An Approximate Difference: Proximity and Oppression in the West's Encounter with Sikhism

Abstract

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 Christian ideology and, thus, 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 which restricted the excesses of their warfare to the teleological calculation of British militancy, a solicitous gesture which surreptitiously testified to Sikh degeneracy. This ethnic cliche 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.