WARRIORS OF GOJA: PAINS AND PLEASURES OF THE SIKH (MALE) BODY

Taking a widely received, winning entry in a televised Indian talent show entitled the Warriors of Goja as its point of departure, my paper is organized around discussions of the body, pain, and pleasure. I aim to raise questions around the subject/objectification of the Sikh male body and examine points of continuity from the colonial era typification of Sikh men as a martial race to contemporary renderings of Sikh men as hyper-macho. I examine the centrality of pain to a kind of Sikh hetero-masculinity that is being constituted on the entertainment stage and circulated transnationally. Alongside, I investigate how machismo and masochistic martyrdom come to evoke Sikh masculinity through mass cultural images. I put forth a reading of the mutilated Sikh male body as an image commodity that accretes value in its circulation. I also explore, whether, and to what extent, the viral Warriors of Goja can be situated within a broader transnational visual economy of maimed Sikh male bodies, namely of martyr figures.