1. Introduction: Wealth, Stewardship, and Sikh Values
- Introduction: Wealth, Stewardship, and Sikh Values
- Theological Anthropology: The Human Being as Steward
- Maya, Lobh, and the Spiritual Dangers of Wealth
- Kirat Karni: The Ethics of Honest Acquisition
- Stewardship vs. Ownership: A Gurmat Analysis
- Wealth and Spiritual Practice: Integration or Conflict?
- The Grahast Jeevan: Householder Ethics and Financial Life
- Contentment (Santokh) and Enough: A Gurmat Economics
- Wealth Inequality and Sikh Justice Ethics
- Investment Ethics in Gurmat Perspective
- Estate Planning and Intergenerational Stewardship
- Synthesis: A Gurmat Stewardship Framework — Works Cited
| Gurmukhi Term | Academic Context |
|---|---|
| ਕਿਰਤ ਕਰਨੀ | Honest labor as the ethical foundation of all legitimate wealth acquisition in Gurmat |
| ਮਾਇਆ | Worldly wealth and its illusory power; the theological foil of Sikh stewardship ethics |
| ਸੰਤੋਖ | Contentment as the cardinal economic virtue opposing acquisitive excess |
| ਲੋਭ | Greed; the primary economic vice in Gurmat moral psychology |
| ਵੰਡ ਛਕਣਾ | Sharing before consuming; the distributive principle structuring Gurmat economics |
| ਗ੍ਰਿਹਸਤ | The householder life; the normative context within which Sikh wealth stewardship is exercised |
| ਸੇਵਾ | Selfless service as the teleological end toward which accumulated wealth is deployed |
| ਦਸਵੰਧ | The one-tenth giving discipline that institutionalizes Gurmat stewardship in financial practice |
1. Introduction: Wealth, Stewardship, and Sikh Values
The question of how human beings should relate to material wealth — how it should be earned, managed, deployed, and shared — is one of the most practically significant questions in applied ethics. For Sikh individuals and communities in the contemporary world, navigating this question requires resources from the Gurmat tradition alongside the financial literacy and institutional knowledge that modern economic life demands. This seminar provides a graduate-level examination of wealth stewardship from a Sikh perspective, integrating theological depth with economic sophistication and practical application.
The Gurmat tradition's approach to wealth is neither ascetic (the tradition explicitly rejects the renunciation of worldly life in favor of householder engagement) nor acquisitive (the tradition provides a sustained critique of wealth-seeking as the primary purpose of life). The normative Sikh framework — articulated through the three pillars of ਨਾਮ ਜਪਣਾ, ਕਿਰਤ ਕਰਨੀ, and ਵੰਡ ਛਕਣਾ — places wealth within a larger ethical and spiritual framework that simultaneously affirms its legitimate role and constrains its pursuit with the principles of honesty, sufficiency, and sharing. This framework is neither capitalism nor socialism but a distinctive third path that merits serious scholarly attention.
The concept of stewardship — holding resources in trust for purposes beyond one's own consumption — provides the organizing framework for this seminar. In Gurmat theology, stewardship is grounded in the conviction that all resources ultimately belong to the Divine and are entrusted to human beings for the purpose of community flourishing. This theological grounding of stewardship is more robust and demanding than secular stewardship ethics, which typically grounds the obligation to manage resources responsibly in consequentialist arguments about sustainability or in rights-based arguments about obligations to future generations. The Gurmat steward is accountable to the Divine, not merely to abstract principles or future persons.
Graduate students in this seminar will engage primary Sikh sources (SGGS, Sikh Rahit Maryada) alongside economic theory (stewardship theory in corporate governance, household economics, wealth inequality analysis), behavioral economics (the psychology of money and status), and contemporary applied ethics of finance. The goal is to develop a comprehensive, analytically rigorous account of Sikh wealth stewardship that is both faithful to the tradition and practically actionable in contemporary economic contexts.
The seminar is organized as follows: the first four lessons establish theological and ethical foundations; lessons five through eight examine the core stewardship framework; lessons nine through eleven address contemporary applications including wealth inequality, investment ethics, and estate planning; and the final lesson synthesizes the inquiry into a coherent Gurmat stewardship framework. Throughout, the emphasis is on developing original analytical arguments rather than merely surveying existing literature — the standard expected in graduate-level scholarly inquiry.
