Military/warrior legacy, the Taj and the Sikh-Canadian diaspora in Breakaway (original) (raw)
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Ethnography, 2020
This article explores what it means to be a Punjabi Sikh man in an era of transnational migration. I look at how Sikh men from India access global migrant flows and negotiate the formal and informal sets of requirements for moving across national boundaries. Upon learning that different travel itineraries necessitate different embodied practices, what kinds of transformations do migrant men undergo? In anticipation of transnational travel, Sikh migrants often cut their hair. Yet, many continue wearing their turbans from time to time, especially when returning to their familial homes in rural Punjab. Detached from its traditional association with Kesh (unshorn hair), the turban as mobilized by Sikh migrant men no longer simply represents an emblem of Sikh identity. Rather it operates as a flexible symbol of cultural citizenship and gendered belonging, an integral part of the process by which these migrants reincorporate themselves into the landscape of their homeland.
Recognition and Rejection of Sikh Identity in Film
Sikh Formations, 2014
Enlarging on Benedict Anderson's idea that print capitalism bound a nation together this paper argues that films, like memoirs, novels and oral histories are also valid historic and public documents that aid in nation formation. In focusing on two commercial films – ‘Amu’ and ‘Khamosh Pani’ – made by women and with women protagonists – we explore how religious identity and gender are deeply embroiled in Indian history and nation building. Religious affiliations and rejections are explored against the backdrop of three critical historical moments – the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and Zia-ul Haq's Islamization of Pakistan in the late 1970s. The underlying message of the films is that unless we know and understand our history we will be forever condemned to relive it. In these two films the protagonists challenge the religious identities thrust upon them viz – Sikhism and Islam and although both protagonists recognize their religious affiliations and the sway it holds over them they also ultimately reject a religion that instead of being life sustaining has destroyed their relationships with their kin, themselves and their state. These films force citizens to reconsider their national and religious identity.
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.
e-Diaspora, the Great War and Sikh military migration to Canada: Commemorating Buckam Singh
Sikh Formations, 2019
Sikh migration to Canada has been theoretically framed and structured largely through colonial, imperial and diasporic historicized trajectories, articulating tremendous engagement in the Canadian economy. The Great War foregrounds Sikh engagement in the military history of Canada and this article examines the ‘martial race’ ideological construction of Sikhs, the fortuitous sighting of the victory medal of Buckam Singh in a pawn shop in London; and how this unintended discovery warrants engendering of critical academic dialogues. Information on Buckam Singh is predominantly inscribed within the cyberspace, invigorating discussions of relationalities, identity-construction, military and digital diaspora modalities and spatio-temporality through e-diaspora.
Imagining Sikhs: The Ethics of Representation and the Spectacle of Otherness in Bollywood Cinema
Sikh Formations, 2013
"Imagining Sikhs: The Ethics of Representation and the Spectacle of Otherness in Bollywood Cinema Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. ---Derrida Myth takes the place of mystery. The world to be achieved is replaced by the essential achievement of its shadow. This is not disinterestedness of contemplation; it is irresponsibility. --Levinas The image and representations of Sikhs, especially in contemporary Mumbai Cinema and popular culture, are rife with portrayals of an eccentricity that the audience loves to disregard eventually. This hyper-essentialism of the populist and the popular images of the Sikh as the Other merely circulates the Sikh as similar to a Shakespearean buffoon, one that in T. S. Eliot’s words seems, “an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use,/Politic, cautious, and meticulous; full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse/At times, indeed almost ridiculous --/Almost, at times, the Fool” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock). Such an ambiguous modernity, through portrayals of comic Sikh characters in many Indian films, highlights key analytical statements about the Sikh as Other, as a marginalized self that, in a Derridean sense, is rhetorical victim of the grammar of de-termination. The Sikh subjectivity is de-termined as well as terminated in this process of misappropriation. The Sikh image in films like Singh is King, Jo Bole So Nihal, Dil Bole Hadippa, becomes a performative contradiction at best. Illustrating through examples from some of these films, this paper will trace the re-production of Sikh subjectivity with references to notions of what Levinas explains as “totalization” of the other to a set of pre-conceived categories and highlight the inscription of the Sikh as a cultural other that is hosted yet also becomes a hostage to pre-suppositions. In this process of performance, the Sikh ego is also disgendered and disengaged as an object of gaze and desire for the non-Sikh viewer. """
Sanjha Punjab – United Punjab: Exploring Composite Culture in a New Zealand Punjabi Film Documentary
Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies, 2019
This paper examines the second author's positionality as the researcher and storyteller of a PhD documentary film that will be shot in New Zealand, Pakistan, and North India. Adapting insights from writings on Punjab's composite culture, the film will begin by framing the Christchurch massacre at two mosques on 15 March 2019 as an emotional trigger for bridging Punjabi migrant communities in South Auckland, prompting them to reimagine a pre-partition setting of 'Sanjha Punjab' (United Punjab). Asim Mukhtar's identity as a Punjabi Muslim from Pakistan connects him to the Punjabi Sikhs of North India. We use Asim's words, experiences, and diary to explore how his insider role as a member of these communities positions him as the subject of his research. His subjectivity and identity then become sense-making tools for validating Sanjha Punjab as an enduring storyboard of Punjabi social memory and history that can be recorded in this documentary film.
Sikh Formations, 2011
In 1993 a number of Sikh Canadian veterans were barred from entering a Legion Hall in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada because they refused to remove their turbans. Using a postcolonial lens to explore this meeting and the historical factors leading to it, this paper offers some important reflections on both the evolution of Canadian multiculturalism and the nature and meaning of Sikh identity in a seemingly postcolonial context. The paper suggests that the Sikh veterans involved in this event were effective at strategically constructing a subject position that relocated them simultaneously at the centre of Empire and Canada's multicultural order.
Militarization of Sikh Masculinity
Critically reading the theoretical and descriptive scholarly work on colonial Punjab, Sikhs, Sikhism and the imperial British Empire, this paper traces how the formation of Sikh martial masculinity rooted in religious tradition was institutionalized into a particular form of militarized masculinity in the colonial period in Punjab, India. Additionally, it explores how the historical construction of masculinity intersects with the contemporary discourses on Sikh identity and masculinity in the diaspora, specifically in Britain. With reference to British Sikhs and their project of reclaiming recognition of their contribution in WWI, the paper goes on to argue that perhaps the projection of Khalsa identity as synonymous with Sikh identity and the performance of Sikh masculinity lies in projecting and representing themselves as warriors, to seek legitimacy from the military of their masculinity in exhibiting war effort. The dominant perception of Sikhs as martial, brave and willing to sacrifice is reflected in popular culture at large. By extension and association, Punjab, seen as the homeland of Sikhs, finds itself venerated as the land of the brave, or the land of the lions, if you like. This idea of the Sikh identity and Sikh masculinity in particular is a very real form of consciousness which defines, shapes and configures Sikh masculinity and performance of the male self, and are ideas in which many Sikh men root their identity. As I have argued elsewhere, this particular masculine performance does draw its strength from religious rituals and practices. 1 It might not
SITUATING SIKH DIASPORIC DUBS: A CASE STUDY FEATURING HUMBLE THE POET AND SIKH KNOWLEDGE
The turban and beard has been a focus of Sikh identity in the diaspora and since 2010 has resurged across North American within popular culture and social media. Based on virtual and visual research conducted on social media, qualitative interviews and lyrical analysis, this case study explores the concept of vernacular cosmopolitanism and Canadian hip hop in relationship to Punjabi-Sikh identities, articulated and performed by artists Humble the Poet and Sikh Knowledge. This case study addresses a lacuna of scholarship available on Punjabi-Sikh identity and hip hop by providing an analysis of album Turban Sex and book/album campaign for UnLEARN: Butterflies and Lions. I will explore how both artists respectively affirm and destabilize identity politics of popular representations of Punjabi-Sikh ethnicity and heritage. Looking beyond turbans and beards and labels of "ethno hip hop" or "desi rap", this research aims to interrogate the limits of multiculturalism. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Joseph Armand-Bombardier Graduate Scholarship).