On the Politics of the Sikh Diaspora

Abstract

Brian Axel and Tony Ballantyne lend articulate voices to concerns over identity within the Sikh diaspora in the politically opaque milieu of multicultural Britain and post-9/11 America. As the Sikh diaspora continues to beat a retreat into the realm of identity politics, both authors highlight the effects of performatively enunciated cultural claims while richly portraying multiple “webs,” or Sikh lifeworlds. Together, their emphasis on the affective or subjectivist aspects of the diaspora represents a break in Sikh studies, simultaneously problematizing the effects of empire in Punjab and the relationship of the diaspora to the “homeland” while also incorporating themes found in “new imperial history” and postcolonial theory: a distrust of abstract/universal categories and a concomitant emphasis on the effects of representations and the impossibility of grasping cultural “difference.”