Affiliated Faculty

<p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair is Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures and holder of the Tara Singh and Balwant Kaur Chattha, Gurbax Singh and Kirpal Kaur Brar Endowed Chair in Sikh Studies at the University of Michigan. A philosopher of religion and postcolonial theorist, his work addresses the categories of "religion" and "the secular" as they apply to the Sikh tradition, and has opened Sikh philosophy as a domain of inquiry within world philosophies. He is the author or co-author of eight books, editor or co-editor of five volumes, and founding editor of <em><strong>Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory</strong></em> (Routledge, since 2005).</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">Mandair was trained first as a scientist, earning a B.Sc. with First Class Honours and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Aston University, where he specialized in solid-state NMR spectroscopy and silicate chemistry. He published in leading chemistry journals and worked as a research scientist for multinationals including Akzo Nobel and Courtaulds before receiving a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Physics at the University of Warwick to research superconductors. It was during this fellowship that his engagement with human rights activism in Panjab catalyzed a decisive turn toward the humanities. He retrained at Warwick, completing an M.A. in Philosophy with Distinction and a British Academy-funded Ph.D. supervised jointly by Martin Warner (Warwick) and Christopher Shackle (SOAS, University of London). His doctoral dissertation, <em><strong>Thinking Between Cultures: Metaphysics and Cultural Translation</strong></em>, laid the foundation for his subsequent work at the intersection of postcolonial theory, translation studies, and the intellectual history of Panjab.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"><strong><em>Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation</em></strong> (Columbia University Press, 2009) launched an extended critique of "religion" as a cultural universal by tracing how Sikh tradition was reinvented as a "religion" during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under the pressure of colonial knowledge-making. The book argues that India's imperial elite recast Sikh teachings in categories borrowed from Protestant theology and Hegelian philosophy, channeling Sikhs into defining themselves as a "world religion" parallel to Hinduism. It draws on deconstruction, postsecular theory, and political theology.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"><strong><em>Sikh Philosophy: Exploring Gurmat Concepts in a Decolonizing World</em> </strong>(Bloomsbury, 2022) is the first sustained engagement in the Western academy with Sikh philosophy as philosophy. Mandair examines key gurmat concepts — the nature of reality, the relationship between mind, self, and ego, the contours of a Sikh logic, epistemology, and ontology — and addresses themes including the body, creation and cosmology, death and rebirth, action and intention, bioethics, and spirituality. The book positions Sikh thought within the emergent field of world philosophies alongside Hindu and Buddhist philosophical traditions.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"><strong><em>Violence and the Sikhs</em> </strong>(Cambridge University Press, 2022) interrogates conventional typologies of violence and nonviolence in Sikhism by rethinking the dominant narrative of Sikh history as a deviation from an ostensibly original pacifism. Drawing on primary Sikh literary sources, the book develops a non-oppositional understanding of the relationship between spirituality and violence, connecting it to questions of sovereignty and the relationship between Sikhism and the state across five centuries, with sustained attention to martyrdom, martial race theory, warfare, and postcolonial conflicts.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]"><strong><em>Philosophical Reflections on Sabad: Event, Resonance, Revelation</em> </strong>(Marquette University Press, 2023), delivered as the Père Marquette Lecture in Theology, explores the concept of <strong><em>sabad</em></strong> (Word) as event, resonance, and revelation in the Sikh philosophical tradition. <strong><em>Secularism and Religion-Making</em> </strong>(Oxford University Press, 2011), co-edited with Markus Dressler, examines how the categories of "secular" and "religious" are actively produced through institutional and discursive practices, with Mandair contributing chapters on modernity, religion-making, and the postsecular, as well as on discourses of Sikh ethnonationalism. His <strong><em>Sikhism: A Guide for the Perplexed</em></strong> (Bloomsbury, 2013) is an introduction to Sikh tradition that addresses the encounter with modernity and the West, the philosophical teachings of its founders, and Sikh ethical and intellectual responses to contemporary issues. The Springer <em>Sikhism</em> encyclopedia volume (2017) provides a comprehensive reference.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">With Christopher Shackle, Mandair co-authored <strong><em>Teachings of the Sikh Gurus</em></strong> (Routledge, 2005), a translation of key passages from the Guru Granth Sahib and the Dasam Granth into modern English, organized thematically by topics including time and impermanence, self and mind, authority, and ethics. He co-edited <strong><em>The Sikh World</em></strong> (Routledge, 2023) with Pashaura Singh, a major reference volume, and <strong><em>Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity</em></strong> (Curzon/Routledge, 2000) with Christopher Shackle and Gurharpal Singh, which brought together new interdisciplinary approaches—including film and gender theory, theology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, and semiotics—to the study of Sikh tradition.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">His journal articles include "The Politics of Nonduality: Reassessing the Work of Transcendence in Modern Sikh Theology" (<strong><em>Journal of the American Academy of Religion</em></strong>), which uses post-structuralist critiques of transcendence to interrogate the ideological foundations of Singh Sabha theology; "The Repetition of Past Imperialisms: Hegel, Historical Difference and the Theorization of Indic Religions" (<strong><em>History of Religions</em></strong>, 2005); "Death, Deathless States and Time-Consciousness in Sikh Philosophy" (<strong><em>Religious Studies</em></strong>, 2023); and "Sikh Philosophy: Transforming Self, World and Society" in the <strong><em>Sage Handbook of Global Theology</em> </strong>(2024). He has contributed multiple chapters to <strong><em>The Sikh World</em></strong>, including essays on the intersection of Guru, <strong><em>sabad</em></strong>, and Khalsa; the sociopolitical dimensions of Sikh philosophy; and the development of modern Sikh Studies.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">As founding editor of <strong><em>Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture and Theory</em></strong> since 2005, Mandair also co-edits the Routledge Critical Sikh Studies book series and the Geophilosophies series with Michigan Publishing, with a third series, Transmodern Times, forthcoming with Rutgers University Press.</p> <p class="font-claude-response-body break-words whitespace-normal leading-[1.7]">After a postdoctoral fellowship at SOAS and five years as the first holder of the S.K.K. Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies at Hofstra University in New York, Mandair joined the University of Michigan in 2006. He currently serves as Director of Graduate Studies in his department. His forthcoming <strong><em>Geophilosophical Encounters: Decolonial Praxis, Diasporic Logics and Sikh Thought</em> </strong>investigates new modes of cross-cultural philosophical encounter beyond conventional comparative frameworks, drawing on his experience as a diasporic British Sikh.</p>

Sikh philosophy as a domain within world philosophies, including questions of ontology, epistemology, and the concept of sabad (Word) as event and revelation. The colonial and postcolonial construction of "religion" and "the secular," with particular attention to how Sikh tradition was recast through Protestant and Hegelian categories. Violence, sovereignty, and the relationship between spirituality and political action in Sikh history and thought. Translation theory and the politics of cross-cultural knowledge production. The ideological foundations of modern Sikh theology, including Singh Sabha exegesis and the politics of nonduality. Consciousness studies and cross-cultural philosophical encounter beyond conventional comparative frameworks.