A Critique of Contextual Reason

Though scholars are critical of unilinear and teleological notions of time, the form of reasoning that accompanies this time, contextual reasoning, remains dominant. This article grapples with the problem of contextual reasoning by examining a central Sikh institution, Darbar Sahib in Amritsar, in the late nineteenth century and its relation to colonial law. This article explores the colonial state’s violent attempt to produce a proper context for Sikh sites and institutions. But Darbar Sahib caused much trouble for the colonial state, and colonial officials continually suspended the law at the site and explicitly produced Darbar Sahib as an exception. The author examines both the reach and the absence of colonial law by turning to hukam and the Sikh tradition to supplement context and offer a parasitic history: one that is irreducible to context, although lodged within it.