Between Colonialism and Diaspora

Ballantyne Tony Ballantyne

Description

Bringing South Asian and British imperial history together with recent scholarship on transnationalism and postcolonialism, Tony Ballantyne offers a bold reevaluation of constructions of Sikh identity from the late eighteenth century through the early twenty-first. Ballantyne considers Sikh communities and experiences in Punjab, the rest of South Asia, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. He charts the shifting, complex, and frequently competing visions of Sikh identity that have been produced in response to the momentous social changes wrought by colonialism and diaspora. In the process, he argues that Sikh studies must expand its scope to take into account not only how Sikhism is figured in religious and political texts but also on the battlefields of Asia and Europe, in the streets of Singapore and Southall, and in the nightclubs of New Delhi and Newcastle.Constructing an expansive historical archive, Ballantyne draws on film, sculpture, fiction, and Web sites, as well as private papers, government records, journalism, and travel narratives. He proceeds from a critique of recent historiography on the development of Sikhism to an analysis of how Sikh identity changed over the course of the long nineteenth century. Ballantyne goes on to offer a reading of the contested interpretations of the life of Dalip Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab. He concludes with an exploration of bhangra, a traditional form of Punjabi dance that diasporic artists have transformed into a globally popular music style. Much of bhangra's recent evolution stems from encounters of the Sikh and Afro-Caribbean communities, particularly in the United Kingdom. Ballantyne contends that such cross-cultural encounters are central in defining Sikh identity both in Punjab and the diaspora.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Sikhism

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 16 août 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822388111
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

v v Between Colonialism and Diaspora

Between Colonialism and Diaspora

v

Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World

Tony Ballantyne

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS vDURHAM & LONDON 2006 v

∫2006 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Granjon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Contents

v

Preface

vii

1 Framing/Reframing Sikh Histories

2 Entangled Pasts Colonialism, Mobility, and the Systematization of Sikhism

34

1

3 Maharaja Dalip Singh, Memory, and the Negotiation of Sikh Identity86

4 Displacement, Diaspora, and Difference in the Making of Bhangra

Epilogue

v

160

Notes175

Glossary197

Bibliography

Index215

201

121

Preface

v

n April 1999, Sikhs across the world celebrated the three hundredth I anniversary of the foundation of the Khalsa, the ‘‘order of the pure’’ that was established by the tenth Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh, on Baisakhi Day in 1699. By the late twentieth century, most Sikhs under- stood the Khalsa as embodying the ‘‘orthodox’’ community, a collective dedicated to protecting the teachings of the ten Sikh gurus. As such, the tercentenary of the Khalsa was an occasion of great significance. Lec- tures, festivals, exhibitions, sport tournaments, and gatherings for wor- ship marked the event in places ranging from Amritsar to Dallas and Delhi to Coventry. Around the time of Baisakhi, the Sikh festival that marks the beginning of the new year, up to a million Sikhs from through- out South Asia as well as from Europe, North and South America, Aus- tralasia, Africa, and East Asia made long journeys to Anandpur, the site of the foundation of the Khalsa. These celebrations attracted considerable global media coverage, which stressed the distinctiveness of Sikhs and reaffirmed Sikhism’s status as a major world religion. In contrast, little attention was paid to an anniversary celebration, ob- served by relatively fewer Sikhs, that occurred approximately two weeks before Baisakhi. The date 29 March 1999 marked the one hundred and

viii v Preface

fiftieth anniversary of the annexation of Punjab by the East India Com- pany and the formal incorporation of Sikhs into the global reach of the British Empire. The symmetry of these anniversaries, 300 years of the Khalsa and 150 years of sustained contact with Britain (with 98 of these years, between 1849 and 1947, as a colony), is not only striking in itself but reminds us that for at least half of the Khalsa’s existence Sikhism has operated within the broader global contexts fashioned by British imperi- alism. This volume explores the interconnectedness of these histories of ‘‘religion’’ and colonialism by examining the reconfiguration of Sikhism and Sikh identities over the last two centuries. Even though the chapters in this book span a wide chronological sweep (from around 1780 to World War I) and traverse many regions inhabited by Sikhs (North America, Australasia, Southeast Asia, and especially South Asia and the United Kingdom), I do not attempt here to write a total history of modern Sikhism. Further, I do not present a detailed analysis of canonical Sikh texts and, despite this work’s broad temporal and spatial canvas, I do not aspire to present an exhaustive narrative or a comprehensive analysis of the institutions that have under- pinned the development of the Sikh community. Rather, in this volume I explore a series of key issues relating to the pasts of Sikhism and the ways in which those pasts have been narrated, both by people belonging to the community and by those, like myself, who do not. The four chapters and the epilogue that make up this volume explore a range of issues and case studies that illuminate the diversity of the modern Sikh experience by communicating some of the richness of the cultural life of Sikhs both within Punjab and beyond it. In the course of this exploration I chart the shifting, often complex, and frequently competing visions of Sikh identity that have been produced from a range of diverse locations and contexts. In tracking Sikhs through some of the global networks fashioned by the British Empire and by offering an assessment of Sikh cultures in the post- colonial world, in this volume I suggest that we need to assess the visions of Sikhism articulated on the battlefields of Asia and Europe, on the streets of Singapore and Southall, and in the nightclubs of New Delhi and Newcastle, as well as the proclamations issued from thegurdwaras (places of worship) of Punjab or thedaftars (offices) of colonial administrators.

Preface v ix

Punjab and adjacent territories. Drawn by David Hood

The title of this volume stresses the overlapping chronology of and strong connections between colonialism and diaspora in the transforma- tion of Sikhism. Despite Brian Axel’s observation that the ‘‘colonial rup- ture’’ is frequently identified as the genesis of South Asian diasporas, within South Asian studies and in much of the humanities scholarship the term diaspora is frequently identified as a marker of the postcolonial ∞ condition. Yet, as I demonstrate herein, the end of the British Empire in South Asia did not mark the emergence of Sikhs as a mobile population, for some Sikhs had always lived outside Punjab and many more Sikhs became more mobile after the annexation of Punjab in 1849. The wealth, authority, and security of the British imperial system rested on its ability to move certain groups of people to fill crucial gaps in the empire’s labor market, administration, and coercive instruments (such as the army or police force), as well as preventing ‘‘undesirable’’ forms of mobility (such as vagrancy, nomadism, the activities of itinerant preachers and mendi- ≤ cants, and ‘‘unlicensed’’ migration). In the case of Punjab, colonialism was crucial in both intensifying and accelerating mobility as many Pun- jabis moved within the region (especially to the new ‘‘canal colonies’’ in