Celebrating ‘the sons of Jats’: the return of tribes in the global village

Abstract

While critics of globalization had apprehended that its homogenizing wave would erase ethnic, cultural and sectarian difference to produce cosmpolitanized identities, the counter movement towards fragmentation in the present global process has paradoxically led to the thickening and intensification of boundaries and the return of ‘the tribes’, which converge on primordial essences such as language, culture, region, religion, ethnicity and caste. The return of the tribes in the global era appears to confirm Samuel Huntington’s apprehensions about the future civilizational realignment of the world along the lines of religion and ethnicity (1997). The thickening of boundaries noted by theorists of globalization in the contemporary world has been particularly visible along lines of religion. While Islamic identity narratives have received considerable global attention, particularly after 9/11, a transnational consolidation of Sikh ethno‐religious identity post 1984 has gone relatively undocumented. This essay traces the production and mobilization of a transnational unified sacral Sikh narrative after 1984 to argue that it reveals deep fissures along class, caste and sectarian differences.