Abstract
AbstractTowards the end of the nineteenth century, the process of community-centric awakening was producing the politics of religious identity, mobilisations, and mutual cultural contests between different communities. Punjab being a province that was inhabited mostly by Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs witnessed an identity based triangular contest between these religious communities where the political leadership of each community picked up cultural symbols to mobilise, organise, and consolidate their respective constituencies. While presenting an account of the symbolic manoeuvrings around jhatka and tobacco in the politics of Sikh identity during the colonial and post-colonial contexts respectively, this article examines the role of symbols in community-centric discourses wherein cultural differences are transformed into cultural discord or antagonism. Here, it is argued that the meanings communicated and deciphered through such symbols need to be comprehended by locating their articulations in the field of inter-community power relations.
Highlights
Situating symbols in the struggle for cultural powerAnalysis of symbols has a significant role in the study of political movements
Symbolic resources have been accorded a central position in the ‘ethno-symbolic approach’ propounded by Anthony D
There is no doubt that the functions of cultural symbols, when considering social boundary maintenance, are relevant to the study of political mobilisations around religious identities, it is important to avoid the cultural determinism that Deol’s analysis commits while conflating cultural distinction of the Sikhs with Sikh separatism
Summary
Analysis of symbols has a significant role in the study of political movements. This methodology treats symbols as a part of the repertoire of cultural elements—like myths, legends and memories—that compose the longue durée core of a cultural unit (ethnie) by maintaining the common-consciousness or sense of continuity through time, and by defining and “sharpening its social boundaries with outsiders”.1. Following Smith’s approach, Harnik Deol has traced the roots of. D. Smith, Ethno-Symbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach (New York, ), p.
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