We have spoken of the subject, but now we must turn to the object. We have been dealing with the world of ideas and words, so our Epilogue must then quite literally be that which comes after the word, after the logos. But the Sikh Word is not a masculine logos, it is the beautiful and formless bāṇī. The Word proclaimed by the scriptures and secular writers of Sikhism is Woman. We cannot underestimate the importance of this achievement in itself, but does anyone listen to the Word? Does anyone truly read it?

By the word of the Sikh Gurūs and poets we are invited to praxis, the third component of feminist ethics. But their word which empowers woman endangers man. The response has been either to shout it down or simply fail to hear it. In the writings of Gurū Gobind Singh and Bhāī Vīr Singh, the feminine presences of Durgā and Rāṇī Rāj Kaur are too central, too striking to be ignored, so instead they have been denounced. The patriarchal exegetes have declared that it would have been unworthy of Gurū Gobind Singh to write of Durgā, and so they have attempted to excise her from his works. They still argue that the compositions praising Durgā under his name were written not by the Gurū himself but by his contemporaries.