Paper short abstract:

The Sikh ethic of seva, service, was drawn upon as a guiding principle for my interlocutor’s engagement with me as an ethnographer. By framing their involvement in my research as service, this allowed my interlocutors opportunities to reflect on, interrogate, and cultivate their moral agency.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I describe how moral agency can be cultivated through the Sikh ethic of seva, service or voluntary care, for members of the historically marginalized Sikh community in Delhi, India. The Sikh ethic of seva is based on ideologies of equality, dignity, and wellbeing for all, and this practical ethic often takes the form of free medical clinics and distribution of free food in contemporary urban India. Based on 19 months of ethnographic research with sevadars, voluntary social workers from the Sikh faith, in Delhi, I describe how the ethic of seva offers an ethnographic approach that was not only relevant to my interlocutors but also offered my interlocutors an approach to reflect on moral agency. The ideological framing of service, equality, and dignity within the practice of seva allows sevadars to cultivate moral agency within themselves, by doing something that makes living possible for themselves and others. Additionally, my interlocutor’s understood their participation in my research as a form of seva, or service, which shaped their relationship with me, the ethnographer, and provided opportunities for them to transform their moral agency with respect to the project. I conclude by suggesting that psychological anthropology should continue to understand how people grapple with and strive to live ethically, that is how they try to make living possible for themselves and others. In doing so, we set up conditions that put at the forefront opportunities for our interlocutors to reflect on and interrogate moral agency.