Unlike most fixed liturgical texts, Ardas is structured with an expected space for local and contemporary insertion: its middle portion traditionally invites the person leading the prayer to name current community concerns, the sick who need healing, significant recent events, or particular occasions relevant to that specific congregation on that specific day, before the prayer returns to its fixed closing portion, so reciting Ardas in different gurdwaras on the same day can differ meaningfully in this middle section even while the fixed opening and closing sections remain constant everywhere, a deliberately built in flexibility uncommon among the other daily and ceremonial texts recorded in this atlas.
A specific and ongoing point of discussion within recent Sikh practice concerns the commemorative section recalling past sacrifice and struggle, traditionally phrased in language emphasizing male historical figures and using masculine grammatical forms throughout, which some Sikh institutions, scholars and diaspora communities have in recent years proposed revising to explicitly include women's historical contributions and to use more gender inclusive language, a live and not fully settled debate about how far a text with this kind of fixed communal, ceremonial standing should or can be revised at all, given that Ardas functions simultaneously as spontaneous, locally adaptable prayer in its middle section and as fixed, memorized communal text in its opening and closing sections, so different parts of the very same prayer are treated as having quite different degrees of openness to revision.