Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age

Giorgio Shani

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415586108
• eBook ISBN: 9781134101887
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age examines the construction of a Sikh national identity in post-colonial India and the diaspora and explores the reasons for the failure of the movement for an independent Sikh state: Khalistan. Based on a decade of research, it is argued that the failure of the movement to bring about a sovereign, Sikh state should not be interpreted as resulting from the weakness of the 'communal' ties which bind members of the Sikh 'nation' together, but points to the transformation of national identity under conditions of globalization. Globalization is perceived to have severed the link between nation and state and, through the proliferation and development of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), has facilitated the articulation of a transnational 'diasporic' Sikh identity. It is argued that this 'diasporic' identity potentially challenges the conventional narratives of international relations and makes the imagination of a post-Westphalian community possible. Theoretically innovative and interdisciplinary in approach, it will be primarily of interest to students of South Asian studies, political science and international relations, as well as to many others trying to come to terms with the continued importance of religious and cultural identities in times of rapid political, economic, social and cultural change.

1
Introduction

Rethinking Sikh nationalism in a global age

The appointment of the first Sikh prime minister of India, ironically one instigated by the daughter-in-law of the woman who ordered the infamous storming of the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar in June 1984,¹ provides an opportune moment to reflect upon Sikh national identity. The twenty-odd years since the military action, codenamed ‘Operation Blue Star’, designed to eliminate a band of armed Sikh militants taking refuge in the holiest shrine in Sikhism have seen the rise and fall of a separatist movement dedicated to the achievement of an independent Sikh state: Khalistan. Although this movement was unsuccessful, there is evidence to show that it enjoyed the support of a significant number of Sikhs in the Indian state of the Punjab (Pettigrew 1995; Gurharpal Singh 2000) and in the ‘diaspora’ (Tatla 1999; Axel 2001). What then can account for first the strength and then the ‘strange death of Sikh ethno-nationalism’ (Gurharpal Singh 2004)?

Generally speaking, four or five different approaches to this question may be identified. The first approach attributes the rise of Sikh nationalism to the coherence of a religiously and culturally defined ethnie (H. Deol 2000; Gurharpal Singh 2000) and accounts for the decline of Sikh militancy in the Punjab as primarily a traumatic reaction to the ‘crescendo of state led violence’ orchestrated by the Indian state (Gurharpal Singh 2004). The second approach considers Sikh identity to have been ‘invented’ in the colonial period (Kapur 1986; Oberoi 1994) and Sikh nationalism itself to have been primarily a reaction to state-led violence and to the ruthless centralization of political power in India by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi (Brass 1991). A variant of this approach sees Sikh ethno-nationalism essentially in socio-economic terms as an ideology propagated by rich, capitalist farmers to unite the rural Sikh masses under their hegemony (Purewal 2000). The ‘death’ of Sikh ethno-nationalism is attributed to the readjustment of relations between central and state governments and the liberalization of the Indian economy. A related approach sees modern Sikh identity as a ‘construction’ of colonial Orientalism (Fox 1985) and Sikh nationalism, in Partha Chatterjee’s words, as ‘derivative discourse’ (Chatterjee 1996 [1993]) or even a ‘pathology’ of modernity (Fox 1996). Finally, many scholars have followed the Indian state in considering Sikh nationalism to be primarily a ‘long-distance’ phenomenon (Anderson 1992). Sikhs settled overseas, particularly in advanced capitalist societies such as Canada, the US and the UK, are seen to constitute a ‘diaspora’, mobilized for the achievement of sovereign statehood (Tatla 1999; Axel 2001).

It will be argued that all of the approaches outlined above are problematic: the first essentializes Sikh identity; the second ‘reduces’ identity to a single causal principle and is, furthermore, unable to account for continuity within the Sikh tradition; the third reproduces the Orientalist discourse it is attempting to critique, whilst the final approach conflates the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘diaspora’. It will be argued, instead, that a more comprehensive approach is needed: one which accounts for both continuity and change in Sikh narratives and, furthermore, takes into account the global dimensions of Sikh identity.

Ethno-symbolist approaches

The first approach attributes the strength of Sikh ethno-religious nationalism to the coherence of a religiously and culturally defined community and accounts for the decline of Sikh militancy in the Punjab as primarily a traumatic reaction to the ‘crescendo of state led violence’ orchestrated by the Indian state and the Indian National Congress (INC) in particular (Gurharpal Singh 2000, 2004). From this perspective, the Sikh community or qaum corresponds to A.D. Smith’s definition of a politicized ethnie, or nation. For Smith, an ethnie is defined as a ‘a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories and one or more elements of a common culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least amongst elites’ (A.D. Smith 1999:13).

The Sikh ethnie share common ancestry myths dating back to the founding of the Khalsa in 1699 and historical memories of martyrdom and persecution under successive Mughal, British and Indian rulers. Although Punjabi is spoken by Sikh, Hindu and Muslim in East and West Punjab alike, the Sikh scriptures are written in the Gurumukhi script particular to Sikhs. Sikhs following the edicts of the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, are enjoined to keep their hair, including facial hair, long (kes); carry a comb (kanga); wear knee-length breeches (kach); wear a steel bracelet on the right hand (kara); and carry a sword or dagger (kirpan). Those who hold these five symbols of Sikh identity are known as Kes-dhari Sikhs. Those who don’t are known as Sahajdhari Sikhs: ‘slow adopters’ who would eventually progress towards full participation in the Khalsa (McLeod 1989:96). Finally, for the Sikhs, the Punjab may be equated with what A.D. Smith terms the ancestral land where, ‘in the shared memories of its inhabitants, the great events that formed the nation took place’ (A.D. Smith 1996:383).

This ethno-symbolist view of the Sikh nation is reflected in the recent work of Sikh scholars as well as in the nationalist narratives in the Punjab as articulated by actors operating within the Sikh political system. In Religion and Nationalism in India: The Case of the Punjab (2000), Harnik Deol illustrates how the origins of modern Sikh national consciousness (1947–1995) lie in the historical roots of Sikh communal consciousness (1469–1947). For Deol, a specifically Sikh ethnic identity based upon the Sikh religious tradition and Punjabi language pre-dates colonial rule. Consequently, the introduction of print capitalism in the colonial period merely ‘energized’ the existing tendencies towards differentiation between the diverse religiolinguistic communities of the Punjab rather than, as in Benedict Anderson’s formulation, created a radically different consciousness (H. Deol 2000:90). Like Deol, Gurharpal Singh believes modern Sikh identity to be ‘remarkably cohesive’ (Gurharpal Singh 2000:87), having its roots in a Jat Punjabi ethnie, ‘a sacred text and religious tradition dating from Guru Nanak’ (Gurharpal Singh 2000:78). Central to this ethno-nationalist narrative is the territorialization of Sikh socio-political identity in the homeland of the Punjab. As early as 1946, the SGPC committed itself to the ‘goal of a Sikh state’ and, therefore, the territorialization of the Sikh qaum or ‘nation’. The Sikh people needed a state of their own to ‘preserve the main Sikh shrines, Sikh social practices, Sikh self-respect and pride, Sikh sovereignty and the future prosperity of the Sikh people’ (SGPC 1946).

However, it is argued that this approach, although convincing in its analysis of the strategies of violent and hegemonic control adopted by the Indian state, essentializes Sikh identity and ignores the voices of those in the Sikh qaum critical of territorialized nationalist narratives. Identities are multiple, subjective and infinitely contested. Communal identities are not ascribed at birth but are adopted, rejected, reinterpreted, negotiated, imagined and, in certain circumstances, invented. In multiethnic states, ‘new’ identities, such as Black, White, European, Asian or Indian, coexist with ‘older’ identities based on language, religion and culture (S. Hall 1997). In such circumstances, identity becomes, in Stuart Hall’s words, a ‘moveable feast’ which is ‘formed and transformed continuously in relation to the ways we are represented or addressed in the cultural systems which surround us’ (S. Hall 1992:277).

Identification may be understood, following Lacan, as the ‘transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image’, to which Lacan gives the term imago (Lacan 1977:2). Lacan argued that identification first takes place when the child is between six and eighteen months and first recognizes a reflection of itself in a mirror. This image, however, is alienating. The ‘specular’ image of the child does not correspond to the identity of the child but comes to the child ‘from the outside’. The mirror-state ‘situates the agency of the ego, before its social determination, in a fictional direction’ (Lacan 1977:2). Thus, for Lacan, identity is not inherent within the subject but comes into being ‘from the place of the other’. It is, therefore, a ‘fictional’ construct: all identities are ‘imaginary’ based on the fundamental misrecognition (méconnaissance) of the child with its imago. The subject and the social order in which the subject finds a place are both in a continuous process of becoming. Both are always in a process of formation.

It follows that the identity of the collective subject, the community, society or nation, cannot be fixed by a ‘primordial attachment’² such as language, religion or ethnicity, but is too in a process of becoming. Although ethnosymbolists are correct to point out that ‘religious’ traditions pre-date colonialism, ethnicized religious communities in South Asia are relatively recent phenomena and their claims to primordiality are based upon an appropriation and reinterpretation of colonial categories. As will be argued later, the religious and cultural homogeneity upon which ethno-symbolists based their claims for Sikh ‘nationhood’ is itself of recent origin, a product of elite manipulation (Kapur 1986; Brass 1991), a reflection of colonial Orientalism (Fox 1985; Dusenbery 1999) or both (Oberoi 1994).

Instrumentalist approaches

The second approach considers Sikh identity as it is known today to have been ‘invented’ by Sikh elites during the colonial period. Particular attention has been paid to the activities of the Singh Sabha movement in the late nineteenth century and their elucidation of a Tat Khalsa discourse which became hegemonic in the twentieth century (Kapur 1986; Oberoi 1994; Barrier 2004a, 2004b). By far the most impressive account of the rise of a Tat Khalsa discourse is provided by Harjot Oberoi’s The Construction of Religious Boundaries (1994), which despite its sophisticated use of constructivist and post-structuralist theory appears to support the instrumentalist thesis. For Oberoi:

In the late nineteenth-century a growing body of Sikhs took part in a systematic campaign to purge their faith of religious diversity, as well as what they saw as Hindu accretions and as a Brahmanical stranglehold over their rituals. The result was a fundamental change in the nature of the Sikh tradition. From an amorphous entity it rapidly turned into a homogenous community.

(Oberoi 1994:420–421)

However, for instrumentalists, it is post-1984 Sikh nationalism, and in particular the movement for a separate Sikh state, which, to paraphrase Ernest Gellner, engendered the Sikh nation (Gellner 1983:55). Sikh militancy itself is seen to be primarily a reaction to state-led violence and to the ruthless centralization of political power in India by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi (Brass 1991). There are two variants of the instrumentalist position which purport to account for the emergence of a Sikh nationalist movement within India. One school of thought has stressed the primacy of the centralizing tendencies of the national government in Delhi and the post-Nehruvian leadership in alienating the Sikh community (Brass 1991). Another complementary approach has emphasized the role of economic factors and, in particular, the effects of the Green Revolution in making the emergence of a new type of politics possible (Narang 1983; Purewal 2000).

The ‘death’ of Sikh ethno-nationalism is attributed to the readjustment of relations between central and state governments which followed the decline of INC hegemony within the Indian political system and the rise of a loose federation of regional parties, including the Badal faction of the SAD, which has helped keep the centralizing tendencies of the centre in check. A variant of this approach sees Sikh ethno-nationalism essentially in socio-economic terms as an ideology propagated by rich, capitalist farmers to unite the rural Sikh masses under their hegemony (Gill and Singhal 1984; Gopal Singh 1984; Narang 1986; Purewal 2000). For Shinder Purewal, Sikh ethno-nationalism is a by-product of the struggle between the Sikh ‘kulaks’ and the predominately Hindu commercial and industrial bourgeoisie of India. Sikhism had become ‘an ideological weapon of the kulaks to build a “common” bond among Sikhs of all classes and to build them under their command’ (Purewal 2000:73).

In the name of Sikhism, the Kulaks seek to strengthen their domination over the home market of Punjab either by demanding the transfer of all jurisdictions except communications, currency, defence, and foreign affairs to the provinces, or by asserting complete independence of India.

(Purewal 2000: viii)

Since the demands of this new Sikh elite were primarily material and centred on greater access to the world market for their mainly agricultural produce, it follows that the decline of Sikh ethno-nationalism can be explained in terms of the transition to a market economy which followed on from the economic reforms which the then finance minister and current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, inaugurated in 1991.

It is argued that both the instrumental approaches outlined above are reductionist in that they seek to reduce the complexity of Sikh ethnonationalism to a single causal principle: the internal dynamics of the Indian political system or the impact of the ‘Green Revolution’ upon agriculture in the Indian state of Punjab where most Sikhs live. Furthermore, ‘instrumentalist’ approaches are unable to account for the persistence of Sikh nationalism today and for its continued salience for, in many cases, wealthy young Sikhs settled in Western, capitalist societies. No attempt is made to account for what Walker Connor termed the ‘irrational’ nature of the ethno-national bond: the strength and depth of feeling of belonging to an ethnic or national community which cuts across different classes (Connor 1994). Nor is there a concerted attempt to explain just how the consciousness of belonging to a religious and cultural community which included adherents from many different classes and ‘castes’ was constructed over time and developed into a political consciou...

Table of contents

• Routledge advances in South Asian studies
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 From panth to qaum
• 3 The territorialization of the qaum
• 4 From Khalistan to Punjabiat
• 5 ‘The territorialization of memory’
• 6 The politics of recognition
• 7 Beyond Khalistan?
• Conclusion
• Appendix Full questionnaire results (India)
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index