Intersectionality,Sikhism, and Black feminist legal theory: Reconceptualizing Sikh precarity and minoritization in the US and India

ABSTRACT

Intersectionality was developed by legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in the late 1980s to broaden legal and epistemological frameworks for peoples at the intersection of multiple oppressions, such as racism and sexism. The theory has since proliferated and grown across many international academic and public contexts. This article examines intersectionality in Crenshaw’s original formulation to argue for theoretical and political insights when intersectionality is applied to the multiply minoritized position of Sikhs in the US and India. I argue for six theoretical formations that can illuminate what I term intersectional Sikhism: intragroup solidarity, intergroup alliances, postsecularism, untranslatability, precarity, and intellectual intersectionality.