The following is the second installment of a three part series. The first can be found here. It is published as a catalogued .PDF in article in the latest issue of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (22.2).
Another common scholarly position is that Nanak and his successors could not have created a separate religious tradition, because such a concept did not exist in Indic culture. Many scholars have made this claim for the Sikhs, and it can be supported by observations such as intermarriage among what are now called Sikhs and Hindus, lack of distinct life cycle rituals, and acceptance of a range of beliefs and practices that do not fit within a clear, commonly accepted definition of what it means to be a Sikh.
This is contrasted with more clear-cut creedal definitions for religious communities. This is a more complicated and deeper issue than the current scope allows,[1] but the equation of “religion” with non-Indic or Christian definitions is at odds with much of the social science literature, which takes a more inclusive position on how the word is used.[2] Furthermore, Islam had been present in South Asia since the 7th century CE, so it would have been well known as a model of spiritual beliefs and practices when Nanak lived, though the community of Islam encompasses its own heterogeneities.
Finally, 16th and 17th century Sikh writings in the GGS and by Gurdas Bhalla explicitly mention Hindus and Muslims in terms of their beliefs and practices, identifying Sikhs as being neither of these communities.[3] If the principle is one of self-definition of identity based on spiritual beliefs and associated practices, then the nomenclature issue is arguably of second-order importance, possibly even leading to mischaracterization.
The role of the Khalsa in Sikhism also elicits a range of positions. Some scholars characterize it as one of many expressions of Sikh tradition, and view it primarily as a militaristic subset of the broader community.[4] Others recognize its importance to the Sikh conception of community, even to the point of the Guru being embodied in the collective of the Khalsa, as the Guru Panth (panth meaning community) complementing the Guru Granth.[5] Less metaphysically, many Sikhs view the Khalsa as representative of an ideal of service and sacrifice, associated particularly with the example of Guru Gobind Singh in his own life. At the same time, it is accepted that practice falls short of ideals, even in traditionally heroic contexts such as the 18th century.[6]
Scholarly positions that put less weight on originality, distinctiveness and a common core in the first two centuries of Sikh history align with what has become the dominant perspective on Sikhism in the Western academy, that its contemporary beliefs and practices are fundamentally different from pre-colonial history. Harjot Oberoi’s narrative is the most well-known, arguing that there was no sense of a definite Sikh identity, prior to the colonial era.[7] Instead, there were a range of traditions, beliefs and practices, all within a larger collection of such traditions that was separately distilled into Hinduism.[8]
Sikhs who created a new, restricted Sikh identity were “aggressive usurpers,” displacing a more pluralistic, tolerant tradition. An alternative account of a rupture associated with colonialism and modernity is that of Arvind-Pal Mandair, who accepts the existence of a prior Sikh tradition, but also views it as fundamentally different, in terms of its philosophical underpinnings as well as its practices.[9] He emphasizes trauma and shame as drivers of this colonial-era rupture in Sikh tradition. Richard Fox, on the other hand, claims that the Sikh community in its modern form is a product of the British, who nurtured the Khalsa identity and brought it back from near extinction.[10]
What is common in all three narratives is that the colonial power causes a transformation of the community, either directly, or through the efforts of elites who are either aggressive or traumatized. An alternative perspective is more nuanced, recognizing the influence of earlier Sikh tradition and thought, as incorporated in the GGS, or the role of the Sikh masses, consisting chiefly of the peasantry, as well as the complicated negotiations in which representatives of different interests and ideologies within the Sikh community engaged, and how they sought compromises to balance inclusion and distinctiveness.[11]
Much of the process of definition of the Sikhs in scholarship situated in the Western hemisphere begins in the 1980s, at a time of political turmoil in Punjab, and focuses on the Sikh diaspora, which is particularly numerous in Anglophone countries (Canada, Britain and the United States). Adopting the perspective that contemporary Sikh identity is almost wholly a modern construct, literally, “a gross transgression of Sikh doctrine,”[12] Sikh identity in the diaspora is described as a recent phenomenon. For example, Brian Axel states, “Khalistan [the name of a projected independent Sikh nation] is an idea that…has become a generalized trope of social practice and representation central to the post-1984 (re) constitution of the Sikh diaspora.”[13]
A similar approach leads to assertions that early Sikh migrants to California saw themselves as cosmopolitan Punjabis or even Hindus, rather than as followers of narrowly religious Sikh tradition.[14] Other academic writing on the Sikh diaspora follows similar lines, though not exclusively so.[15] Building sometimes on some early ethnographic studies,[16] there has been a tendency to emphasize Punjabi rather than Sikh identity, with the latter being reduced to a manifestation of “identity politics.”[17]
Voice, Inequality and Power
This section develops the central arguments of this paper, by analyzing the intellectual genealogy of the kinds of debates outlined above, uncovering the effects of inequality and power in that process. As a prelude, note that scholarship on the Sikhs – as that term is used in the modern academy – begins during the colonial period, and it has two strands. One strand is work by Sikhs, in modern Punjabi, which is part of the project of reform and “modernization.” Some of this effort is doctrinal in nature, explicating or interpreting the GGS, and because of its language and goals, it is internally directed.
It is intertwined, however, with attempts to construct a unified historical narrative that is empirically based. The second strand consists of historical narratives in English, written initially by colonial observers, and then by non-Sikh Indians who were part of the new colonial higher education system. Post-independence, the second strand also begins to include Sikh academics. As one might expect, even the second strand includes a variety of perspectives and interpretations, especially on questions of identity, and how sources are used and weighted.
One example of the second strand that gets elevated in status, to the point that it is projected as a driver of the Sikh engagement with colonialism, is the work of Ernst Trumpp.[18] Trumpp was commissioned by the colonists to translate the GGS. He was a German Indologist, Sanskrit scholar, and sometime missionary. While he was charged with translation into English, he admitted later that his own knowledge of English was imperfect. He eventually produced a partial translation, accompanied by a summary history of the Sikh tradition. Trump himself was a latecomer to an established tradition, one which has subsequently been labeled “Orientalism.”[19]
In the 19th century, German Indologists “discovered” the sacred classical traditions of India, and formalized these as Hinduism, recognizing the enormous diversity of practice as well as the evolution of beliefs over time, but nevertheless creating a category that could be viewed in more Western terms. When they came to the Sikhs, as was the case for Trumpp, their reference point was this older Hindu, Sanskritic tradition, as defined by the Indologists, but also by Hindu scholars. The use of Hindu terms and mythological metaphors in the GGS made it easy to take the position that the Sikh tradition was an inconsequential and inferior gloss on classical Hinduism, which Trumpp stated in blunt and uncomplimentary language.
Members of a new Sikh intelligentsia tried to respond to Trumpp’s work, because of its implications for how the community would be treated by the colonial political and legal system. They encouraged and supported the work of Max Arthur Macauliffe, who collaborated with members of the community to produce an alternative narrative, which also consisted of a partial translation of the GGS, combined with a historical account of the community.[20] While some Sikhs have seen this as a reclamation of the truth about the community, the perspective of scholars that currently dominates the Western academy frames this dialectic as one of response to shame and trauma, either through defense or aggression,[21] while Fox sees the material incentives to Sikhs provided by the British as an essential part of these developments.[22] All of these perspectives tend to deny the mass of the community any real agency, reducing them to objects of elite manipulation. A more nuanced position has been somewhat lost in this popular framing.
Before considering the specifics of history again, one has to trace the intellectual development of the two strands of scholarship identified above. Essentially, while scholarly writing in Punjabi continued, it has been swamped by writing in English. This new scholarship has claimed to offer two kinds of improvement. First, it has emphasized a return to sources, and a more critical use of these sources, in terms of not taking them at face value. The exemplar of this claim is McLeod in his re-examination of traditional stories of the life of Guru Nanak (janamsakhis), pointing out lack of reliable or consistent evidence for almost all of them.[23] Much of this effort has gone into challenging the modern reformist position that Sikh tradition has been well-defined and continuous. As Oberoi states, this effort is meant to parallel a much larger project that offered a revisionist account of Hinduism.[24]
A second intellectual current that is prominent in newer scholarship on the Sikhs is an acknowledgement of different subjectivities and interpretations, so that there is not necessarily a final, unquestionable narrative. Of course, this is a central intellectual feature of scholarship in a range of disciplines and topics of inquiry. In the case of scholarship on the Sikhs, this has led to greater attention to groups that are downgraded or ignored in the dominant reformist narrative, including various sects, challengers to what became the main line of development of the Sikh community, members of erstwhile outcaste groups, and so on.
A greater awareness of issues of gender and sexuality, social inequalities, and the validity of normative positions has also come from this approach. Much of this work has complemented the first kind of development: for example, in challenging an idealized normative account of the role of women in Sikh tradition by reconsidering historical evidence or documenting contemporary practices.[25]
A significant aspect of the newer scholarship on the Sikh tradition is in how it brings theory to historical narratives. For example, Fox might easily be considered to have an Orientalist approach. He repeatedly plays off the literal translation of “Singh” as “lion,” with chapter and section titles such as “Singh Nature and Habitat,” “British Methods of Obedience Training,” and “An Endangered Species.”[26] But he also quotes or appeals to Bakhtin, Bourdieu, Foucault, Touraine and Williams.[27] This is with the goal of critiquing the “standard anthropological treatment of culture and cultural patterns.” Sikhs are innocent bystanders in this project. The teachings of the Sikh Gurus receive one page in Fox, the 18th century history of the Khalsa does not get a mention, and the later Singhs (effectively the Khalsa) are described airily as “one segment of the great arc of Sikh potential.”[28]
Oberoi provides a different causal story for the Sikh transformation in the colonial period, but a similar theoretical basis. He uses Foucalt’s concept of an episteme: “the totality of relations that can be discovered for a given period.”[29] Some generic discussion of these ideas is followed by raising the problem of what can explain the shift from one episteme to the next. Here, Oberoi appeals to Bourdieu. By contrast to Fox, who states that Bourdieu cannot explain historical change, Oberoi interprets the “unceasing intervention of human practices” as the drivers of change.[30]
However, Bourdieu is not quite adequate for this explanation, and Oberoi turns to the work of Sherry Ortner, and her framework of three modes of human action: routine activity, intentional action and praxis.[31] The ensuing discussion of praxis by Oberoi is vague, even though it is made into the driver of changes in epistemes. Bourdieu, Foucault and praxis all then disappear from the rest of the narrative, until the ending assertions that the reconstituted Khalsa episteme of the early 20th century represented an epistemic shift or rupture with the past.
In another example of appeals to theory, Karen Leonard uses the theoretical binary of “cosmopolitans” versus “transnationals” to characterize the evolution of the Sikh community in California.[32] In doing so, she compares immigrant Sikh men who married immigrant Mexican women before the Second World War, with Sikh men who married Sikh women from Punjab once immigration policies were changed in 1965. The general normative connotation of “cosmopolitan” is problematic in this context, as is the manner of translation from the original work of Stuart Hall and Pnina Werbner.[33]
But the lack of accounting for changing societal circumstances and constraints itself brings the analysis into question. Indeed, Leonard’s initial framing of the temporally earlier case as “making ethnic choices,” and as an example of cosmopolitanism and the unimportance of Sikh religious identity, conflicts with her own examples, such as the Sikh who “changed his name from Singh to Ram because, having taken off the turban and beard, he felt he was no longer a Sikh and did not want to dishonor the Sikh religion.”[34]
Oberoi’s historical narrative is also subject to the criticism of lacking an empirical anchor. For example, Jagtar Grewal, in assessing the pluralistic Sanatan Sikh category that Oberoi uses as a foil to the aggressive reformers, concludes, “His [Oberoi’s] hypothesis of Sanatan Sikhism in the early nineteenth century appears to be vague and vacuous.”[35] N.-G. K. Singh, Grewal, and Murphy are among those who offer detailed critiques of Oberoi’s analysis based on features of Sikh history.[36] These critiques admit the reality of diversity of views, and disagreements within the community.
But they place the colonial period in the context of a longer arc of history, one that is reasonably well-documented. For example, attempts to define boundaries, or to institute reforms designed to bring practices closer to what the reformers viewed as the message of the Sikh Gurus, go back to the late 17th century,[37] and the early 19th century,[38] before the colonial period in Punjab. Murphy appreciates Oberoi’s attempt to delineate “the diverse religious worlds of early nineteenth century Punjab,” but points out that his “tying of ‘Sanatan Sikhism’ and folk traditions in opposition to the Khalsa episteme” has a shaky empirical basis. She details how Oberoi’s construction does not match the actual historical circumstances, instead enacting nostalgia for a non-existent “proto-multiculturalism.”[39]
Continuing with the theme of empirical foundations, what is noteworthy about the development of scholarship on the Sikhs in the last few decades is that use of primary sources has been relatively light. For example, Leonard relies entirely on Oberoi for her characterization of Punjab in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[40] Even Barrier relies primarily on English language sources,[41] and McLeod, while a prolific analyst of early Sikh sources, is not always completely accurate or reliable.[42] For many scholars of the Sikhs, lack of knowledge of modern Punjabi, let alone Persian or the language forms used in the GGS, constitutes a barrier to accessing aspects of the contemporary historical record, except if a translation is available. Language is not a determinative factor, and information is not automatically authentic even if the source is read in its original language, but this issue adds a layer of complication to scholarship in the field.
Nirvikar Singh is Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance at UCSC, of which he was the founding Director. From 2010 to 2020, he held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies at UCSC. He has previously directed the UCSC South Asian Studies Initiative. He has served as a member of the Advisory Group to the Finance Minister of India on G-20 matters, and Consultant to the Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India. He is currently serving on the Expert Group on post-Covid-19 economic recovery formed by the Chief Minister of Punjab state in India. At UCSC, he has previously served as Director of the Santa Cruz Center for International Economics, Co-Director of the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, and Special Advisor to the Chancellor.
[1] Analyses of the applicability of the term “religion” include Talal Asad, Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, MD: JHU Press, 1993); Mark Taylor, “Refiguring Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 77 (1) (2009): 105–119; Gil Anidjar, “The idea of an anthropology of Christianity,” Interventions 11, no. 3 (2009): 367-393; and Gil Anidjar, “Christianity, Christianities, Christian,”Journal of Religious and Political Practice 1, no. 1 (2015): 39-46.
[2] For a comprehensive overview of this approach, see Ara Norenzayan, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais, Aiyana K. Willard, Rita A. McNamara, Edward Slingerland and Joseph Henrich. The cultural evolution of prosocial religions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 39, e1, (2016): 1-65
[3] Rahuldeep Singh Gill, “The Works of Bhai Gurdas,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 147-158.
[4] For example, see Pashaura Singh, “Re-imagining Sikhi (‘Sikhness’) in the Twenty-First Century: Toward a Paradigm Shift in Sikh Studies,” in, Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt, Pashaura Singh and Michael Hawley, eds. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill ,2013): 27-48; and Susan E. Prill, “Sikhi Through Internet, Films, and Videos,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 471-481.
[5] For example, see Louis E. Fenech, “The Khalsa and the Rahit,” in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 240-249
[6] Dhavan, When Sparrows Became Hawks.
[7] Harjot S Oberoi,.The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
[8] However, as noted, Hindu leaders such as Gandhi never accepted this separateness.
[9] Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). For example, he states (p. 32), “neither Sikh experience nor the broader Indic culture from which it is derived can claim to possess a word for “religion” as signifying either a mystical or theological core or a unified faith community.”
[italics are mine]
[10] Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
[11] These three perspectives are treated, respectively in Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, “Review of The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition by Harjot Oberoi,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 55 (3) (1996): 760-762; Mohinder Singh, The Akali Movement (Delhi: The Macmillan Company of India, 1978); and N. Gerald Barrier, “Competing visions of Sikh religion and politics: The chief Khalsa Diwan and the Panch Khalsa Diwan, 1902–1928,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 23, no. 2 (2000): 33-62.
[12] Oberoi, The Construction, p. 323.
[13] Brian Keith Axel, The nation’s tortured body: Violence, representation, and the formation of a Sikh “diaspora” (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020).
[14] Karen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); and Leonard, “Transnationalism, Diaspora, Translation: Comparing Punjabis and Hyderabadis Abroad,” Sikh Formations, 3 (1) (2007): 51-66.
[15] For example, N. Gerald Barrier and Verne A. Dusenbery, The Sikh diaspora: Migration and the experience beyond Punjab (Delhi: Chanakya Publications, 1989).
[16] For example, Arthur W. Helweg, “Punjab Farmers: Twenty Years in England,” India International Centre Quarterly, 5 (1) (1978): 14-22.
[17] For example, Sunit Singh, “On the Politics of the Sikh Diaspora,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 14 (1) (2005): 157-177.
[18] Ernst Trumpp, The Adi Granth, or The Holy Scriptures of the Sikhs, Translated from the Original Gurmukhi, with Introductory Essays (London: Wm. H. Allen & Co., 1877), available at https://archive.org/details/cu31924023913217.
[19] Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979).
[20] Max Arthur Macauliffe, The Sikh Religion, its Gurus, Sacred Writings and Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909) For a summary of the relationship of the Sikh community and leadership to Macauliffe and his work, see, Harbans Singh, “Max Arthur Macauliffe,” Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Volume 3 (Patiala: Punjabi University, 1998), 1-4.
[21] Oberoi, The Construction; Mandair, Religion and the Specter.
[22] Fox, The Lions.
[23] McLeod, Guru Nanak.
[24] Oberoi, The Construction. One example of the argument for Hinduism is Richard E. King, Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999).
[25]Doris Jakobsh, Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Jakobsh, ed., Sikhism and Women: History, Texts and Experience (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010).
[26] Fox, The Lions.
[27] In particular, he relies on Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1981); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977 (New York, Pantheon Books, 1980); Alain Touraine, The Self Production of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977).
[28] Fox, The Lions, p. 8.
[29] Oberoi, The Construction, 28, quoting Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Pantheon Books, 1972), 191.
[30] Oberoi, The Construction, 28.
[31] Sherry Ortner, High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
[32] Leonard, “Transnationalism.”
[33] Stuart Hall, “Politics of Identity,” in Culture, Identity, Politics: Ethnic Minorities in Britain, Terence Ranger, Yunus Samad, and Ossie Stuart, eds. (Brookfield, VT: Avebury, 1996): 131–32; and Pnina Werbner, “Global Pathways, Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds,” Social Anthropology, 7 (1) (1999): 17-35.
[34] Leonard, Making, 127.
[35] Jagtar Singh Grewal, Historical Perspectives on Sikh Identity (Patiala: Publication Bureau, Punjabi University, 1997): 29. As Anne Murphy explains, the term ‘Sanatan’ is anachronistic and inappropriate for the early 19th century: see Anne Murphy, “Allegories of difference and identity: Reflections on religious boundaries and ‘popular’ religion,” International Journal of Punjab Studies. 7 (1) (2000): 53-71. The term was introduced into the discourse of Hindu reformers and their conservative opponents in the Punjab of the 1870s, and only adopted by a section of Sikhs a decade later: John Zavos, “Patterns of Organisation in Turn of the Century Hinduism: an examination with reference to Punjab,” International Journal of Punjab Studies. 7 (1) (2000): 29-52.
[36] Singh, “Review;” Grewal, Historical; Murphy, “Allegories.”
[37] Naindeep Singh Chann, Rahit Literature, in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Volume I: History, Literature, Society, Beyond Punjab, Knut A. Jacobsen, Gurinder Singh Mann, Kristina Myrvold and Eleanor Nesbitt, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2017): 183-191.
[38] Man Singh Nirankari, “The Nirankaris,” The Punjab Past and Present, Vol. 7 (1973): 1-11; Bhagat Singh, “The Kuka Movement,” The Punjab Past and Present, Vol. 7 (1973): 153-161.
[39] Murphy, “Allegories,” 59, 60. The import of these criticisms is not that theory is harmful or unimportant. Indeed, theory can be used very effectively in analyzing the case of the Sikhs. In fact, it is Murphy’s theoretical analysis, combined with a more careful reading of the historical record, that reveals the problems with Oberoi’s narrative. In another example, Rajbir Judge offers a theoretical analysis of Sikh tradition as a mode of continual resistance that is not bounded by the colonial encounter: Rajbir Singh Judge, “There is No Colonial Relationship: Antagonism, Sikhism, and South Asian Studies,” History and Theory 57 (2) (2018): 195-217. In another theoretically rich account, he explores how the “invisible hand of the Indic” lurks in different ways in accounts of religious boundaries and authenticities in South Asia, but also in supposedly secular democratic formulations: Rajbir Singh Judge, “The Invisible Hand of the Indic,” Cultural Critique, 110 (Winter) (2021): 75-109. The current analysis is more elementary. Indeed, its message might be conveyed by the words of Sherlock Holmes, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” See Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” The Strand Magazine, July, London (1891).
[40] Leonard, Making; Leonard, “Transnationalism.”
[41] Barrier, “Competing.”
[42] For illustrative examples, see Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, “Poetic Rhythm and Historical Account: The Portrait of Guru Nanak Through Bhai Gurdas,” International Journal of Punjab Studies, 5 (2) (1998): 127-158; and Nirvikar Singh, “The Challenge of Translating the Guru Granth Sahib: An Illustration and Preliminary Reflections,” Sikh Research Journal, 3 (1) (2018): 1-22.
