What the connections of sacredness with valour and identity in the Sikh tradition reveal

Holiness, a fundamental concern of religions, is a concept difficult to define. Broadly speaking, it seems a compound of notions drawn from folk belief and mythology, theology and eschatology, and ideas of salvation and sacredness. The concept endows individuals, texts, times, places, institutions, and communities with a distinctly powerful hold over the human mind and emotions, making it distinguishable from others in circulation within civil society.

The term holiness subsumes the meanings of “sacred” – in common parlance the two are synonymous – but holiness also subsumes within itself a moral code that informs the values, beliefs, concepts, and symbols through which a community conceives what is just, legitimate, and virtuous. With this encapsulation within itself of a moral order, holiness enables a community to distinguish the pure from the impure, the right from the wrong, and the sacred from the profane, thereby establishing codes of individual and collective conduct.

Those who violate standards of holiness are usually subjected to the intense rage and indignation of the community, expressed through words, gestures, rumours, signs, and occasionally weapons. These traditional expressions of outrage against transgressors of a “holy order” – or a socially constructed common sense of holiness – were easily communicated and comprehended…

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