Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations 9780739178744, 9780739178751, 2013003587

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SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY ATCLAREMONT

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SIKH AND MUSLIM ore) Non Miwa AND

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Theology

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Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict

5] 47) ii

Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations Katy P. Sian

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham ¢ Boulder * New York * Toronto * Plymouth, UK

Theology pes)

CLAREMON’ SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY Claremont, CA

Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sian, Katy P., 1984— Unsettling Sikh and Muslim conflict : mistaken identities, forced conversions, and postcolonial formations / Katy P. Sian.

pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-7874-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-7875-1 (electronic) 1. Sikhs—

Great Britain—Social conditions. 2. Group identity—Great Britain. 3. Ethnic conflict—Great Britain. 4. Sikhism—Relations—Islam. 5. Islam—Relations—Sikhism. I. Title. DA125.S57847 2013 305.6'946094 1—de23 2013003587 eh ‘ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For my Mum, Sarah, and Lucinda

Contents

Acknowledgments Prologue Introduction: “Shoot the ‘Pakis!’”: The Art of Storytelling Deconstructing Sikhs: What’s in a Name? The Development of the Sikh Diaspora A History of Conflict Explaining Conflict Sweet Seduction: “Forced” Conversion Narratives Accounting for Sikh and Muslim Conflict Sikhs and the British Ethnoscapes Sikh Not Muslim: Questioning Sikh Islamophobia = NY WH bh CSPmOANKIHAMN

109

Conclusion

icles

References

123

Index

129

About the Author

135

“Who Is a Sikh?”

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Acknowledgments

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said “‘you don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.” This seems fitting for my journey, which has had many twists and turns along the way, a journey in which I found my voice to give me that something to say. In this journey I have been blessed to have so many wonderful people by my side supporting me from beginning to end. First and foremost, thank you Mum, you have always been my inspiration and through your courage, strength and intelligence you have enabled me to write this story. I wouldn’t be here without your constant love and prayers. You mean the world to me. Sarah and Lucinda, my beautiful sisters, without your faith, love and encouragement none of this could be possible. Thank you so much for your patience and understanding. Throughout the years you have both brought me so much joy and laughter and always believed in me. I am truly grateful. I am so lucky to have such a supportive family and would also like to thank my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and cousins for always being there for me in so many different ways. My only regret is that this book will perhaps not be read by a pair of eyes in whose gaze I hope to see so much, and for whose gaze I still feel Ido so much. There are so many friends to thank and you all remind me how fortunate I am to have you in my life. Liz Ellis, you are like a sister to me. You have been with me through the ups and the downs. My best friend, I can’t thank you enough for all you have done for me. Kath Hartley, you always know how to make me smile. Thank you for being so loyal and trustworthy. The friendship you have given me over the years is so precious. I would also like to thank Nadia Abou Ragheb, Harriet Green and Carmen Lau for ongoing encouragement, kindness and words of wisdom. Leon Sealy Huggins, thank you for all the coffees (and cakes), all the banter, and of course all the ix

x

Acknowledgments

dancehall to keep my spirits lifted. Thanks to all the wonderful staff in the school of sociology and social policy at the University of Leeds, particularly Ian Law for your tremendous support over a number of years; your constant generosity, optimism and encouragement has contributed greatly to the cultivation of my intellectual passions. Thank you also to David Tyrer for all your valuable insights; I really appreciate the help and advice you have given me along the way. Marta Aratjo and Silvia Rodriguez Maeso, I am so blessed that I have been lucky enough to have you not only as my colleagues but also as my close friends. You have given me continuous encouragement and most

of all laughter; thank you for all the conversations and guidance. I am so thankful that our paths crossed. Thanks also to Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair, Rita Dhamoon, Claire Alexander, David Theo Goldberg and Avtar Brah for all your advice and assistance. Melissa Wilks and Eric Wrona, I cannot thank

you enough for believing in this project and having the faith to take it on. Thank you to all those who were interviewed for this research. I hope this book will bring something promising for my Sikh brothers and sisters. Last, and by no means least, thank you to S. Sayyid, I cannot begin to try and express how thankful I am for all that you have done for me. Words don’t seem enough. Because of you this project has been possible; you gave me the courage and the strength to find my voice and myself, and you provided the tools to prepare me for each and every step of my journey along the golden path... . Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

Prologue

“Did you ever hear about that Sikh girl?” . . . It all started at college when she first met him, she was independent, away from home. . . . This is what happens to so many of these young girls .. . I’ve seen it happen time and time again because they think they’re so grown up they start to do their own thing. ... Anyway the course she was taking had many South Asian boys on it... . They’d all go out together, watch movies, go out for something to eat... . She started to get close to one of these boys in particular; he said he was Sikh. .. . At first they were just friends, they used to discuss religion a lot, now she didn’t know much about Sikhism, like many young Sikhs today, they’re more interested in going out with friends then going to Gurdwara... The two of them began to get closer, they went out on a few dates and soon after they got into a relationship. . . . It was exciting for her at first... . He would buy her expensive gifts, treat her like a princess. .. . He got her the latest mobile phone too, but he used it to track her every move when they weren’t together. ... Later things started to get serious between them, she fell in love with him and they decided to rent a flat together. . . . It was then he revealed that he was really a Muslim, she was so confused and she didn’t

know what to do because she was so in love with him. .. . He would tell her to leave home for good and pressured her to convert to Islam. . . . He even introduced her to his family, his parents, brothers and sisters... . Her own family tried to gain contact with her a number of times, but he didn’t let her speak to them or see them... Things started to get worse. . .. He changed so much, he didn’t let her go to college anymore and he started to beat her up, when he went out he would lock her up in the small flat on her own so she couldn’t escape, she lived on bread and water. . . . He used to invite his Muslim friends over and they would abuse her, call her names like slag, drug her and laugh at her. . . . She Xi

xii

Prologue

begged him to let her go but he used to tell her if she ever tried to leave and go back home he would show her family all the photos he had taken of her... intimate photos. .. . She had no choice but to stay; she couldn’t bring shame onto the family, they’d probably disown her anyway. . . . He used to tell her how he was planning to take her to a brothel where she would work as a prostitute with the other Sikh girls. . .. Iwonder what happened to her? I think the last I heard was that she was in Pakistan. . . .

Introduction “Shoot the ‘Pakis!’”: The Art of Storytelling

So, Christmas was lovely this year. I spent it with the family and friends— lots of food and typically lots of drink, the usual. After our “traditional” Christmas spread with all the trimmings, the “young ones” retired into the living room to watch TV. “So how’s the writing going?” my cousin asked, just as a family friend entered the room. “It’s going really well,” I replied. The family friend, a middle-aged Sikh man holding a glass of whisky, quickly interrupted the conversation and asked, “What is it you’re looking at? Your uncle tells me it’s something to do with Sikhs and Muslims.” That’s not really an adequate description, so I thought I best clarify. “I’m exploring Sikh and Muslim conflict in the British diaspora.” His face lit up, he took a sip of his drink and paused, then said, “I can tell you a lot about that; it’s the Muslims who have caused all the problems in the world.” He laughed. “We need to shoot all the Pakis!” Not one to make a scene, I wryly smiled and

thanked him for his “valuable” and “informed” contribution and swiftly left the room. Stories are integral to cultures. They inform, entertain, and protect or heal communities; we tell and are told stories from childhood through to adulthood; and they show us how and what we can be. Stories help us to narrate ourselves as we identify with the different actors. Little girls dream of their prince charming to awaken them from their long slumber; little boys cheer as the hero triumphs over the evil villain; and parents feel warm inside as the

king and queen enjoy their reign over their kingdom and live happily ever after. Storytelling is an art; some fail while others who possess the gift are able to captivate, fascinate and enchant. People listen, people pay attention and, without knowing it, people are transformed in the process. This is the 1

2)

Introduction

power of the words we hear, see, speak and internalize. It is the power of language. In every story there must be a plot, different characters and, of course, the

narrator. The more shocking, the more scandalous and the more wicked the plot, the more interesting the story. The more vulnerable, the more evil and the more heroic the characters, the more powerful they become. And the more compelling, the more charismatic and the more persuasive the narrator, the more inspiring he or she becomes; yet the narrator can also choose to be unreliable, untrustworthy and unpredictable, for the narrator exists in the very language game he or she is playing.! Whichever form narrators chose to use, from cave paintings of ancient communities, to performance through dance, acting and song, to the oral traditions of the telling and the retelling passed on from one generation to the next, and to the writing inscribed on pottery, parchment or paper, the structure of the story remains. . . . Over time stories may change, adapt or modify, they may be exaggerated, things may be taken out as well as added in, but what does not change, adapt or modify is that stories give meaning, thus they shape identity. This book tells the story of the Sikh community in contemporary Britain and their antagonism with Muslims, but the research itself is also part of this complex, intricate and infinite language game. Typical of a story format, this book has a beginning, a middle and an end, perhaps even a happy ending if one wishes to interpret it that way. The story on the surface is a tale of Sikhs and their battle against the Muslim enemy, and following true to the conventions of storytelling we see articulated the bloody conflict between brave,

courageous and heroic Sikhs who emerge at a time of adversity facing oppression, cruelty and tyranny from the Muslim antagonist. This story has come to occupy a dominant position within the Sikh community as it has

been told and retold again through word of mouth, paintings and text. Unfolding throughout this book we will see how the story has been modified and adapted to fit within the landscape of contemporary postcolonial Britain—a more sexy, scandalous and shocking tale emerges in which Sikh girls become the particular targets for Muslim predatory behavior. However, the structure of this story never changes; the figure of the Muslim always remains the enemy. Stories teach us right from wrong, they instill values and beliefs and they warn us about our enemies. The tale of little red riding hood teaches little girls not to wonder off into the woods alone, just as stories within the Sikh diasporic community teach young Sikh girls about the dangers of the outside world and to trust nobody but family. This story has become institutionalized within Sikhness itself. The main objective of this book is to examine Sikh and Muslim conflict to understand how a particular story of anti-Muslimness has become central to Sikh discourse. Throughout this book I will examine how such a narrative

“Shoot the ‘Pakis!’”: The Art of Storytelling

3

has been constructed and what makes it dominant within the Sikh community. As we dig beneath the surface we uncover a tale about Sikh identity. It is a story Sikhs use to narrate themselves, and the very language drawn upon tells a story about Sikh being. However, the fixity of this narrative does not mean that the book is closed; in fact, what follows is a story that attempts to rewrite a new version of Sikhness. Telling a story requires a language. The language that I use in this book can be described as antifoundationalism. By antifoundationalism I refer to a philosophical perspective pioneered by writers such as Martin Heidegger (1962) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) and taken up by varied researchers such as Roland Barthes (1964), Michel Foucault (2002), Edward Said (1978) and Stuart Hall (1992). Antifoundationalism under its various labels is characterized by the rejection of a belief that what grounds our investigative practices is either a search for a hidden external “truth” that corresponds to reality or some matrix that can order the world itself. Antifoundationalism argues that what lies beyond our investigative practices is not some kernel of reality but other unexamined (not as yet investigated) practices. 2 In relation to the subject matter of this book, an antifoundationalist approach situates this work within a genre of writing that has emerged in the wake of Edward Said’s Orientalism. Specifically this means deconstructing, or at least subjecting to deep critical analysis, the very categories that form the staple of writing about South Asians. Thus this book has two main strands running through it; one is an exploration and an examination of the causes of the conflict between Sikhs and Muslims that will draw upon a body of empirical data that I refer to as the corpus. The corpus, which throughout this book will be defined as the totality of linguistic material collected from my research,* is composed of semi-structured interviews with thirty Sikh respondents between the ages of eighteen to forty, including male and female students, young professionals and community leaders, from Leeds, London,

Birmingham and Leicester.> Alongside semi-structured interviews, insights gained from participant observation also informs the book,°® as well as various mainstream media literature, Sikh organizational material and “rightwing” accounts sourced from the Internet. The aim of these investigative techniques is not to discover the “truth” of a phenomenon but, rather, to help

understand the meaning of a phenomenon. The different elements of the corpus can thus be seen as nodal points that help to organize the discourse around Sikh and Muslim conflict in the UK. These various nodal points provide an understanding of the way in which meaning is structured and enable us to see how this particular discourse is relayed through the constitution of subjectivities in distinct spaces. The corpus of the material generated by this research is not intended (nor is it able) to access the interior of a Cartesian subject but, rather, sets out to map a discourse.

4

Introduction

The second main strand of this book is a series of reflections that attempt to study this problem by relying upon antifoundationalism. This twin-track strategy means that this book does not offer a ready-made methodology that can be applied and used to organize its empirical material. Instead, each of the chapters attempts to entwine both theoretical and substantive concerns. The reason for choosing such an approach is perhaps arbitrary; however, it can be said that what antifoundationalism offers as a possibility is a recognition of the fundamental agency of Sikhs, and with agency comes the ability to tell an alternative story. This book provides a critical investigation into the phenomenon of SikhMuslim conflict in the British diaspora. Specifically I examine the way in which Sikhs represent themselves as being subject to attack from Muslims against the backdrop of postcolonial settlement in Britain. The contribution this book makes is fivefold; first, it brings into the public domain new material based on its semi-structured interviews, participant observation and literary analysis. Second, the book positions itself as part of a developing postcolonial analysis of British ethnic minorities, focusing in particular upon interethnic minority relations rather than relations between minority-majority.

Third, the book shows how a broadly antifoundationalist perspective can be used to conduct studies of ethnically marked populations. Fourth, the book provides the beginnings of a postorientalist approach that builds upon the critique of orientalism and indology and goes beyond its simple reversal in the form of anti-orientalism. Fifth, the book provides a new language game

in which Sikh destiny and identity can be played out within the contours of the postcolonial. Ultimately the originality of this book comes from not just its conclusion but the paths that led us to it; in other words, the mix of

antifoundationalist theorizing and the focus on interethnic relations marks out this contribution. The book is organized around nine chapters that ask the question of what is involved in Sikh-Muslim conflict, and at the same time, raise issues about

how such questions can be answered. What unifies the chapters is the central underlying question of what actually constitutes Sikh identity. The chapters to follow examine the various debates surrounding the phenomenon of the Sikh-Muslim conflict to understand what this tells us specifically about Sikh identity and Sikhness itself. That is, how do Sikhs come into being through this particular discourse? The book locates the study itself outside of a framework that is both concretely and empirically rooted; the subjects will not be used as a piece of indulgent ethnography but, rather, their histories, experi-

ences and journeys will break away from essentialist readings that only take for granted their coming into being. This work thus sets out to understand how, through a hegemonic narrative, Sikhs are able to be Sikhs against the backdrop of an unsettled postcolonial Britain.

“Shoot the ‘Pakis!’”: The Art of Storytelling

5

Chapter | introduces the central question of “Who is a Sikh?” The aim of this chapter is to begin this process of deconstructing the topic, to fundamentally critique the established framework of coloniality and in doing so situate Sikhs outside of the colonial lens. This sets the stage for the context of our story; in other words, Sikhs will be understood as a “postcolonial people” in which the gaze of the West to understand non-Western identities is destabilized. Rejecting essentialist readings of the Sikh community centred upon Sikhs as a “race” or a world religion, I move to conceptualizing Sikhs as a political formation that opens up a space to articulate their being not as the result from pre-existing common features but, rather, from the distinct articu-

lation of diverse features. Chapter 2 looks at the formation of the Sikh diaspora, which I conceptualize as an analytical rather than a descriptive category; diaspora is framed as a condition of possibility for the way in which Sikhs come into being. This chapter provides the background to examine the parameters of Sikh-Muslim conflict as it is protracted in postcolonial Britain and enables an understanding of how Sikh settlement outside the Punjab influences the development of a Sikh collective identity. The conceptualization of diaspora helps us to understand both the relationship between Sikhs in the Punjab and Sikhs in Britain as well as to see how diasporic identities unsettle the conventional ways in which a group maintains its sense of self. Before I move to the contemporary enunciation of the conflict as inflected in the diaspora, I explore in chapter 3 the historical accounts embedded within Sikh discourse to locate Muslims as a threat. Three key instances of tension are examined including Mughal tyranny, partition violence and the attack of the Golden Temple in 1984. This examination provides a prelude to understanding conflict in the current British landscape, but before we get to the current manifestations of the conflict we first need to understand the very category of conflict. Chapter 4 examines the nature of conflict itself by drawing upon a range of accounts that seek to explain the phenomenon. I examine the main ways in which the conflict between Sikhs and Muslims has been described, that is,

the ethno-religious causes, multicultural causes and/or as the symptom of youth delinquency. Such accounts have been widely adopted in both popular and academic literature, which provide us with rich empirical descriptions of the conflict. However, as valuable as these approaches may be, | prefer to interrogate an ontological understanding of conflict, that is to elaborate the central role of conflict and its relationship to the political as the site for contestation between “friends and enemies.” This will enable us to open up the space to re-evaluate the nature of Sikh and Muslim conflict within the diasporic context. The conflict between Sikhs and Muslims in the diaspora is largely represented through what I refer to as the “forced” conversions narrative, a story

6

Introduction

that articulates Sikh girls as “vulnerable victims” of “predatory” Muslim male behavior. Chapter 5 thus provides a detailed examination into the “forced” conversions narrative to examine the construction of a specific agenda thought to be in operation surrounding Muslim attempts to convert Sikh girls into Islam. This narrative is significant for understanding the conflict between Sikhs and Muslims as this particular story is hegemonic in which its internalization, re-narration and institutionalization distinguishes Sikhs from Muslims or “friends” from “enemies.” The “forced” conversions narrative as I will elucidate throughout is central to this conflict. The centrality of the “forced” conversions narrative within the British Sikh diaspora needs to be explored; to do this chapter 6 looks critically at the category of hegemony. This chapter develops the conceptual tools to account for Sikh and Muslim conflict. The concept of hegemony will inform understandings as to why this particular antagonistic narrative has remained so dominant within the Sikh community and how it has become intrinsic to the formulations of Sikh diasporic identities. The focus of this chapter is to examine how particular meanings become fixed within particular discourses. To account for Sikh and Muslim conflict I am thus concerned with the hegemonic processes in which particular anti-Muslim narratives remain dominant and in the process constitute a particular form of Sikh subjectivity. Chapter 7 focuses upon Sikhs in the UK to understand how the setting of postcolonial Britain sustains the hegemony of this conflictual relationship between a Sikh “us” and a Muslim “them.” Within this chapter I examine the ways in which ethicized communities relate to each other and also the way in which they relate to the national majority community. This will provide the space to investigate the way in which Sikhs represent themselves as being subject to attack from Muslims in the contemporary climate. The context of the UK and the impact of the war on terror are examined to explore how the figure of the Muslim enemy has been inflected within the British diaspora. I question why, within a landscape of racism, restricted autonomy and the regulation of rights, Sikhs insist upon the figure of the Muslim as representing the biggest threat to their community in the context of the UK. Central to the chapter is an examination of how Sikhs attempt to articulate themselves as a distinct community in the postcolonial condition. Chapter 8 demonstrates how the anxieties of the Sikh diasporic community have been projected through a hegemonic, anti-Muslim discourse in which the Muslim “other” has been consistently represented as the “predatory” antagonist. The problem of how to be a Sikh in the diaspora seems to find its only answer in the formulation of a Sikh identity that is increasingly seen in contrastive and conflictual terms with the Muslim community. This chapter thus examines how central Islamophobia becomes in the articulation of a distinct diasporic Sikh identity.

“Shoot the ‘Pakis!’”: The Art of Storytelling

a.

Chapter 9 brings us to the end of our journey, in which we go back to the very first question raised in chapter 1, that is, “Who is a Sikh?” The main focus of this chapter is to examine the possibility of alternative formulations of Sikhness whereby Islamophobia is not central, a discourse that does not rely upon the antagonism with Muslims but instead offers a replacement of the old hegemony with a new one in the form of a decolonization. The chapter suggests that the decolonization of Sikh identity opens up the possibility for a new language to tell new stories. But before we get to the point of telling new stories, we still have to tell the old story for perhaps one last lumen. NOTES 1. The concept of the language game was introduced first by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958) in Philosophical Investigations and refers to a combination of linguistic and extra-linguistic acts connected by family resemblance to form a unity. For details see Wittgenstein (1958), 1-9. 2. See Fish (1989) for elaboration. 3. For an example of such writing, see Ali, Kalra, and Sayyid (2006). 4. This definition is inspired by the way the later Barthes talks about the corpus in his analysis; see Barthes (1964) and Barthes (1975) for further elaboration. 5. To preserve confidentiality I refer to the interview respondents throughout the book by numbers. 6. The participant observation took place at West Yorkshire police station for the third annual meeting of association of chief police officers with the Sikh community, UK (ACPO 2008). This is a meeting between Sikhs who represent or are reflective of the Sikh communities in different parts of the UK and police officers from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). More recently, the police representatives are linked in with the National Community Tension Team (NCTT) and the Metropolitan Police (as it has led responsibility on antiterrorism for the country). The meetings are usually held three times a year with provision to call additional meetings should there be cause to do so. See chapter 8 for an in-depth discussion of the participant observation carried out.

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Chapter One

Deconstructing Sikhs What’s in a Name?

“T solemnly affirm that I am a Sikh, that I believe in Guru Granth Sahib, that I believe in the ten Gurus and that I have no other religion. .. .”! This would be one way of beginning a story about Sikhs. A Sikh is someone who can make such an affirmation, but what makes it possible to make this declaration? When we think of a Sikh what images come to mind? One of the most

common ways of identifying a Sikh is simply to point out a man with a turban and proclaim, “This is a Sikh!” Behind this most basic of ostensive definitions are descriptions that are commonly attached to the name of Sikhism, where terms such as the Punjab, the 5 Ks,? and “martial races” are

typically deployed to capture some essence of Sikhness, a substantive and permanent property that determines what a Sikh is in all possible worlds. This means that by discovering a Sikh essence we will come to know what a Sikh is, with or without turban, in and out of Punjab, with or without the 5 Ks.

The task, then, of any scholarly investigation would seem to be straightforward enough: to illuminate the vagueness by finding out the essence of what exactly a Sikh is in any time and in any place. Knowing who a Sikh is, or what Sikhism is, is a preliminary and necessary step to working out how Sikh-Muslim conflict is articulated by the Sikh community in the British context. This is the central question that will stitch this book together. This story presumes a language, not only Punjabi or English but also a conceptual vocabulary. Embedded within such narratives are ideas of causality, of identity, of history and so on; however, to tell a story of Sikhs becoming we must begin with the idea of a Sikhness.

10

Chapter 1

RETHINKING

SIKHS

If we are to deconstruct Sikhs we must first rethink the category of Asians. Throughout this book the term Asian will be replaced with that of BrAsian. That is a category that seeks to move away from an ethnography that repro-

duces ethnic essentialism (Sayyid 2006). BrAsian actively rejects the use of British as a prefix that redefines “Asian” without itself being transformed in the process. Thus BrAsian suggests that the distinction between host and

immigrants that is constitutive of the immigrant imaginary can be sustained. The immigrant imaginary refers to a series of discursive representations based around the ontological and temporal distinction between host and immigrant (Sian, Sayyid and Law 2011; Sayyid 2006). It is an analytical device beholden to orientalist and indological ways of thinking about non-Western

social phenomena and continually attempts to replace political motivations and agency with cultural, biological and other mechanistic accounts. Thus

the immigrant imaginary fixes in the colonial gaze the experiences of excolonial subjects relocated in the metropole (Sian, Sayyid and Law 2011; Sayyid 2006). The distinction S. Sayyid (2006) examines between the host community and immigrant community remains hegemonic in narrations of the settlement of ethnically marked communities in Britain. It is based on a violent hierarchy that represents the immigrant as fundamentally incompatible with the host (Sian, Sayyid and Law 2011; Sayyid 2006: 7). By focusing on the (con)fused nature of South Asian articulation with a sense of Britishness, it points to the way in which fixed ethnicities are really momentary

representations of an on-going process of identity formation (Sian, Sayyid and Law 2011; Sayyid 2006). It follows, then, that ethnicized minorities are not reflections of primor-

dial communities transplanted to Britain but, rather, constellations of social actors held together by a political logic. As political logics change so do these social constellations, and the appearance of distinct ethnic communities is an effect, not a cause, of political contestation.? Thus Sikh identity, despite its very visible manifestations (for example the turban, the kara, the kirpan),4

is seen not as the uncovering of a preexisting ethnicity but, rather, the fabrication of a specific sense of Sikhness within the diasporic setting of the UK. BrAsian identities, like other social identities, are a collection of other pos-

sible identity formations and thus may become so distinct that they no longer remain included within the ambit of what is meant by BrAsian. (For example, it could be argued that the emergence of a Muslim identity in Britain has now put a limit to the very idea of BrAsianness, as being a Muslim becomes more significant than whether a Muslim is from an African or BrAsian heritage.>) The question that can be seen as the underlying thread weaving together this tapestry is “Who is a Sikh?” This same question was presented by W. H.

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McLeod in 1989 in his book Who Is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. McLeod’s extensive work in Sikh studies attempted to uncover some sort of essence to Sikhness. His work presents an analysis of the Sikh community exploring the history and traditions of Sikhs. McLeod develops what can be described as a schema to judge the criteria by which Sikhs can be identified as Sikhs. If we are to follow McLeod’s approach the task of method would be to help filter the essential from the contingent features of what constitutes Sikhness. If, however, there is no essence to Sikhness, no feature that is

permanent against all articulations, then the question of what constitutes a Sikh cannot be answered by locating one set of features or another. Rather, the question of who is a Sikh is really a question of how Sikhs come into being. McLeod’s accounts have since been challenged and debated by contem-

porary scholars and the Sikh community. McLeod was unable to narrate Sikhs outside of a Western lens, and his writings can only offer Western insights and “expertise” to answer the question of who is a Sikh. That is, by interpreting and classifying religious texts, customs and practices, McLeod can only provide a superficial and essentialist analysis that fails to understand how Sikhs actually come into being; in other words, his analysis is unable to go beyond an ostensive definition. In presenting the same question, I depart from McLeod’s interpretation in favor of an ontological reading that attempts to understand the way in which Sikhs have been constructed as opposed to framing them as a fixed category with a particular essence. According to Harjot Oberoi (1994) the historical experiences of Sikhs have been largely silenced (Oberoi 1994: 30). Oberoi suggests that narrations

of Sikhs have persistently misrepresented them through a failure to recognize religious, spiritual and cultural diversity. For Oberoi, nineteenth-century European scholars were only concerned in their quest to establish “what Sikhism ought to be like rather than what it was like” (Oberoi 1994: 31). Conventional orientalist and indological discourse thus focus attention “upon the opposition between normative western practices and establishments against which South Asian ways of living appear as distortions and aberrations” (Sayyid 2006: 2). By adopting tropes such as caste, kinship and honor, such subjects become domesticated and in turn “help to identify South Asian settlers as essentially ‘Indian’” (Sayyid 2006: 2). Sikh discourse has also been plagued by attempts to locate Sikhs within the colonial gaze, a notion referring to the “British experience of India” (Sayyid 2006: 2). The colonial gaze is a term founded upon “a distance, a space of separation, a relationship of curiosity, that made it possible to see something as ‘a case’ a self contained object whose ‘problems’ could be measured, analysed and addressed by a form of knowledge that appears to stand outside the object and grasp it in its entirety” (Mitchell 2000: 100).

12

Chapter 1

Within Sikh studies, both popular and academic narratives have continued to view such subjects through the colonial lens. As a consequence they have often been reduced to a people “without a history”? with assumptions based upon “a tautological argument that ends up legitimising the discourse of the modern Sikh intelligentsia” (Oberoi 1994: 32). These discourses subsequently “prevent us from seeing the Sikhs as being in a world constantly constructed and reconstructed by them” (Oberoi 1994: 34). The critique of conventional studies of orientalism, indology and Sikh studies that informs the basis of this book enables us to see the dangers of reproducing the West/non-West framework. ® By challenging these hegemonic representations I am fundamentally concerned with engaging with the ontological. The subjects of study are not read as ontic; they have a history and their coming into being is no longer a product of the colonial West. This means that to establish a postorientalist discourse, the destabilization of the very framework that articulates orientalism and indology and its “other’’ is central. A postorientalist discourse cannot be characterized simply by the reversal of orientalism; rather, postorientalism signs itself by departing from the privileging of the West over the non-West and subsequently becomes a name in its own right. Rather than subjects being written in a script without autonomy, without history and without voice, postorientalism enables the actor to articulate a language that no longer locates them through the eyes of the West. In short, the story to follow is not one to validate, endorse and

corroborate the hegemonic positioning of the West; instead, it rewrites, relocates and re-marks a new space for the non-West to lucidly speak as themselves (Sian 2009b). The postorientalist critique of orientalism has both a significant and intimate relationship with the postcolonial as it is the postcolonial condition that enables us to step outside the hegemonic framework of coloniality. Postcolonial investigations are thus made possible by this critique of orientalism. A postorientalist account is only attainable in the postcolonial condition that decenters and destabilizes the hegemonic position of the West. ? This chapter looks at the different ways of thinking about Sikh identity in the context of the postcolonial. In its basic form the postcolonial refers to cultures and societies after colonial rule in different spaces and at different times. Conceptually speaking, the postcolonial is more complex, referring to the erosion or breakdown of the hegemonic West/non-West hierarchy. The West here is decentered; thus the postcolonial condition allows a new space for articulating autonomous identities that have typically been subjugated. To elaborate further, the postcolonial “is not to be understood empirically as simply referring to the conventional etchings or endings of empire as a formal regime or set of institutions, but rather conceptually as a way of narrating the deregulated presences of past economic, political and cultural colonial-

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ities transformed within the postcolonial present to naturalise and depoliticise the world order” (Sayyid and Hesse 2006: 16-17). The postcolonial, then, illustrates both the boundaries and the lack of a

complete “anterior decolonialization” by creating spaces for possible sites of contestation. The postcolonial allows the articulation of a renewed challenge and resistance to overcome the vestiges of coloniality. The postcolonial “question|s] and unsettle[s] Western practices of normalising, disavowing and depoliticising the contemporary colonial architecture of the world order” (Sayyid and Hesse 2006: 17). Where does this leave Sikhs and Sikh identity in the condition of the postcolonial? Typical accounts of Sikhs have attempted to situate them in terms of a world religion/religious organization or as a “race.” We must reject both of these answers. SIKHS AS

A WORLD RELIGION

We can withhold, for the purposes of this book, a religious answer to the question of Sikh being, not because Sikhism is not a religion but precisely because the definition of a religion as a universal category is difficult to sustain (Asad 1993; Mandair 2006: 94). The very category of religion is a Western construct and thus cannot be simply applied to account for religions of the non-West.!° Religion in this sense maintains the dominance of the global imperialist hegemonic project whereby subscribing to such a discourse “forces Sikhs to accommodate themselves to the prevailing local ideologies and policies governing the extension of rights and the entailment of responsibilities of recognized religions” (Singh and Barrier 1999: 133). Tony Ballentyne (2006) explores the implications of “contextualising Sikhism as a religion,” which has traditionally served the interests of “British

colonial knowledge” shaped by several factors: first, the certain assumptions held about religion; second, the structure of religious collectives; and third, the blueprint of Christian history (Ballentyne 2006: 41). The concept of religion thus emerges as the result of European Christian encounters with non-European practices. To elaborate, the imperial encounter sought to impose Christianity on non-Western societies. Coupled with this, the enlightenment vision of the West constituted by “rationality,” “civility” and “reason” worked to establish an empirical language to articulate a “universal” concept of religion. These processes were thus central “in shaping British understandings of cultural variation, religious differences, and the human condition”

(Ballentyne 2006: 42). Within this narrative “British commentators framed Sikhism as an improvement of the increasingly degenerate forms of belief and ritual that they believed to characterise popular Hinduism” (Ballentyne 2006: 44). Thus, what emerges are colonial attempts to articulate a systemat-

14

Chapter 1

ic discourse to categorize and redefine “other” religions against the European “enlightened” model of Christianity. Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair (2006) further examines the implications of deploying the category of religion to identify non-Europeans. For Mandair, the signifier religion works to recycle and instill the colonial relationship of West/non-West, “self/other” (Sian 2011b: 113). He points out that “recent thinking about the question of religion, as opposed to assuming ready-made definitions of it, suggests there is a much stronger, and often invisible, connection between religion, enunciation and subjectivity than is normally recognised” (Mandair 2006: 94). Mandair thus argues that it is fundamental to question this link in order to disrupt the relationship between the “empirical and the imperial” (Mandair 2006: 94). The work of Hegel is worth noting, in particular his focus on constructions of India and his influence in legitimizing the hegemonic discourse of religion to maintain the “self/other” distinction. The idea of Hegel as one of the main authors of a colonized worldview is well established in the literature.!! Hegel provides a philosophical encapsulation of the various disparate experiences arising out of Europe’s engagement with non-European worlds. Hegel’s lectures on world history, specifically, can be seen as a founding text of the European colonial world. In these lectures Hegel reorganizes all historical development so that it culminates in the European experi-

ence. Along the way, non-Europeans are placed in various positions of subordination; each non-European civilization represents both a specific set of cultural and historical developments and a stage toward European Christian civilization. India has a place within this schema, which sees it more or less as a land of spirituality and excessive religiosity. It follows that Indian communities are to be marked by this discourse (Mandair 2006: 97). This reading of Hegel points to his central role not only in formulating the various colonial subjectivities but also in influencing their extensions within the postcolonial context. Sikhs, along with other ethnicized communities, continue to be seen primarily in religious terms or as communities in which religion is central despite their migration and settlement globally. Thus the idea of Sikhs as primarily a religious community, accessible via techniques of the anthropology of religion, is one of the major ways in which Sikh identity is conceptualized. This idea of Sikhs as a religious community continues to be empiricist and essentialist, where communal or individual Sikh behavior can be accounted for by reference to their insertion into a schema that Hegel would instantly recognize. Mandair’s suggestion is for Sikhs to refuse to translate their sense of spirituality into indological categories. Thus Sikhism is simply Sikhism; it is not comparable, traceable or reducible—it is what it is—and not accessible except through the interior. The notion of Sikhs as a religious community, whereby religion is established in contrast to European rationality, does not

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allow us to investigate sufficiently the process of Sikh identification outside the West/non-West framework. The culturalist and essentialist pitfalls of such an approach are all too evident. In other words, by continuing to simply state that Sikhs are primarily a religious community without examining the processes that led to their constitution and maintenance we are condemned to play out the colonial drama in a postcolonial setting (Sayyid 2006: 31). SIKHS AS A “RACE” David Theo Goldberg’s conceptualization of race as articulated in The Racial State (2002) is important when considering the Sikh case. For Goldberg, race is central to the formation of the modern nation-state; “race marks and orders

the modern nation-state, and so state projects, more or less from its point of conceptual and institutional emergence” (Goldberg 2002: 4). Goldberg argues that the category of race was integral to the project of modernity and the emergence of the West. This can be seen to resonate with the Sikh case whereby race was mobilized to organize and classify the population as racially distinct. This was illustrated most clearly during the nineteenth century, when British colonial representations of Sikhs as belonging to the “martial

races” became prominent. “Martial race theory” was based on the belief by many British colonial officials that particular “races” in India, including Sikhs, Punjabis, Pathans and Gurkhas, were innately more superior fighters compared to other groups. The notion that certain social groups or “races” in India, namely the Sikhs, Punjabis, Pathans, and Gurkhas, were inherently better warriors than others was based on the belief, popular among British soldiers in the nineteenth century, that in India, “certain clans and classes can bear arms; the others have not the physical courage necessary for the warrior”. The belief that “martial” qualities were inherent in an individual belonging to a particular group eventually developed into a racist recruitment doctrine known as the martial race theory. (Yong 2002: 28)

The ideology of “martial races” mirrored wider British assumptions of Indian society. The British identified the significance of the Indian caste system in classifying particular groups along the lines of ability and aptitude, and thus these divisions were heightened and intensified by the British (Yong 2005: 60). The perceptions of colonial British officers were significant in determining the schema, definition and selection of what constituted a “martial race” (Yong 2005: 62). As the British army reallocated its focus from domestic issues of the Raj to protection from external threats, officials put more energy into maximizing the strength of its army. This meant that recruitment became centered upon a few chosen groups. This recruitment strat-

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Chapter 1

egy soon became embedded in the “martial race” ideology (Yong 2005: 69). Yong argues: The identification of local collaborating groups, or indigenous allies, and their incorporation into the structures of colonial rule was an essential strategy adopted by European rulers in their subjugation and control of non-European societies. Of the different types of collaborating groups—tuling classes, landlords, and merchants—the most important were those that served in the imperial armed forces, given that military power was often the underpinning of the creation and maintenance of imperial authority. (Yong 2002: 7)

Sikhs had a place within this strategy. Although the British defeated Sikhs twice in the mid-nineteenth century in the first and second Anglo-Sikh wars (1845-1846 and 1848-1849), commanders were full of praise and admiration for the courage and bravery presented by Sikh soldiers (Yong 2005: 61). Sikhs were seen as a “warriorlike” collective with military efficiency and Europeanlike organization and training. They were thus regarded in high esteem as a “martial” people (Yong 2005: 61). As “martial race theory” became established, recruitment into the colonial army was increasingly guided by manuals, textbooks and anthropological studies based entirely upon imperial and racial stereotypes whereby particular groups were marked out quite literally as possessing inherent qualities such as courage, masculinity, loyalty and bravery that made them more likely to be chosen for the army. As Yong points out, “Couched as ethnographical and anthropological studies, these handbooks were often nothing more than observations based on colonial stereotypes and racism that imbibed an extreme form of cultural and environmental determinism. These handbooks justified their choice recruits by attributing to them inherent qualities such as masculinity, fidelity, bravery and loyalty” (Yong 2005: 65). In these manuals it was often advised that, in relation to Sikhs, “in judging the values of tribes which supplied converts to Sikhism in the time of Guru Gobind Singh, who in fact formed the Singh people, . . . those tribes who, though they now supply converts to Sikhism, did not so then, cannot be considered (or it is inadvisable to consider) as true Sikhs” (Yong 2005: 72).

This illustrates the dominant role of colonial discourses in deciding what constituted a “true” Sikh (rather than Sikhs themselves), and over decades the British were able to carefully cultivate and secure the loyalty and allegiance of many Sikhs through “special considerations as a martial race” (Yong 2005: 289). Serving in the British army and being represented as the “favored” sons of the Empire it is not surprising that the Sikh diaspora occupies a complex, and somewhat intimate, association with Britain. Initially, the Sikh diaspora developed as a by-product of Sikh incorporation into the British imperial world system. Subsequently, in the wake of the Second World War and associated reconstruction labor shortages, as well as the

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collapse of the British Raj following India’s independence in 1947, many Sikhs were prompted to migrate and settle in the UK. However, members of the Sikh community were soon to learn that they were not necessarily welcomed with open arms in the UK, despite their long service and loyalty. In the earlier phases of migration Sikh men often found it easier to get employed if they took off their turbans. But in 1959 when a Sikh was banned from wearing his turban in the workplace the issue became political as the Sikh community launched a number of campaigns and protests to gain the right to wear turbans at work (Brah 2006: 38). A more recent example highlighting the struggles and shifts in multicultural policy can be demonstrated with the case of a Sikh pupil’s expulsion from a school in Wales for wearing the kara in November 2007. In July 2008 the student won her battle as it was concluded that the school was guilty of indirect discrimination under race relations—Sikhs are a race—and equality laws. !2 Sikhs are protected, like Jews, under the Race Relations Act (1976), which states that it is unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of color, race

and nationality, and on the grounds of ethnic or national origins, in the fields of employment, education, housing, and the provision of goods, facilities and services. The protection of Sikhs under Britain’s Race Relations Act marks Sikhs out once again as occupying a racial status, as it is inscribed literally that “Sikhs are a race.” The classification of Sikhs as a race, however, is not

so easy to apply outside of the British Isles. The idea that Sikhs constitute a common race is problematic for a number of reasons. Not only does it fly in the face of the general critique of very notion of “race,” but also it does not

allow for the possibility of Gora Sikhs or Sindhi Sikhs who cannot be said to belong to the same descent group as Punjabi Sikhs.!? Attempts to classify Sikhs along racial lines remain largely futile and ineffectual when narrating Sikhs as a people. While it may be useful to see the formation of people in terms of a distinct set of features, there is no reason to assume that such

features need to coalesce around a racial essence. SIKHS AS A POLITICAL COMMUNITY I have critiqued the notion of Sikhs as constituting a religious community or a race. Instead I want to argue that Sikhs constitute a people and as such they possess a different economy of identification. This would mean that we have to insert Sikh identity into debates regarding the making of a people. One of the difficulties we encounter when discussing the process by which a people come into being is the discrepancy between analytical and ordinary understandings. For members of ethnic groups, very often they present their ethnic identity as being intrinsic and given and see any attempt to describe it as constructed as tantamount to suggesting that the ethnic group is inauthentic

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Chapter 1

and their membership an act of bad faith. It is thus important to recognize that seeing the process of ethnic formation as a social, rather than a natural, phenomenon does not imply that ethnic identity is itself distorted or insignificant to the members in it. The problem that Sikhs have faced since their emergence has been represented by their incorporation into larger and longer established traditions: Indic, Islamicate, and Western. The organization of Sikhs along the lines of Western-inspired schemas, such as religious and racial, is not only of academic interest, for such understandings both facilitate and condition practices. Throughout this chapter I have examined the problems associated with such attempts to classify Sikhs within racial and religious categories. This book argues for a postcolonial reading of Sikhs in order to disrupt the Western gaze. Such a reading frames Sikhs as a political community; that is, they are no longer situated within a Western lens. In order to facilitate the elimination of the cardinal division between the West and non-West I find it more useful to argue that the idea of an ethnic group is not homogenous and its unity comes not from preexisting common features but, rather, from the articulation of diverse elements. What unifies

these elements can be seen as a master-signifier (Sayyid 2003; Zizek 1989). As such I am more concerned with examining the meanings attached to the master signifier that is Sikh, and through the miasma that tries to mystify, distort and naturalize our understanding; this journey will attempt to reveal what is in the name Sikh as a political question. In other words the question “Who is a Sikh?” is an ontological question that is never closed; it is an ongoing process of construction and reconstruction. Throughout this book Sikhs will not be simply subjected to ethnographic or empirical investigations; rather, | am more concerned with an answer that lies in an understanding of Sikhs as a politically constructed, postcolonial community. The next chapter explores the consequences of Sikhs as being framed by a postcolonial diasporic context to elaborate the question of Sikh

identity and the significance of their conflict with Muslims in the UK. NOTES 1. This is the legal definition found in the Gurdwara Act 1925, Section 3 (9). See Bakhshi (2008: 8). 2. The Five Ks refer to the five items worn by many Sikhs, including kes (uncut hair), kirpan (sword or dagger), kara (steel bangle), kachh (a pair of pants), and kangha (wooden comb). 3. This in contrast to many anthropological accounts that see in Britain’s ethnic minorities the uninterrupted continuation of ethnic formations. Thus, tropes such as caste become unproblematic tools for the analysis of BrAsians. The work of Pnina Werbner exemplifies this approach, particularly her book The Migration Process: Capital, Gifts and Offerings among Pakistanis (1990).

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4. Interestingly, it is actually male Sikhs who are most often the visible markers of Sikhism rather than Sikh women. This contrasts with other cases in which it is usually the female members of ethnic communities who are most likely to be marked through dress and are thus regarded as being representative of the community’s ethnic identities, such as hijabi Muslim women. 5. This discussion is elaborated on in chapter 7 exploring Sikhs in the UK. 6. For an excellent account debating both the significance and implications of McLeod’s work, see Mandair (2009). 7. For elaboration of the idea of people without a history, see Wolf (1982). 8. It is important to note that contemporary works in Sikh studies offer alternative readings to critique mainstream orientalist/indological accounts; for example, see Mandair (2009) and Puar (2007). 9. See chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of the colonial and the postcolonial. 10. For further elaboration see Sian (2014a, 2014b). 11. For details see Bernasconi (1998). 12. For full details refer to Gillan (30 July 2008). 13. By Gora Sikhs I mean white Sikhs, that is, those of recent European heritage who have converted to Sikhism; one of the largest community of Gora Sikhs is to be found in the United States. Sindhi Sikhs refers to a large community of Sikhs in the Sindhi province of Pakistan.

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