Sikh Diaspora Research Articles

COMMEMORATING HURT: MEMORIALIZING OPERATION BLUESTAR

The storming of Sikhism's most sacred shrine, the Darbar Sahib at Amritsar by the Indian army in June 1984 has become a commemorative event in the ritual calendar of the Gurdwara. Memorialized every year in June, Ghallughara Dihara (Day of Genocide) fuses the modern event with medieval Sikh history. The remembrances of Bluestar and its martyrs are primarily viewed as an anti-state ritual, evoking the devastation of the Akal Takht as the hurt remembered. But over time ritual performances have altered the meaning of memorializing, subtly discounting the pre-eminence of particular Khalistani leaders killed in the army action, telescoping them within the generalized category of martyrs. Within Darbar Sahib celebrations a sense of a restoration of ‘order’ and divine authority embodied in the Akal Takht prevail over the memory of charismatic leaders who were central to the movement for Khalistan. Ritual enactments among the Sikh Diaspora in London on the other hand, continue to bracket together claims for asylum with political persecution in the ‘homeland’.

Sikh Masculinity, Religion, and Diaspora in Shauna Singh Baldwin’s English Lessons and Other Stories

Shauna Singh Baldwin’s English Lessons and Other Stories (1999) focuses on the previously neglected Sikh male as the subject of its narratives. The construction of Sikh masculinity is mapped onto the wider historical contexts of immigration to North America, and globalization and consumerism in India. In Sikhism, the Khalsa male, because of his turban, is the marked body signaling difference. But in the diaspora, religious markers such as the turban shape the performance of a specific kind of gendered identity and also define the manner in which integration into a religious, cultural, and ethnic identity proceeds. The family, specifically the hetero-normative family, is at the heart of the performance, the pedagogy, and the continuity of specific notions of a religio-cultural masculinity, which speaks sometimes in concert with and sometimes against the feminist grain. Religious identifications such as the turban that bear the moral burden of older value systems and notions of masculinity and femininity collide with changing survival systems, and women and men may have to negotiate different moral compasses.

Digital Figurings of the Unimaginable: Visual Media, Death, and Formations of the Sikh Diaspora

In this paper, I analyse how the confluence of martyrdom, terror, and computer-mediated communications has contributed to the emergence of a Sikh diasporic cultural politics. I offer an analysis of a moment of conflict that took place in June 2001 when Sikhs around the world commemorated the seventeenth anniversary of ‘Operation Bluestar’—the Indian government's code-name for a military siege on Sikhism's holiest temple that led to the deaths of several thousand people. Commemorating this day of genocide refocused enduringly significant debates about the status of the martyr in Sikh life and reconstituted the tensions of an ongoing conflict between Sikhs and the Indian nation-state. This moment of conflict also effectively drew together transnational struggles to establish a separate sovereign Sikh state called Khalistan with the emergence of globalising information technologies like the Internet. What I call the diasporic sublime offers a means for addressing this moment of diasporic conflict in relation to intersecting histories of Sikh religious practice, the valorisation of martyrs, and the proliferation of images of corpses on Sikh websites. These instances of violence, technology and knowledge production prompt a rethinking of analytical models that privilege the ‘imagination’, ‘dispersion from a homeland’ and ‘experience’ in explaining the creation of diasporic communities. In contrast to these models, the notion of the diasporic sublime offers the possibility for developing a more precise way of talking about diasporic subject formation that marks out the powerful effectivity of the inexperiencable and the unimaginable.

STUDYING THE SIKH DIASPORA: FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE OF PUNJABI SIKH STUDENTS

This paper examines the effectiveness of the ‘Sikh Diaspora’ course in terms of enhancing the first year higher education experience of Punjabi Sikh students attending a post-secondary educational institution in the Vancouver Lower Mainland. The paper provides a general overview of the pertinent socio-cultural issues that South Asian students may experience while obtaining higher education. It analyses data based on an evaluation questionnaire collected from 82 students registered in the ‘Sikh Diaspora’ course. The analysis reveals that the course had a positive impact on the students, including (a) enhanced classroom experience, (b) cultural validation, and (c) career relevancy. The paper concludes that the classroom can play an integral role in welcoming, supporting, and validating students of culturally diverse backgrounds.

MISUNDERSTOOD IN THE DIASPORA: THE EXPERIENCE OF ORTHODOX SIKHS IN VANCOUVER

This article is an extension of the author's post-doctoral research on the Vancouver Sikh diaspora. The article delineates the development and usage of the term ‘fundamentalism’ in the Sikh tradition and the Sikh diaspora, with specific focus on the Vancouver Sikh community. Drawing upon the experiences of five orthodox Sikhs, the article sheds light on how the usage of the term in Vancouver has adversely affected Sikhs and has created a distorted view of Sikh orthodoxy.

Repackaging the ineffable: changing styles of Sikh scriptural commentary

AbstractThe special importance of the Ādi Granth as the defining scripture of the Sikhs has encouraged the production of commentaries whose language and approach reflect changing understandings of the Gurus' teachings over the last four centuries. The oral style of the earlier commentaries which typically demonstrate a catholic inclusiveness towards the wider Indic tradition came largely to be replaced in the twentieth century by the more exclusive approach of Sikh reformist commentators, in part aroused by the dismissive attitudes of the first English translation by Trumpp. Continuing to shape most modern understandings of the scripture, these highly organized commentaries composed in the new idiom of Modern Standard Panjabi are only now beginning to be challenged by new styles of exegesis being pioneered in the Sikh diaspora.

1984 and the Diasporic Politics of Aesthetics: Reconfigurations and New Constellations among Toronto’s Sikh Youth

This article explores how Sikh youth in Toronto respond—through personal narratives and performative practices—to past events of violence associated with the Indian Army’s 1984 attack on the “Golden Temple” in Amritsar, as well as the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, India. Arguably, the politics of representation around the “Punjab crisis” of 1984 have been considered crucial for conceptualizing Sikh diaspora formations. However, studying how young Sikh activists relate to these events today and redefine their own sense of diasporic citizenship a generation after the event allows us to challenge both the homogeneous framings of (religious) diaspora and the primary role attributed to trauma through which past injuries are narrated. I shall demonstrate that there is a discursive trope (or tendency) in youth accounts that, on the one hand, asserts an attachment to injury as well as the separatist and nationalist sentiments that have long been embodied in representations of 1984 and, on the other, points to identity formations yet to be defined within the context of emerging “transnational second generations.” Moreover, Sikh youth are engaged in increasingly diverse forms of social justice work and have different motivations for their participation. This research reveals involvement in an emerging grassroots movement that is globally tuned into broader social justice struggles, while maintaining local ties to placespecific engagements and narratives

Rethinking Diaspora

Diaspora, a term used to refer to the dispersal of Jewish people across the world, is now expanded to describe any deterritorialized or transnational population that lives in a land different from that of its origin and whose social, political and economic networks span the globe crossing national borders. Through comparing the Anglo-Indian, the Sikh and the IITian diasporas, this project proposes to deconstruct diaspora as a construct. How does the Anglo-Indian Diaspora formed by conquest and colonization compare with the Sikh diaspora created in the service of the Empire and the highly skilled IITian diaspora? What are the categories through which the three diasporas constitute themselves and how do they define the homeland? While the Anglo-Indian and the Sikh diasporas have a pre-national history originating in the Empire, the IITian diaspora is intertwined with the history of the Indian nation. The three display a wide divergence in their constitutive categories – race in Anglo-Indian, religion and ethnicity in Sikh and skills in IITian and also vary in their myths of origin. While the homeland is defined through the region and sacral place in Sikh diaspora, the IITian diaspora converges on the alma mater and nation. The constitution of the homeland is far more problematic in the case of the Anglo-Indian diaspora. While the Anglo-Indian and Sikh diasporic movements in the past were those of low-skilled workers characterized by traditional migration chain, the high-skilled IITian diaspora fits the open migration chain pattern. Yet the three diasporas intersect as communities formed through strong transnational networks that interrogate the link between space, place and identity in the imagined communities of the nation. I argue that both the mixed race Anglo-Indian narrative, the ‘pure’ discourse of the Sikh imaginary and the knowledge/skills based imagining of the IITian community compels us to rethink essential categories of belonging and identity such as race, nation, caste, ethnicity while intensifying or creating new boundaries that are mobilized in their self-fashioning.

The "1984 violence" and the change of identity of Sikh ethnicity: A Study Sikh diaspora in Southall, London

디아스포라에서의 시크 공동체는 ``1984년 폭력`` 이후 종교적 정체성이 강화되었고, 이로 인해 과거의 ``뻔잡``이라는 인도 국가 내의 한 지역을 중심으로 하여 형성된 시크 공동체는 세계 각지를 연망으로 규합하는 하나의 종족으로 만드는 새로운 현상이 발생하였다. 이와 관련하여 ``귀환의 신화``가 폐기되거나, 인도로부터 독립하여 새로운 국가 칼리스탄을 건설하자고 하거나, 소위 ``국가 없는 민족``의 건설을 시도하는 현상이 발생하고 있다. 하지만 그렇다고 해서 디아스포라에서의 시크 정체성을 그러한 성격 하나로 규정할 수만은 없다. 그들은 여전히 경제적으로 이민 사회 안에 편입되어 있기 때문에 이민 사회로부터 전적으로 벗어날 수만은 없다. 그들은 상황에 따라 이민 사회의 시민으로 존재하기도 하고 인도 국민으로 존재하기도 하며 국가 없는 민족으로 존재하기도 한다.

Trauma, cultural survival and identity politics in a post-9/11 era: Reflections by Sikh youth

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of Sikh immigrant communities after 9/11. Notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘home’ are deeply fragmented for the Sikh families, especially the youth, and these complex social processes are explored. The post 9/11 backlash was pivotal in this community as it created more barriers for the youth in their schools as they became victims of racist slurs, threats and physical assault that were treated with apathy from teachers and administrators. Students stopped going to school, changed their physical appearances, displayed ‘patriotic’ American sentiment to promote an appearance of belonging, became depressed and were even suicidal as a result of the 9/11 backlash. The sense of persecution and of being labeled ‘suspect’ in the eyes of the public was detrimental to the families and the ensuing ‘fear’ for their safety in public spaces provoked many violent memories from India that these families experienced during the Hindu–Sikh riots from 1984 to the mid-1990s. The role of memory and the diasporic imaginary of Khalistan in the Sikh diaspora are understood throughout the article, as well. The findings of the study reveal immeasurable hardships for the Sikh youth in their schools and challenge assumptions about immigrant rigor and the resilience of immigrant youth in the face of hostile experiences and interactions. These hardships that stemmed from the trauma of migration and downward social mobility, the 9/11 backlash and their struggle to find a place led to challenges in identity formation and preservation.

Intergenerational Communication in Immigrant Punjabi Families: Implications for Helping Professionals

This paper is an extension of the primary author’s post-doctoral research on the Sikh diaspora in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing upon the orality, literacy and ‘analytics’ (critical inquiry) paradigm, the paper delineates the distinctive communication patterns that characterize each of three generations in the Punjabi community in that location. A sample intergenerational dialogue in the counselling context is provided to demonstrate the nature of fluidity in communication, and the implications for helping professionals are discussed.

Trauma and memory within the Sikh diaspora: Internet dialogue

The events surrounding the 1947 partition and the attack on Sikhs in the Golden Temple and Delhi continue to affect Sikhs today. Memory of the specifics and related issues plays a major role in politics both in India and within the diaspora. This paper explores the literature on the events and how they are recast and understood by various groups. Particular attention is paid to interactions on the Internet and especially within chat groups and on websites. Modern communication has created a global Sikh dialogue that has implications for understanding of traditions, control of institutions, and politics. Please do not quote without permission.

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. xiii, 276 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. xiii, 276 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $26.95 (paper).

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Pp. 276.

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. By Kamala Elizabeth Nayar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Pp. 276.

DIASPORA INVOLVEMENT IN INSURGENCIES: INSIGHTS FROM THE KHALISTAN AND TAMIL EELAM MOVEMENTS

This article exposits and contrasts the roles of two diasporas in ethnic conflict waged in their homelands, namely the Sikh diaspora's involvement in the Punjab insurgency in north India and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora's role in Sri Lanka's Tamil insurgency. It draws out the various similarities and distinctions between the two in their use of technology, means of mobilization and identity production, and the geographical and political reach of their institutional arrangements. The article argues that the varying means by which these diasporas came into being affected the ways in which they mobilized and the positions they espoused towards homeland politics. It finds that the abilities of the two diasporas to contribute to events “back home” differed in part because of the scope of their respective institutional arrangements.

On the Politics of the Sikh Diaspora

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.”

On the Politics of the Sikh Diaspora

Singh examines the complex links that connect the history of the Sikhs in colonial India both to the Khalistani movement and to diasporic politics in multicultural Britain and the United States today. He reviews two books, The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of the Sikh Diaspora by Brian Axel (Duke UP, 2001) and Tony Ballantyne’s Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (Duke UP, 2006). Singh praises these texts for breaking “with the trend of producing case studies of individual or highly localized collective experiences in an attempt to grapple with the cultural interconnections that are foundational to the Sikh diaspora” and for highlighting “the effects of the performative enunciation of cultural claims.” But he also argues that the sociohistorical structures that allow for such articulation are less of a concern in these analyses than they should have been. In the course of his rich analysis, Singh argues that both Axel and Ballantyne anachronistically project the current identity concerns of the Sikh diaspora, embodied in the ambivalent figure of Maharajah Duleep Singh, backward onto the history of the colonialism in Punjab as well as onto the subsequent rise of Indian nationalism, to ill effect. He joins Axel in asking what constitutes a diaspora, and he examines the usefulness of Ballantyne’s claim that the continued emphasis on Khalistan in Sikh studies effaces the “politics of the everyday,” the more mundane but equally important cross-cultural dilemmas that confront diasporic Sikhs—an observation that has a more general application in diaspora studies as a whole.

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism (review)

The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism (review)

The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood

This book offers an overview of the Sikh diaspora, exploring the relationship between home and host states and between migrant and indigenous communities. The book considers the implications of history and politics of the Sikh diaspora for nationality, citizenship and sovereignity.; The text should serve as a supplementary text for undergraduates and postgraduates on courses in race, ethnicity and international migration within sociology, politics, international relations, Asian history, and human geography. In particular, it should serve as a core text for Sikh/Punjab courses within Asian studies.

The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh "Diaspora" (review)

Reviewed by: The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh Diaspora Kuldeep Singh The Nation’s Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh Diaspora.. By Brian Keith Axel. Durham: Duke University, 2000. 1 Most of the well-known stories of Indian diasporas begin with the colonial system of indenture, which is the primary factor in the mobilization and dispersal of particular groups of people away from India. In this book, however, the author focuses on three aspects of the histories of displacement that constitute the Sikh diaspora: the position of Sikhs just prior to colonial rule with a unique territory, the specific manner of mobility within and after the colonial period, and the emergence of transnational struggle to create a separate, sovereign Sikh State called Khalistan. Axel beautifully summarizes these points of emergence in the introduction and develops them at length in the subsequent chapters of his book. In the first chapter, Axel gives a glimpse of the history of Sikh Empire and their surrender to the British. He outlines, for example, how Maharaja Runjeet Singh fought off the Afghans on one side of his territory and signed treaties of friendship with the British on the other side. The British, in turn, took advantage of the internal weakness of the Sikh Raj, violated the friendship treaty of 1809 and invaded Punjab right after the five-year-old Maharaja Duleep Singh ascended the throne. The author quotes the letter written by the Governor General Dalhousie to Queen Victoria about the surrender of March 24, 1849 in Ferozepur without mentioning the circumstances that lead to this historic event. The words were “As they threw their arms down upon the heap, the brave Sikh soldiers said: ‘This day Runjeet Singh has died.’” What the author fails to mention here is a matter of great significance, for in fact, the British were almost ready to make an unconditional surrender before the Sikhs during the battle at the city of Pheru on December 21, 1845.1 Axel utilizes a number of strong academic resources to dig out the facts and follows a chronology of events leading to the partition of India into two dominions, India and Pakistan. In 1947 India got freedom after the Sikhs were forced to sacrifice more than half of the Punjab, resulting in tremendous loss of life and material wealth. The author calls it a new Sikh surrender. In his analysis of the post-independence history, he gives innumerable examples of antagonism, hostility, and oppression not only against the Sikhs but also against other minorities of India. He argues how Sikhs failed to get their most legitimate right from the British, who considered them as the protectors of their empire, as well as from the Hindu rulers of the postcolonial India, who promised “an area and a set up in the North wherein the Sikhs can also experience the glow of freedom.” The author elaborates the circumstances that forced the Sikhs to continue their struggle for an independent, sovereign Sikh homeland, which they thought to be essential for the preservation of Sikh traditions and identity, during and after the British colonial rule. In the third chapter, Axel provides evidence, including his personal experiences, of the existence of state violence in today’s India. He clearly elucidates how the Sikhs have been intimidated by the use of cruel and inhumane methods of torture by the police and the state authorities, and shows how the official magazine of the Indian Army—Baatcheet—portrays Sikhs as “dangerous people pledged to commit murder, arson and acts of terrorism.”2 Testimonies of survivors included here demonstrate various categories of torture to which victims have been subjected. This is what he calls the “tortured body,” i.e. how the glorious amritdhari body of the Khalsa got tortured. He profiles a typical victim: a visibly identifiable Sikh male, complete with beard, turban, Kirpan and Kara. Pictures of the mutilated Sikh men have become a well-known, and singularly important, sight for Sikhs living in the Diaspora. Although it is common knowledge that Sikh males are routinely detained and help in police custody (with no charges or formal arrest), there is...