Southeast Asia. Sikhs in Southeast Asia: Negotiating an identity Edited by Shamsul A.B. and Arunajeet Kaur Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011. Pp. 321. Photographs, Maps, Bibliography, Index.

Abstract

Sikhs in Southeast Asia: Negotiating an identity Edited by shamsul a.b. and arunajeet kaur Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2011. Pp. 321. Photographs, Maps, Bibliography, Index. doi: 10.1017/S002246341400037X This volume on the Sikh community in Southeast Asia is based on localised and collective experiences of the community in the diaspora who have strived to maintain religious and cultural connections with the homeland. Among other things, it brings forth the cross-cultural dilemmas confronting this community in Southeast Asia. Here, it resonates with the concerns, ambiguities and aspirations of the global Sikh diaspora. The two main themes of the volume--as is the case with a lot of literature on immigrant communities--are 'migration' and 'identity', which are dealt with in different dimensions by the many contributors. While more publications are available on the diasporic experiences of the Sikhs in the West, similar literature on Southeast Asia is negligible. In this respect, this book makes a commendable effort to address this gap and throw light on the little known experience and history of this sub-ethnic community. In doing so, it also contributes significantly to the sparse literature available on the Indian immigrant communities in the region. Migration flows between South and Southeast Asia, especially in the past two centuries, had been orchestrated and facilitated by the agency of the colonial enterprise. While on the one hand, the Sikh communities contributed as auxiliaries to the British in their colonial expansion and took up jobs abroad to ameliorate economic grievances, they were also being increasingly drawn into the parallel growth of anti-colonial activities across the globe. Few studies have been made on the dilemmas and contradictions of Sikh armed recruits with their rising national consciousness and awareness of racial discrimination in spite of their image as loyal and obedient colonials. This dichotomy among the Sikh soldiers in China was raised by Madhavi Thampi in her book, Indians in China: 1800-1949 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005). Arunajeet's chapter resonates with Thampi's idea in relation to the Sikhs as victims of agencies that created their misinterpreted identities beyond homeland borders, though she does not refer to Thampi's work at all. Also, Arunajeet's chapter, although it raises an important question, is more descriptive and documentary rather than providing any substantial analysis in the larger framework of similar psychological predicaments. The Sikh community's dilemmas with identity and their struggle for survival continued unabated in the post-Partition narrative and postcolonial 'nation-building' strategies. There has also been a distinct difference of imagined homelands and cross-cultural identity formations for subsequent generations, as brought up in many articles in this volume. The question of Sikh identity in Southeast Asia is complex and overlaps with similar issues for the South Asian minority as a whole in the region. Thus, while the Sikhs had to deal with the misnomer of a 'Bengalese' identity (as A. Mani points out in his essay on Indonesia) in many places in Southeast Asia, their place of religious congregation, the gurdwara, has been used by both the Sikhs and the Sindhis. Mani also points out that the Sikhs in Indonesia are not seen as a distinct ethnic category, but are grouped as Hindus (p. 142). Interestingly, the Bollywood rhetoric relating to the imagined homeland for the Sikh diaspora is essentially a shared space with 'Punjabi' cultural influence. Jain's article on ethnographic perspectives and methodological debates, with extensive references to work done in this field, is one of the brightest chapters in the volume. Mani's work on Brunei and Indonesia is also informative and interesting and contributes almost as primary sources of information, especially on the Sikhs in the lesser known towns and suburbs across Indonesia. …