The daily installation and retiring of the Guru Granth Sahib reflects a specific theological decision rather than an ordinary custom of caring for a sacred text: in 1708, shortly before his death, Guru Gobind Singh is recorded as declaring that the line of living human Gurus would end with him and that the scripture itself would thereafter be regarded as the eternal Guru, a status the daily court like treatment of the volume is built to express in physical form. The canopy held over the scripture, the waving of a ceremonial fan, the chauri, above it, and the formal procession that brings it out each morning and returns it each night, all borrow directly from South Asian royal court protocol, the same gestures historically used to honor a reigning sovereign, applied instead to the book once a human line of Gurus no longer existed to receive them.
Parkash's specific opening, a chosen passage read at random when the volume is first installed for the day, called the vak or hukam, is itself treated as a directive from the Guru for that day, a practice distinct from ordinary scripture reading precisely because it is performed only at this fixed daily threshold rather than whenever a passage is needed for another purpose. The consistency of this daily rhythm across gurdwaras worldwide, performed identically whether the congregation is large or the room nearly empty, is itself read by Sikhs as evidence that the scripture's status as Guru does not depend on the size or attention of any particular audience.