Beyond Reciprocity: Sikh Vand Chakna and the Ethics of Shared Life

This article examines Sikhism's principle of Vand Chakna (sharing one's earnings) and its institutional manifestation in Langar (community kitchen) as distinctive configurations of religious giving that challenge dominant anthropological frameworks. Drawing on gift theory, moral economy, and comparative religious ethics, the analysis demonstrates how Sikh practices resist the hierarchical asymmetries and moral accounting that structure charitable systems. Rather than framing giving as oriented toward reciprocity, merit, or obligation, Vand Chakna positions sharing as a constitutive condition of collective life, grounded in relational ontology and enacted through embodied practice. Langar functions as an "ethical infrastructure"—a material, spatial, and institutional arrangement that stabilizes egalitarian ethics through routine participation. Comparative analysis with Hindu dāna and Islamic zakāt clarifies how Sikh ethics diverge from merit-accumulation and purification-oriented giving. The concept of ethical infrastructure proves analytically valuable for understanding how religious practices materialize moral orientations while negotiating persistent social hierarchies. This theoretical framework invites future ethnographic research on how egalitarian principles operate in lived contexts marked by caste, class, and gender inequalities.