of the main points I was developing and communicating to Ms Hoerbelt was that the uniqueness of the Sikh tradition lies in the very desire to resist this them-and-us arrogance by seeing and hearing the voices of non-Sikhs (Hindus and Muslims) as authoritative by including them within the corpus of diverse voices the make up Sikh scripture.”