Sikh Religion, Culture and Ethnicity

231 Pages·2013·13.211 MB·English

by  Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Christopher Shackle, Gurharpal Singh

Sikh Religion,
Culture and
Ethnicity
This page intentionally left blank
Sikh Religion,
Culture and
Ethnicity
Edited by
Christopher Shackle,
Gurharpal Singh &
Arvind-pal Singh Mandair
~l Routledge
~ ~ Taylor & Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First Published in 2001
by Curzon Press
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Editorial Matter © 2001 Christopher Shackle,
Gurharpal Singh & Arvind-pal Singh Mandair
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 13: 978-0-700-71389-9 (hbk)
Contents
Contributors VB
Acknowledgements IX
1. Introduction: New Perspectives in Sikh Studies 1
Editors
2. Canon Formation in the Sikh Tradition
Gurinder Singh Mann 10
3. Eighteenth Century Khalsa Identity: Discourse, Praxis
and Narrative 25
Jeevan Deol
4. Thinking Differently about Religion and History: Issues
for Sikh Studies 47
Arvind-pal Singh Mandair
5. On the Hermeneutics of Sikh Thought and Praxis 72
Balbinder Bhogal
6. Making Punjabi Literary History 97
Christopher Shackle
7. The Mirror and the Sikh: the Transformation of
Ondaatje's Kip 118
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh
v
CONTENTS
8. The Limits of 'Conventional Wisdom': Understanding
Sikh Ethno-nationalism 142
Gurharpal Singh
9. Imagining Punjab: Narratives of Nationhood and
Homeland among the Sikh Diaspora 161
Darshan S. Tatla
10. What Has a Whale Got to Do With It? A Tale of
Pogroms and Biblical Allegories 186
Harjot Oberoi
Bibliography 207
Index 217
VI
Contributors
Balbinder Bhogal is a Lecturer in the Department of Religious
Studies at the University of Derby. He is completing his PhD on 'The
Word of Guru Nanak: Hermeneutics, Nonduality and Skilful Means'
at SOAS, University of London.
Jeevan Deol is completing his PhD at St John's College, University
of Cambridge. His publications include 'The Minas and their
Literature', Journal of the American Oriental Society (1998); and
'Surdas: Poet and Text the Sikh Tradition', Bulletin of SOAS (2000).
He compiled entries in the catalogue of the major international
exhibition 'Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms'.
Arvind-pal Singh Mandair is a Research Fellow in the Department
of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. Besides
Sikhism and North Indian religions, his interests include continental
philosophy and cross-cultural theory. His publications include
Religion and the Translatability of Cultures (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, forthcoming). He was responsible for constructing
and teaching the Sikh and Punjab Studies programme at Coventry
University.
Gurinder Singh Mann is Kundan Kaur Kapany Professor of Sikh
Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His
publications include The Goindval Pothis: the Earliest Extant Source
of the Sikh Canon (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard Oriental Series 51,
1996); and The Making of Sikh Scripture (New York: Oxford
Vll
CONTRIBUTORS
University Press, forthcoming). He is Director of the Columbia
UCSB Summer Programme in Punjab Studies at Chandigarh.
Harjot Oberoi is Professor of Indian History in the Department of
Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author
of The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and
Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Christopher Shackle FBA is Professor of Modern Langages of
South Asia at SOAS, University of London. Besides linguistics, his
wide academic interests include both comparative literature and
comparative religion. He has published extensively on Punjabi and
Urdu, and is the compiler of An Introduction to the Sacred Language of
the Sikhs (London: SOAS, 1983), and A Guru Nanak Glossary
(2nd ed., New Delhi: Heritage, 1995).
Gurharpal Singh is the C.R. Parekh Professor of Indian Politics at
the University of Hull. His most recent publication (co-edited with
Ian Talbot) is Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of
the Subcontinent (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999). He was
formerly editor of the International Journal of Punjab Studies.
Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh is Professor of Religious Studies at
Colby College. Her interests focus on poetics and feminist issues. She
has published widely in the field of Indian Religions. Her recent
books include The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the
Transcendent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and
The Name of My Beloved: Translations of the Verses of the Sikh Gurus
(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995).
Darshan S. Tatla is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology at the Punjabi University, Patiala. His recent
publications include Sikhs in North America (New York: Greenwood,
1991), and The Sikh Diaspora: the Search for Statehood (London:
UCL Press, 1999).
Vlll
Acknowledgements
This book grew out the workshop entitled 'New Perspectives in Sikh
Studies' held at the School of Oriental and African Studies on
28-29th May 1998. However not all of the articles published in this
volume were presented at the workshop and neither are all the papers
read at this event included here. It has been a privilege for the editors
of this volume to play their small part towards bringing the
contributors' discussions of these issues to publication. The editors
gratefully acknowledge the support of those without whose help the
original workshop which gave rise to this volume could not have taken
place. Generous financial support for the workshop was provided by
De Montfort University, by the Research Committee of SOAS, by the
Guru Nanak Education Trust and by CRDP (Coventry). The
practical organization of the workshop was greatly assisted by Barbara
Lazoi of the SOAS Centre of South Asian Studies.
IX