Spiritual-political sovereignties: 3HO-Punjabi Sikh relations, pluriversal identities, and power dynamics (original) (raw)
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How Religion Became Ethnonationalism: Reflections on Sikh Calls for Statehood and Identity.
It is difficult to disentangle religion from politics in the troubled history of intercommunal relationships in Punjab. This entanglement is most apparent in the Sikh call for statehood and identity. This dissertation seeks to identify the processes by which religion became ethnonationalism in the Sikh context. It argues that the call for self-determination and statehood, sometimes expressed by the idea of ‘Khalistan’ is rooted in religion but expressed as a political aspiration shaped by the context of the rise of Hindu nationalism through Hindutva politics. Punjab has a long history of rule by external powers, most notably the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. The Sikh community experienced both flourishing and oppression at different points in these Empires, but this dissertation argues that the last act of the British Empire; namely, Partition; was catastrophic for the identity of the Sikh community. It argues that the rise of Hindu nationalism post-Partition, though an understandable reaction to Colonialism, has had significant negative consequences for the Sikh community; a minority in India, which now finds itself in many ways disenfranchised in what is left of its homeland. These and associated events have combined to generate the shift from the apolitical religious practice of the past to identity politics and ethnonationalism for contemporary Punjabi Sikhs.
Sikh Political Theology, Diaspora, and Recognition of Difference
This paper addresses questions of citizenship, migration, place and displacement by applying the concept “recognition of difference,” as developed in Sikh theological, ethical, and political thought since the 1980s, to pressing international questions about migration and identity in an interconnected and pluralistic world. The Sikh religious community is arguably just one of two truly diasporic communities in the contemporary world (H. Kaur). The religio-political thought of Sikh scholars therefore provides particular insight into the contradictions of migration and citizenship in a world of “nation-states,” where identity is not entirely stable and people are increasingly on the move. In the wake of the failed “Khalistan” movement of the 1970s and 1980s, Sikh thinkers and activists took stock both of the community’s existence as a religious minority in India and its establishment in diaspora in places like the U.K., U.S., Canada, and elsewhere (Shani, Tatla). They began asking how Sikhs – and, by extension, other minoritized communities – might retain and generate communal identity across state borders, while engaging in interreligious dialogue, shared advocacy, and solidarity toward justice for all in a pluralistic world (N. Kaur, Tatla). This paper will draw on the notion of “recognition of difference” as a concept which, precisely because it grows out of a religious community’s experience of diaspora among nation-states, points a way forward for a common human life in the world as we have it. Particular attention will be paid to the work of the U.S.-based Sikh Coalition, which brings into public life both the concept and the practical application of “recognition of difference,” including partnerships with both dominant and minoritized communities to promote public understanding of religious (and other) differences and to enhance peaceable relationships in a society where Sikhs, among others, are often subject to suspicion and threats.
The Third Ghallughara: On the Sikh Dilemma since 1984, Sikh Formations, 2015 11(3), 316-342
This article examines the enduring impact of 1984 tragedy upon the Sikh community. After outlining the initial reaction to the Government of India’s army action in the Golden Temple Amritsar, it looks at some of the ways common Sikhs made sense of the loss of the Sikh heritage and the hurt of desecration of their holiest shrine. While the Indian stately discourse enforced by the media tried to justify its ghastly action, this was challenged, by a section of the Sikh elite. Even after three decades the reverberations of the tragedy seem unending, reminding Sikhs individually as well as collectively about the precarious public space available for community’s cultural, linguistic, and political expressions. The article points towards the persistent dilemma of the Sikh elite as it makes sense of various compulsions, choices, and strategies in the postcolonial Indian polity.
Politics of Identity & Independence: Sikh Political Activism at Home and in the Diaspora
The paper seeks to analyse the complex interconnection between the identity politics of the Sikh community in the diaspora and the Sikh homeland politics in India. Building on the history of Sikhism, the paper focuses on the continuity and changes in the nature of political activism of the Sikhs both in the diaspora and homeland in the context of globalisation.
One People Two Nations: Diasporic Sikh Community in Canada and ties with India
History has recorded the migration and settlement of people from one part to another part of Globe.The present article traces the process that led to free migration of Sikhs from colonial Punjab to Canada. Over the period of time these Sikhs encountering racial discrimination made Canada their homeland. At the same time ties with motherland were also retained. The relationship between two nations as experienced and forged by the Sikhs has been a focal point of analysis. This aspect has been illustrated within the emergent historiography of Canadian history and specific instances in the realms of community and Institutions. The lived experiences of Sikhs show how they are at home in both nation States.
Diaspora: a journal of transnational studies, 2010
After the events of9/11, Sikh Americans were victims of specific hate crimes and more generalized discrimination and distrust. This essay draws on participant observation and interviews conducted in the immediate aftermath of9/11 with the Sikh community of the greater Washington, DC, area to examine the range of their responses to the pressures confronted by the community. It examines both the creativ ity and the anxiety surrounding the intersubjective efforts of Sikh communities to redefine together diasporic Sikh identity in the eyes of a hostile non-Sikh public; this was achieved through the actions undertaken by a joint committee of the leadership of gurdwaras and advocacy groups. Vigils, charity work (sewa), public meetings, and advertisements in support of the 9/11 victims and their families were significant not only insofar as they professed American patriot ism but also because the backstage planning for them made clear the depth of diversity and difference within the Sikh-American communities of the region. Joint action was achieved even as, in certain pockets of the Sikh-American community of Washington, DC, Khalistani American activists conflated their patriotism for America with their patriotism for Khalistan by creating a discourse in which their two "homelands" were seen as simultaneously under attack by outside terrorists (Al Qaeda and the Indian state, respectively).
Guru Nanak Is Not At The White House: An Essay on the Idea of Sikh-American Redemption
Sikh Formations, 2017
This article examines the rights-based discourse deployed by Sikh advocacy organizations, the Sikh Coalition and Sikh American Legal Defense & Education Fund, in order to carve an inclusive space within the United States. We interrogate the deep violence of forgetting embedded within this politics that not only sanctions American values and their regulatory might globally, but also integrates the foundational anti-blackness of Western subjectivity into the conceptual structure of Sikhism. Reconsidering these attachments to the American political project and the white-settler state, we argue Sikh organizations fasten Sikhs to ways of life that are inimical to their own flourishing.
There is No Colonial Relationship: Antagonism, Sikhism, and South Asian Studies
History & Theory, 2018
This article identifies how scholars have displaced antagonism within histories of Sikhism and South Asian Studies more broadly. In contrast to this displacement, this article foregrounds antagonism by taking into account a third element within the presumed colonizer and colonized relationship: a curved space of nonrelation that signals there can be no colonial relationship. By considering the constitutive nature of antagonism within social reality that remains unable to be demarcated, this article examines the generative principles of Sikh practices and concepts that both structure Sikhism's institutions and productively conceptualize this antagonism. Examining these concepts and practices, I consider the possibility of different modes of both historical being and becoming not bound within our current conceptual rubrics. These different possibilities culled through Sikh concepts and theories demand we reflect upon the rabble: those unable to be contained within colonial civil society or within attempts by the colonized for self‐determination in political societies. This void then fractured Sikh reform organizations historically, providing multiple avenues for politics unaccountable within our bifurcated and asymmetrical understandings of civil society and political societies and colonizer and colonized.
Sikh Formations, 2012
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 organisations 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 fro recognition.