CONTRARY NARRATIVE SPACES AND THE SIKH WOMAN: Imperial aftermaths in Bhisham Sahni's Tamas and Gulzar's Maachis

Public nationalistic discourses construct ideas of national belonging for the privileged few while the minorities and the exilic struggle to find a place within nation-states in the postcolonial world. In the production and construction of the nationalistic discourse and identity, private narratives, often gendered accounts, are elided, and a masculinist and heteropatriarchal construct dominate. In this paper, I will examine private narratives ensuing the 1947 partition of India and the Sikh militancy in Punjab from 1984 onwards in order to incorporate an alternative interpretation regarding ideas of national belonging for the Sikhs, especially for the diasporic Sikh women.     

THE OTHER SIKHS

In the last 100 years, Sikhs have travelled to different countries in the West and beyond. There is a significant amount of scholarly writing about the presence of Sikhs across the globe. However, their experience in migration and settlement in different parts of India beyond Punjab remains a comparatively neglected area of Sikh studies. Its history goes back to the medieval days and includes a larger numbers of Sikhs than that exist in the Western diaspora. These Sikh sites are numerous and scattered across India. They communicate the message of home in poly-vocalic voices and point to the surfacing of another Sikh diaspora within India beyond Punjab. This article seeks to outline a small part of it with reference to the Sikh past in Manipur. Manipur is located along the Indo-Myanmar border and seeks to emphasize the local Sikh community's distinctiveness and plurality.     

Sikhs and Sikhism in Bihar: Their distinctiveness and diversity

Medieval Bihar served as an important corridor for Sikh dispersal to other areas in eastern and north-eastern India. It stimulated the birth of native Sikh groups who significantly differ from their Punjabi-speaking counterparts in physical presentation and mother tongue. The essay examines why the native Sikhs’ perception of Sikhism differs from Singh Sabha’s (1873–1909) narrative of a monolithic Sikh identity, distinct from Hinduism. The study debates whether it is the perceived centrality of Sikhism’s self-representation in Punjab that stimulates fissures in the Punjabi-Bihari Sikh relationship – fissures that periodically surface and rupture an imagined, homogenized Sikh identity within the sacred precincts of twenty-first-century Patna city.     

(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.     

The Sikh ‘Political Prisoner’ Issue and Hunger Strikes

This article contributes to answering the question: What has happened to Sikh ethnonationalism? I argue that the decline of this phenomenon can best be explained by examining the changing interests, incentive structures, and patterns of dominance and legitimacy of various Sikh political actors in Punjab – that is, the institutional structures on which mass community mobilization occurs. More specifically, I argue that the sustained mass mobilization of Sikhs is not possible without the active encouragement of the components of the institutionalized ‘Sikh political system’ including the dominant Akali Dal, Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, and Akal Takht. All of these are currently under the leadership of Parkash Singh Badal, and remain committed to moderation and non-confrontation with the central state. This conceptual argument is illustrated through detailed empirical analysis of the trajectory and eventual failure of the 2013 and 2014–2015 hunger strikes by Gurbaksh Singh Khalsa for the release of Sikh ‘political prisoners’ in India.     

1984 Punjab Tragedy in Hindi Literary Archives: Images Beyond Punjab in India

This paper reviews four Hindi literary works on the Punjab crisis. Two are novels written by Sikhs while the other two are short stories authored by non-Sikhs. With dissimilar social background, religious beliefs and dwelling places, their narratives underline complexities of the Punjab crisis and their varied popular reactions. Creative imaginations were not restricted to Sikh sufferings but spacious enough to include those of non-Sikhs who reside in distant Indian locations. This paper argues how these literary representations introduce a wider space for Sikhs in recent Hindi writings and offer some fresh perspective to the Punjab scenario.     

BOOK REVIEWS

The storming of the Golden Temple complex in 1984 is central to the imagination of both a Sikh ‘nation’ and a specifically Sikh ‘diaspora’. Both ‘derivative discourses’ construct Sikhs as ‘victims’ of a ghallughara which forced them into a physical or emotional exile from India. Translated as ‘genocide’, the term ghallughara resonates deeply with earlier pogroms in Sikh history, and is memorialized through the image of the desecrated Akal Takht. Mediated through Information and Communications Technologies, this on-line lieux de mémoire provides testimony to the attempt by the ‘secular’ Indian state to violently wrench the temporal from the spiritual dimensions of Sikh sovereignty as embodied in the Khalsa, thus leaving Sikhs ‘mute and absolutely alone’ in a world of nation-states. In contrast to the nationalist imaginary, it is suggested that Sikh claims to sovereignty should be grounded not in territorial claims to an imagined homeland of Khalistan, but in a reconceptualization of the Khalsa as a distinct de-territorialized religio-political community, one better able to articulate the universal values of the Gurus in an increasingly ‘post-western’ world.     

Sikh historical memory as an ideological justification for Khalistan

The Khalistan movement was an armed secessionist struggle carried out by the Sikhs of Punjab, northern India, which spanned the period between 1981 and 1993. In parallel with other such insurgencies around the world, it is evident that the Khalistan movement had a strong ideological underpinning which not only helped to fuel its rise, but also helped to sustain it throughout its tenure. In this regard, the reference point for ideological justification was very much the past experiences and episodes of the Sikh community, or, to be precise, their ‘historical memory’ of these. This article focuses its attention on identifying, describing and interrogating the strength of the ideological justifications that were extracted from Sikh historical memory in support of Khalistan.     

Sikhs of Nagaon in Assam (India): Dilemmas of language and religion*

Sikhs are a widely scattered community found both in India and far beyond. They have historically been a hardworking people who have sought out economic opportunity in a wide variety of places. In the state of Assam, there are Sikhs who had settled there for the past two centuries, exclusively in the villages of one district of Nagaon. They claim to be the progeny of Sikh soldiers sent there by Maharaja Ranjit Singh in support of the Ahom king. After they lost the battle and dispersed to the forested areas clearing the jungle and cultivating the land. While they have kept Sikh tradition in its entirety and believe fully in Guru Granth, they do not understand Punjabi. The Punjabi Sikhs, as later day migrants, have subjected them on these grounds and refer to them as ‘duplicates.’ This article will seek to present a full account, however, of their immersion into the culture of Assam and how they came to call themselves Axomiya, a distinct type of Sikhs from this state.     

Trauma and memory within the Sikh diaspora: Internet dialogue

The events surrounding the 1947 partition and the attack on Sikhs in the Golden Temple and Delhi continue to affect Sikhs today. Memory of the specifics and related issues plays a major role in politics both in India and within the diaspora. This paper explores the literature on the events and how they are recast and understood by various groups. Particular attention is paid to interactions on the Internet and especially within chat groups and on websites. Modern communication has created a global Sikh dialogue that has implications for understanding of traditions, control of institutions, and politics.

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UNDERSTANDING INTER-BRASIAN CONFLICT

The phenomenon of Sikh and Muslim conflict has been largely analysed in anthropological and sociological works in terms of a product of angry youth or ethnic hatred or religious passions. This paper explores the main ways in which the increasing tensions between Sikhs and Muslims have been articulated in the landscape of postcolonial Britain. It investigates the most prominent explanations provided both in academic and popular literature to understand the various causes seen to fuel this type of conflict, that is ethno-religious causes, multicultural issues and as the symptom of youth delinquency. The paper offers a critique of such accounts and moves towards an ontological understanding of conflict, that is, to elaborate the central role of conflict and its relationship to the political as the site for contestation between ‘friends and enemies’. This reading of Inter-BrAsian conflict enables us to open up a new space to re-evaluate the nature of Sikh and Muslim tensions within the diasporic context.     

AN APPROXIMATE DIFFERENCE: PROXIMITY AND OPPRESSION IN THE WEST'S ENCOUNTER WITH SIKHISM

The work of John Hick represents a prominent trend in the philosophy of religion, which is allegedly receptive to the epistemological concerns of religions other than Christianity. However, I will argue that this apparent latitude towards religious difference deploys a comparative idiom that is surreptitiously informed by a form of ontotheology that inscribes the same cultural chauvinism as other forms of Western discourse. This form of clandestine interventionism was also a feature of the colonial system. Among the most insidious regimes of control inaugurated by the British in India was the identification of racial kinship between themselves and other ‘martial races’ such as the Sikhs. I will suggest that this apparent commensurability of colonial and native traditions depended upon the Sikhs readily appropriating a martial signature that restricted the excesses of their warfare to the teleological calculation of British militancy, a solicitous gesture that surreptitiously testified to Sikh degeneracy. This ethnic cliché persists to this day and indicates that the Sikhs remain unacquainted with the lack organic to such stereotypes, prompting expressions of autonomy already prefaced by failure.     

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.     

Sikh millennials of the ‘kirtan generation’ in the making of an ‘American Sikhism’

ABSTRACT

This essay focuses on the millennial generation of Sikhs in the United States. Based on extended ethnographic research in Sikh communities, the author explores the role of Sikh millennials in the making of an ‘American Sikhism’, the contours of which are taking shape having followed after the explosive growth of gurdwara communities – and the educational, social, and other resources they provide – which were largely made possible by the affluence of Sikh communities beginning with the previous ‘Brain Drain’ generation. In particular, the author discusses this ‘kirtan generation’ of Sikhs, educated in gurdwara schools, and their growing leadership of Sikh communities.     

Desire,patriotism, and Sikh subjectivity

Post-9/11 era is marked by the resurgence of white American nationalisms across the country. Members of Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian communities experienced hate crimes, anti-immigrant sentiments, and government surveillance due to suspicions of being ‘terrorist-monsters’. Since 2001, Sikh advocacy groups participated in the nationalist discourse to express their desire for legitimacy as national subjects while distancing themselves from the ‘terrorist-other’. This article explores the politics embedded within the thrusts of these desires. I examine the disciplining nature of these groups and the possible ways they homogenize and foreclose Sikh subjectivities through a rather violent love for the nation.     

Modern Pakistani and Indian Muslim perceptions of Christianity

In a forthcoming book,¹ I have examined the development of Muslim perceptions of Christianity over the centuries, with particular reference to contemporary Egyptian views. In the early modern period, the nineteenth century in particular, together with Egypt it was the Indian sub‐continent which was the point of genesis of much of the new Muslim thinking which emerged on the subject of Christianity.² This article will investigate the more recent development of this tradition, in both Pakistan and India, since they achieved their independence in 1947.     

Locating the sikh pagh 1

The importance of the turban to Sikh identity has come into sharp focus since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. In particular the conflation of all turban wearers with terrorists has marked Sikhs out as targets for racist attack. This article offers a broad overview of the many ways in which the symbolic value of the turban renders it forever associated with tradition, across multiple contexts. For Sikhs, whether it be in India or America, the turban is over-signified and imbued with the potential to arouse violence. The specific relationship of Sikhs to the turban is examined in both theological and social terms. Returning to the relationship of the turban to tradition and modernity the article proposes that because the turban remains the paramount signifier of male Sikh identity, then the project of being modern remains impossible for Sikhs.     

Sketches of Sikhs in the 1880s

Between 1883 and 1885 the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway commissioned a sailing expedition around the world with the frigate Vanadis. On board was the Swedish archaeologist and ethnographer Hjalmar Stolpe who during land excursions collected no less than 7500 cultural specimens for an intended ethnographical museum in Sweden. When reaching India in late 1884 he travelled through the northern British territories, including Punjab, for almost three months. This article gives an overview of the Indian and Sikh ethnographical objects preserved in the Vanadis collection and how the material entered the collection through Stolpe's travels, scholarly networks, and encounters with Sikhs in Punjab.     

Mimic writing: On Rammowalia’s fictional narrative of Air India Plane tragedy

This paper presents a reading of Iqbal Rammowalia’s novel What the Judges Wouldn’t See? [2005]. It is a fictional narrative of post-1984 events in a Canadian Sikh household, which, readers are invited to believe, bears closely upon the crashing of Air India plane in June 1985. The plot devised by Rammowalia turns out to be a caricature of gross distortion. Its tall claim of portraying a realistic scenario of a conspiracy is unconvincing – knowing Canada’s two national security agencies could not substantiate such a contention. As it stands, Rammowalia’s creative work only lends its weight to a shelf-load of prejudiced writings concerning the Canadian Sikhs.