Anand is one of the most popular prayers used in Sikh worship. This article compares twelve English translations, authored by men (1909 to 2005), of the opening stanza of Anand, with two renderings by women translators (1981 and 1995), and discusses their suitability as study materials in a teaching environment where neither the instructor nor the students are conversant with the language of the original text and its religious tradition. Drawing on Derrida’s reflections on translation as necessity-cum-impossibility and Spivak’s notion of ‘politics of translation’, the authors study the appropriateness of the translations for contemporary readers, here teachers and learners. By creating a study template and demonstrating that all examined translations are deeply embedded in their historical milieus and strongly influenced by translators’ backgrounds and subjective choices, thus often archaic and dated, the authors argue for the use of modern translations in the classroom. They further assert that due to its gendered lens and thoughtful avoidance of Judeo-Christian vocabulary, hence also the conceptual framework of these religious systems, the fairly recent rendition (1995) by one of the woman translators (Kaur Singh) seems to be the most promising choice for a classroom reading.