(EN)Gendered Sikhism: The iconolatry of manliness in the making of Sikh identity

Among the most insidious regimes of control inaugurated by the British in India was the identification of a fundamental affinity between themselves and manly ‘races’ such as the Sikhs. I will suggest that this apparent commensurability of colonial and native traditions depended upon the Sikhs readily accepting a masculine signature which restricted the ambiguous organization of the Khalsa Sikh body to the muscular piety prescribed by colonial discourse. Thus, far from inscribing ontological parity between the British and the Sikhs, this advocacy of ‘racial’ kinship actually communicated a censorious judgement about Sikh identity. The significance of interventions by Sikh reformers, such as Bhai Kahan Singh Nabha (1861–1938) and Bhai Vir Singh (1872–1958), will be highlighted as key influences in the disciplining of a native semiotics of the body. This reformist ideology encouraged the representation of Sikh corporeality as not-effeminate, signalling not only the insinuation of a colonial iconolatry of manliness at the heart of Sikh tradition, but also the disingenuousness of received opinion concerning the progressive nature of Sikh sexual politics.     

Social and political activism amongst British Sikhs: Responses to issues of equality and human rights – a new way forward?

ABSTRACT

This article discusses two key issues relating to activism amongst British Sikhs. The exploration focuses upon the mobilisation of Sikhs at rallies and protests surrounding human rights issues, as well as their overall objection to caste legislation in British Law. The revelations surrounding the British Government’s involvement in Operation Bluestar came as a huge shock not only to British Sikhs but also to Sikhs worldwide. This paper will discuss whether the British Sikh community has taken on a fresh approach when confronted with issues surrounding equality and human rights and will explore how youth led Sikh groups and organisations have responded to contemporary challenges by using Sikhi to encourage activism amongst British Sikhs.     

THE TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF MULTICULTURALISM

Since 1984, there have been recurring images of Sikhs in Canada, as ‘extremists’, ‘militants’ and ‘terrorists'. As a result, when Sikhs are viewed as participating in ‘un-Canadian’ beliefs or practices, the general public often responds with discourses that state Sikhs need to return ‘home’, despite their citizenship status. These images produce conversations among Canadians about the extent Sikhs are compatible with Canadian society. I will use the aftermath of the Kamal Nath Protest (23 March 2010), organized by Sikh-Canadians (mostly born in Canada), to unpack the discourse of the Sikh ‘extremist’ in the media. I will explore how the idyllic discourse of Canadian multiculturalism has denied the political identities and histories of communities that have migrated to Canada. Despite discourses of universal tolerance and individual rights, it becomes apparent that any protest is not an appropriate form of dissent for the racialized immigrant within Canada.     

Queering colonial power: Sikh resistance in the Ghadr movement

This work contemplates gender, and how it shaped both colonial power and the anticolonial Ghadr movement. I will examine how the Sikhs of the Ghadr movement disrupted, or queered, the colonial gender binary of the ‘loyal Sikh masculine’ and the ‘disloyal Hindu feminine’ and how, despite this, the binary remains intact in Ghadr movement historiography, perpetuating colonial logics. I will then draw upon archival and non-archival texts to gather traces of gender, the ‘feminine,’ and the ‘queer,’ in the Ghadr movement, and in a manner parallel to the movement itself – queer (colonial power) in order to decolonize.     

SITES OF ‘SEDITION’, SITES OF LIBERATION: GURDWARAS,THE GHADAR PARTY,AND ANTICOLONIAL MOBILIZATION

This paper examines the gurdwaras on the Pacific Coast of North America as critical sites of Ghadar organizing. Linked to gurdwaras across the Pacific, particularly in Manila, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, in a network of labor migration and anticolonial politics, the gurdwaras in Stockton, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia in particular, were closely monitored by US, British, and Canadian officials as centers of sedition and fronts for revolutionary activity. Examining British gendered representations of Sikh soldiers and the ways in which Ghadar activists sought to dismantle the bond between Sikhs and the British Empire, I argue that Pacific Coast gurdwaras were critical meeting spaces for Indian migrants to forge an anticolonial movement against both British colonial subjugation in India and racial discrimination and exclusion in North America. As such, these gurdwaras constituted a central place in early South Asian American history and the histories of global anticolonialism and state repression in the early twentieth century.     

Media framing and the myth of religious violence: The othering of sikhs in The Times of India

ABSTRACT

This article employs theories of media framing to ‘the crisis in Punjab’ in 1983 and 1984. I argue that The Times of India frames Sikhs and the crisis in such a manner as to generate a stereotype of Sikhs as inherently violent, pre-modern and dangerous to the Indian state. Such a framing, I argue, mimics stereotypes of religion and violence critiqued by William Cavanaugh [2009. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press.]. I employ Cavanaugh’s critical lens on the myth of religious violence to demonstrate that this framing of Sikhs is a tool of media and the state to justify illegitimate violence again Sikhs.     

AT HOME IN MOTION

This paper was first delivered as the keynote address at the ‘Transnational Punjabis in the 21^st Century: Beginnings, Junctures and Responses’ Conference held in May 2011 at the University of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada. It argues that there are two dimensions to evolving Sikh diasporic identities that are firmly anchored in being at home whilst in motion. These two dimensions are rooted in culture and dharam. The ways in which Sikh culture travels and evolves is illustrative of post-colonial transformations and largely dependent on the host culture as well as the product of being part of either an ‘old’ or ‘new’ diaspora – that is, being a diaspora that has been forged in either the age of colonization or the age of globalization. While it remains to be seen how a Sikh diasporic identity will be shaped in the future, it is apparent that diasporic processes will be played out on a global stage as communications between Sikhs and others throughout the world are further revolutionized.     

A Child of the Empire: British Sociology and Colonialism, 1940s–1960s

British sociology was established as an academic discipline between 1945 and 1965, just as the British Empire was gearing up for a new phase of developmental colonialism backed by the social and other sciences. Many parts of the emerging sociological discipline became entangled with colonialism. Key themes and methods in sociology and the staff of sociology departments emerged from this colonial context. Historians have tended to place postwar British sociology in the context of expanding higher education and the welfare state, and have overlooked this colonial constellation. The article reconstructs this forgotten moment of disciplinary founding and explores three of the factors that promoted colonial sociology: the Colonial Social Science Research Council, the so‐called Asquith universities, and the social research institutes in the colonies; and the involvement of sociologists from the London School of Economics in training colonial officials.     

“The Thing Happened as He Wished”: Recovering an American Indian Cultural Psychology

One of the chief questions confronting mental health professionals who serve American Indian communities is how best to offer genuinely helpful services that do not simultaneously and surreptitiously reproduce colonial power relations. To ensure that counselors and therapists do not engage in psy‐colonization, it is crucial to recognize the sometimes divergent cultural foundations of mental distress, disorder, and well‐being in “Indian Country.” In this article, I will consider four excerpts from a research interview undertaken among my own people, the Aaniiih Gros Ventres of north‐central Montana. At a superficial level, these excerpts seem to reinforce reigning sensibilities that are readily familiar within the mental health professions. And yet, closer analysis of these interview excerpts reveals several tantalizing facets of an indigenous cultural psychology that may well continue to shape life and experience among tribal members in this setting. I recover this distinctive cultural psychology through archival representations of cultural and community life, including analysis of an important tribal myth. This analysis makes possible an alterNative interpretation of these interview excerpts, grounded in an aboriginal cosmology, that yields important implications for conceiving a more inclusive knowledge base for psychology that only robust community engagement can reveal.     

Making and Unmaking of Strangers – The Komagata Maru Episode and the Alienation of Sikhs as Undesirable Persons

The Komagata Maru episode, which became a test case for White Canada and Asian Exclusion polices, epitomizes the process of ‘the making and unmaking of strangers’ under British imperialism (Bauman 1997 Bauman, Zygmunt. 1997. Postmodernity and Its Discontents. Cambridge, MA: Polity. [Google Scholar]). While the passengers on board the ship chartered by Gurdit Singh, a descendant of one of the Sikhs who had arrived in the British Malaya as part of Captain Speedy’s force in 1872, viewed themselves as British subjects who were free to move within the borders of the British Empire that included the Dominion of Canada, the Immigration Act of 1910 posited the immigrant, as Audrey Macklin convincingly argues, as the other of the Canadian subject (2011). The Komagata Maru episode strongly underlines grave inconsistencies in the definition of the stranger in different parts of the British Empire. In movements triggered by imperial policies and agendas such as those to Shanghai, the British Malaya or East Africa, the Sikh was regarded as a favourable stranger. In movements initiated by himself, the Sikh was resignified as a hostile stranger and his movements were closely regulated. This paper will closely examine newspaper reports, letters, telegrams and witness statements of the Japanese crew and British officials in the Komagata Maru Inquiry Committee Report to focus on the resignification of the Sikhs from favourable to hostile strangers under the British Empire through their being labelled as aliens, undesirable persons and ‘dangerous seditionists’ prejudicial to the safety and tranquility of the British state.     

“NO CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLE”

The period of the Boer, or South African, War (1899–1902) has generated remarkably little interest amongst scholars of Anglo-Jewish history. Historians of British anti-Semitism have found fruitful ground in the controversy of alleged Jewish culpability for the war and the amplified climate of anti-Jewish (ostensibly anti-immigrant) sentiment. But, while telling us a great deal about how some segments of the British public regarded Jews, these studies have done little to illuminate how British Jews themselves thought and behaved. This article will make a first step towards redressing these imbalances, using Jewish sermons as a case study for understanding the established community's response to the war. Though a climate of insecurity undoubtedly existed, I will argue that the clergy's unflinchingly martial posture—which was representative of elite Jewish opinion as well—was not simply defensive or reactive. The clergy also saw the war as providing an ideal opportunity to express genuine gratitude and patriotism, showcase Jewish contributions to the nation and enhance Jewish inclusion. My examination of their rhetoric illustrates how these communal representatives attempted to balance the imperative of self-defence with the quest for fuller integration.     

Buddhism in war: A study of cause and effect from Sri Lanka

In this article, I explore two attitudes towards war present among Buddhists in contemporary Sri Lanka: support for an all‐out military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and support for a ceasefire followed by a negotiated settlement. After a phenomenological presentation of the two approaches, I turn to the factors that have conditioned them. I argue that canonical narrative is drawn on both to support the war and to reject it and then look at more recent colonial history to provide further data, particularly to the dynamic undergirding Buddhist support for war. In the nineteenth century, under British rule, one significant ‘other’ for Sri Lankan Buddhists was the Christian. A pattern of spirited defence developed in the face of what was seen as humiliation and betrayal at the hands of Christians. This pattern, the paper suggests, can throw light on responses in the present to the very different ‘other’, the LITE.     

British multiculturalism and Sikhs

British Sikhs are often portrayed as the pioneers of British multiculturalism, a public policy that has come under serious introspection since 9/11 and 7/7. This article argues that although the development of the British Sikh community since the Second World War has contributed significantly to the shaping of national and local policies to manage religious and cultural diversity, this achievement has been realised within a traditional British statecraft that promotes opt-outs from general rule-making, localisation and asymmetrical pluralism. The dispute over the recent play Behzti highlights the tensions between this mode of diversity management and the need to address the claims of deep multiculturalists who call for the further cultural democratisation of public spaces.     

Traditional martial arts versus modern self-defense training for women: Some comments

Most research conducted on women's self-protection strategies has focused on modern self-defense training, as opposed to traditional martial arts instruction. Further, traditional martial arts training has been characterized by many as less useful for women than modern self-defense instruction. However, no investigations have compared the effectiveness of these two approaches. Several misconceptions concerning traditional martial arts may explain why this form of self-protection has not been utilized as often, or evaluated as frequently, as other methods. This paper: (1) distinguishes traditional martial arts from modern self-defense training, (2) reviews research that has assessed behavioral outcomes of self-defense training strategies, and (3) discusses factors that influence perceptions and efficacy of such programs. To assist in these efforts, we include the expertise and perspectives of an internationally-recognized grandmaster in the Okinawan martial art of Shorin Ryu Karate. Suggestions for directions that future research in this area might take are offered.     

PAKISTAN AND SIKH NATIONALISM: STATE POLICY AND PRIVATE PERCEPTIONS

The paper will examine Pakistan policies and perceptions of Sikh nationalism in the period from 1947 until the present day. The policies, it will be argued, have been opportunistic rather than strategic and have embraced both covert support for militancy against the Indian state in the 1980s and the attempt to use Sikhs and East Punjab as a bridge between Pakistan and India in the post-2001 period of composite dialogue. Private perceptions will be explored first through the accounts of partition survivors. They contain a typical mixture of romanticized views of Muslim–Sikh rural harmony before 1947 and of the Sikhs as an aggressive ‘Other’ in the ‘War of Religions’ at the time of the massacres and mass migrations. Their official counterpart is the attempt to ‘blame’ Sikhs for the violence and to understand the attacks in East Punjab as part of a Sikh Plan of ethnic cleansing. Secondly, private perceptions will be examined in terms of accounts written at the time of the 1980s Punjab crisis. These Pakistani works support the view of Sikhs as an ‘aggrieved minority’. Sympathy for Sikh nationalist struggle stops short of overt support for the militants in such texts. They frequently indulge, however, in attacks on the ‘Brahminical’ hegemony within India, thus echoing Sikh ethno-nationalist writings. Contemporary writings are suffused with romanticist imaginings of the Punjab, bringing harmony to the region in which the ‘love’ aspect of the love/hate relationship between Punjabi Muslims and Sikhs is emphasized. The extent to which the two Punjabs have drifted away from each other since partition is seldom acknowledged; nor the history of competing Muslim and Sikh nationalisms in the region.     

STATE AND CRIMINALITY: THE COLONIAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST THUGGEE AND THE SUPPRESSION OF SIKH MILITANCY IN POSTCOLONIAL INDIA

Crime and policing, as outlined in the policies of independent India, can be traced to the definitions of criminality espoused by the British Empire. I am particularly interested in examining the role of the centralizing State, in colonial and postcolonial India, in defining ordinary (‘individual’) and extraordinary (‘collective’) crime. This project postulates a contextual definition of criminality, and interrogates the political ideology that links the colonial to the postcolonial by tracing the lineage of the Indian State’s policies toward Sikh separatism.     

Inside the Guru's Gate: ritual uses of texts among the Sikhs in Varanasi

The images and representations of Sikhs in contemporary Mumbai cinema and popular culture, rife with portrayals of eccentricities that the audience loves to disregard eventually, point to a cultural turn that has become a power-laden strategy to regulate Sikh otherness and consequently, re-present it through a predominant, controlling gaze. In tracing such sense of carnivelesque otherness with which Sikhs have been portrayed in most Bollywood films, this paper aims to explore the configuration and re-configurations of Sikh subjectivity as an Other that remains marginalized by their difference and can only be acknowledged through a Hindu-centric lens of approval. Through depictions of what I call as Bolly Sikhs, a dubious space is created which is filled with contextual disjunctures and inconsistencies, a bricolage where Sikh identities and practices are jumbled up or deliberately misrepresented; sometimes the Sikh is presented only through subtractions and absences. The discursive limits of Sikh representation, presence and absence, when examined in context of cultural analyses offered by cultural critics as Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Frantz Fanon, Foucault and Homi Bhabha, among many others, enable us to understand the neo-Orientalist rhetoric whereby Sikhs can be seen as displaced or assimilated, if not betrayed in creative/visual representations. The Sikh thought/mind is nullified and/or absorbed within the hegemonic implications of Hindu thought and the Sikh body is at times, a fashionable icon of vibrant, colorful excess and at others, an object framed in terms of weaker ethos unable to achieve any accomplishment by itself.     

REPRESENTATION OF SIKHS IN BOLLYWOOD CINEMA

Like other ethnic minorities, Sikhs have been conventionally represented in popular Hindi cinema either as brave warriors or as uncouth rustics. In the nationalist text in which the imagined subject was an urban North Indian, Hindu male, Sikh characters were displaced and made to provide comic relief. Since the mid-1990s, Hindi filmmakers have genuflected to the rising economic and political power of the Sikh diaspora through token inclusions of Sikhs. Although 1990s films like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) included attractive images of Sikhs, Hindi cinema could introduce a Sikh protagonist only in the new millennium in Ghadar: Ek Prem Katha (2001) and featured a turbaned Sikh as a protagonist only two decades later in the film Singh is Kinng (2009). Ever since the film became a superhit, top Bollywood stars such as Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and even Rani Mukherjee have played Sikh characters in films like Love Aaj Kal (2009), Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year (2009) and Dil Bole Hadippa (2009). Even though Bollywood stars have donned the turban to turn Sikh cool, Sikhs view the representation of the community in Hindi cinema as demeaning and have attempted to revive the Punjabi film industry as an attempt at authentic self-representation. This paper examines images of Sikhs in new Bollywood films to inquire if the romanticization of Sikhs as representing rustic authenticity is a clever marketing tactic used by the film industry to capitalize on the increasing power of the Sikh diaspora or if it is an indulgence in diasporic techno-nostalgia that converges on the Sikh body as the site for non-technologized rusticity. It argues that despite the exoticization of Sikhs in the new Bollywood film, the Sikh subject continues to be displaced in the Indian nation.     

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF DIASPORIC SIKH NATIONALISM! FROM ANGUISHED CRIES OF ‘KHALISTAN’ TO PLEAS FOR ‘RECOGNITION’

This paper explores the nature of the diasporic Sikh nationalism in the post-1984 period. Generally labelled as a movement for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan, overseas Sikhs’ reaction was a highly emotional demonstration of anger and protest at the desecration of the Golden Temple in Amritsar – the holiest shrine of the Sikhs. While it seems certain that most Sikhs were suddenly made aware of the lack of state power, the strategy and ideas advocated by various Sikh leaders and their organizations did not produce a sustainable movement. The paper discusses reasons why such a widespread and shared diasporic nationalist movement failed to generate ideas and appropriate strategies for statehood and instead subsided with pleas for recognition.