Young Sikhs in a global world : negotiating traditions, identities and authorities

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

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Young Sikhs in a Global World Negotiating Traditions, Identities and Authorities

Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen

University of Bergen, Norway Kristina Myrvold

Linnaeus University, Sweden

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First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold 2015 Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Young Sikhs in a global world : negotiating traditions, identities and authorities / Edited by Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-5696-0 (hardcover) 1. Sikh diaspora. 2. Sikh youth. I. Jacobsen, Knut A., 1956- editor. II . Myrvold, Kristina, editor. DS432.5.Y68 2015 305.235088’2946--dc23 ISBN 9781472456960 (hbk) ISBN 9781315546018 (ebk)

2015000825

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Contents List of Figures    List of Tables    Notes on Contributors  

Introduction: Young Sikhs in a Global World   Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold

vii ix xi 1

Part I: Family and Home 1 2 3 4

Family Values: The Impact of Family Background on the Religious Lives of Young British Sikhs    Jasjit Singh

15

Young Sikhs in Finland: Feeling at Home Nowhere, Everywhere, in Between and Beyond    Laura Hirvi

35

Punjabi Youth in Northern Italy: The Family, Belonging and Freedom    Meenakshi Thapan

51

Punjabi across Generations: Language Affiliation and Acquisition among Young Swedish Sikhs    Kristina Myrvold

71

Part II: Representation and Gender 5 6

The Impossible Hybridity of Hair: Kesh, Gender and the Third Space    Nicola Mooney Marking the Female Sikh Body: Reformulating and Legitimating Sikh Women’s Turbaned Identity on the World Wide Web    Doris R. Jakobsh

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97

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vi

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7 8

Young Sikhs and Literature: Identity Formations in Sikh Creative Writing in Norway    Knut A. Jacobsen

149

Becoming Men in the Global Village: Young Sikhs Reenacting Bhangra Masculinities    Anjali Gera Roy

167

Part III: Reflexivity and Translation  9

Beyond Code-Switching: Young Punjabi Sikhs in Britain   Kaveri Qureshi

10

Young Sikhs in Italy: A Plural Presence for an Intergenerational Dialogue    Barbara Bertolani

209

London Sikh Youth as British Citizenry: A Frontier of the Community’s Global Identity?    Gurbachan Singh Jandu

231

Reflexivity: Language, Power and Capital When Researching Sikhs    Bikram Singh Brar

261

11 12

Glossary    Index  

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191

275 281

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List of Figures 1.1

Main sources of guidance in life according to online survey respondents  

19

4.1

Perceived mother tongue/s among Sikhs in the 2009 survey  

75

7.1

Book covers of the autobiographies Jeg er Prableen by Prableen Kaur, Min annerledeshet, min styrke by Loveleen Rihel Brenna and the autobiographical novel Ung mann i nytt land by Romeo Gill  

151

Mr Chaz Singh, political official figure   Raj Birk, special constable   Luke Sital-Singh, British-born singer and songwriter    Sikh youth identity “embodiment”  

241 243 249 252

11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4

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List of Tables 1.1 1.2

The British Sikh population by locality   Sikh migration by caste  

20 21

2.1

Time of immigration and age of interviewed young Sikhs  

38

4.1

Overview of interviews with Swedish Sikh youth about the Punjabi language  

79

10.1 Social characteristics of the youth interviewed  

214

11.1 Ballard’s dimensions in relation to Sikh youth as citizenry  

236

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Notes on Contributors Barbara Bertolani is PhD in Sociology and Adjunct Professor at the University of Molise (Italy), where she teaches Sociology and Economic Sociology. She is a member of the LabRel (Research Laboratory on Religions in Italy) at the University of Padua. From 2008 to 2012 she participated in the national research project “Religious Pluralism in Italy”, funded by the Italian government. Bertolani’s research focuses on Sikhs in Italy, transnational Sikh families and cultural and religious identity of second generation Sikhs. Her recent publications include “Transnational Sikh Marriages in Italy” (Sikhs Across Borders, Bloomsbury, 2012), “Religious Belonging and New Ways of Being ‘Italian’ in the Self-Perception of Second-Generation Immigrants in Italy” (with F. Perocco, Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe, Brill, 2013) and “The Sikhs in Italy: A Growing Heterogeneous and Plural Presence” (Testing Pluralism, Brill, 2013). Bikram Singh Brar is PhD in Sociology and Social Psychology from the University of Bradford (UK). His PhD dissertation entitled The Educational and Occupational Aspirations of Young Sikh Adults: An Ethnographic Study of the Discourses and Narratives of Parents, Teachers and Young Adults in One London School, explored how young Sikh adults constructed their future aspirations, which resources they drew upon when doing so, and the role their parents and teachers had to play. In addition, Brar’s research focuses upon constructions of British Sikh identities and, in particular, how they were intersected by gender, social class and caste, were constructed and reconstructed according to social and cultural contexts, and delineated by shifting power relations. Anjali Gera Roy is a professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. She has published a hundred essays in literary, film and cultural studies, authored a book on African fiction, edited an anthology on the Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka and co-edited another on the Indo-Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry. Her publications include The Cinema of Enchantment: Perso-Arabic Genealogies of the Hindi Masala Film (Orient Blackswan, 2015) and Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond (Ashgate, 2010). She has co-edited The Travels of Indian Cinema: From Bombay to LA (together with Chua Beng Huat, Oxford University Press, 2012) and Partitioned Lives: Narratives of Home,

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Displacement and Resettlement (together with Nandi Bhatia, Pearson Longman, 2008) as well as edited The Magic of Bollywood: At Home and Abroad (SAGE, 2012) and Imagining Punjab, Punjabi and Punjabiat in the Transnational Era (Routledge, 2015). Laura Hirvi is PhD in Ethnology who works as the Director of the Finnish Institute in Berlin, Germany. Her dissertation, Identities in Practice: A TransAtlantic Ethnography of Sikh Immigrants in Finland and California (SKS Publishing House, 2013), examined and contrasted the ways in which Sikh immigrants and their descendants negotiate their identities through the practice they perform in everyday life. Previous publications by Hirvi include “Multi-local Fieldwork amongst Sikhs with an Immigrant Background: Reaching the Offline via the Online” (Where Is the Field?, SKS Publishing House, 2012), “Sikhs in Finland: Migration Histories and Work in the Restaurant Sector” (Sikhs in Europe, Ashgate, 2011), and “The Sikh Gurdwara in Finland: Negotiating, Maintaining and Transmitting Immigrants’ Identities” (South Asian Diaspora, 2010). Knut A. Jacobsen is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Bergen. His research interests include Samkhya and Yoga, pilgrimage in India, Sikhism and various dimensions of religious pluralism in South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. He is author and editor of around 30 books and numerous articles in journals and edited volumes on different aspects of religions and religious pluralism in South Asia and in the South Asian diasporas. His books include Prakriti in Samkhya-Yoga: Material Principle, Religious Experience, Ethical Implications (Peter Lang, 1999; Indian edition, 2002), Kapila: Founder of Samkhya and Avatara of Vishnu (Munshiram Manoharlal, 2008) and Pilgrimage in the Hindu Tradition: Salvific Space (Routledge, 2013). Other recent publications include the edited volumes South Asians in the Diaspora: Histories and Religious Traditions (Brill, 2004), Theory and Practice of Yoga: Essays in Honour of Gerald James Larson (Brill, 2005), South Asian Religions on Display: Religious Processions in South Asia and in the Diaspora (Routledge, 2008), South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America (Ashgate, 2008), Modern Indian Culture and Society (Routledge, 2009), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations (Ashgate, 2011, with Kristina Myrvold), Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices among European Sikhs (Bloomsbury, 2012, with Kristina Myrvold) and Yoga Powers: Extraordinary Capacities Attained through Meditation and Concentration (Brill, 2012). Jacobsen is the Editor in Chief of the six volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Brill, 2009–14), Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism Online and Editor (with Gurinder Singh Mann, Kristina Myrvold and Eleanor Nesbitt) of the forthcoming Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism.

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Notes on Contributors

xiii

Doris R. Jakobsh is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Acting Director, Women’s Studies at the University of Waterloo in Canada. She has degrees from the University of Waterloo, Harvard University and the University of British Columbia and is the author of Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity (Oxford University Press, 2003, 2005) and Sikhism (University of Hawaii Press, 2011). Jakobsh has also edited Sikhism and Women: History, Texts and Experience (Oxford University Press, 2010) and World Religions – Canadian Perspectives: Eastern Traditions and World Religions – Canadian Perspectives: Western Traditions (Nelson, 2013). Recent journal articles and book chapters include “Offline Politics/Online Shaming: Honour Codes, Modes of Resistance and Responses to Sikh Gurdwara Rolitics” (Diaspora, 2014), “3HO/Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere: The ‘Forgotten’ New Religious Movement?” (Religion Compass, 2008), “Gender in Sikh Traditions” (Oxford Handbook on Sikh Studies, Oxford University Press, 2014), “The Sikhs in Canada: Culture, Religion and Radicalization” (Religion, Radicalization and Securitization in Canada and Beyond, University of Toronto Press, 2014), “Sikhism and Women” (Women and Religious Traditions, Oxford University Press, 2014), “‘Sikhizing the Sikhs’: The Role of ‘New Media’ in Historical and Contemporary Identity Construction within Global Sikhism” (Sikhs Across Borders, Bloomsbury, 2012) and “Studying the Sikhs: Thirty Years Later … Where Have We Come, Where Are We Going?” (Sikhism in Global Context, Oxford University Press, 2011). Jakobsh was a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Sikh Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. Gurbachan Singh Jandu is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute whose interests lie in emically understanding a fast-changing British identity as experienced by London’s Sikh youth. As an early career writer preparing his research proposal, The “British Only” Box and London’s Sikh Youth: Nationalism and Ethnic Minority Identity Politics,his latest project, The Sikh Turban: Exploring an Icon of a Migratory Peoples’ Identity, is a visual arts commission that researches Sikh turbans as material culture for the Horniman Museum exhibition Collections, People, Stories: Anthropology Reconsidered. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society for whom he is researching the primary source anti-revisionist treatise Ranjit Singh and the Lahore Durbar as Sikh Sovereignty: A Reconsideration Using Accounts of European Visitors to the Punjab Kingdom to understand cultural secularism in the Sikh kingdom of Lahore. Nicola Mooney received her doctorate in social-cultural anthropology from the University of Toronto. Her work broadly concerns ethnicity, urbanization, migration and what it is to be modern in Punjab, and particularly among Jat Sikhs, along with the impacts of the transitions from rural to urban and diasporic

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

life on class, gender, religion, memory, identity and popular culture. She is the author of Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity among Jat Sikhs (University of Toronto Press, 2011). She has also published articles and chapters on gender, migration, caste, bhangra, Punjabi cinema, Partition, the 3HO/Sikh Dharma and, most recently, colonial ethnography. She teaches anthropology, religion and diaspora studies in the department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley, where she is Senior Associate of the Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies. She also holds an adjunct position at Mount Allison University, where she was formerly McCain Post-Doctoral Fellow. Kristina Myrvold is PhD in History of Religions (Lund University) and Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Linnaeus University. Her dissertation was titled Inside the Guru’s Gate: Ritual Uses of Texts among the Sikhs in Varanasi (Lund, 2007). Myrvold has published numerous articles and book chapters on Sikh practices in Sweden and India, such as “Death and Sikhism” (Death and Religion in a Changing World, ME Sharpe, 2006), “Personalizing the Sikh Scripture: Processions of the Guru Granth Sahib in India” (South Asian Religions on Display, Routledge, 2008), “Engaging with the Guru: Sikh Beliefs and Practices of Guru Granth Sahib” ( Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds, 2010), “Making Pilgrimage Places of the Gurus in Varanasi: Countering Hindu Narratives in Local Sikh Historiography” (South Asian History and Culture, 2012) and “Translating the Guru’s Words to Local and Global Contexts: Contemporary Katha in the Sikh Religion” (Sikh Diaspora, Brill, 2013). Myrvold has contributed chapters on the Sikhs in Sweden and Europe to different handbooks on religions (Religion i Sverige, 2008; The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, 2013; Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia, 2014). She is editor of The Death of Sacred Texts: Ritual Disposal and Renovation of Texts in the World Religions (Ashgate, 2010), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations (Ashgate, 2011, with Knut A. Jacobsen), Sikhs across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs (Bloomsbury, 2012, with Knut. A. Jacobsen) and Objects of Worship in South Asian Religions: Forms, Practices and Meanings (Routledge, 2014, with Knut A. Jacobsen and Mikael Aktor). Myrvold is also Editor (with Knut A. Jacobsen, Gurinder Singh Mann, and Eleanor Nesbitt) of the forthcoming Brill’s Encyclopedia of Sikhism. Kaveri Qureshi is PhD and Research Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Her research is primarily on Pakistani and Indian Punjabi migration and diasporas in Britain, exploring the life-course, transnational families and politics. She has published numerous articles in edited volumes and peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of

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Notes on Contributors

xv

the Royal Anthropological Institute, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Global Networks, South Asian Diaspora, Identities, Citizenship Studies, and Ethnicities. Jasjit Singh is PhD in Religious Studies and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow based at the University of Leeds. His research examines the religious and cultural lives of British South Asians, in particular young British Sikhs. He focuses on understanding processes of religious and cultural learning and their impact on religious identity. In particular he is interested in the relationship between traditional methods of religious transmission which take place in the family environment and religious institutions and newer arenas of religious transmission including camps, University faith societies and the Internet and media. Singh has published several articles on these themes, such as “The Guru’s Way: Exploring Diversity among British Khalsa Sikhs” (Religion Compass, 2014), “Sikh-ing Online: The Role of the Internet in the Religious Lives of Young British Sikhs” (Contemporary South Asia, 2014) and “Keeping the Faith: Reflections on Religious Nurture among Young British Sikhs” ( Journal of Beliefs and Values, 2012). Meenakshi Thapan is Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics and Coordinator of the D.S. Kothari Centre for Science, Ethics and Education at University of Delhi since 2012. She has been Coordinator of the European Studies Program (funded by the European Union, 2010–11), University of Delhi. She has also been a Trustee of the Krishnamurti Foundation (India) since 2012. Her first book was Life at School: An Ethnographic Study (Oxford University Press, 1991, 2006) and the most recent are Ethnographies of Schooling in Contemporary India (editor, SAGE, 2014), Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India (SAGE, 2009) and Contested Spaces: Citizenship and Belonging in Contemporary Times (editor, Orient Blackswan, 2010). She is also Series Editor of a five volume series on Women and Migration in Asia (SAGE, 2005–8). In addition, she has published research papers and articles in several journals in India and abroad.

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Introduction: Young Sikhs in a Global World Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold

“I’m a Punjabi-speaking Swedish Sikh with family members and friends all over the world.” A statement like this, which in this case was expressed in an interview with a young Sikh in Sweden, could most probably be similarly heard with local nuances in other geographical contexts, and raises several queries about religious, cultural and linguistic identifications and belonging. In the everyday lives of young Sikhs at different locations, the Sikh traditions and practices are being interpreted and translated into new cultural contexts and languages. The Sikh religion, which has been estimated to include approximately 25 million adherents around the world, has increasingly become a culturally and linguistically diverse community with new generations that have multicultural and transnational lifestyles. This book brings together studies of religious identifications, representations and translations among Sikh youth and young emerging adults in transnational and global contexts. Previous studies of young Sikhs, who can be categorized as persons identifying themselves, in some way or another, with the Sikh religion and the various practices and traditions within Sikhism, have primarily focused on Sikh children and adolescents in English-speaking countries with large Sikh populations. Several studies have, for example, been conducted on the second- and third-generation Sikhs, their parents and intergenerational differences in Canada, the United Kingdom and the USA.1 These contributions have illustrated various strategies of cultural adaptation and integration in host societies and how young Sikhs and their families experience cultural possibilities and barriers on their way to becoming citizens of multicultural nations. The research literature on young Sikhs in the phase of “emerging adulthood” and young adults is a newer field of study,2 just as the academic interest for Sikhs in other parts of the world with transnational For studies on Sikh and Punjabi children in these countries, see e.g. Anand, 2008; Brah, 1979; Dhruvarajan, 2003; Hadwen, 1995; Jacobsen, 1997; James, 1974; Klein, 2007; Larson, 1999; Nayar, 2004; Nesbitt, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2009; Nesbitt and Jackson, 1995; Smythe and Toohey, 2009; Sodhi, 2002; Verma, 2004. 2 For studies of Sikhs in the phase of emerging adulthood, see e.g. Drury, 1991; Hall, 2002; Qureshi, 2014; Singh, 2012a, 2012b. 1

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

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2

networks is an emerging research field.3 The chapters of this book describe and analyse how Sikh youth and young emerging adults, who have grown up and reside primarily in various European countries and North America under different cultural and linguistic conditions, may interpret, articulate and negotiate religious identities, traditions and authorities through practices and narratives on individual and collective levels. Several chapters highlight the youth’s creative means to solve tensions between their families and expectations of the majority society, between the Punjabi culture and religious values, as well as generational transmission of religious, cultural and linguistic traditions, and the impact on their identifications and identity formation processes. As many chapters in this book highlight, young Sikhs at various locations have experienced a tension between the diaspora projects of their parents and the assimilating forces of the societies in which they live. As the “second-generation” Punjabi Sikhs in the West, many of them grew up in an in-between world in which they were positioned in relation to many cultural others and experienced both conflict and solidarity across different social fields. While many have naturally felt a belonging to their families, learnt the Punjabi language and Sikh religious practices, they do not necessarily share the diaspora perspective and consciousness of their parents. Similarly, they may have encountered both similarities and differences in relation to various “others” in different fields of the majority society. Several chapters of this volume illustrate how many young Sikhs have experienced a “double alienation” and a feeling of “being in-between” (see e.g. the chapters by Jacobsen, Jandu and Thapan). Some youth may choose to separate themselves from the Punjabiness of their parents and emphasize a claim that Sikhism is a universal religion translatable to any culture and language, while others articulate quests for “authentic” Punjabi Sikh identity. Some may feel cosmopolitan and assert that they do not belong to any particular place or society, perhaps more so within the “third generation”. The process and strategies that the youth may assume when translating, representing and relating to cultural and religious identifications are thus multiple depending upon various factors. What still seems to resound in many studies in this volume is a felt need among the youth to differentiate between a Punjabi culture (Punjabiyat) and Sikh practices (Sikhi). The chapters of the book document how identities are continually constructed, negotiated, protected and transformed in relation to contextual factors, including the “otherness” and representations of the personal or collective selves in particular historical, cultural and social settings. The transactional aspect of identity is reinforced in a migrant situation and makes identity an unstable and unfixed category, as people may fashion identity in relation to many different cultural others in global, regional, national and local contexts.

3

See e.g. Jacobsen and Myrvold, 2011, 2012.

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Introduction

3

The youth engage in many different social and cultural worlds that make them negotiate between divergent fields of power and meaning, and thus they may act and express ideas in relation to numerous possible identities. Their religious identification can consequently be viewed as more relational phenomena of constructing ideas and behaviours in different social settings. The chapters, which are based on qualitative research and ethnographic fieldwork, illustrate how young Sikhs continually construct, choose and emphasize different aspects of religious identities and identifications depending on their situational setting and contextual factors in their lives and locations. In one situation they may draw on models that are based on stability and authenticity of traditional cultural elements (see e.g. the chapter by Bertolani) and in other situations fashion more fluid identities in relation to multiple forms of discourses that circulate in their lives (see e.g. the chapters by Qureshi, Jacobsen and Jandu). This may also imply that they question traditional authorities, such as family members, religious leaders in the gurdwaras and others. The consequences can be a revitalization of traditions and the creation of specific subcultures in youth activities, which they organize themselves, or attempts to deculturalize and refine a Sikh identity from cultural elements, or create and negotiate alternative identities in relation to the societies. Accordingly, the contributors to this volume use a number of different terms for the youth whom they analyse, such as Punjabis, Indo-Italians, Norwegian and Swedish Sikhs, Sikhs in Britain, British Sikhs or Britons, depending on which elements of the identities the youth in their studies emphasize, including linguistic, geographical, cultural, or religious aspects. This plurality of the uses of terms further indicates the situational, contextual and fluid characterization of identities and identifications among young Sikhs. The book is divided into three parts, each of which focuses on one broader area of research: young Sikhs in relation to family and home, representations and gender issues, as well as reflexivity and translations of young Sikhs. The first part, titled “Family and Home”, deals with the influence of the family and home environments on religious engagement among Sikh youth, their various meanings of home and ideas of belonging, their quest for freedom and belonging in particular local contexts, and the importance of home for learning a home language and a mother tongue that can be differently linked to religious identifications. In Chapter 1 Jasjit Singh analyses the impact of family background on the religious lives of young British Sikhs and demonstrates how, for young Sikhs, future religious engagement is to a great extent impacted by religious upbringing in the family. The chapter highlights some of the varieties in the religious socialization which young British Sikhs encounter in their early lives and how this impacts ideas of tradition and authority. Singh illustrates the importance of the family in view of diversity along the lines of caste, family structure, migration history, use of spoken Punjabi, external identity and locality. He argues that Sikh

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

families strongly promote ideas of what it means to be a Sikh, and especially of what it means to be a “proper Sikh”, and socialize the youth in gurdwara and group affiliation as well as the way in which “religion” and “religious authority” are to be approached. In Chapter 2 Laura Hirvi analyses the concept of home among young Sikhs in Finland. As she argues, the concept of “home” has been given a prominent role in migration studies. However, most studies have focused on exploring questions related to home mainly from the perspective of adult immigrants and ignored the experiences of their children. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter examines various notions of home among young Sikhs in Finland and in what ways they formulate their sense of belonging. The chapter analyses strategies through which young Sikhs negotiate identities in relation to the wider society in which they are embedded and highlights the role of their agency in this process. Hirvi concludes that the home is an object of contestation that is continually negotiated and re-created and motivated by a “homing desire”. Meenakshi Thapan examines in Chapter 3 the experience of being Indian (largely Sikh and Punjabi), migrant and young, and with belongings to several cultures at the same time in Northern Italy. As the Indian youth simultaneously seek belonging and integration both into the family and into the Italian social landscape, Thapan argues that the family functions with both constraining and enabling agency. The forms of belonging explored in the chapter point to a multiplicity of experiences that are shaped by the family. Thapan shows that diverse ways of belonging shape multiple ways of relating to the “other”, resulting in competing definitions of what it means to be Indian, Italian or European, and argues that citizenship is a feeling of belonging, to which all youth, children of immigrants or otherwise, aspire through social and cultural acceptance, friendship and support. Thapan argues that, above all, young Sikhs in Italy desire and seek admittance to, and equal treatment in, a social universe that is defined by emotions as much as by legal forms of acceptance and belonging. Kristina Myrvold examines in Chapter 4 how the Punjabi language is transmitted across generations within the Swedish Sikh community with special focus on multilingual youth in the second and 1.5 generations, who have been brought up in Sweden or migrated in childhood. Starting from the perspective of languages as having communicative and representational functions – that is, as a means of interacting with others but also a tool for constructing selfrepresentations and identities – the chapter focuses on what values and functions young Swedish Sikhs may attach to Punjabi, what literacies and language uses they assume, and how they have learnt the language in the social contexts of home, school and the gurdwara. As Myrvold illustrates, the context of home is undoubtedly the most important context for learning spoken Punjabi, while the mother tongue education provided in Swedish schools encourages the acquisition of reading and writing ability according to dominant ideas of

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Introduction

5

literacy in the majority society. Young Swedish Sikhs may, however, express a multitude of divergent affiliations towards the Punjabi language depending upon generational belongings. While the second generation perceives Punjabi as a mother tongue and primarily a language for communication with families and relatives, youth of the 1.5 generation or those who migrated to Sweden in childhood connect the language with strong representational functions of their religious and ethnic identities. The second part of the book, called “Representation and Gender”, brings attention to various articulations and representations of young Sikhs with particular focus on belonging, identities and gender. This part includes discussions on the challenges of conceiving religious identifications in terms of “hybridity” and “a third space” when studying young Sikhs and different creative representations through various media, such as representations of female Sikhs on the Internet, representations of young Norwegian Sikhs and their experiences of being in-between cultures through the genres of autobiographies and autobiographical novels, and bhangra music and global youth cultures that articulate hypermasculinity and patriarchal structures as a reversal of Western stereotypes of the spiritual Indian. In Chapter 5 Nicola Mooney critiques the popular discourses and concepts of “hybridity”, “hyphenation” and “a third space” and explores the possibility of such identifications for diasporic Sikh youth. Mooney shows that these concepts are frequently mobilized to explain the production and experience of identity in postcolonial, diasporic and transnational contexts, and particularly among second-generation immigrant youth. She argues that theories about hybridity uncritically posit, if not celebrate, a creative and empowering syncretism of disparate elements in novel, difference-accommodating, transcultural – and potentially transgressive – forms of identity that refuse essentialized and externally imposed modes of subjectivity. However, the author argues, this heterogeneous third space may not necessarily be accommodating of religion, nor of race, for it has been variously charged that the hyphen that relies upon problematic states of anterior purity glosses over hierarchy and inequality, and can be, or become, a limiting site of racialized otherness. Given the rejection of the separation of spiritual and material life in Sikh religion, the development of an anti-syncretic impulse in contexts of postcolonial marginalization, and at times strident community debates about the nature and appearance of the “true” Sikh, the author argues that we must question whether Sikh practice and identity can be hybridized. Using a multi-sited ethnographic approach and narrative vignettes, with particular attention to the issue of kesh (unshorn hair), the author examines a range of instances and interpretations of the potential for hybridity among Sikh youth. How the World Wide Web has functioned to legitimate Sikh women’s turbaned identity is the topic of Chapter 6 by Doris R. Jakobsh. She points out

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

that the “marked body” of the Sikh male has long been an important “entry point” in coming to an understanding of Sikhism at large. When speaking of Sikhism, it is the highly visible Khalsa Sikh male, complete with external signifiers, most particularly the turban traditionally worn by Sikh males, which has come to characterize the Sikh community both in the “homeland” of Punjab and within Sikh diasporic contexts. Jakobsh examines the religious particularization of Sikh women that is taking place through varied means, most specifically on the WWW and, for the most part, by Sikh youth. She argues that through increasing and repeated imaging and iconization on the Internet, novel attempts are being made to mobilize, legitimize and historicize Sikh female identity to more closely resemble the Khalsa Sikh male, with a particular focus on Sikh women wearing turbans. The chapter examines notions of nationalism and globalization vis-à-vis Sikh women’s search for identity and creating narratives about themselves, regardless of whether such an identity or narratives may have historical precedents or significance. In Chapter 7 Knut A. Jacobsen analyses two Norwegian Sikh autobiographies and one autobiographical novel, published in 2011 and 2012, to understand the in-between identities of the second-generation Sikhs in Norway. Jacobsen argues that the Sikh autobiographies constitute a genre that gives insights into the processes of growing up in in-between worlds and the clash of values between generations and between Punjabi and Norwegian contexts. They show the importance of locations and relations, the development of Indian Sikh immigrant cultures in Norway, and the impact on a personal level of the institutionalization of Sikh traditions in a new country. By analysing the autobiographies, concepts such as “cultural” Sikh, “religious” Sikh, Norwegian Sikh and Punjabi Sikh are problematized, as the books provide examples of the difficulties for the second generation to separate Punjabi culture from Sikhism as a religion. Jacobsen argues that all three books describe youth moving away from Punjabi culture. For some of the authors this means moving away from Sikhism, while for others it instead implies an embracement of Sikhism. The authors display strong agency and they make different choices and thus their authorships point to the many options available for identity formations for those growing up with the in-between situations. The chapter illustrates how the ritualization of a Sikh identity in autobiographical writing has made possible a disassociation from Punjabi cultural heritage and a promotion of a purely religious identity that is combined with cultural values derived from the majority society. Autobiographies, as a special literary genre, can be used for understanding the identity formations among young Sikhs since the literature reveals and opens up for a multiplicity of voices, choices and opportunities. Anjali Gera Roy analyses in Chapter 8 how contemporary bhangra texts reiterate and celebrate precolonial, colonial and postcolonial stereotypes of the Sikh male body. Gera Roy argues that the Sikh male body has been historically

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Introduction

7

constructed as that of “the warrior” (or vir) in Sikhism, “the martial race” in colonialism and the peasant (or jat) in nationalism. This mapping of strength, vigour, vitality, and even sexuality, on the Sikh male body has resulted in the representation of the Sikh male as the material other of the spiritual body of the Indian nation, often symbolized by the emancipated body of Mahatma Gandhi. The glorification of physical strength as a hallmark of virility, and of all that produces it, in bhangra texts reenacts the labouring body of the cultivator as well as of the migrant free worker. But it also replies to the stereotypes of the Sikh martial race produced in colonialism and of the uncouth rustic in nationalism. The author argues that the hypermasculine jat Sikh body becomes the site for producing Sikh youth identity globally in the post-national era through which young Sikhs resist national and transnational hegemonic formations. The third part of the book, titled “Reflexivity and Translation”, includes chapters that discuss different interpretations, translations and communicative strategies among young Sikhs as well as forms and practices of reflexivity when Sikh researchers are studying young Sikhs adults. In Chapter 9 Kaveri Qureshi questions the concept of “code-switching” in studies of Punjabi youth brought up in the United Kingdom, as this has a presumed flawed assumption of the prior existence of whole cultures. As she argues, “code meshing” rather than “code-switching” describes better the situation of young Punjabis in Britain. Her chapter analyses uses of English and Punjabi among young Punjabis and how the languages are mixed in conversations, even if the identification of Punjabi as the notional mother tongue is important. Qureshi discusses how the children bring pervasive cultural changes to their homes, and home becomes a “kind-of mixed-up” place, with the adults responding to the children’s demands for such things as pizzas and Christmas celebrations. She concludes that young Punjabis do not switch Punjabi habitus at home and English outside the home, but their hybridity is more dispersed across these sites. In Chapter 10, Barbara Bertolani analyses intergenerational dialogues among Sikhs in Italy. Bertolani notes that in the public discourse in Italy Sikhs are generally considered a supportive and cohesive community of good and pacific workers, immersed in a religious dimension of life. The Sikhs skilfully capitalize on this positive stereotype which generates a “mirror game” in the relationship with local Italian institutions that encourages Sikhs to emphasize the most formal and normative aspects of their religious belonging. She further argues that this process manifests itself through two different strategies of communication. On the one hand, some aspects of the Sikh religious culture tend to be presented as harmless ethnic features, in order to be more easily accepted by Italians, such as the martial symbols which are displayed as ritual objects especially during religious festivals like Vaisakhi and Nagar Kirtan. On the other hand, the Sikh religion is presented as a universal religion that is respectful to all faiths and supports equality regardless of social and caste belongings. According to

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

Bertolani, these strategies have consequences for the second-generation Sikhs whose voices contradict the homogeneous picture of a cohesive and reconciled community. Young Italian-Indian Sikhs engage in discussions about the “true” Sikhs, which includes different ways of religious belonging. Moreover, the youth identify “caste” as an argument of discussion with their parents, as it is important for their negotiations about arranged marriages. Bertolani illustrates how the youth have expressed desires to take up leadership roles and claim that they have a better knowledge of Italian “mentality” and therefore a better competence in confronting the relationships between the Sikh community and the majority society. As she concludes, the fact that young Sikhs perceive themselves as being Italian-Indians seems to be a useful element for them in Italy in the process of redefining Sikh history and identities. In Chapter 11, Gurbachan Singh Jandu notes that while second-generation Sikhs are well represented in many parts of British society and are considered prosperous, they remain “Sikhs in Britain” rather than “British Sikhs” as would be their preference. Jandu notes that “culture contact” has been marked by “cultural distances”, which has created unease in the British Sikh youth during their identity processes. He observes that young Sikhs in London increasingly have turned to the discourse of citizenship to address this situation. In exploring these discourses, the young Sikhs commented that the community’s traditional authority within institutions and support networks, such as the gurdwara and families, has not developed a platform for this kind of identity negotiation. In order to advance this discussion, the youth mobilize and politicize without a unified point of collaboration and authority. The author argues that there should be a larger debate about British citizenship and identity among British Sikhs. Given the historical importance of the Sikh community in Britain in political debates on multiculturalism and cultural relativism, the formation of British Sikh identity could become one of the frontiers of British citizenship as these youth navigate through the difference between British Sikhs and Sikhs in Britain. Jandu concludes by looking ahead to a time when Sikh youth may not be “Sikhs in Britain” nor “British Sikhs”, but just inhabitants of Great Britain. In Chapter 12 Bikram Singh Brar discusses the importance placed upon the researchers’ own role within their research, with an acknowledgement that this is intrinsic to the research process. As a Sikh man investigating his “own” group, the author considers it imperative to explore how he interpreted and analysed information. Brar critically discusses two conceptualizations and forms of reflexivity, which he drew upon in his study on the educational and occupational aspirations of young Sikh adults in West London, England. The first, based upon discursive forms of psychology, focuses on the importance of language and linguistic practices, while the second concerns notions of power and subject-positions and stresses how every interaction is intersected by various structures including gender, “race”, ethnicity, social class and, in his own study,

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Introduction

9

caste. Throughout the chapter, the author draws upon examples of his own research to illustrate how he employed reflexivity and concludes by offering possible improvements to the concept for the purpose of making research processes as transparent as possible. As the chapters of the book illustrate how Sikh youth and young adults have managed in different ways to mobilize efforts to understand difference, translate culture and carve out a place for themselves in new local and global contexts, they point to the their strong agency and the importance for researchers to do empirically based and context-sensitive research when studying and analysing young Sikhs. Furthermore, the contributions show how the Sikh traditions are being transferred to new locations and are translated into a multitude of new languages and cultural understandings by Sikh youth and young adults. While shaping identifications with different kinds of cultural, linguistic and religious belongings, young Sikhs are also transforming the Sikh traditions. References Anand, A. (2008), The Effects of Second Generation Sikh Adolescents’ Perceived Closeness to Parents and Acculturation on Anxiety and Acculturation Stress. PhD thesis, Alliant International University, San Francisco Bay. Brah, Avtar (1979), Inter-generational and Inter-ethnic Perceptions: A Comparative Study of South Asian and English Adolescents and Their Parents in Southall. PhD thesis, University of Bristol. Dhruvarajan, Vanaja (2003), “Second Generation Indo-Canadians: Change, Resistance and Adaptation”, in Sushma J. Varma and Radhika Seshan (eds), Fractured Identity: The Indian Diaspora in Canada. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, pp. 168–87. Drury, Beatrice (1991), “Sikh Girls and the Maintenance of an Ethnic Culture”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 17 (3), 387–99. Hadwen, Diane Jeanette (1995), Contemporary Religious Nurture among the Sikhs in Bradford. MPhil thesis, University of Leeds. Hall, Stuart (1992), “The Question of Cultural Identity”, in Stuart Hall (ed.), Modernity and Its Futures. London: Polity, pp. 276–323. Jacobsen, Knut A. and Kristina Myrvold (eds) (2011), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate. Jacobsen, Knut A. and Kristina Myrvold (eds) (2012), Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury. Jacobsen, Marianne Ekeberg (1997), Sikhs through Discourse: Discussions and Debates among Young Second and Third Generation Sikhs in England. IMER Report Series. James, Alan G. (1974), Sikh Children in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Klein, Wendy L. (2007), Punjabi Sikh Families in Los Angeles: Discourses of Identification and Youth Socialization Practices. PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles. Larson, Heidi (1999), “‘We Don’t Celebrate Christmas, We Just Give Gifts’: Adaptations to Migration and Social Change among Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh Children in England”, in S.K. Houseknecht and J.G. Pankhurst (eds), Family, Religion, and Social Change in Diverse Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 283–302. Nayar, Kamala Elisabeth (2004), The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: The Generations Amid Tradition, Modernity and Multiculturalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nesbitt, Eleanor (1999), “Sikhs and Proper Sikhs: Young British Sikhs’ Perceptions of Their Identity”, in P. Singh and N.G. Barrier (eds), Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change. Delhi: Manohar, pp. 315–33. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2000), The Religious Lives of Sikh Children: A Coventry Based Study. Leeds: Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2001), “Representing Faith Traditions in Religious Education”, in L.J. Francis, J. Astley and M. Robbins (eds), The Fourth for the Third Millennium: Education in Religion and Values for the Global Future. Dublin: Lindisfarne Books, pp. 137–51. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2004), Intercultural Education: Ethnographic and Religious Approaches. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2009), “Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikh and ‘Mixed-faith’ Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues”. Journal of Religion in Europe, 2 (1), 37–57. Nesbitt, Eleanor and Robert Jackson (1995), “Sikh Children’s Use of ‘God’: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Religious Education”. British Journal of Religious Education, 17 (2), 108–20. Qureshi, Kaveri (2014), “Culture Shock on Southall Broadway: Re-thinking ‘Second-generation’ Return through ‘Geographies of Punjabiness’”. South Asian Diaspora, 6 (2), 161–77. Singh, Jasjit (2012a), “Global Sikh-ers: Transnational Learning Practices of Young British Sikhs”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 167–92. Singh, Jasjit (2012b), “Keeping the Faith: Reflections on Religious Nurture among Young British Sikhs”. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 33 (3), 369–83. Smythe, Suzanne and Kelleen Toohey (2009), “Investigating Sociohistorical Contexts and Practices through a Community Scan: A Canadian PunjabiSikh Example”. Language and Education, 23 (1), 37–57.

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Introduction

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Sodhi, Pavna Kaur (2002), Punjabi Women Living in Eastern Canada: A Study Exploring How Parental Attitudes Influence Intergenerational Cultural Preservation and Ethnic Identity Formation. EdD thesis, University of Toronto. Verma, Rita (2004), Migration and Memory: Reflections on Schooling and Community by Sikh Immigrant Youth. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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Part I: Family and Home

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Chapter 1

Family Values: The Impact of Family Background on the Religious Lives of Young British Sikhs Jasjit Singh

To date, few scholars have examined the religious lives of young Sikh adults even though the British Sikh population is currently skewed towards youth. Indeed, according to the 2011 UK census, of the 423,158 Sikhs currently living in England and Wales, 105,985 (25 per cent) are between the ages of 15 and 29, further highlighting the necessity to understand the religious lives of young Sikh adults. Examining the literature on Sikhs in Britain, it is clear that although much has been written about Sikh migrants and Sikh migration, there has been very little research examining how British-born young Sikhs engage with their religious tradition. As Gurharpal Singh and Darshan S. Tatla note: Sikh youth today clearly continue to identify with the religious tradition, but this identification is far more complex and ambiguous than hitherto … In the absence of more detailed, systematic and comprehensive research in this extremely important area, all conclusions must remain tentative. The culture of young British Sikhs today remains an area of darkness for the community and a testing ground for its uncertain futures. (Singh and Tatla, 2006, p. 207)

In this chapter I will enlighten an aspect of this “area of darkness” by analysing how the family environment impacts on the religious lives of young Sikh adults. To date, studies of young British Sikhs have focused on Sikh children and adolescents with Alan G. James’s pioneering study of the lives of Sikh children in Huddersfield highlighting the importance of the family and the gurdwara as key arenas for religious nurture ( James, 1974). More recent accounts include Heidi Larson’s study of minority children in Southall (Larson, 1999), Diane Jeanette Hadwen’s study of religious nurture in the gurdwaras in Bradford (Hadwen, 1995) and Eleanor Nesbitt’s numerous studies of Sikh children in Coventry (Nesbitt, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2009). In her studies, Nesbitt notes the importance of zat (caste) in differentiating family experience with regards to education and employment (Nesbitt, 2011, p. 238)

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

highlighting discrepancies between the lived reality of Sikhs and textbook representations of Sikhism, in particular regarding attitudes and experiences in relation to caste and gender. Studies which have examined the religious lives of young Sikh adults include Beatrice Drury’s exploration of the maintenance of tradition among teenage Sikh girls and Kathleen D. Hall’s investigation of identity formation among Sikh teenagers in Leeds (Drury, 1991; Hall, 2002). Drury distinguishes between those who conform to tradition (willingly or unwillingly) and those who abandon tradition (with or without the permission of their parents). For Drury, conformity relates to maintaining the external Sikh identity, with non-conformity being defined as a lack of commitment to preserving the Sikh identity. Similarly, Hall links religious adherence to the importance of maintaining family honour, arguing that young Sikhs “encounter two contrasting ideologies – the ideology of family honour and the ideology of British nationalism or British cultural purity” (Hall, 2002, p. 149). The main issue with both of these frameworks is that they define conformity in relation to parental pressure, and assume that young Sikhs maintain a religious identity primarily to please their parents. This review of relevant literature highlights the fact that to date there have been few dedicated studies of young Sikh adults, particularly those young Sikhs in the phase of “emerging adulthood” which is a period of life that falls between the ages of 18 and 30, and according to Jeffrey Arnett has recently emerged in industrialized societies (Arnett, 2000, p. 473). Much like the life stages of “teenager” and “adolescence” which emerged in the twentieth century due to changes in education, child labour laws, mass consumerism and the media, the phase of “emerging adulthood” has evolved in the late twentieth century due to four key social factors (Smith and Snell, 2009, pp. 4–6), the first of these being the increase of up to 50 per cent of young adults undertaking higher education in Western societies (BBC, 2008). In the case of Britain, this means that fewer young people are leaving school at 18 and that many are now extending their schooling beyond the age of 21 and often into their thirties, increasing the number of young Sikhs in higher education (Thandi, 1999, p. 355). This relates to the second crucial change, which is the delay of marriage among emerging adults. According to the UK Office of National Statistics’s “Social Trends” report, “men, on average, were 31.8 years of age when they tied the knot for the first time … compared with 29.3 years 10 years earlier. Women were also putting off the big day, on average until the age of 29.7 compared with 27.2” (Ormsby, 2009). Compared to previous generations of South Asians, particularly women, many of whom would live at home until marriage (Nayar, 2004, p. 93), many young people now face almost a decade between the end of university and marriage in which to examine their views on life, the universe and everything. The third factor which has led to the development of emerging adulthood is the change from careers being “for life” to careers becoming less secure

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Family Values

17

and requiring ongoing training, leading many young people to feel “a general psychological orientation of maximizing options and postponing commitments” (Smith, 2009, p. 5), and thinking nothing of continually learning and developing their ideas and impacting on continued education and delayed marriage. Fourth, young emerging adults enjoy the support of their parents for much longer than previous generations, with many living with their parents until marriage. Although this may not be a change in behaviour for many young Sikhs who would live with their parents until marriage anyway ( Johnston, 2004, p. 1079), it appears that young adults as a whole are generally living with their parents well into their twenties (Wallup, 2008), allowing them more time to explore their ideas, and offering them increased resources within which they are able to examine their identities as emerging adults. Examinations into the religious lives of emerging adults have raised a number of interesting observations. In his research into young white Christian emerging adults Arnett notes that there is no link between the religious training people receive throughout their childhood and the religious beliefs they hold by the time they reach emerging adulthood and that “this is a different pattern than is found in adolescence [which reflects greater continuity]” (Arnett, 2004, p. 174). For Arnett, “something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children” (Arnett, 2004, p. 174), a change which results from the exposure to new ideas and influences outside the family which young people encounter at college and university. The claim that childhood religious training has little impact on religious belief and practice in emerging adulthood is a startling one. Is childhood religious socialization totally overridden by experiences in emerging adulthood, or do emerging adults bring some aspects of childhood socialization with them? What is the link between childhood religious socialization and continued membership of a religious community in emerging adulthood? Methodology for Studying Young Sikhs For this study a mixed methods approach was taken to carry out the research, using a variety of data sources as part of the investigation (Denscombe, 2007, p. 37). As Martyn Denscombe explains, “the Mixed Methods approach provides the researcher with the opportunity to check the findings from one method against the findings from a different method … [meaning that] where different methods produce data that are more or less the same the researcher can feel more confident in assuming that the findings are accurate” (Denscombe, 2007, p. 109). The main methods included semi-structured interviews with thirty 18- to 30-year-old British Sikhs who had attended and participated in events organized for young Sikhs; the implementation of a self-selecting online survey

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Young Sikhs in a Global World

of young British Sikhs; running focus groups with Sikh students across the UK; and participant observation at events organized for young Sikhs, including Sikh camps and university Sikh society events with the fieldwork being undertaken between 2009 and 2011. The online survey elicited 645 responses in total, having been advertised on discussion forums relating to Sikhism and bhangra and on Facebook pages belonging to gurdwaras, Sikh camps, university Sikh societies and bhangra groups in order to reach to as wide a range of respondents as possible. As there is currently no means of obtaining a random sample from all young British Sikhs and as young people are a difficult population to study as they tend to be very busy and mobile (Denton and Smith, 2001, p. 2), online survey respondents were self-selecting and consequently the respondents were likely to be young Sikhs with a strong commitment to Sikhism. This is justified by the fact that the research examined how and why young Sikhs engage with their religious tradition and therefore sought the views of young Sikhs who would respond to an online survey relating to the Sikh tradition. Rather than aiming to gather the views of young Sikhs from one or all of the various groups in the Sikh community, I examine here the socialization of young Sikhs from a variety of sectarian and ideological backgrounds. The Role of Sikh Families Although not originally intended to be a distinct arena of study, especially given Arnett’s assertion that there is no link between childhood socialization and religiosity in emerging adulthood, the online survey in particular highlighted the importance of the family environment for 18- to 30-year-old British Sikhs (Arnett, 2004, p. 174). Over 33 per cent of the respondents stated that they spent most of their time with their family and as Figure 1.1 demonstrates, parents and family also featured prominently in responses to a question asking the respondents about their main sources of guidance in life. The pre-adult period of life can be divided into childhood (up to 13 years old) and adolescence (13 to 18 years) with many scholars observing a decline in religious adherence from childhood to adolescence (Roberts and Yamane, 2011, p. 97). Sociologists of religion highlight the role of the family as the primary agent of religious socialization throughout the life course as well as being the main influence on religious choices (Sherkat, 2003, pp. 151–8). Indeed, Phil Zuckerman concludes that “ultimately, religious identity and conviction aren’t generally so much a matter of choice or faith or soul-searching as a matter of who [sic] and what one’s parents, friends, neighbours and community practice and profess” (Zuckerman, 2003, p. 51). It can be argued that of these, the family is the most important factor in religious socialization determining the types of friends, neighbours and community which the individual is exposed to in early life.

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Family Values

Figure 1.1

19

Main sources of guidance in life according to online survey respondents

Although Sikh families may share some elements, many have their own unique way of expressing and practising Sikhism influenced by their migration experiences, caste, political affiliation, economic status and the extent to which they are committed to the Sikh faith (Hadwen, 1995, p. 72). This commitment to the Sikh faith will vary considerably, with certain families aligning themselves to particular sants, Khalsa groups or other charismatic individuals. In order to further understand the family environments in which young British Sikhs grow up I will first focus on the diversity within Sikh families, before describing some of the similarities. Diversity in Sikh Families In her recent examination of Sikh diversity in the UK, Nesbitt highlights a number of axes along which diversity exists in the British Sikh community, including locality, caste, political diversity, generation, language and religious groupings (Nesbitt, 2011). Using data gathered primarily through the interviews and survey data I will now examine diversity in relation to locality, caste, religious identity, language and migration history in particular, while also discussing diversity in relation to generation and cultural consumption.

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Locality Taking the statistics from the 2011 census regarding the distribution of the British Sikh community, it becomes clear that the Sikh community is concentrated in particular areas of the UK. Most of the British Sikh population, 84.9 per cent, lives within London, the South East and the East and West Midlands with a smaller presence in Yorkshire and Humberside (see Table 1.1): Table 1.1

The British Sikh population by locality

Region East East Midlands London North East North West South East South West West Midlands Yorkshire and Humberside

Sikh population 18,213 44,335 126,134 5,964 8,857 54,941 5,892 133,681 22,179

% of total UK population

% of total Sikh population

0.3 1.0 1.5 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.1 2.4 0.4

4.3 10.5 29.8 1.4 2.1 13 1.4 31.6 5.2

Source: Office for National Statistics, 2011.

As well as differences relating to the number of Sikhs in a particular area, research on local Sikh populations has identified much caste-based regional diversity largely matching patterns of caste-specific migration (Nesbitt, 2011, p. 237). Local diversity has an important impact on religious transmission, both on the institutional choices and facilities available to young British Sikhs and also on the caste configuration of local Sikh populations. Caste As Table 1.2 highlights, certain regions of the UK have higher caste concentrations than others, although it must be remembered that Jats constitute around 70 per cent of the total Sikh population and will therefore be present in most regions (see Table 1.2.). Sikh migration to the UK mapped along caste lines has been summarized by Nesbitt as follows, with the Bhatras arriving from the 1930s onwards and settling in Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol,

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Family Values

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Southampton, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Peterborough. Jats and Ramgarhias (primarily from India) followed from the 1950s onwards settling in Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, Gravesend, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Southall, Slough, Ealing, East Ham, Barking, Forest Gate, Bedford, Derby, Bradford, Leeds, Nottingham, Glasgow, Huddersfield and Scunthorpe. Ramgarhias and other East African migrants arrived from the 1970s onwards and settled in Southall, Birmingham, Leicester and Leeds. Recently Afghani Sikhs have arrived from the 1990s onwards and settled primarily in Southall (Nesbitt, 2011). Table 1.2

Sikh migration by caste

Caste

Settlement period

Main regions of settlement

Bhatra

1930s onwards

Jats and Ramgarhias (primarily from India)

1950s onwards

Ramgarhias and other East African Migrants Afghani Sikhs

1970s onwards

Glasgow, London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol, Southampton, Nottingham, Portsmouth, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Peterborough Coventry, Birmingham, Leicester, Gravesend, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Southall, Slough, Ealing, East Ham, Barking, Forest Gate, Bedford, Derby, Bradford, Leeds, Nottingham, Glasgow, Huddersfield, Scunthorpe Southall, Birmingham, Leicester, Leeds

1990s onwards

Southall

Source: Office for National Statistics, 2011.

While caste may influence religious socialization in terms of gurdwara attendance, this is not as clear-cut as it is often presented, with many Jats attending the Ramgarhia gurdwara in Coventry (Nesbitt, 2009, p. 43) and similarly, I have observed many Ramgarhias attending a primarily Jat gurdwara in Leeds. In their survey responses, many young Sikhs appeared to strongly reject the notion of caste, stating that “there is no caste in Sikhism” and “caste is utterly stupid”. Given its status as an issue which many young Sikhs explicitly reject and given that religious transmission events are not explicitly organized based on caste lines given the Gurus’ apparent rejection of the notion of caste (Baumann, 1996, p. 110), caste membership was not used as a factor with which to examine any differences in religious transmission practices.

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Migration History As Singh and Tatla explain, the various phases of migration through which Sikhs arrived in Britain led to an uneven employment profile among British Sikhs, and to differences in levels of education (Singh and Tatla, 2006, p. 67). Although more than three quarters of the community worked as manual, unskilled workers in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of professional and skilled Sikhs increased significantly with the arrival of the East African migrants in the 1970s (Singh and Tatla, 2006, p. 148). For Hall, class is the main reason why the British Sikh population has become increasingly differentiated as different members of the population acquire different levels of economic, cultural and social capital through their occupational, academic and social accomplishments (Hall, 2002, p. 152). In her study of Sikh children in Coventry, Nesbitt wonders if “differences of social class and geographic region … will affect the religious lives of British Sikh children in different ways” (Nesbitt, 2000, p. 261). Although, as explained, locality clearly impacts accessibility to transmission resources, the role of migration history is slightly more complex. As Alison Shaw (2004) observes, the literature on class differences in South Asian communities tends to distinguish between “direct migrants” and “twice migrants”. Parminder Bhachu (1985) notes that the socioeconomic status of twice migrants is generally high in comparison with the direct migrants as their English is fluent, and many were professionals or had business experience from Africa giving them a head start in processes of resettlement in Britain. In addition Shaw observes that as well as being more likely to leave the choice of spouse to their child, linked to the fact that they have fewer socioeconomic ties with the subcontinent, women in twice migrant families: are also more likely to be in paid employment outside of the home, and their daughters are more likely to become college or university graduates who will delay marriage and childbearing and choose their own spouses. These processes mark them out, to some extent, from ‘direct migrants’. (Shaw, 2004, p. 278)

The distinction between “direct” and “twice” migrants clearly also has an impact on religious nurture, as those who have relatives or contacts in India, regardless of caste, are more likely to visit the Punjab as children and consequently to visit sites of Sikh history, including the Golden Temple in Amritsar. For Sirjit, a 23-year-old male from the South of England, visiting the Golden Temple at a young age had an important impact on the rest of his life as a Sikh: I was born in the UK – and my family were not particularly religious … but when I was 6 or 7, I went to Harmandir Sahib [the Golden Temple] with my family …

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and then when the golden throne of Guru Granth Sahib was coming out, my Grandfather got my hand and touched the palki [palanquin] – and basically after that experience on that day at the age of six and a half, everything changed. I used to have cut hair, couldn’t speak Punjabi very well … and then on that day I bought four books on Sikh history, which I’ve still got to this day … and I used to read them every day – everyone thought it was a phase, me keeping my hair, giving up certain things to eat, getting up early in the morning … but eventually after a few months, when things didn’t stop, then everyone realised that actually he’s taking it for real. (Interview, 18 August 2010)

Although it is too simplistic to argue that all those who migrate from a particular locale at a particular time will lead similar religious lives, migration history is clearly an important factor in understanding the religious lives of young Sikhs and differentiates between Sikh families in a number of ways. Religious Identity Whereas many direct migrants removed their turbans on arrival in the UK, male members of East African families tended to keep their turbans having already experienced migration to Africa (Ballard, 1994, p. 111). Based on their external identity practices Opinderjit K. Takhar concludes that “the majority of East African Sikh migrants to Britain are on the whole more religiously inclined than other zats coming directly from India” (Takhar, 2005, p. 42). In this regard, children growing up in families in which turbans are habitually worn, including East African Ramgarhia and Bhatra Sikh families, might regard themselves as members of “religious” families as they would be surrounded by men keeping the Sikh identity unlike those growing up in households in which family members are less identifiable. Survey responses to questions about identity revealed differences between Sikh families depending on the parental migration background. Although the percentage of male turban wearers with full beards was similar in Sikh families from a variety of migration backgrounds, in East African families the most popular category among males who do not keep turbans and full beards was “male with turban and trimmed beard” whereas in Indian and UK background families it was “male with haircut”. This indicates that respondents raised in East African households tended to grow up in households in which males wore turbans. The fact that children born in East African households are generally more likely to be exposed to turban wearers impacts their religious socialization in various ways. Although ideas of izzat, or family honour, are regularly discussed in ethnographies of South Asians (Baumann, 1996, p. 103), there is little if any discussion about how ideas of izzat might affect religious transmission. As izzat affects an individual’s standing in the community and “following religious

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‘tradition’ increases and maintains one’s identity and izzat” ( Jhutti-Johal, 2011, p. 116), it follows that families in which male members are externally identifiable generally have higher status in the community than those which do not. For Kamala E. Nayar, the link between turban wearing and izzat causes many parents “to force the externals of their religion on their children and to do so in a collective authoritarian manner” (Nayar, 2004, p. 111). As well as external religious identity, it is clear that some families identify with particular sants, often expressed through their practices relating to food. As well as playing an important role in informal nurture as young Sikh children are “accustomed to receiving, distributing and eating food in culturally acceptable ways which were distinct from those current in the surrounding western society” (Nesbitt, 2000, p. 55), food practices in the home can also serve to reinforce group membership. As Sukhdev, a 23-year-old female Sikh from south England whose family follows a particular sant explained, vegetarianism had become an important identifier for her household, distinguishing the family from other households which did not conform to the “basics of sikhi”: Dad used to eat meat, whereas for Mum it was the complete opposite … and Mum seems to have had the good influence and now they’ve all stopped … so in that way this house is a house which has [the] basics of sikhi – no alcohol, no meat. (Interview, 18 May 2009)

In this regard it appears that as well as the external religious identity, identifying with a particular group also acts as a differentiator between different types of Sikh family. Language The speaking of the Punjabi language and visiting the Punjab are integral to Sikh children’s nurture (Nesbitt, 2000, p. 242), a factor which is clearly influenced by migration history, as those who have relatives or contacts in India are more likely to visit the Punjab as children, and consequently visit sites of Sikh history including the Golden Temple. Indeed, Baldeep, a 38-year-old camp organizer, whose parents are from India, explained how “every year … I always go to Harmandir Sahib [the Golden Temple] and then Anandpur Sahib and then the pind [village]”. Indeed, Punjabi speaking is often sustained in certain families through marriage as direct migrants from India are more likely to maintain links with India through marriage by looking to India for future brides and grooms. For Jat women, for instance, Nicola Mooney notes that transnational marriages “sustain kinship networks and authentic Jat traditions, while in an important and potentially transformative new public and civic role, they facilitate migration”

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(Mooney, 2006, p. 399). The level of familiarity with Punjabi has important implications for religious transmission, as only those who have a strong command of spoken Punjabi will be able to listen to and understand traditional Punjabi katha, and only those who are able to read Punjabi fluently will be able to read books on Sikhism written in Punjabi. Conversely those with low levels of confidence in Punjabi may be drawn to groups which provide instruction in Sikhism in English. Generation The role of elders is highlighted by Nesbitt, who observes that “it is clear that parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles contributed to the nurturing of young Sikhs in their faith tradition” with “many of the young people referred to hearing an older relative ‘doing a prayer’ or ‘doing path’” (Nesbitt, 2000, pp. 52, 69). This role was also stressed by Gurpal, a 19-year-old university Sikh society committee member who explained that his grandmother “used to do path every morning, she used to do Japji Sahib every morning – I remember that”. In her study of the Sikh diaspora in Vancouver, Nayar argues that tensions between the generations are caused by differences in generational “modes of thinking” (Nayar, 2004, p. 155). Simply put, Nayar argues that the “first generation”, those aged 56 or older who spent their formative years in India and migrated as adults, tend to think using orality, a mode of thinking based on oral tradition where transmission consists of the telling of ideas and stories that have been passed down from generation to generation (Nayar, 2004, p. 26). Conversely, the “second generation”, those aged between 31 and 55 who migrated in their late teens, use the mode of literacy, which is influenced by the ability to read and write, but which still operates in the context of a traditional society. Nayar argues that both of these modes differ from the mode of thinking used by the “third generation”, those ranging in age from 18 to 30, the majority of whom were born in the West, who use the mode of analytics, a “mode of critical thinking that emerges out of the culture of reading and writing and that breaks away from the traditional mentality to mirror the essential characteristics of modernity” (Nayar, 2004, p. 28). For Nayar, this mode of thinking carries the mark of a “modern mentality” incorporating a self-orientation and including the capacity for self-reflection. Although Nayar’s idea that various generations of Sikhs are defined by particular modes of thinking can be challenged as it assumes that all members of a generation think in the same way, I am proposing that the distinction between the “modes of thinking” is useful when considering the way in which religion is presented in the family environment. For instance, where parents transmit religion through orality through the telling and retelling of stories, or through literacy which is still marked by a strong traditional mentality, it appears that

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young Sikhs are socialized to treat religion and religious authority in the same way. Conversely where parents engage with religion through the mode of analytics and where religion and religious authorities are presented as being open to question and challenge, young Sikhs are themselves more likely to raise questions about religious tradition. Those raised in an environment where religion is regarded as something which should not be questioned and where religious transmission is viewed as being “top down” from clearly defined religious authorities are more likely to support the idea that particular individuals are religious authorities by virtue of their spiritual advancement following intense religious practice. On the other hand, those who have been raised in environments in which religious authorities are open to more scrutiny will tend to seek sources of religious transmission which are based on critical thinking, especially if their families are not affiliated to any particular group or individual. Cultural Consumption To these categories, I also wish to highlight the diversity of “cultural consumption” within Sikh families and the impact of different types of media. As Marie Gillespie notes in her examination of media consumption among Sikh youth in Southall, “transnational and diasporic media representing several cultures are available in Southall homes, offering a range of choices of symbolic identification” (Gillespie, 1996, p. 206) and that: the very coexistence of culturally diverse media is a cultural resource. It engenders a developed consciousness of difference and a cosmopolitan stance. It encourages young people to compare, contrast and criticise the cultural and social forms represented to them by their parents, by significant others present in their daily lives and by significant others on screen. (Gillespie, 1996, p. 206)

The importance of media consumption as a means of religious transmission has become particularly significant since 2009 when the Sikh Channel started broadcasting Sikhism-related religious programming from Birmingham, UK. Following this, Sikh TV and Sangat TV started broadcasting Sikhism-related programming in 2010, although Sikh TV has since shutdown. Survey responses highlighted considerable diversity in the cultural consumption practices of young British Sikhs. For example, whereas 482 of the 645 respondents were happy to name a favourite Hollywood film, only 373 respondents named a favourite Bollywood film. Patterns of TV consumption preferences also varied, with only 13 respondents stating that their favourite programming was Sikh religious programming and the rest stating preferences for a number of mainstream television programmes

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including Eastenders, The Simpsons and The Apprentice. These survey responses indicate that relatively few young Sikhs purposively engage with the Sikh media, although online discussions do indicate that programmes which target Sikh youth are popular for some.1 In addition, although Sikh youth might not choose to engage with the Sikh media themselves, the fact that parents and grandparents are watching these programmes is likely to have an effect on religious transmission. Further research on patterns of consumption of Sikh media is required to ascertain if this is linked to locality, caste, migration history, generation or language patterns in any way, and how this consumption of religious programming impacts the religious lives of British Sikh families. Similarities in Sikh Families Having understood points of diversity within Sikh families I will now examine how survey responses drew attention to aspects of Sikh family life which are likely to be more common. Family Religious Practices Following Nesbitt who highlights the role of parents and other relatives in religious nurture, many respondents mentioned that as children, they had been explicitly taught Sikh practices by their parents (Nesbitt, 2000). Arti, the president of a Sikh society in the Midlands, explained that she “used to do mul mantar from the age of 5 – every day … that’s what my mum had raised me to do”. Indeed, the role of mothers was emphasized by a number of respondents. A 23-year-old male from Birmingham explained that “me and my mum are religious we will do Rahiras together when possible”. Similarly an 18-year-old male from Leeds explained that “Mother is very religious/Dad is total opposite”. A number of interviewees also noted that the family keeping the Guru Granth Sahib in the house had an important impact on their religious socialization, presumably because hosting the Guru Granth Sahib in one’s home is very labour- and time-intensive. As Nesbitt explains (Nesbitt, 2005, p. 39), “most Sikhs do not have a complete hard copy of the scriptures at home, as this means setting one room aside as a mini-gurdwara, with family members ensuring that the Guru Granth Sahib is opened in the morning and laid to rest for the night”. For Narinder, a 39-year-old speaker at camps and Sikh societies, these reverential

1 For example, the Sikh Youth Show, which initially aired on the Sikh Channel and now airs on Sangat TV, generates a number of online responses after each show among particular groups of Sikh youth (see Sikhsangat, 2011).

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practices became part of her daily routine, acting as a daily reminder of her commitments as a Sikh: The house I grew up in with my parents, there was always Guru Granth Sahib. Ever since I can remember, my mum does prakash [the formal opening of the Guru Granth Sahib] before she does anything else. So I had a couple of ground rules as a child, [one of ] which was you had to matha tek [bow to the Guru] before you came downstairs. (Interview, 8 May 2010)

Religious Iconography Although not all Sikh households choose to house the Guru Granth Sahib, many studies of young Sikhs highlight the importance of iconography. James notes, for example, that “pictures of the Gurus, and of events in their lives and places associated with them, decorate the walls of nearly all Sikh homes … they must be important elements in their developing imagination” ( James, 1974, p. 31). Similarly Hadwen observes that “in most Sikh homes children not only grow up with daily religious observances … but also in an environment where symbols and artefacts of the Sikh religion abound” (Hadwen, 1995, p. 77). Indeed for Nesbitt, the religious pictures in her respondents’ households “were statements of their self-identification with a faith tradition” (Nesbitt, 2000, p. 52). The importance of iconography as a means of religious transmission was supported through my observation in Sikh households, as iconography was present in all of the households in which interviews were conducted, ranging from pictures of the 10 Gurus to pictures of sants and notable martyrs in the Sikh tradition, to translations of quotations of the Guru Granth Sahib on the walls. The impact of this iconography in religious socialization is illustrated by Santokh, a 33-year-old male from the north of England: My Mum would have at least fifteen to twenty photos of the Gurus pictures in every room – there’s probably more pictures of the Gurus and Gursikhs (respected historical Sikhs) than there are of us … [so] if I come into a room and see the Gurus photo I’d think they were watching me. (Interview, 9 March 2010)

Whereas pictures of the Gurus, in particular Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind Singh, are found in the majority of Sikh households, interviewees who followed sants or particular Khalsa groups often displayed pictures of the particular sant, or inspirational figures from that group in their homes.2 2 In their study of Sikh children’s ideas of God, Eleanor Nesbitt and Robert Jackson note that in sant-following families the elevated status of the sant is encouraged by the use of language as “not only is the same word [Babaji] used for all three (Guru, Guru Granth Sahib

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Religious Stories The interviews also highlighted the importance of stories as a means of transmission. For example, Param, a 22-year-old president of a northern university Sikh society, explained that: [h]istory means so much to me – when I hear about what some of the shahids [those martyred for the faith] have done – I get kind of emotional. I think it’s magic. I’d love to do something for my religion – I’d love to live the life of a Sikh. (Interview, 22 October 2009)

Similarly, Narinder highlighted how her “Mum would read sakhiyan [stories] to me before I used to go to bed – and I just couldn’t bring myself to cut my hair”. It is clear from these accounts that stories about key figures in Sikh history have an important impact on the religious socialization of young British Sikhs, causing some to question their own identities when being made aware of the lives of Sikhs in the past. Indeed, Navdeep, a 26-year-old male from the south of England, explained: The one thing that I do recall about my childhood is that my bed-time stories would always be about stories about Sikhs … And when I was in Year 2, about 5–6 years old, I looked in the mirror once and I said to my mum, ‘you tell me these stories about all these people, about these great soldiers … This blood runs through my body as well – runs in my veins – so why am I a mona [a person with hair cut]?’ I don’t know what hit me – it was a simple thing, but I thought, ‘why don’t I keep my hair? If this is what I’m made of as well, then why can’t I keep my hair?’ (Interview, 12 May 2010)

A number of scholars have noted the significant role of stories in religious socialization, among them Keith A. Roberts and David A. Yamane who observe that – together with scriptures, moral codes and the celebration of religious events – stories are important, as they become “imbedded in the memory and meaning for youngsters” (Roberts and Yamane, 2011, p. 95). That the role of stories was mentioned by a number of interviewees indicates that, for young Sikhs, stories of sacrifice made for the faith leave a long-lasting impression, primarily because of the emotional impact of these accounts. Stories also contribute to young Sikhs’ awareness of “different degrees of Sikhness”, a phrase coined by Nesbitt to illustrate how young Sikhs describe more visibly observant Sikhs as “the English ‘proper Sikh’ or ‘real Sikh’, etc. and living sant) but the actual living sant (Babaji) is equated with both the Gurus and the Guru Granth Sahib” (Nesbitt and Jackson, 1995, pp. 115–18).

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and the Punjabi ‘pagwala’ and ‘amrit chhakia’ with a small minority applying ‘Sikh’ only to those who were committed to the Khalsa code” (Nesbitt, 1999, p. 329). The idea that young Sikhs are socialized to be aware of different degrees of Sikhness helps to explain religious intensification in later stages of life, when young Sikhs search for greater engagement and aim to become “proper Sikhs” themselves. A number of the male interviewees who wore turbans while growing up explained that they were aware that removing the turban was not an option for them, especially as other family members acted as “identity enforcers”. Gurpal, a 22-year-old from the Midlands, recalled this, commenting that “they used to call my chache [Dad’s younger brothers] if I threatened to cut my hair”. It is important however to highlight that assumptions about levels of family religiosity should not be purely based on levels of adherence to the Khalsa identity. For instance, Mandeep a religious transmitter who regularly speaks at camps and Sikh societies, explained that: [m]y dad was a mona [had a haircut] … but I remember from a young age that he knew Japji Sahib, Rahiras Sahib, Sohila Sahib off by heart. And if we were ever going anywhere in the car my Dad would say ‘it’s evening time let’s do Rahiras’ – he wouldn’t cover his head or anything, it was automatic – and all we knew was that you should do Rahiras in the evening – and in the morning my Dad would say, let’s do Japji Sahib. (Interview, 9 March, 2010)

Therefore, rather than simply using external identity as a measure of a Sikh family’s religiosity, it is important to examine other factors, including knowledge of Sikh history and prayer practices. It has also been explained that Navreet Singh’s excitement about wearing a turban results from childhood socialization probably through stories about the idea of “proper Sikhs”. Conclusion In this chapter I have highlighted some of the variety in the religious socialization which young British Sikhs encounter in their early lives and how this impacts ideas of tradition and authority. As I have shown, there is much diversity within Sikh families with migration history in particular being an important factor, leading to differences between the identity practices of “direct” and “twice” migrants. Migration history also influences the level at which Punjabi is spoken, which in turn affects the type of religious learning which young Sikhs engage with in later life. Those who are confident with Punjabi will have access to a wide range of resources including Punjabi katha, whereas those whose Punjabi is limited will need to access these resources through an interpreter. While caste

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may have had an influence on the occupations of the early Sikh migrants, it does not determine occupation as much as it once did. The structure of the household has also been shown to impact on religious socialization, especially if grandparents live in the same household or close by, as does the “mode of thinking” which is applied to religion in the family environment. The “mode of thinking” cannot be determined by any of the factors individually but evolves from a combination of these factors and the life experience of the individual. Related to this are the presentations of particular types of religious tradition and authority. In families who follow sants, authority and tradition are linked to the figure of the sant, whereas those attending a particular gurdwara may invest authority in the local gyani while learning about tradition in a variety of ways. Besides these differences, I have noted a number of commonalities. Nesbitt’s analysis of the idea of “proper Sikhs” is useful, as it helps to explain why many young Sikhs who do not keep the external identity in childhood and in their teens, subsequently do so in later life as they experience a process of religious intensification (Roberts and Yamane, 2011, p. 123). In this regard I am arguing that most young Sikhs, regardless of their own family identity practices, will have been socialized in the Sikh tradition to some degree even if this is simply through weddings and other life cycle rites. Consequently, despite Arnett’s assertion that there is no link between the religious training people receive throughout their childhood and the religious beliefs they hold by the time they reach emerging adulthood (Arnett, 2004, p. 174), many of the religious engagement choices made by young British Sikhs are determined by the family environment in which they are nurtured and raised. Indeed, the importance of the family has been demonstrated, highlighting the diversity along the lines of caste, family structure, migration history, the amount of Punjabi spoken, external identity and locality. As well as promoting ideas of what it means to be a Sikh and especially of what it means to be a “proper Sikh”, Sikh families determine gurdwara and group affiliation as well as the way in which “religion” and “religious authority” are to be approached. The fact that Sikh families promote different “modes of thinking” suggests that ideas about the status and reverence with which religious authorities should be treated are transmitted to young Sikhs throughout their lives. Rather than arguing that the type of religious learning young Sikhs engage with in emerging adulthood is dependent on either caste, or migration history or education, I am proposing that it is the combination of these factors along with the “mode of thinking” with which young Sikhs approach religion which helps define the type of religious learning going forward.

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References Arnett, Jeffrey (2000), “Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens through the Twenties”. American Psychologist, 55 (5), 469–80. Arnett, Jeffrey (2004), Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens Through the Twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ballard, Roger (1994), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain. London: C. Hurst. Baumann, Gerd (1996), Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multiethnic London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BBC (2008), “Student Growth Risks Widening Gap”, 9 September. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7604631.stm (accessed 21 August 2009). Bhachu, Parminder (1985), Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain. London: Routledge. Denscombe, Martyn (2007), The Good Research Guide: For Small-scale Social Research Projects. 3rd ed. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Denton, Melinda and Christian Smith (2001), Methodological Issues and Challenges in the Study of American Youth and Religion, National Study of Youth and Religion. Chapel Hill, NC. Available at: http://www.youth andreligion.org/sites/youthandreligion.org/files/imported/docs/methods. pdf (accessed 12 December 2011). Drury, Beatrice (1991), “Sikh Girls and the Maintenance of an Ethnic Culture”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 17 (3), 387–99. Gillespie, Marie (1996), Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge. Hadwen, Diane Jeanette (1995), Contemporary Religious Nurture among the Sikhs in Bradford. Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Leeds. Hall, Kathleen D. (2002), Lives in Translation: Sikh Youth as British Citizens. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. James, Alan G. (1974), Sikh Children in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jhutti-Johal, Jagbir (2011), Sikhism Today. London: Continuum. Johnston, Hugh (2004), “Sikhs in Canada”, in M. Ember, C.R. Emeber and I. Skoggard (eds), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Basel: Springer, pp. 1075–83. Larson, Heidi (1999), “‘We Don’t Celebrate Christmas, We Just Give Gifts’: Adaptations to Migration and Social Change among Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh Children in England”, in S.K. Houseknecht and J.G. Pankhurst (eds), Family, Religion, and Social Change in Diverse Societies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 283–302. Mooney, Nicola (2006), “Aspiration, Reunification and Gender Transformation in Jat Sikh marriages from India to Canada”, Global Networks, 6, 389–403.

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Nayar, Kamala E. (2004), The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver: Three Generations Amid Tradition, Modernity, and Multiculturalism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Nesbitt, Eleanor (1991), “‘My Dad’s Hindu, My Mum’s Side are Sikhs’: Issues in Religious Identity”. Charlbury: National Foundation for Arts Education. Available at: http://www.casas.org.uk/papers/pdfpapers/identity.pdf. Nesbitt, Eleanor (1997), “‘Splashed with Goodness’: The Many Meanings of Amrit for Young British Sikhs”. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 12 (1), pp. 17–33. Nesbitt, Eleanor (1999), “Sikhs and Proper Sikhs: Young British Sikhs’ Perceptions of Their Identity”, in P. Singh and N.G. Barrier (eds), Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change. Delhi: Manohar, pp. 315–33. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2000), The Religious Lives of Sikh Children: A Coventry Based Study. Leeds: Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2004), “Young British Sikhs and Religious Devotion: Issues Arising from Ethnographic Research”, in A.S. King and J. Brockington (eds), Intimate Other: Love Divine in Indic Religions. New Delhi: Orient Longman, pp. 310–36. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2005), Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2009), “Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikh and ‘Mixed-faith’ Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues”. Journal of Religion in Europe, 2 (1), 37–57. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2011), “Sikh Diversity in the UK”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 225–52. Nesbitt, Eleanor and Robert Jackson (1995), “Sikh Children’s Use of ‘God’: Ethnographic Fieldwork and Religious Education”. British Journal of Religious Education, 17 (2), 108–20. Office for National Statistics (2011), “Religion (Detailed)”, Nomis: Official Labour Market Statistics. Available at: http://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/ 2011/qs210ew (accessed 28 November 2013). Ormsby, Avril (2009), “UK Couples Waiting Longer for Marriage”. Reuters, April 15. Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE 53E2RB20090415 (accessed 21 August 2009). Roberts, Keith A. and David A. Yamane (2011), Religion in Sociological Perspective. 5th edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Shaw, Alison (2004), “Immigrant Families in the UK”, in J. Scott, J. Treas and M. Richards (eds), The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 270–85.

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Sherkat, Darren E. (2003), “Religious Socialization: Sources of Influence and Influences of Agency”, in M. Dillon (ed.), Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 151–63. Sikhsangat (2011), “Sikh Channel-Yesterdays Youth Show”. Available at: http:// www.sikhsangat.com/index.php?/topic/60724-sikh-channel-yesterdaysyouth-show/ (accessed 12 May 2012). Singh, Gurharpal and Darshan Singh Tatla (2006), Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community. London: Zed Books. Smith, Christian and Patricia Snell (2009), Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takhar, Opinderjit K. (2005), Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups among Sikhs. Aldershot: Ashgate. Thandi, Shinder (1999), “Sikh Youth Aspirations and Identity: Some Perspectives from Britain”, in P. Singh and N.G. Barrier (eds), Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 349–63. Wallup, Harry (2008), “Adults Rely on Parents for Financial Support”, The Telegraph, 30 July. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/per sonalfinance/2794047/Adults-rely-on-parents-for-financial-support.html (accessed 4 August 2009). Zuckerman, Phil (2003), An Invitation to the Sociology of Religion. London: Routledge.

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Chapter 2

Young Sikhs in Finland: Feeling at Home Nowhere, Everywhere, in Between and Beyond Laura Hirvi

The notion of “home” is ambiguous and carries with it a great amount of shifting meanings, which are often deeply entangled with each other. On the one hand, home may refer to a concrete, physical and intimate space of daily dwelling. However, on the other hand, home can also refer to a symbolic, imagined and intangible entity such as the “homeland”. The notion of home is in many ways also tied to the emotionally but also politically meaningful question of belonging. For this reason, questions related to home also play a pivotal role in the ongoing process through which people construct identities. The meanings, feelings and experiences connected to home offer people an imagined point of reference that influences the ways in which they shape their sense of self. Here are some of the questions that are profoundly linked to the process through which people negotiate identities and belonging: Where is home? What does home mean? And who is entitled to feel at home in a particular space? In the lives of immigrants and their descendants, the concept and the experiences of home and belonging become further complicated (Ahmed et al., 2003b, p. 2). Through their mobility, which might be forced or voluntary in nature, immigrants actively challenge the idea of a single, fixed home that would be firmly rooted in a particular kind of space, as much as their empirical lived realities have significantly helped to challenge the idea of a single identity. Today it is thus widely acknowledged that not only are identities constantly negotiated and re-created, but also homes are produced and shaped in an ongoing manner. Hence, the home is not seen as a static entity, but as being constituted in motion. Taking a look at the literature it becomes clear that the concept of “home” has featured in the past 30 years in an increasingly prominent and central role in studies dealing with the topic of migration (see e.g. Joy et al., 1995; Al-Ali and Koser, 2002; Ahmed et al., 2003a; Huttunen, 2005; Mazumdar and Mazumdar, 2009 Wiles 2008; Bozkurt 2009; Levin and Fincher, 2010). This might come as no surprise, especially if considering that the notion of home and homeland

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usually plays a central role in applied definitions of diaspora (see e.g. Safran, 2005), which is a central concept in the field of migration studies. Typical questions that are often raised and addressed in studies dealing with home and migration are, for instance: What meanings does home have for people who have left one place and settled down in another? What role does the homeland play in the lives of immigrants and their descendants? How do immigrants create a sense of home in the diaspora and construct, but also imagine, a home away from home? What role do artifacts play in this process? And how is the question of home related to feelings of belonging? However, most of the studies conducted so far have examined questions related to home mainly from the perspective of adult immigrants and ignored the experiences of their children (Mand, 2010, p. 277). Only recently have scholars started to pay more attention to the experiences of children who immigrated together with their parents, or who were born in the country to which their parents had immigrated, and are thus often growing up in an environment that is marked by various cultural influences. Among others, scholars have begun to scrutinize what roles home, belonging and homeland play in the lives of immigrants’ descendants (see e.g. Christou, 2006; Mand, 2010; Tereshchenko and Araújo, 2011; Archambault, 2012). The objective of this chapter is to contribute novel insights into this growing field of research by looking at the lived experiences of Sikhs who have grown up in Helsinki and Finland, and the ways in which they negotiate their identities. Using data that was gathered by means of ethnographic fieldwork in the period 2008–12, I will examine in more detail the meanings that young Sikhs, who have grown up in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, attach to the notion of home and how they formulate their sense of belonging. In this way, I seek to gain a more profound understanding of the strategies through which they negotiate their identities in relation to the societies in which they are embedded. To begin with, I will shortly introduce the reader to Finland’s migration history, and the Sikh immigration history in particular. I will then go on to offer an overview of the method and data on which this chapter is grounded, before taking a closer look at how belonging is experienced by four young Sikhs who have grown up in Finland. Through the discussion of the ethnographic material I hope to highlight the various strategies that they apply in order to maintain a sense of home and belonging, which defies the experiences of exclusion that they encounter in their everyday life in Finland. In this vein, I wish to draw attention to young Sikhs’ agency and its limitations. Finally, I will offer some concluding thoughts.

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Background In order to be able to properly evaluate the discussion of the ethnographic data presented in this chapter, it is important to open up to a certain extent the larger context in which this study is embedded by introducing the reader briefly to Finland’s migration history, and the Sikh migration history in particular. Unlike in other countries such as the US or the UK, the in-migration from countries outside of Europe is a rather recent phenomenon in Finland. Until the 1980s, Finland was a country characterized by a strong outward migration. People from Finland migrated to, among others, North America and Australia, and after World War II in significant numbers to Sweden. However, the early 1980s marked a turning point when the net migration flow to Finland became positive, which means that more people migrated to Finland than emigrated from it (see Statistics Finland, 2009). However, as migration scholars Jouni Korkiasaari and Ismo Söderling point out, until the end of the 1980s “some 85 per cent of the immigrants coming to Finland were return migrants (mostly from Sweden)” and only since the 1990s has the number of immigrants with foreign origin significantly increased (Korkiasaari and Söderling, 1998, p. 14). In 2012, out of Finland’s total population of 5.4 million people about 3.6 per cent (195,000) were people with a foreign nationality (Statistics Finland, 2012). Out of these 2.1 per cent (4,100) were Indian nationals, which also includes Sikhs who emigrated from India to Finland. Sikhs started migrating to Finland mainly from the Punjab in northern India in the beginning of the 1980s, and today there are an estimated 600 Sikhs living in Finland (Hirvi, 2013). This is a fairly small number if compared to the number of Sikhs living in other Nordic countries, such as Norway or Sweden ( Jacobsen and Myrvold, 2011, p. 10). The majority of Sikhs are located in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, like almost half of Finland’s immigrant population (Martikainen, 2013, p. 6). In 2006, a group of active Sikhs established a gurdwara in a suburb of Helsinki that can be seen to play an important role in the process through which Sikhs in Finland maintain and transmit their cultural and religious heritage and negotiate their identities (Hirvi, 2010). It also serves as a site where Sikhs in Finland negotiate their understanding of Sikhism in relation to larger religious debates that are carried out in a transnational manner ( Jacobsen et al., 2012). The majority of Sikh immigrants in Finland are working nowadays in bars and restaurants, either as employees or as entrepreneurs (Hirvi, 2011). In recent years, a small number of Sikhs have also arrived in Finland as expatriates who have been sent by a company in India to work in Finland for some time.

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Researching Sikhs The discussion presented in this chapter draws from a larger research project in which I explored how Sikhs in Helsinki (Finland) and Yuba City (California, US) negotiate their identities through practices that they perform in their everyday life (Hirvi, 2013). Altogether I interviewed 69 self-identified Sikhs with a migration background, out of which 29 interviews took place with Sikhs living in the metropolitan area of Helsinki. The interviews were semistructured and touched upon a number of themes, but offered enough room for free discussions. Each interview, which took place either in Finnish or in English, usually lasted between 30 minutes and 2 hours, and they were taped with the help of a voice recorder with the permission of the interviewee. In order to protect the anonymity of the research participants, I use pseudonyms throughout the entire text. Out of the 29 Sikhs I interviewed in Helsinki, 16 people were male and 13 female. I interviewed more immigrants (20) than immigrants’ descendants (9). Aware that the term “immigrant” is related to deep emotions and questions of power (see e.g. Hirvi, 2013, pp. 41ff., 74ff.), this work applies a definition of an immigrant that refers to persons who immigrated from one country to another when they were 18 years old or older. Immigrants’ descendants and the expression “Sikh youth” are used in this chapter to refer to those who either immigrated in the company of their parents to Finland before reaching the age of 18, or who were born in Finland but have at least one parent who is a Sikh immigrant. Out of the Sikh youth I interviewed in Helsinki two were born in Finland, two had moved there together with their parents as toddlers, and one as a five-year-old in the 1990s. Three others had moved to Finland with their parents when they were between 5 and 10 years old and one when he was 15 in the 1980s (see Table 2.1). Table 2.1

1980s 1990s

Time of immigration and age of interviewed young Sikhs Born in Finland

Toddler

5- to 10-year-old

Teenager

2

3 1

1

2

In addition to the interviews, I did participant observation during spring 2008 and spring 2012. During the entire fieldwork process, I tried to make it clear that I was an ethnographer collecting material for my study, and made sure I received consent from those whom I interviewed to participate in

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this research. I mostly carried out participant observation at the gurdwara, because it constitutes one of the most significant sociocultural arenas where Sikhs gather on a regular basis and which is open to the public. I also attended different social events to which I was invited, such as birthday parties, and visited Sikhs in their homes and at their workplaces. Most of the Sikh families I interviewed for this study live in nuclear households consisting of a Sikh father, a Sikh mother and usually one to three children. Sometimes also grandparents, who visit from India, may live in the household for up to three months, often engaging in transnational childcare (Hirvi, 2013, pp. 138ff ). Questions of Belonging During the very first interview that I conducted for this study I asked 18-year-old Satleen, whose Sikh parents had migrated to Finland before she was born there in the beginning of the 1990s, what “home” meant for her. She gave me the following reply: What home means for me? [Thinks a moment] Everything. My home means everything for me. I am outside and everything goes well and all but when I get tired then home is the best place; it is where I step in. All my family is here, siblings and parents. And nowadays, when you think that most children want to move away from home, I at least don’t want to move away from home, I feel better here than outside.

What is interesting in this statement is that Satleen draws a picture of home that is marked by social relationships and that is related to the idea of home as a safe haven: an “inside” that she returns to by stepping in when she gets tired of the “outside” world. In other words, it appears as if the outside world starts the moment she literally walks out of the door. What Satleen encounters there is the public space, where she is asked to identify herself in relation to the others she encounters there, and who also ascribe to her a certain kind of identity position possibly on the grounds of her skin colour, how she is dressed, what she says or with whom she socializes. Implicit in this process of constructing identities is not only the identity position that others ascribe to a person or a group, but also the quest of an individual or a collective to claim an identity and to craft a sense of belonging. But as anthropologist Laura Huttunen reminds us, public spaces are subject to different regimes of power and this makes it easier for some to claim belonging or “being at home” in those spaces than for others (Huttunen, 2005, p. 179). This became clearly evident in the interviews that I conducted with Sikhs who had grown up in Finland.

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Jodh, for example, had moved to Finland as a teenager and he is now in his mid-thirties. Today, he is working in a pub and this is also where I meet up with him for our first interview. Sitting at a table close to the counter with a strong cup of coffee in front of me, some Finnish hit songs playing in the background, I ask Jodh whether he considers himself to be Finnish. He replies “Yes, at times”, but says that this feeling of being Finnish disappears quickly the moment one of his customers starts to verbally harass him. As he says, no matter how much he would do for the Finnish society – working and paying taxes or joining the Finnish army are some of the concrete examples he mentions here – a “foreigner stays a foreigner” in Finland. His skin colour plays a significant role in his experiences of discrimination, and sets limits for his possibility to claim and perform a particular kind of identity position. As Jodh explains, when he is working behind the bar he and his friends may forget that their skin colour is darker than that of their white customers, “but then someone always reminds us”. This makes him angry but also sad, leaving him with a feeling of disappointment: “I have been living here for so long, but this stays in my mind, the ‘foreigner’. And then, when someone reminds me, then I get angry, and I would like to leave.” Indeed, like his father, Jodh does leave Finland on a regular basis. He maintains an active transnational lifestyle, which means that he visits India at least once a year, often staying for a month or even longer. But leaving Finland is not really a remedy for his feeling of estrangement. As he explains later on in the interview, the problem is that also in India he is considered as a foreigner, concluding that “now we are nowhere, but in between”. He does not deem this state of being “in between”, as he experiences and describes it himself, to be a positive thing at all. Instead, I get the impression that Jodh would like to be able to call Finland his home, but feels that this is impossible because of the negative encounters he has had with his customers. Since Jodh also feels pushed into the role of an outsider when visiting India, he does not fully feel at home in either of the countries that clearly provide significant frameworks for his life. Maintaining and Commuting between Homes Komal, who is a similar age to Jodh but had moved to Finland as a young girl in the 1980s, reflects in the interview a point of view that resembles that of Jodh, as we shall see. When in Finland, Komal says that she does not miss India because, after all, Finland is the place where her daily life takes place and where her close family members live, including her parents, husband, children and her siblings with their families. About India, Komal says that: “It is nice to go there, and you have to know after all your own roots and so on, and you have to bring your own

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children there”, thus highlighting the important role that India still plays in her life as well as the lives of her three children, who were all born in Finland. In the course of the interview it becomes obvious that Komal’s family owns an apartment in India. As she says, she is glad that they have their own apartment in India. When I ask her why she thinks this way, she begins to explain how history has shown that there is always the possibility that people with an immigrant background will be driven out of the country in which they have settled. In such a case, she continues to explain, it would be good to have an alternative place to go to. And although Komal makes it clear that she believes that the chances of this happening in Finland are very small, she takes this possibility into consideration. After all, she concludes, “a foreigner is always a foreigner in another country”. Komal and Jodh, who moved to Finland when they were about 7 and 15 years old respectively, and who are both now in their thirties, obviously find it difficult to establish a sense of belonging to the imagined, collective “us” of Finns. On one level, it was evident in the interviews that they do consider Finland as their home, because it provides the backdrop of their daily family life. But outside of their private homes and those of their close relatives, they clearly feel alienated and find it hard to truly feel at home in the larger imagined community of Finns, because they have had the experience that others negate them the right to do so. Taking a closer look at the interview material, it seems that both Jodh and Komal have worked out a strategy by the help of which they seek to confront and circumvent this sense of estrangement. In the case of Jodh, it appears that by visiting India on a regular basis he seeks to escape the feeling of alienation that he encounters in the context of the wider Finnish society. But it is obvious that his mission is only temporarily successful, as also in India local people position him in the role of the outsider. During his visit to the Punjab, others just see him as someone who left the Punjab and is now earning easy money in the West, he says. Due to the “double alienation” he encounters in both countries, he is left with the feeling of being nowhere, but in between. As a consequence, Jodh is left with a “homing desire” (Brah, 1996, p. 180) – in other words, the wish to belong. Komal, in turn, responds to the feeling of exclusion that she experiences in Finland by having a back-up plan in case of an emergency, such as a threat to her right to legally stay in Finland. As a strategic reaction to such a worst-case scenario, the family maintains an apartment in India that they now use during their holiday visits to India. For Komal, the concrete home in India constitutes an alternative home site and retreat that signals the idea of shelter in case she and her family are one day driven out of Finland. Even though this is a highly unlikely scenario, as Komal herself pointed out, her line of thinking brings to the fore that she does not feel wholly secure in Finland right now. As becomes clear in the interview, Komal is well aware of the public discussions that are

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carried out in the media on the topic of migration. She also noticed with great concern the success of the “nationally minded” True Finns party in the 2011 parliamentary elections, when they won 19 per cent of the votes, thus becoming Finland’s third biggest party in the Finnish Parliament. Members of the True Finns party have expressed (on various occasions in public) statements that were clearly anti-immigration in nature, if not even racist. In Komal’s case, it could be argued that the act of maintaining a second, actual home in the ancestral homeland does therefore not necessarily reflect a desire or concrete plan to return home one day, as is, for example ,the case with Jodh’s father who initially built a house in India for exactly this reason. Further, since it is an apartment and not a house, it does not need to be seen as a symbol by which the migrant family seeks to communicate their success to fellow migrants and kin in an attempt to increase their social standing and status, as anthropologist Roger Ballard has argued with reference to the houses built by migrants in Pakistan (Ballard, 2003, pp. 199, 220), and historian Filomeno Aguilar with regards to the houses built by labour migrants in the Philippines (Aguilar, 2009, pp. 106–8). Nor does the act of maintaining a second home in the context of India necessarily signal the migrants’ wish to express their sense of belonging in the communities they originate from, as Aguilar has suggested as well as Huttunen with respect to houses built by immigrants who are part of the Bosnian diaspora (Aguilar, 2009, pp. 108,109; Huttunen, 2006, p. 75). It may be all those things, but in Komal’s case the fact that the family maintains a second home in India can also be seen to communicate her fear of exclusion from the country she is now living in, and the fragile foundations on which her sense of belonging is constructed in the context of settlement. The apartment in India thus reflects the feeling of insecurity that Komal has with regards to her legal position in Finland, the country she would like to call home but is still unable to do so full-heartedly; at least not the kind of home she seems to yearn for – one that would offer her a sense of being welcomed, and a feeling of comfort, security, stability and safety. At Home Everywhere? Two of the young Sikhs I interviewed, who had grown up a decade later than Jodh and Komal and who spent their teenage years in Finland in the beginning of the twenty-first century, also seemed to perceive it as hard to become fully recognized as equal members in the imagined mainstream community of Finns. They have also come up with a number of creative strategies to circumvent the feeling of exclusion that they encounter in the course of their daily life in Finland. Livleen, for example, was born and raised in Finland, and at the time of our interview she was just about to graduate from grammar school. In the

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interview she declared that she is neither fully an immigrant nor 100 per cent Finn, concluding, like Jodh, that “I am somewhere in between”. When I asked Livleen whether she thought that this was a good thing or not, she responded that in her eyes this was a positive thing. Livleen explained this with reference to the fact that she had studied for many years at an international school in Finland. For this reason, she says: I basically do not feel that I am connected to Finland or India. I do not know yet, what my citizenship is: I want to travel a lot, and I want to find the citizenship myself, to where I belong […] For me it feels that I am not a citizen of any country, it just feels that I am ‘international’ (says it in English) because I went to the international school. Because I have internalized so many different cultures, I have British friends, I have [friends] from America, from Indonesia, so it feels to me that I have taken parts from them and combined all those cultures to my own […] For this reason I can tolerate things, and I can think differently, I do not think so single minded. (Interview, 8 August 2008)

This interview excerpt shows clearly that Livleen is keen to carve out for herself the identity of a cosmopolitan – in other words, a person whose home and sense of self is not necessarily anchored in a particular place or country such as Finland or India. Instead, she is keen to reach beyond the restriction of those national frameworks and stay flexible and open-minded when it comes to questions of citizenship or belonging. A couple of years after we conducted our first interview, I meet Livleen again and in the course of our conversation it becomes obvious that her way of looking at questions related to home and belonging have slightly changed. By now, Livleen has graduated from school and she is working in a part-time job and spending a lot of time with her friends. Talking about her current situation and her future plans, she now makes it rather clear that Finland is not a place she could imagine living in for the rest of her life. In Finland, she says, there is no real future for her, as her skin colour will always constitute a barrier to her agency, which she finds impossible to overcome. Hence, Livleen says she is now seriously thinking about the option of moving to India for some time. She would not like to move to the region where her family comes from, but rather to a larger city such as Mumbai where she could build up her own home and life in an independent manner. Similar to the second-generation British Muslim women from South Asia studied by linguist Fazila Bhimji, Livleen obviously reasons that a big city, and not the place where her family comes from, would give her the possibility to do so (Bhimji, 2008, p. 420). The fact that Livleen is playing with the idea of “returning” to her parents’ ancestral homeland suggests how hard it is for her to claim a sense of home and belonging in the context of Finland, the country in which she has lived most of her life.

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interview she declared that she is neither fully an immigrant nor 100 per cent Finn, concluding, like Jodh, that “I am somewhere in between”. When I asked Livleen whether she thought that this was a good thing or not, she responded that in her eyes this was a positive thing. Livleen explained this with reference to the fact that she had studied for many years at an international school in Finland. For this reason, she says: I basically do not feel that I am connected to Finland or India. I do not know yet, what my citizenship is: I want to travel a lot, and I want to find the citizenship myself, to where I belong […] For me it feels that I am not a citizen of any country, it just feels that I am ‘international’ (says it in English) because I went to the international school. Because I have internalized so many different cultures, I have British friends, I have [friends] from America, from Indonesia, so it feels to me that I have taken parts from them and combined all those cultures to my own […] For this reason I can tolerate things, and I can think differently, I do not think so single minded. (Interview, 8 August 2008)

This interview excerpt shows clearly that Livleen is keen to carve out for herself the identity of a cosmopolitan – in other words, a person whose home and sense of self is not necessarily anchored in a particular place or country such as Finland or India. Instead, she is keen to reach beyond the restriction of those national frameworks and stay flexible and open-minded when it comes to questions of citizenship or belonging. A couple of years after we conducted our first interview, I meet Livleen again and in the course of our conversation it becomes obvious that her way of looking at questions related to home and belonging have slightly changed. By now, Livleen has graduated from school and she is working in a part-time job and spending a lot of time with her friends. Talking about her current situation and her future plans, she now makes it rather clear that Finland is not a place she could imagine living in for the rest of her life. In Finland, she says, there is no real future for her, as her skin colour will always constitute a barrier to her agency, which she finds impossible to overcome. Hence, Livleen says she is now seriously thinking about the option of moving to India for some time. She would not like to move to the region where her family comes from, but rather to a larger city such as Mumbai where she could build up her own home and life in an independent manner. Similar to the second-generation British Muslim women from South Asia studied by linguist Fazila Bhimji, Livleen obviously reasons that a big city, and not the place where her family comes from, would give her the possibility to do so (Bhimji, 2008, p. 420). The fact that Livleen is playing with the idea of “returning” to her parents’ ancestral homeland suggests how hard it is for her to claim a sense of home and belonging in the context of Finland, the country in which she has lived most of her life.

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New Finn? Rana, who moved to Finland in the 1990s when he was five years old and is now in his early twenties, also feels that it is difficult to claim belonging in the context of Finland: Laura: And do you feel that in Finland you are given the chance to be a Finn? Rana: In certain things, ‘yes’, and in others ‘no’. In the very, very, very end, if you think to the last end, we are always foreigners. Although we are ‘New Finns’, for the Finnish nation and the Finns we are still foreigners from different cultures. (Interview, 9 July 2010)

Rana explained in the interview that he always had a strong desire to belong. As he literally phrased it, he did not want to be the black sheep standing out in the crowd. However, there were situations in which he had to realize that due to his skin colour others would deny him the right to claim belonging in the context of Finland, where whiteness is still seen by many as an outward marker of Finnishness (see Rastas, 2005, p. 159). It is most likely because of his experiences of discrimination and racism that Rana does not want to claim the identity of a Finn. Instead, he prefers to identify in the course of the interview as a uussuomalainen, which literally translated means “New Finn” and refers to people with a migration background in their family. Annika Forsander, who is a leading scholar in the field of migration studies in Finland, has pointed out that the expression “New Finn” is problematic, because it still differentiates and excludes the “New Finn” from the category of the “Finn” (Forsander, 2004, p. 201). But what is relevant for the discussion related to Rana’s sense of home and belonging is the fact that he considers the “New Finn” as an appropriate expression to refer to people like him – in other words, people who were raised in Finland but have immigrant parents. As he explains, for him New Finns are people who were “raised here with this culture, but they also have in their blood their own culture. They are ‘New Finns’, they are part of the Finnish nation, part of the Finnish culture” (interview, 9 July 2010). Rana seems to be eager to craft for himself an alternative site for claiming belonging. But unlike Jodh, Komal and Livleen, Rana does not make use of the transnational dimension to craft the idea of an alternative home site but instead claims belonging within the national framework. And although Rana still positions himself slightly outside of the imagined community of the normative image of the Finn, when he asserts that “I am not a Finn, but I feel that I am a New Finn”, he still seems to be hopeful that he will be able to drop the prefix “New” one day. What seems to encourage Rana to think this way is that also

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many Finns are “fighting with us to the end [that others in Finland] would accept that we are here and are part of them” (interview, 9 July 2010). Discussion and Concluding Thoughts In this chapter I have focused on the experiences of four Sikhs who have grown up in Finland in the roughly defined period of 1980–2010. My objective was to examine what role home and belonging play in the lives of those young Sikhs in order to gain a better understanding of the ways in which they negotiate their identities with regards to the larger society in which they are embedded. As became clear, Sikhs who have grown up in Finland encounter in the public spheres which they traverse in the course of their everyday lives a number of forces that make it hard for them to claim belonging to the larger imagined community of Finns, even though they would like to do so. The experiences of discrimination and racism that they encounter in their daily lives seem to deprive them of the right to fully claim Finland as their home. The ethnographic material discussed in this chapter hence confirms the observation of sociologist Avtar Brah, who concluded in reference to her study conducted on immigrants in the UK more than 15 years ago: “It is quite possible to feel at home in a place and, yet the experience of social exclusion may inhibit public proclamation of the place as home” (Brah, 1996, p. 193). In the context of Finland, the Sikhs who were interviewed for this study had had the experience, like other children in Finland (see Rastas, 2007, pp. 98–9; Haikkola, 2010, p. 227), that because of their non-white skin colour they were pushed many times into the role of a Non-Finn. More precisely, they felt that independent of their practices and their personal biographies they were ascribed the identity of a foreigner: an ulkomaalainen, someone who “comes from outside of the country” (cf. Rastas, 2005, p. 161). Being identified as a foreigner implies the idea that a person is not a native but an alien – in other words, someone who is considered to be fremd in the home of the other, and thus has no right to claim belonging in this space. In her study of second-generation young people’s transnationalism and identity negotiations in Finland, sociologist Lotta Haikkola suggests that one strategy by which young people with a migration background respond to the categorization power of the wider Finnish society is to adopt the collective identity of the “foreigner”. Her research participants, who had different ancestral homelands, claimed in the interviews belonging to the larger group of foreigners in an act of differentiating themselves from the Finns (Haikkola, 2010, pp. 229–30). Also, Rana and another of my interlocutors, who had moved to Finland as a toddler in the beginning of the 1990s, made remarks that could be interpreted in a similar vein. One may recall, for example, a phrase that Rana

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said in response to my question of whether he feels he has been given the chance to claim the identity of a Finn: “for the Finnish nation and the Finns we are still foreigners from different cultures”. With reference to this statement, it could be indeed argued that Rana identified with the wider group of “foreigners”. But unlike the young people studied by Haikkola, the young Sikhs I interviewed did not fill this category with positive characteristics as a way of demarcating themselves from the imagined group of “Finns”. Instead, they made it clear that “foreigner” was an externally ascribed identity position that made it hard for them to cross and challenge the imagined border between a Finn and a non-Finn. To challenge those voices that questioned their right to be in the country, the young Sikhs would instead claim the identity of a “New Finn”, as in the case of Rana, or of a cosmopolitan, as in the case of Livleen, or they would seek refuge and comfort by maintaining a second home in their ancestral homeland (Komal), and commute between the new and the original homeland ( Jodh). While these are all strategies that can be seen to emerge as a reaction to the experience of exclusion in the country of settlement, it was obvious, especially with reference to the case of Jodh, that the feeling of social exclusion can be experienced at various sites, and is not necessarily only limited to the new homeland, as definitions of “diaspora” seem to tacitly suggest (see e.g. Safran, 2005). The feeling of alienation can occur during so-called “return visits” to the ancestral homeland, when locals identify the visiting immigrants and their children as non-locals, or even as foreigners (Christou, 2006, p. 1047; Bhimji, 2008, p. 415; Hirvi, 2013, pp. 151, 154). This feeling of double alienation might evoke in immigrants and their children a “homing desire” (Brah, 1996, p. 180). Sociologist Anne-Marie Fortier sees the desire to belong as a driving force that constitutes home, when she writes that “‘home’ is constituted by a desire for a ‘home’, rather than surfacing from an already constituted home, ‘there’ and ‘here’” (Fortier, 2003, p. 129). The ethnographic material discussed in this chapter seems to confirm this argument in so far as all four of the interviewed young Sikhs engaged in creative strategies through which they sought to re-imagine a sense of home and belonging in a context marked by migration. On a more general level, the empirical data discussed in this chapter highlights the various challenges and limitations that young Sikhs in Finland encounter when trying to carve out a positive and respected identity position for themselves in the wider society of the country they have lived in for most, if not all, of their lives. Once more, it can be noted how questions of power are intrinsically linked to the ways in which identities are negotiated. What is up for discussion is the question of who has the right to claim and deny belonging outside of the legal sphere. This debate is not taking place outside of home but within the context of not only imagined and desired but also concrete homes,

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thus challenging the idea of home as a harmonious and trouble-free space, and turning it into a site as well as an object of contestation. In this regard, I agree with scholars who have argued that our conceptualizations of home need to be cut loose from the idea of home as a place of comfort (Fortier, 2003; Basi and Qureshi, forthcoming). Nevertheless, the ethnographic material discussed in this chapter highlights how the idea of home as a safe place persists and continues to be at the core of each homing desire. References Aguilar, Filomeno (2009), “Labour Migration and Ties of Relatedness: Diasporic Houses and Investments in Memory in a Rural Philippine Village”. Thesis Eleven, 98, 88–114. Ahmed, Sara, Claudia Castañeda, Anne Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller (2003a), Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg. Ahmed, Sara, Claudia Castañeda, Anne Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller (2003b), “Introduction: Uprooting/Regroundings. Questions of Home and Migration”, in Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller (eds), Uprooting/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg, pp. 1–22. Al-Ali, Nadje and Khalid Koser (2002), New Approaches to Migration? Transnational Communities and the Transformation of Home. London and New York: Routledge. Archambault, Josée (2012), “‘It Can Be Good There Too’: Home and Continuity in Refugee Children’s Narratives of Settlement”. Children’s Geographies, 10 (1), 35–48. Ballard, Roger (2003), “The South Asian Presence in Britain and Its Transnational Connections”, in Bhikhu Parekh, Gurharpal Singh and Steven Vertovec (eds), Culture and Economy in the Indian Diaspora. London: Routledge, pp. 197–222. Basi, Chand and Kaveri Qureshi (forthcoming), “Homing Desires: Queer Young Asian Men in London”, in Paru Raman and Tom Selwyn (eds), Travelling Towards Home. Oxford: Berghahn. Bhimji, Fazila (2008), “Cosmopolitan Belonging and Diaspora: Secondgeneration British Muslim Women Travelling to South Asia”. Citizenship Studies, 12 (4), 413–27. Bozkurt, Esin (2009), Conceptualizing “Home”: The Question of Belonging among Turkish Families in Germany. Frankfurt: Campus. Brah, Avtar (1996), Cartographies of Diaspora. Contesting Identities. London and New York: Routledge.

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Christou, Anastasia (2006) Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity. SecondGeneration Greek-Americans Return “Home”. Amsterdam University Press. Forsander, Annika (2004), “Tekeekö työ oikeaksi suomalaiseksi?” [Is Work Turning One into a Real Finn?], in Tuula Helne, Sakari Hänninen and Jouko Karjalainen (eds), Seis yhteiskunta – tahdon sisään! [Society Stop – I Want in!]. Jyväskylä: Minerva, pp. 195–215. Fortier, Anne-Marie (2003), “Making Home: Queer Migrations and Motions of Attachment”, in Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller (eds), Uprooting/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration. Oxford: Berg, pp. 115–35. Haikkola, Lotta (2010), “Etnisyys, suomalaisuus ja ulkomaalaisuus toisen sukupolven luokitteluissa” [Ethnicity, Finnishness and Foreignness in the Classifications of the Second Generation], in Tuomas Martikainen and Lotta Haikkola (eds), Maahanmuutto ja sukupolvet [Immigration and generations], Helsinki: SKS, pp. 219–38. Hirvi, Laura (2010), “The Sikh Gurdwara in Finland: Negotiating, Maintaining and Transmitting Immigrants’ Identities”. South Asian Diaspora, 2 (2), 219–32. Hirvi, Laura (2011), “Sikhs in Finland: Migration Histories and Work in the Restaurant Sector”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe. Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 95–114. Hirvi, Laura (2013), Identities in Practice: A Trans-Atlantic Ethnography of Sikh Immigrants in Finland and in California. Helsinki: SKS. Huttunen, Laura (2005), “‘Home’ and Ethnicity in the Context of War: Hesitant Diasporas of Bosnian Refugees”. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 8 (2), 177–95. Huttunen, Laura (2006), “Bosnialainen diaspora ja transnationaali eletty tila” [The Bosnian Diaspora and the Transnationally Lived Space], in Tuomas Martikainen (ed.), Ylirajainen Kulttuuri. Etnisyys Suomessa 2000-luvulla [Transborder Culture. Ethnicity in Finland in the 21st century]. Helsinki: SKS, pp. 55–82. Jacobsen, Knut A. and Kristina Myrvold (2011), “Introduction: Sikhs in Europe”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and K. Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 1–17. Jacobsen, Knut A., Kristina Myrvold, Ravinder Kaur and Laura Hirvi (2012), “Contesting and Confirming Religious Authority in the Diaspora: Transnational Communication and the Dasam Granth Controversy in the Nordic Countries”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 232–50.

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Joy, Annama, Michael Hui, Chankon Kim and Michel Laroche (1995), “The Cultural Past in the Present: The Meaning of Home and Objects in the Homes of Working-class Italian Immigrants in Montreal”, in Janeen Arnols Costa and Gary J. Bamossy (eds), Marketing in a Multicultural World: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Cultural Identity. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, pp. 145–79. Korkiasaari, Jouni and Ismo Söderling (1998), “Finland: From a Country of Emigration into a Country of Immigration”, in I. Söderling (ed.), A Changing Pattern of Migration in Finland and Its Surroundings. Helsinki: The Population Research Institute, pp. 7–26. Levin, Iris and Ruth Fincher (2010), “Tangible Transnational Links in the Houses of Italian Immigrants in Melbourne”, Global Networks, 10 (3), 401–23. Mand, Kanwal (2010), “‘I’ve Got Two Houses. One in Bangladesh and One in London. … Everybody Has’: Home, Locality and Belonging(s)”. Childhood, 17 (2), 273–87. Martikainen, Tuomas (2013), Religion, Migration, Settlement: Reflections on Post-1990 Immigration to Finland. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Mazumdar, Shampa and Sanjoy Mazumdar (2009), “Religion, Immigration, and Home Making in Diaspora: Hindu Space in Southern California”. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 256–66. Rastas, Anna (2005), “Racializing Categorization among Young People in Finland”. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research, 13 (2), 147–66. Rastas, Anna (2007), Rasismi lasten ja nuorten arjessa. Transnationaalit juuret ja monikulttuuristuva Suomi [Racism in the Everyday Life of Children and Young People. Transnational Roots and Multicultural Finland in the Making]. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Safran, William (2005), “The Jewish Diaspora in a Comparative and Theoretical Perspective”. Israel Studies, 10 (1), 36–60. Statistics Finland (2009), Immigration and Emigration in 1971–2008. Available at: http://www.stat.fi.ezproxy.jyu.fi/til/muutl/2008/muutl_2008_2009-05 -20_kuv_001_en.html (accessed 19 February 2010). Statistics Finland (2012), StatFin online service. Available at: www.stat.fi (accessed 8 July 2012). Tereshchenko, Antonina and Helena C. Araújo (2011), “Stories of Belonging: Ukrainian Immigrant Children’s Experiences of Portugal”. Global Studies of Childhood, 1 (2), 129–39. Wiles, Janine (2008), “Sense of home in a transnational social space. New Zealanders in London”. Global Networks, 8 (1), 116–37.

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Chapter 3

Punjabi Youth in Northern Italy: The Family, Belonging and Freedom Meenakshi Thapan

This chapter examines the fraught experience of being migrant, young and belonging to several cultures at the same time.1 It is about the quest for freedom and independence that underlies the aspirations of Indian (largely Sikh and Punjabi) youth in northern Italy who simultaneously seek belonging and integration both into the family and into the Italian social landscape. Their quest for freedom is always balanced by the deep and unshakeable place of the family in their lives. The family provides emotional sustenance, security and well-being in an alien space. At the same time, it is also the source of difference and inequality.2 In that sense, the family is as constraining as much as it is an enabling agency. This often results in an anxiety-ridden and complex situation. Youth, especially young women, seek to rebel, and desire and pursue autonomy and independence, and yet assert their need for immersion in familial life. The situation is also complicated by the fact that absence of family, especially a missing spouse, evokes a kind of existential dilemma where the experience of being “alone” is heightened into a psychological condition that requires medical intervention. The co-presence of family members is therefore as much a necessity in some contexts as it is a bane in others. Fieldwork was conducted with financial support from the EU FP 7 EuroBroadMap project directed by Professor Claude Grasland at the University of Paris 7 at Diderot, and from the EU funded European Studies Programme (2010–11) at the University of Delhi. I am indebted to both, as I am to Professor Philippe Fargues for the opportunity to visit as Robert Schuman Fellow (2012–13), and the Migration Policy Centre at the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Florence, where I have been able to complete this work. I thank Stefano Gandolfi and Chiara Scavia of Rete Intercultura, Fidenza, who have provided invaluable help in organizing meetings with a vast cross-section of respondents, and to Maitrayee Deka for assistance in fieldwork in Italy and in India in 2010. Finally, I thank Kristina Myrvold, Laura Hirvi and Knut Jacobsen for inviting me to the excellent conference on Young Sikhs in a Global World in Lund in 2013. 2 Migrant women in Italy particularly experience isolation and exclusion often enforced by the male members of the household. In a recent paper, I have discussed this experience of migrant women at some length (see Thapan, 2013a). 1

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To begin with, the family is critical to the migration project of the Indian immigrant. The decision to immigrate is taken by the family, who also helps with finances and makes all arrangements, with the support of local agents and other family members in the destination countries. Migration for the Indian immigrant is therefore a “kind of collective investment, of which the main beneficiary is the family, which derives financial resources and social prestige from the investment of its human resources abroad” (Compiani and Quassoli, 2005, p. 146). In other words, the centrality of the family and the significance of kin networks are critical to the migration enterprise. Kin networks are central to the lives of Punjabi and Sikh migrants and function as “sponsors for immigration of other individuals and families by enabling and controlling the integration of newcomers into the Italian labour market and society” (Bertolani, 2015). The family plays a definitive role in the migrant’s life, exercising social control, especially over generations, and sets the rules for the maintenance of traditions and customs imported from India. These are crucial to the life of the immigrants and set the tenor for relationships within the family, between spouses, with the children and with members of the older generation who often reside with the son and his family. The content of culture is therefore primarily determined by family members for whom the status of migrant brings social prestige and honour, not only in the diaspora but also more importantly in the community in Punjab. The family is at the heart of the community in which the migrant is embedded and I invoke the work of Ralph Grillo, which urges us to reinstate the family at the centre of analysis as “it foregrounds an important site in which relations of gender and generation are articulated and/or in terms of which they are conceptualised, and around which debates circulate” (Grillo, 2008, p. 19). At the same time, it is important to emphasize that Italian society views the abilities and aspirations of youth for cultural integration from within a restricted familial and ethnic space that is perceived as creating barriers to fruitful integration (see Thapan, 2013b). In other words, the family is crucial as an emotional, collective space that offers support to the migrant but is also perceived as a differentiating space that perhaps encourages isolation and exclusion, often to the detriment of the integration of youth into European society and culture. The Context and Setting The history of immigration in Italy, it has been suggested, may be divided into two parts. The initial phase is linked to the first development of the phenomenon, and was marked by “an atmosphere of emergency” as Italy was unprepared for the inflow of people. The second part is characterized by “the propensity to create a stable system and by a strong need of social and political cooperation” (EMN, 2012, p. 16). This aim has not yet been realized. At the same time there is

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an increasingly large influx of immigrants from EU and other non-EU countries into Italy: “The number of immigrants (both EU and third-country nationals) reached half a million in 1987. Ten years later, they were over one million. In the following years the number of immigrants continued to grow: 1.5 million in 2002, 2 million in 2004, 3.5 million in 2006, nearly 5 million in 2010” (EMN, 2012, p. 16). This steady influx of immigrants has meant that Italy now has to grapple with the situation and devise ways and means to deal with the “problems” that immigration brings in its wake. As citizens of the European Union freely move about the Schengen zone in search of economic opportunities, the playing field in the labour market sends out different messages to citizens from outside the EU. There are limited mobility opportunities for them and they “may enter on the basis of economic migration (managed migration), family reunion and on humanitarian grounds” (Biffl, 2012, p. 1). Costs of integration include such special measures for integration as in schools, the labour market (for example, education and training), and in already pressurized areas such as housing, health care and welfare services (Biffl, 2012, p. 1). Such concerns are in addition to the existing negative attitudes and stereotypes prevalent among native populations towards third-country nationals that do not allow easy routes towards integration. As a consequence of such policies, and the over-emphasis on high-skilled immigration, most lowskilled migrants seek to enter the informal economy through insertion into the lowest segments of the economy. It is argued that low-skilled migration has a “long tradition” in Europe going back to the guest-worker migration of the 1960s and 1970s, followed by chain migration and family reunion. In the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of refugees, with low educational levels, followed (OECD 2008 as cited by Biffl, 2012, p. 6). It is significant that the countries of southern Europe, late destinations for migrants, have the largest share of unskilled migrants: 70 per cent of Portugal’s workforce is unskilled, followed by Spain at 48.5 per cent, Italy at 45.7 per cent and Greece at 38.8 per cent (Biffl, 2012, p. 6). Migration policy in these countries has therefore tended to be more open to this category of migrants due to the demand for them in sectors of the economy that are hard-pressed for native workers. It has in fact been pointed out that since the 1980s, the principle of the “economic legitimation of immigration” which views immigrants primarily as “economic factors, with relatively little regard for social and humanitarian considerations” has been followed in Italy (Caponio and Graziano, 2011, p. 106). According to CARITAS 2008, the employment rate for foreign immigrants in Italy is 67.1 per cent, whereas it is 58.1 per cent for Italians. At the same time, the unemployment rate is 5.9 per cent for Italians with 8.3 per cent for foreign citizens (Caponio and Graziano, 2011, p. 105). Immigrants in Italy are currently unemployed at 12.1 per cent, four points higher than Italian citizens (Dossier Caritas, 2012).

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Although the entry of labour migrants has largely been unauthorized in most cases, they fill job shortages in large numbers. It is an undisputed fact that immigrants are essential to the survival of the Italian economy primarily due to the low birth rates and the apprehensions about meeting the social security demands of a rapidly ageing population (Calavita, 2005, p. 48). As a result, Italy has sought immigration in the past and there are now 5.3 million immigrants, including more than 500,000 foreign residents who are in an irregular position (Fondazione ISMU 2011, as cited by Ambrosini, 2013, p. 139). Most immigrants to Italy are concentrated in the northern and central regions of the country with the majority of the immigrant population coming from outside the European Union, especially Africa, followed by eastern and central Europe. The second largest Asian communities in the EU are in Italy comprised of Indians (145,164) and Pakistanis (90,185) (EMN, 2012). There is thus an enormous presence of migrants in Italy, who are viewed by the local population as both being essential in certain sectors of the labour market, such as agriculture, but also as causing grave “security” risks through their infringement on the welfare benefits such as housing, health care and education. These aspects of the migrants’ presence in their midst are fuelled by politicians and their agents who seek to maximize their political gains through a focus on “security” issues which are fabrications created for public consumption. For example, the Northern League, a right-wing political party active in northern Italy, has from the beginning articulated defence against the surging immigration presence in its political agenda (Ambrosini, 2013; Avanza, 2010). The repeated emphasis in the popular media serves to increase fears that the Italian “race” itself is under threat and, along with European culture, may soon be overcome by large and increasing numbers of migrants in Italy and indeed in Europe as a whole (Ambrosini, 2013, p. 139). All the resultant antagonism in society is particularly directed at the non-European immigrant who is increasingly visible in the labour market, in social spaces such as educational institutions, and towards whom the energy and work time of the social service and other welfare officers appear to be directed. The social rejection of migrants, as a consequence of political and media efforts, results in the creation and sustenance of feelings of insecurity, suspicion and distrust of migrants among the Italian people which have consequences for the integration of migrants. At the same time, due to economic necessity, there have been several regularization programmes, six in 22 years, with the most recent one in 2009 (Ambrosini, 2013, p. 139). There is no doubt a conflict between the political aims of some political parties and the economic needs of the labour market that appears to have resilience and adaptation in the absorption of immigrants especially at the lower ends. This dual approach to immigrants does not augur well for immigrants who are both considered useful in certain slots of the labour market and, at the same time, are not welcome in the social and collective spaces that are inhabited by migrants and others in urban and rural

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Punjabi Youth in Northern Italy

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territories. However, the traditionally left-wing northern regions of the country have been far more receptive towards all immigrants in general and towards the Indian immigrants who work primarily in the dairy farm sector in the region.3 Due to the increasing influx of Indian immigrants to the Emilia Romagna region, Fidenza and Parma in northern Italy were selected for this study.4 Immigrants of Indian origin were interviewed on the basis of their location, gender, social class, age and educational backgrounds. Almost all interviews were conducted in the district of Fidenza and in a high school in Cremona in Lombardy during visits scheduled between 2010 and 2013. These immigrants have lived in Europe for between 15 and 25 years depending on the trajectories for migration undertaken by them. In addition, there are more than 130 Indians, out of a work force of 200, mostly from Punjab, working in a well-known slaughterhouse for pigs in the region. I met and interviewed 30 men between the ages of 35 and 60. Those with very little formal education are employed in the agriculture sector, primarily dairy farms, slaughterhouses and small factories in the largely rural areas and small towns of Emilia Romagna. Interviews and focus group discussions were also conducted with 50 school-going young adults (aged 15–18 years) and other youth (18–21 years) in Fidenza, Cremona and Reggio Emilia. I met several women as well, some of whom were employed in factories or laundries, or worked in small boutiques or shops. Most were homemakers and unemployed. I made numerous visits to the region for a week to two to three weeks each time, spending every day meeting a cross-section of the Indian farm worker community, NGOs working with immigrant populations, immigrant associations, employers, school teachers and administrators, male and female students of Indian origin, and women at home, in the Sikh gurdwara and Hindu temples. In addition, I met and interviewed more than 40 Italian people including social workers, teachers, doctors, employers, trade union officials, police officials, members of local governments, church functionaries, translators, cultural mediators, NGOs of different kinds and others. Interviews with Indian immigrants were conducted in Punjabi and Hindi, and with Italians in English, using an interpreter. 3 I have elsewhere discussed the work of the trade union CGIL, NGOs and the Catholic Church in this region as pathways for the integration of immigrants (see Thapan, 2013c). See also Jeffrey Cole (1997) and Kitty Calavita (2005) for a general discussion of civil society initiatives in this region as a result of the left-wing governments that have had local pro-immigrant policies in place. 4 In 2012, there were 17,260 Indians in the Emilia Romagna region, up from 7,532 in 2005 (Rete Intercultura, Fidenza, 2012). Parma is host to the second largest Indian community in the region. In 2012, among the new additions of migrants to Fidenza, every fifth new migrant was Indian, thus indicating that the Indian immigrant is able to find a greater chance of employment and receptivity in this region (Thapan, 2013a).

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Youth, the Family, and the Experience of Double Exclusion There are no homogeneous categories of Punjabi, even Indian, youth in Italy. There is an enormous diversity among them depending on their gender, socioeconomic status, the length of their stay in Italy, their ability to speak Italian, their present educational level and several other factors. What is common, however, is the experience of “difference” that is ingrained into the habitus of the youth with as much certainty as the fact of their physical embodiment. This emotive and embodied experience of difference as a marker of otherness and exclusion animates their narratives. Emotions and affect are intimately connected to the experience of migration. Following Sara Ahmed, I argue that emotions are crucial in aligning “some subjects with some others and against other others” (Ahmed, 2001, p. 17). Emotions thus circulate between individual and collective bodies and signs, and are expressed through the multitude of experience that frames the encounter between subjects and collectives. This, however, is not to suggest that emotions are located in the private worlds of individuals and are, therefore, “inside” and are expressed “outside”. Rather, “they create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of bodies and worlds” (Ahmed, 2001, p. 17). Emotions thus move in and out of boundaries, conjure up borders based on feelings of difference and hate, fear and marginalization, alienation and aloneness, affinity and inclusion. The question of course arises as to how we may understand emotions in a social context as they play themselves out in everyday life. We need to therefore focus on emotions as they frame actions, express actions, give rise to actions, and are therefore in a sense, “social actions intertwined with … structures of power in specific temporal and geographic contexts” (Boehm and Swank, 2011, p. 2; see also Svasek, 2008). The family in this context acquires significance in the affective and social worlds of Punjabi youth as much as in their simultaneous experience of belonging and exclusion in contexts shaped by the vastly different geographical spaces that they inhabit. The importance of the family in migrants’ lives and intergenerational influences ensure that Punjabi youth, young women in particular, experience a double exclusion, in their community through a kind of enforced seclusion, after school hours; and in the host community, through forms of social exclusion and marginalization. At the same time, they seek higher education, an independent lifestyle and secure employment and through these, a movement away from the lives they have known with their families. The complexities in this situation, their anxieties and the ways they seek to overcome their fraught position as youth caught between two cultures, or youth in transition, are the stuff their young lives are made of. Punjabi youth in Italy are in a category that is set apart: from other migrant youth with whom they rarely interact and from the Italian youth population who are their ambivalent other. There are huge cultural differences although

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language is not a problem as it is learnt early in school and is part of their repertoire of languages. They speak it with ease and confidence and at one level it is a strong binding force with the Italian community. At the same time, it is important to look into the educational experience of Indian youth, as these institutions are significant spaces for socialization into the host community as well as for developing relations with other immigrant and Italian youth. Indian youth in school are rather articulate about their experience of racism and bullying. They tell me it begins with the food they were prevented from bringing to elementary school by their peers when they were very young. There are comments about their long hair and turbans as well and that they experience more racism as they grow older. One university student (Meet, male, 20 years) asserts that it is naphrat [hate] that shapes their teachers’ attitude towards them. He adds, “teachers reduce marks for written work, telling us ‘you should not have written like this’”. He clarifies, however, that not all teachers are like that. A cultural organization in Reggio Emilia that works especially with youth identified the “subtle racism” present among teachers in high school. Such teachers send immigrant students for vocational training even though the students themselves want to pursue engineering. There is a view among teachers that the cognitive abilities of Punjabi youth [Indian or Pakistani, they do not distinguish between them] are not on a par with the Italians and they are therefore able only to pursue vocational training. The students have to appeal to higher authorities and even ask outside organizations to intervene in order to help them realize their goals. As a result, some youth who were born in Italy and some who travelled with their parents as infants or very young children are very clear they will never be fully integrated into Italian society. The young men provide the example of “servants” in India who aspire to be like their masters in terms of their desires and aspirations, but can never realize them. One of them asserts, “[w]e want to have a lifestyle like the Italians/Europeans, but this will never happen. The job market will always prefer the Italian over the Indian even if both have the same qualifications” ( Jatinder, male, 18 years). The uncertainty over their employment is the main factor influencing their decision to use Italy as a stepping-stone to secondary migration. This is fuelled by their experience of “difference and distance that cannot be overcome”. One boy concluded the discussion: “In India, you are free. It is your own country. I can never feel the same way here however much I integrate into Italian society” (Nitin, male, 18 years). The experience of the inability to integrate by Indian youth no doubt underlies their interaction with Italian youth as well as their decision to leave Italy, a decision that does not always bear fruit. At the same time, employment opportunities are limited in India and the students do not find returning to India a viable option. There is a certain ambivalence towards Italy which they identify as their home and where at the same time, they experience the inability to completely integrate.

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The experience of belonging depends on relationships, interaction, emotional ties and an attachment borne of interaction and togetherness. Being different emphasizes the feeling of marginalization: “[t]he place that is experienced as one’s own and as the basis of the fundamental experience of feeling ‘at home’ is construed … within relational and imaginative dimensions, rather than within a spatial one” (Colombo, Leonini and Rebughini, 2009, p. 40). The bodily and sensory experience of difference is a very critical part of the experience of “who” you are as an immigrant. Young Punjabi girls in high school say their bodies are labelled as “smelly” by other students. They are often told that their food smells, or their hair smells or their bodies smell: that in any case they give off a smell that is experienced as distasteful and abhorrent by the host community. This for the Indian students is the most humiliating experience of difference that they have encountered in their everyday life. There is an acute feeling “of temporal and bodily disjuncture” that occurs when “other bodies do not respond as anticipated” (Wise, 2010, p. 923). They cannot change their bodies and therefore the sense of being different and other is in some way permanently fixed through their embodied existence. The experience of being different is particularly painful in the middle school years when Italian students are most harsh in their criticism of Indian students, who are often told to return to India, to stop wearing turbans and stop coming to school. The youth tolerate their taunts by ignoring them because it is what they call their majbori, “helplessness” – that is, they have no choice but to tolerate them. It is, however, the experience of being isolated and alone that stands out sharply in their memory of their middle school years and affects their experience of high school as well. Katrine Fangen, Thomas Johansson, Nils Hammarn and Nils Hammarén examine such feelings of isolation and rejection within the context of “social exclusion” and distinguish between “feelings” of being excluded and physically not being allowed access (Fangen et al., 2012, p. 4). While migrant students have access to schools and good relationships with most teachers, they experience social exclusion at a very emotional level from their peers. However, “social exclusion” in the context of migration is very complex and it is important to examine it as a “process” that cannot be neatly slotted into either/or situations (Fangen et al., 2012, p. 4). It then becomes apparent that exclusion is not necessarily an emotional experience vis-à-vis only “others” in alien contexts but takes place within the ethnic community as well. The image of Italy is no doubt constructed among Punjabi youth through the lens of difference but the prism through which they view Indians and India is also one of difference. Satnam, a student at university, articulates this difference: “Indians are stuck in the India they left behind 20 years ago whereas India has changed so much” (Satnam, male, 21 years). He thinks that parents are not the problem for them as much as “relatives” and members of the community who continuously gossip about each other’s children. Parents then intervene and ask

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youth, especially the girls, to stop talking to others outside the school. These youth resent such forms of control and are in a sense isolated and alone in a bubble that is formed by their experience and locks them in a lived world where they remain troubled, uncertain and anxious about not only their future but also their present. For young women, the struggle with parents and family for independence is complex. Young women rebel against the impositions laid down by the family but simultaneously seek out the safety and security of family life despite their urge for freedom and autonomy. Kirti, a student at university in Reggio Emilia, said, “[g]irls are considered the problem of the family. So you have to keep their respect. If a boy does something, it’s no problem. But if a girl does something, it’s a big problem” (Kirti, female, 21 years). This “something” could be as simple as talking to a boy, going out somewhere after school hours, chatting with friends on the phone or not informing parents of their whereabouts. Indian families in Italy “are very traditional”. Kirti elaborates, “[f ]irst I have to study, then work for two to three years, then they say they will search for a ‘suitable groom’ for me, and then they tell me, ‘you can work if you want’. I have to fight with my parents to let me study at the university”. Kirti’s parents – her father is a farmer and her mother is a homemaker – would have liked her to start working immediately after high school but Kirti wanted to study at university. Kirti’s Sri Lankan friends tell me she is a “good girl” and that her family must give her more freedom. They think Kirti’s family gives more importance to boys and sees her as a problem, a burden: as Kirti clarifies, bojh. Kirti says, “[i]zzat is tied to marriage. As soon as a girl marries, the burden will be over. The girl is settled. That is what they think”. At the same time, Kirti knows that she can communicate with her family and she says that that is very “good” as she first talks to her mother, and through her, to her father. In a way, she is able to manipulate them to her advantage and so she remains committed to the family and her place within the family. She insists that she “loves” her family and is therefore dedicated to the project of the family and its high place in the Indian community, which valorizes the family and the role of the family above all else. Parents of these youth, especially youth who are studying at university and are mixing with Italians and others, are worried in particular about their choice of marriage partners. A cultural mediator informs me that they worry about the kind of girl/boy their children will marry as it will complicate their family lives and affect relationships among themselves. Belonging in this context is construed essentially as coexisting with familial norms and values. Marriage with an Italian is taboo. It is as if sexual intimacy with “others” is like crossing the last frontier from where there is no return. One Punjabi woman with a son studying at university went home to Punjab and consulted an astrologer about her son’s marriage prospects: her main worry was to ascertain whether her son would marry an Indian or an Italian girl (interview, cultural mediator).

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Marriage is the ultimate frontier of separation and difference and, once that is crossed through mixed marriages, it is assumed that somehow the sanctity of not only marriage but also family life would be disturbed. It would result not only in a disruption of family life but also perhaps in the eventual annihilation of the community as well. This would shake the foundations of identity and it therefore becomes essential for Indian immigrants to control their children’s relations with Italians. In this way, they are also inhibiting their integration into Italian society, although this is not of paramount concern. What is important is to preserve family life and family honour against any form of contamination or breakdown. At the same time, belonging incorporates within it a form of relating to Italians, surpassing all differences, and for the purposes of survival that depends on cohabitation, cooperation and the attainment of common goals. A Sikh boy (Madanjeet, 18 years old) talks about his older sister who is single and goes out to work in the morning and returns in the evening, having spent the whole day at work. This is a huge problem for the rest of the family who have “big fights” over the issue. His older brother in fact wants to leave the family home because of the fights and the tension generated by them. That the sister goes out to work is a matter of concern for the family, but still she does it. She does not care. His sister’s job takes her to different places every day, and he says to me, “you don’t know my sister”. But she just does not care about all this and carries on with her life regardless of the problems she is creating for others or the tensions her actions generate. She seeks to live her life on her own terms, generating her unique understanding and expression of an embodied agency that exists on the edge of modernity, constrained by the family, but liberated by her desire to attain her goals against all odds. This is not, however, always possible as socialization and the binding practices of the family are very strong, and young women often submit to them at an early age. Manjeet, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, came to Italy when she was two months old. She is the older of two siblings. Her father is a Jat Sikh, who has studied up to Class 10 in Punjabi medium in Ludhiana in Punjab. He was a farmer in Punjab where he owned 6–7 acres of land and, in Italy, he is a factory employee, doing packing work, earning about 1,000–1,500 euros in a month depending on work. Although her father is not a farmer, they live on a dairy farm (goshala) paying a rent of 200 euros per month. She explains that the family was not in a poor financial state back home in Punjab but that it was important for her father to see the world as he had a desire to see what exists outside India. So, he paid an agent 700,000–800,000 rupees, without selling any land, and made his way to Europe with an uncle and several others, first to Russia (where he spent six months in jail), then Poland, then Germany (where he worked in restaurant). He wanted to stay in Germany but her mother was unable to join him. He moved to Italy and worked in different jobs. Many relatives applied

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for legal papers and slowly they came to Italy and acquired papers so that her mother could also come over and they could be together as a family. The desire to emigrate was based on how others came and showed off their money. “We also wanted to earn money”, but now Manjeet’s mother tells others not to come to Italy: “there is nothing here, no work ‘panga na lao’ [don’t take the trouble], there is a better life in India, there are fields (khet hain), here only milking cows and cleaning them, there are more luxuries and rest (ashoaaram) over there”. Her father particularly remembers India and tells her that there is a better life there and more hard work here. He tells her about his struggle (dhakke khaye) and that at the end of the day he does not earn very much, but that she must study hard and “get high marks, there should be some gain (fayda bhi howe)”. The family story of struggle and hardship is essential to Manjeet’s constitution of herself as an immigrant. To belong to another world is to first recognize the worth and value of being in the world and understand the difficulties that have been endured and overcome to get there and be there. There is no way therefore that Manjeet can ever even think of returning to India: “All our relatives are here, many Sikhs, Jat Sikhs, another farmer lives near us, Rajput farmers, (they stay for free in goshalas), we know them all as they are Punjabis too”. The family and community are the familiar social and cultural worlds for Manjeet in spite of intra-community conflicts based on caste and regional differences to which she alludes. Manjeet and her family watch only Indian television channels, speak only Punjabi at home and worship at the local gurdwara. Although her mother does recitations (path) at home, Manjeet, however, does not think that there is any purity (suchan) left, as her father is a non-vegetarian. Therefore, having a small temple at home does not have the same sanctity it would have if there were a sacredness of space and place, both linked to ideas of purity and pollution. Manjeet has no doubt internalized this version of sacredness from her mother who is a vegetarian like herself and resents this incursion of modernity into the sacred space of their home. For Manjeet, being an immigrant is inextricably an Indian experience, located in the family and the household, where she returns from school to eat Indian food (in her words “dal, subzi, roti”) every day, works hard, watches Indian television, listens to (Punjabi) bhangra music, watches films (Bollywood), goes out and walks about with other farmers, visits relatives, goes to the market. They celebrate Indian festivals exclusively and eat Indian sweets (mithai not chocolates, she explains) from Indian stores only. There is therefore a sustained and rigorous effort to retain the Indianness that might perhaps be contaminated by contact with forms of foreignness such as eating meat or interacting with the opposite sex or watching Italian cinema or speaking Italian inside the home. Marriage with an Italian is inconceivable for Manjeet, who has assumed her primary role as an immigrant: to study well, get a good job, work hard and keep the family honour intact. She says, “I have to study, my brother has to study, no

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‘fayda’ [point/gain] of going back. I want to marry an Indian only, I can’t talk to boys, only to the point, no ‘faltu gallan’ [unnecessary conversation], parents are very strict and they are right”. Manjeet’s identity is keenly linked to familial patterns that she identifies through the close relationships that endure through family travails. She asserts that in Europe “people don’t live in families; don’t mix with each other. They don’t fight with each other, find out a solution. In India people fight. There is a higher divorce rate here”. Her parents tell her that in India people marry by the age of 18–20 years, so she knows that, “I have to study till I am 20, and then get married. I can’t go out with boys, I have to be only with girls”. Manjeet states all this in a matter-of-fact way, having absorbed the significance of familial life in her experience of racism and isolation in Italy, which pushes her back into the familiar and welcoming embrace of the family. She does not find Italian society particularly welcoming and says, [i]t depends … many students ‘hate’ me in class, ‘naphrat karte hain’, they won’t even talk to me, they think we come here to take away their work. At first I felt bad, but now it is better. I used to feel strange (aukha) but it was better when I learnt the language. In class children are difficult, outside it’s OK.

Clothes are a particular form of difference: If we wear salwar suit, they look at us. My father doesn’t like to see me in jeans. When I was little, students hated me, you are black, ‘kaali hai’, don’t speak much, as I spoke less. I used to feel very bad, used to cry when I was young, now it is OK. When I used to feel very bad I used to answer back ‘in India we welcome you’, I used to tell my teachers also, who used to help us. We are all treated alike by them.

And yet, Manjeet seeks out belonging through work and engagement with a social class different from her parents: Now, I’m studying, don’t know, I will have to study harder, I will have to get a degree for employment. With a diploma, there is not much work available. A degree takes five years. My father wants me to do a nursing course, which will work in America. I don’t want to do this because one has to study too much. I want a ‘vadiya naukri’ (good job), to sit in an office, dafttara baithna, and earn at least 2,000 euros a month.

There is an idea that the good job is an office job that conveys social status and enjoys good financial remuneration. At the same time, such a job does not have the additional burden of manual work that Manjeet has experienced as central to her parents’ life of struggle and suffering. Manjeet therefore seeks to move out

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of the familial world through her aspirations and occupational choices. In this way, she articulates the beginnings of a way out of the conundrum she is trapped in. She knows she cannot return to India, she must find success in Italy, through higher education and work, both of which are no doubt going to take her out of the domain of the family into the world of the community to which she will inevitably belong. At the same time, Punjabi girls in high school view Italian people largely in terms of their experience of other Indians in Italy. The latter suspect them of having boyfriends and gossip about this endlessly among themselves. Italian adults, on the other hand, are on the whole more “loving” and “gentle” and treat them with respect. Nonetheless, even these migrants did not hesitate to point out that they are “different” from the Italians who think that Indians do not interact with them. This is accentuated by their experience of the Indian community as quarrelsome and difficult, which is not appreciated by the Italians and this, the girls say, makes them “feel bad”. This sense of “feeling bad” is linked to the emotional experience of shame vis-à-vis their own community in relation to the host community so that difference is experienced on two planes: within and outside the community. Similarly, the girls do not have any relationship with the Indian boys in school with whom they are afraid to speak. They do, however, freely interact with Italian boys in school. There is in this articulation of sameness and difference a complexity based on relationships, norms and values in the Indian community itself that prevents them from being independent in their relationships with Indian youth in the same way as they are with their male Italian classmates. There is a tension here as well, as Italian boys can be friends but not marriage or sexual partners, thus sending out ambivalent messages to the young women. The difficulties this engenders among themselves and in their experience of being different in Italy is based on the community’s lack of trust and willingness to accept another lifestyle or relationships that are different from their own established ones. The youth thus feel isolated within the Indian community as much as they do in the Italian community. This places an undue strain on the young migrant who is simultaneously struggling to keep herself afloat in school as a marked person, as well as a “good”, “virtuous” and “respectful” girl in her own community. As we can see, gender is critical to how Indian youth view the other: girls value relationships with Italian youth and teachers, and seem to desire such relationships in order to successfully achieve their goals of integration. This is, however, not the case with Indian boys who emphasize difference and accept the fraught situation, seeking to avoid conflict or tension with members of the Italian community.

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Absent Spouse: The Intensity of Separation and Loss Despite the differences with the family and the community in Italy, a recurrent theme in the narratives of young Punjabi men and women is the experience of the emotional loss of relatedness to members of the family, who are elsewhere, primarily in the homeland. They miss their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, among others. They particularly point to the absence of the “love” (pyar) of grandparents and yearn for “roaming” the streets with their cousins, as they do in India, eating street food, chatting, sharing their experiences and lives. In this experience of loss, the prevalence of familial ties as providing the insuperable bonds that cannot be severed, even with an enormous geographical distance, is renewed and overwhelmingly emphasized. This is done, however, within the greater, deeper and perhaps more significant loss of freedom that emanates from being in one’s homeland: “apne Punjab” or “apne India” [our Punjab or our India] is a common refrain and reference point in their conversations. It is an emotional connection especially when migrants discuss their transnational kin relationships. At the same time, the context of certain intimate relationships offers a more profound understanding of what the experience of separation and loss entails. The relationship between spouses stands out for the intensity with which the heartache of loss and longing in separation is experienced. Meena, a young woman who has been in Italy for 13 years, lived with her four siblings and grandparents in Ludhiana in Punjab when her parents immigrated to Italy. Meena’s parents brought the children to Italy after 14 years and Meena and her siblings studied in Italian schools, learned the language and mixed with Italian children. Her father worked in a factory that manufactured plastic glasses while her mother worked in a restaurant as a helper-cook. Back in 2000, when she first arrived, Meena did not like being in Italy (changa nahin lagta si) as the “atmosphere was not good”. After four years, she left school to look after a newly born sibling, her younger brother, as her mother had to go back to work. Meena’s mother was the breadwinner as her father was an alcoholic and beat the entire family, and especially her mother, by slapping them, hitting them and abusing them repeatedly. At the age of 45, her father died and her mother, who had breast cancer, died six months later. Orphaned in Italy, and with no kin nearby to help them, the siblings decided to buy a house and live together in the village. They are still paying back the loan for the house to the bank and have experienced a life of great struggle, hardship and difficulties after the death of their parents. Other Indians in Italy wanted their grandparents to come and live with Meena and her siblings. Their grandparents, who had come to Italy earlier, returned to India after Meena’s parents died and no longer keep in touch with any of the children. Meena tells me that their grandparents have in fact abandoned them because they perhaps fear that Meena and her siblings will ask them for financial

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assistance. On the contrary, it is Meena who handed over 2,000 euros to them for her mother’s bhog ceremony, which includes a continuous reading of the whole Guru Granth Sahib, in India. Meena’s grandparents were further alienated when in 2010 she married a young man, a cousin of her sister’s husband in Punjab. She first talked to him over the phone and then saw his photograph and avows that theirs is a “love marriage”. Her grandparents, however, had wanted her to marry someone she considers an alcoholic and good-for-nothing kind of man, also in Punjab. Meena asserted her independence by marrying her brother-in-law’s cousin as he is the same age as her and they share similar interests. Moreover, he has completed his schooling and works in a factory as a mechanic. She lived with him for four months after they were married and then returned to Italy. She is, however, unable to bring him to Italy as she does not have a permanent job and cannot therefore sponsor his visit or stay in Italy. Meena’s familial context has sharply changed from a home with parents, that included a violent and abusive father, and a helpless mother, to disinterested grandparents, to a brief and happy marriage, and a subsequent state in which Meena is very alone, vulnerable and isolated in a strange social landscape. Meena’s despair is based on two aspects of her life in this landscape: no member of the Indian community visits her or her sister. Together, they look after their very young brother who is in school, in addition to the baby girl born to Meena in 2011. She says, “[w]hen our parents were alive, everyone used to come to regularly meet us. Now, no one comes to see us. Even when my baby was born, no one came to see us”. It is due to the fact that they are orphans, she thinks, and others imagine that they will seek financial help from the Indian community. Meena concludes, “we have carried such a big sorrow (dukh); when our mother died, it was a big dukh, now, we don’t want anyone or anyone’s help in our life”. This agony is accentuated by the absence of her husband whom she says she loves “too much” (bahut zyada), and from whom she cannot bear this forced separation. Her younger sister has come to help her with the baby so that Meena can go back to work but she has been in a severe depression for some time as she is desperate to be with her husband again. She feels that she is trapped in a dilemma, as she cannot return to India, as her husband keeps asking her to, because she has taken on the responsibility of taking care of her young brother, his education and future life. She told me that she was talking to her husband on the phone one day and could not endure his absence and just threw the phone and started screaming. She broke down, collapsed, stopped speaking, was unconscious for a while and very depressed. She started talking to a doll as if it were her husband. She also started “seeing” her mother and told her sister, “I am going to Mama”, and continued to talk to her as if she were present in the room and also talked to herself. The neighbours came to help and called an ambulance.

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In the hospital, she sat in a wheelchair and kept talking to the doll and to herself. The next morning, the doctor had a long conversation with her, gave her some medication and sent her home. She has no memory of this incident that was narrated by her older sister. It has been suggested that all the bodily senses are impacted by the desire and intense longing for people who are not present as there is a deep urge to “see, hear and touch (embrace) their loved ones”, and that this is managed “through feeling the presence of people and places involving all the five senses” (Baldassar, 2008, p. 252, emphasis in the original). The telephone and Internet are important ways through which a kind of “co-presence by proxy” is realized. We find that Meena had recourse to only this form of co-presence as she phoned her husband several times a day. She later took to talking to her doll as if it were her husband, thus imbuing the doll with some kind of an “imagined co-presence”. Talking to the doll and caressing it perhaps provided some form of gratification, but also left her completely helpless and forlorn as her collapse indicates. However, with medical assistance and the support of Italian neighbours who have been most forthcoming and helpful, Meena has gained some confidence and strength. At the same time, she is impatiently awaiting the arrival of her husband, as the importance of physical co-presence with intimate partners is essential to the mental state of well-being. Concluding Comments This essay has considered the experiences of Punjabi youth and some of the ways through which they seek to contend with their dilemmas and anxieties in their relationships within the family, and the Indian and Italian communities in transnational contexts. Increasingly, young people are turning to social networking sites on the Internet to seek to establish private worlds of interaction with those whom they seek friendships with, away from the prying eyes of the family and the community.5 Young Punjabi women have different accounts on Facebook, for example, under different names for use at home and with friends. In this way, they seek a way out of the impasse in which they find themselves. There are also instances of youth breaking out of the constraints of the home and becoming independent of Indian parents as their conservative ideas and lifestyles begin to conflict with what the youth experience as a more liberated and independent European culture (Thapan, 2013c). Their socialization in particular social landscapes as a consequence of their familiarity with the 5 See Jacqueline Andall for an understanding of the efforts of second-generation youth from different communities to interact with each other, asserting their identities and claiming rights, through a social network platform G2 in Rome (Andall, 2010).

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Italian language and culture learnt in school and with peers steers them in this direction. We can see therefore how the experience of living in Italy shapes their imagination in diverse ways, not based on economic criteria alone, but carrying within it now the experience of individuals in a different and perhaps more enabling social and cultural space. The forms of belonging explored in this chapter point to a multiplicity of experience that is shaped by the family, overflows its embrace and yet returns to its articulation in one way or another in the lives of young Punjabis in northern Italy. Changing lifestyles and seeking new ways out of a socialized and embedded habitus into different ways of belonging are not easy tasks. It is marked by contestation, struggle, dissent, rebellion, submission and also change. Freedom and autonomy in the pursuit of modernity, we may argue, do not emerge from the utopian immigrant dream of attaining economic goals alone. There is also a need to recognize the values that frame human relationships, and the conflicts these give rise to, both within the home as well as in the public sphere. Writing in the context of Muslim young girls growing up in Milan, Laura Menin writes, modernity emerges as “a critical site of imagination and agency where competing representations of what it means to be a ‘Muslim woman’ are crafted, contested and embodied in everyday politics” (Menin, 2011, p. 513). We may make a similar argument for the Punjabi young woman who is caught between not just two worlds or two cultures but in the midst of her own shifting and moving desires, and an ambivalence in her self-definition to be an independent and “free” young woman and a “good” Punjabi girl. Her lived experience is shaped by an emotive, embodied state of simultaneously being other and different and therefore marked, as well as embodying sameness in multiple spaces, both inside closed familial spaces, community frames and in the public sphere. These diverse ways of belonging shape multiple ways of relating to the other, resulting in competing definitions of what it means to be Indian, Italian or European. Ideas of citizenship are also redefined, as to belong is not necessarily constructed or experienced in terms of legal citizenship alone.6 Citizenship is a feeling of belonging, which all youth, children of immigrants or otherwise, aspire to through social and cultural acceptance, friendship and support. Above all, they desire and seek admittance into, and equal treatment in, a social universe that is defined by emotions as much as by legal forms of acceptance and belonging.

6 For an understanding of the relationship between citizenship and belonging in the experience of immigrant youth in Italy, see Colombo, Domaneschi and Marchetti (2011).

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Participation among Children of Immigrants in Italy”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 16 (3), 334–47. Colombo, Enzo, Luisa Leonini and Paola Rebughini (2009), “Different But Not Strangers: Everyday Collective Identifications among Adolescent Children of Immigrants in Italy”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35 (1), 37–59. Compiani, Maria Jose and Fabio Quassoli (2005), “The Milky Way to Labour Market Insertion: The Sikh ‘Community’ in Lombardy”, in Ernst Spaan, Felicitas Hillmann, and Ton van Naerssen (eds), Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets: Patterns and Processes of Immigrant Labour Market Insertion in Europe. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 138–58. Dossier Caritas (2012), Dossier Statistico Immigrazione. Rome: Caritas/Migrantes. EMN (European Migration Network) (2012), The Fifth EMN Italy Report. Rome: Ministry of Interior, Department Civil Liberties and Immigration, Central Directorate Immigration and Asylum Policy with the support of IDOS/Centro Studi e Ricerche, pp. 1–70. Fangen, Katrine, Thomas Johansson, Nils Hammarn and Nils Hammarén (2012), Young Migrants: Exclusion and Belonging in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Grillo, Ralph (2008), “The Family in Dispute: Insiders and Outsiders,” in Ralph Grillo (ed.), The Family in Question: Immigrant and Ethnic Minorities in Multicultural Europe. Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, pp. 15–35. Menin, Laura (2011), “Bodies, Boundaries and Desires: Multiple Subjectpositions and Micro-politics of Modernity among Young Muslim Women in Milan”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 16 (1), 504–15. Rete Intercultura, Fidenza (2012), Compilation of Statistics for the Region. (Personal Communication). Svasek, Maruska (2008), “Who Cares? Families and Feelings in Movement”. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 29 (3), 213–30. Thapan, Meenakshi (2013a), “Isolation, Uncertainty and Change: Indian Immigrant Women and the Family in Northern Italy”, in CARIM-India Research Report, 9. Available at: http://www.india-eu-migration.eu/media/ CARIM-India-2013-09.pdf. Thapan, Meenakshi (2013b), “Pathways of Integration: Individual and Collective Strategies in Northern Italy”, in CARIM-India Research Report, 28. Available at: http://www.india-eu-migration.eu/media/CARIM-India-2013-28.pdf. Thapan, Meenakshi (2013c), “Imagined and Social Landscapes: Potential Immigrants and the Experience of Migration in Northern Italy”. Economic and Political Weekly of India, Volume XLVIII, Number 38 (21 September), 55–64.

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Wise, Amanda (2010), “Sensuous Multiculturalism: Emotional Landscapes of Inter-ethnic Living in Australian Suburbia”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (6), 917–37.

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Chapter 4

Punjabi across Generations: Language Affiliation and Acquisition among Young Swedish Sikhs Kristina Myrvold

Previous research has illustrated that migrants of Punjabi ancestry often have multilingual repertoires and in their daily communicative practices move between different languages in more hybrid and heteroglossic ways, while simultaneously making severe efforts to learn and maintain the Punjabi language across generations as a heritage language and a “mother tongue” with perceived links to the “homeland” of Punjab (see e.g. Dosanjh and Ghuman, 1997; Bradby, 2002; Detaramani and Lock, 2003; David, Naji and Kaur, 2003; Shankar, 2008). Moreover, the Punjabi language with its gurmukhi script is for many Sikhs more than just a means for communication but represents a language that bears historical and religious significances. It is perceived to be a sacralized language in the textual traditions, intimately associated with Sikh religious practices, and has at different times and places been used for politics of recognition and to mark out identity, community and space (see e.g. Grewal, 1999; Dusenbery, 1997; Hall, 2002). While Sikhs in increasingly diverse communities continue to display complex linguistic repertoires and uses in their everyday life, Punjabi is often represented as a heritage language, sometimes with an almost indexical relationship to Sikh identities and an imagined global community. As researchers in socio-linguistic, cultural theory and other disciplines have reminded, language has the general functions of communication and representation: it is a means of understanding the world and interacting with others, but also a tool for constructing self-representations and identities on the individual and collective level. According to Stuart Hall, language is one of the more important resources “in the process of becoming” and “how we might represent ourselves” in relation to others (Hall, 1996, p. 4). Although a concept like “mother tongue” might generally be understood to mean the native language that one grew up with, speaking at home, learning at school, and the primary medium to transmit cultural knowledge, the term is closely connected with representation and is “itself a ‘claim’ about national, ethnic or religious identity (or any combination of the three) that speakers may make and hearers will

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certainly interpret” ( Joseph, 2004, p. 185). Views of languages, and particularly perceptions of “a language” linked to “a people”, are ideological constructions and “artifacts” that can be used and played out individually and collectively in different times and domains of society (Blommaert and Rampton, 2011, p. 4). Especially in discourses on language policies of nation states, languages are often presented as symbols that are associated with essentialist constructs of national belonging and can be attributed several meanings that are constitutive for both ethnic and national identification and group cohesion (Castles and Miller, 1993; Hall, 2002). In an immigrant situation, cultural language identities and the values ascribed to languages can become even more complex. Several studies have illustrated that the “home language” or the “mother tongue” of migrants plays a crucial role in shaping diasporic identities (Eisenlohr, 2006), and can become a “part of a language of kinship and of home” which is invoked “to describe these attachments to an imagined common origin or ancestry […,] experienced and expressed as ‘natural’” (Rumbaut, 2002, p. 44). The first-generation migrants may perceive their native vernacular as the mother tongue that they use for communication, as well as regard it as a fundamental part of their ethnic and religious identities. The conflation of the two language functions, however, is in no way static but can vary considerably and change over time, especially with the emergence of the second and third generations growing up in multilingual and heterogeneous environments. As Mukul Saxena illustrated in a study of language shifts among Punjabis in Southall, for instance, the linguistic situation transformed with a new generation and when migrant families integrated into the British society. The first generation perceived English as a passport to success, representing an evidence of their successful integration, but began emphasizing the importance of the heritage language when their children were brought up with English as the language of communication and the linguistic and cultural gap between the generations increased (Saxena, 1994). The Nordic countries and other parts of Europe provide challenging multilingual settings as the children of migrant parents are often expected to learn the national language/s of the country, beside English and their parents’ “mother tongue”, as well as one or several additional languages at school. In these complex linguistic settings, with access to a number of literacies, it can be interesting to examine how a “mother tongue” is perceived, what values and functions young people may attach to different languages from their own experiences, and what literacies and learning practices they assume. Unlike many other countries with large Sikh populations that lack formal provision of Punjabi teaching in public schools and leave the responsibility of language transmission solely to parents and religious communities (see e.g. Tatla, 1999, p. 70; Dosanjh and Ghuman, 1997, p. 291), the Punjabi language has been officially recognized by Swedish educational authorities as one of the “mother tongue languages” that

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Punjabi across Generations

73

should be offered to children with Punjabi-speaking parents during schooling. Perhaps as a consequence of this, the Swedish Sikhs have not been involved in language rights campaigns nor felt a need to politicize their linguistic rights in the majority society as, for example, in Britain (Hall, 2002). Like parents at many other places, their primary concern has rather been to secure their children’s socialization in their own native language while fostering the children to become multilingual. From the general theoretical perspective of language as having communicative and representational functions, this chapter examines how Punjabi is transmitted across generations within the Swedish Sikh community with special focus on youth who have been brought up in Sweden or migrated in childhood.1 To provide a background to language identification and knowledge among Swedish Sikhs the first part provides the results from a quantitative survey that was conducted in 2009. Since official statistics in Sweden do not register people by religion or ethnicity and tools to measure the Sikh population are consequently absent, a questionnaire was sent out to 705 individuals with Punjabi surnames that were found in the telephone directory. The survey included 12 questions about their social and religious identities, migration experiences, language knowledge and learning, and in total 182 valid responses were received. As the first section illustrates, most of the respondents were Sikhs of the first generation who stated good knowledge in the Punjabi language perceived by most as a “mother tongue”. The second part of the chapter focuses specifically on language affiliation and acquisition among their children and how they have learnt the Punjabi language in the social contexts of home, school and the gurdwara. This part is based on qualitative interviews that were conducted at different locations between 2009 and 2011 with 15 young people aged between 17 and 24 years old who identified themselves as Sikhs. While 12 respondents were born and brought up in Sweden with Punjabi parents and thus can be categorized as the second generation, three of them belonged to the 1.5 generation as they were born to Punjabi parents in Afghanistan and arrived in Sweden as refugees and asylum seekers during childhood.2 1 The Swedish Sikhs constitute a fairly small community of about 4,000 individuals. Most of them arrived in the 1970s and 1980s as politically or economically motivated immigrants directly from India or via other European countries. Like Sikhs in other parts of the world, the first generation has displayed self-conscious reflections on religion and invested considerable effort in maintaining traditions of the homeland by successively building up gurdwaras, often with the explicit purpose of transmitting a heritage to their children. The first public gurdwara, Gurdwara Sangat Sahib, was inaugurated in 1997 and today there are four congregations and gurdwaras concentrated in the larger cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö (Myrvold, 2011). 2 For the classification of second and 1.5 generations, see Rumbaut, 2002.

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The decision to maintain and pass on a “home language” to the next generation is certainly influenced by a variety of interacting generational and intergenerational factors on different analytical levels, including the constitution and position of the migrant group, language policies in the country, individual migration histories, family compositions, education of family members and so on (see e.g. Kipp, Clyne and Pauwels, 1995). These larger and far more complex factors are not dealt with in this chapter. Rather, the purpose is to present some experiences, interpretations and aspirations among a limited number of young Swedish Sikhs when they described their linguistic knowledge, learning and affiliation to the Punjabi language. Language Affiliation and Literacies: Results for a Quantitative Study As the data generated from the 2009 survey illustrated, a considerable part of the respondents – 74 per cent – regarded Punjabi as their only “mother tongue”, while 6 per cent stated Punjabi with one other language (Hindi, Swedish, English or Persian) and 3 per cent placed Punjabi alongside two or four other languages (Hindi, Urdu, Swedish, Danish or English). It is beyond the reach of this study to know how the respondents interpreted the question about their mother tongue, as referring to the first language for everyday communication, the first language they have learnt and/or the language representing their ethnic identity and origin. It is, however, illustrative that within the group of respondents giving preference to Punjabi alone most belong to the first-generation immigrants who have been born and brought up in India (80 per cent) or in Punjabi communities in other countries (13 per cent), such as Afghanistan and Uganda. Only a small minority (7 per cent) in this group belonged to the second generation raised in Sweden. The second Indian language that was mentioned as a mother tongue, either alone or in combination with Punjabi, English and/or Scandinavian vernaculars, was Hindi. In total 4 per cent of the respondents asserted Hindi as their only mother tongue and all in this group, except for one individual, had been brought up India and arrived in Sweden at different times. Several respondents specified that they had been raised in New Delhi or Indian states other than Punjab, such as Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where Hindi is the common vernacular. All individuals in this group considered themselves as Sikhs and two were amritdharis. The ethnic and religious picture was more divergent in the group that stated Swedish as their only mother tongue and constituted 9 per cent of all respondents. The individuals in this group belonged to the second generation of Punjabi families, born and raised in Sweden, or the 2.5 generation with an Indian father and a Swedish mother. The large majority of respondents with

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Punjabi across Generations

Figure 4.1

75

Perceived mother tongue/s among Sikhs in the 2009 survey

Swedish as the solitary mother tongue said they were Christian, or secular (two respondents categorized themselves as “atheist” and “non-believer”), or, as one respondent wrote, “Christian mixed up with Sikh and Hindu beliefs”. Only two individuals in this group alleged a religious Sikh identity and yet another was a native Swede who had converted to Sikhism and adopted an amritdhari identity. Others, who asserted both the Punjabi and the Swedish languages, were from more diverse backgrounds. The greater part of respondents in this category belonged to the first generation brought up in Punjab, many of whom arrived in Sweden in the past decade, or were “twice migrants” from other countries. They had pursued language skills in the Swedish vernacular, which they considered to be their first language beside Punjabi, but also Hindi, Urdu and/or English. A few of those who stated both Punjabi and Swedish belonged to the second generation. By making notes in the questionnaire some of them indicated that they considered Swedish as their first language while Punjabi was secondary. One respondent, for example, specified the she knew Punjabi “because my mother is from there, but my mother tongue is however Swedish”. All respondents of the first generation with Swedish given as the “mother tongue” identified themselves as Sikhs, while second-generation individuals categorized themselves as either Sikhs or secular. Another question in the survey’s section on language dealt with literacy in the Punjabi vernacular. The respondents were asked to self-assess their knowledge of Punjabi and indicate if they could speak, read and write or had not pursued any skills in the language. The results suggest that the Swedish Sikhs in this sample

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constitute a fairly literate group with 90 per cent of all respondents stating they knew spoken Punjabi, 74 per cent said they could read the gurmukhi script, and 67 per cent could write. A lesser number, 7 per cent of the respondents, asserted they did not know any Punjabi at all. A closer look at the data of those who claimed full literacy in the Punjabi language reveals that the large majority (89 per cent) were first-generation Sikhs in all ages that originated from India or countries other than Sweden and considered Punjabi their mother tongue. As illustrated by the group of respondents who stated they only knew spoken Punjabi, the large part had been brought up outside of the Punjab, in other Indian states or in Sweden, Afghanistan or Uganda, while only a few with an origin in Punjab had never learnt the gurmukhi script. Nonetheless, almost all in this group considered Punjabi as their “mother tongue”, and thus people may accredit Punjabi the status of being their native language even if they do not acquire full literacy in the vernacular. A further analysis of the sample data suggests that language acquisition of Punjabi among the younger generation becomes more difficult and involves primarily vocal aspects. In the group of respondents who had been brought up in Sweden, less than a quarter (23 per cent) stated full literacy with the ability to speak, read and write Punjabi, while considerably more knew only the spoken language (40 per cent) and the remainder had not pursued any knowledge of Punjabi (37 per cent). The difficulty of developing written language skills in a language foreign to the country of residence has been observed in several research studies. In a survey of literacy practices among 100 secondary-school students of Asian background in Britain, for instance, Susan Jones (2004) showed that the students’ ability to write in the mother tongue was considerably weaker than their reading and speaking skills, even if the script was heavily loaded with symbolic importance, as representing the home culture. But since the students in Jones’s study claimed to have little use for their knowledge of writing in the everyday life, the quality of the students’ writing ability varied considerably – all from simple shopping notes to letters and personal diaries ( Jones, 2004, p. 42). The study touches upon the question of motivation and utility when learning a heritage language. The second and third generation may develop speaking skills as they learn and regularly practise at home, but do not bother to learn how to write since they have no direct pragmatic use for this knowledge in their everyday life. Things seem to be somewhat different when religion becomes a motivator for language acquisition. For instance, in the sample a high rate of the respondents who asserted an amritdhari identity stated the Punjabi language as their mother tongue (93 per cent), irrespective of age and country of birth. The literacy rate in this group was impressive with a large majority who could speak (98 per cent), read (93 per cent), and write (84 per cent) the gurmukhi script. Even amritdhari Sikhs of the second generation seemed to have acquired literacy in the Punjabi

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Punjabi across Generations

77

language better than others with little or no interest in religion. In comparison, those who did not consider themselves to have any religious interests but explicitly stated a secularized identity displayed a much lower rate of linguistic skills in Punjabi (60 per cent could speak Punjabi, 45 per cent could read and 30 per cent could write) and constituted the major part of those who reported no knowledge. This occurrence could possibly support the scholarly claim that religion creates strong attachments and “groups that have been successful in transmitting language to succeeding generations, even in the face of societal dominance by another language, have generally done so when language has been linked to religion” ( Jones-Correa, 2002, p. 235). If this argument holds true in the face of additional data, it suggests that migrants who link the Punjabi language to religious activities may succeed better in maintaining language skills across generations. Similar general trends of language transmission across generations are reflected in the qualitative field studies presented below. However, the interviews suggest that language acquisition of the second generation can certainly be stimulated by religious activities in homes and in gurdwaras, but the language in itself is not necessarily linked with religious identifications. Language Affiliation and Literacies: Results for a Qualitative Study Both parents and young Sikhs in Sweden are well aware of language shifts and the cultural divide that have arisen between generations. The first-generation migrants have recurrently expressed concerns about their children’s development of Punjabi literacy when they are brought up with Swedish as the primary language of communication, while at the same time being very optimistic about their children’s future. Knowledge of Swedish and other languages and their pursuit of a good education at school are generally viewed as means of developing multiple linguistic and cultural competences that secure integration and advantages both nationally and internationally (Myrvold, 2011; Singh, 2012). The interviews with young Sikhs reveal their multilingual and multimodal environments and practices when growing up in Sweden. When they were requested to identify the languages that they had learnt and had knowledge of today all of them stated between three and seven languages. Except for Punjabi, Swedish and English, which all of them knew, these languages included Danish, Dari, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Pashto, Spanish and Urdu (see Table 4.1). Most had learnt the European languages through compulsory (English) or optional language studies at school, but also through work and studies abroad and by being brought up in multilingual environments with transnational contacts. Several respondents also listed Hindi as one language they had learnt during childhood and particularly through the consumption of Indian media. Previous studies have illustrated how Bollywood films can become a key

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resource for new ideals and identity constructions among young British Sikhs who are integrated into the society while maintaining elements of Indian and Sikh identities (Takhar et al., 2010). In this study some of the youth asserted that their interest in Bollywood films had encouraged processes of learning and helped them maintain a level of proficiency in spoken Hindi. Only in one case had the mother of the family organized private Hindi classes for a respondent outside the home for a short period of time during childhood for the specific purpose of learning the family’s cultural heritage and languages. As the following descriptions elucidate, Punjabi had primarily been acquired at home as a private language used within the family and in school through mother tongue education. When the respondents were to evaluate their knowledge in Punjabi – if they speak, read and write – their conversational ability or even fluency was strongly emphasized while their reading and writing ability was clearly downplayed in all the interviews. Those who stated that they knew how to read and write reported different levels of language proficiency. As one woman described her Punjabi: “I can read pretty fluently and know a little how to read … not super-fast really. I can write a bit but there would be many typos. I know the characters but would not be able to write an essay, like only filling out a form perhaps” (interview, 5 December 2009). Two male respondents mentioned that reading compositions from the Sikh scripture and other religious texts had motivated them to improve their reading skills. One of them said: “I have dealt with it [writing and reading ability]. That’s why I have trouble with nitnem, I know how to read, but it takes time. If someone would ask me, I would say that I know how to read, but writing is a little bit worse” (interview, 11 November 2011). Several respondents who asserted little or no knowledge of the written language expressed with different wording how they at some point during childhood had tried to learn the gurmukhi script but dropped it because of various reasons, although they wished to acquire reading and writing ability. With regard to their perceived mother tongue, the larger part stated Punjabi from their own understanding of the concept, described in the interviews, as referring to the first spoken language they learnt during early childhood and the language spoken with parents and relatives. Two of them who stated Swedish instead understood the concept as the language that they use most frequently for communications in their daily lives. Quite a few became very confused by the question regarding their perceived mother tongue and were not comfortable with stating only one language. One woman, who hesitated considerably before she eventually stated both Swedish and Punjabi, explained: “I don’t know … I am neither one nor the other. I’m a mix. I cannot choose. It is impossible” (interview, 22 January 2010). Another female respondent noted it was primarily on the request of other people and institutions in society that she needed to identify with the language as a mother tongue: “For example when you need

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20

22

25

23

19

24

20

22

F

F

F

F

F

F

F

F

F/M Age

Table 4.1

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Sweden

Birth place

Punjabi

Punjabi

Punjabi

Punjabi

Swedish

Swedish Punjabi

Punjabi

Punjabi

Mother tongue/s

Speak, read write Speak

Speak, read write

Speak

Speak

Speak

Speak, read

Speak, read

Proficiency in Punjabi

Punjabi, Swedish, English (3) Swedish, Punjabi, English, Danish, German, Spanish, French (7)

Swedish, English, Punjabi, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, German (7) Punjabi, Swedish, English (3)

Swedish, English, Punjabi, German (4)

Swedish, English, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, French (6) Swedish, English, Punjabi, Spanish, Hindi (5)

Swedish, Punjabi, Hindi, English (4)

Language repertoires

Home

Home and school

Home, school and gurdwara

Home

Home

Home and gurdwara

Home and school

Home, school and gurdwara

Contexts for learning Punjabi

Overview of interviews with Swedish Sikh youth about the Punjabi language

Swedish and Punjabi between siblings and Punjabi with parents Punjabi between all family members Swedish and Punjabi between siblings and Punjabi with parents

Swedish and Punjabi mixed between all family members Swedish between siblings and Punjabi with parents Swedish between siblings and Punjabi and Swedish with parents Swedish between siblings and Punjabi and Swedish with parents Swedish between siblings and Punjabi with parents

Languages spoken at home

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Afghanistan

17

24

19

18

19

20

20

F

F

M

M

M

M

M

Sweden

Sweden

Afghanistan

Sweden

Afghanistan

Sweden

Birth place

continued

F/M Age

Table 4.1

Swedish

Swedish

Punjabi

Punjabi

Punjabi

Punjabi Swedish

Punjabi

Mother tongue/s

Speak, read

Speak

Speak

Speak, read

Speak

Speak

Speak, read, write

Proficiency in Punjabi

Swedish, Punjabi, English (3)

Swedish, Punjabi, English, German (4)

Punjabi, Swedish, Dari, English, Hindi, German (6) Punjabi, Swedish, English, Hindi (4) Punjabi, Urdu, Swedish, English, Pashto, Hindi, Spanish (7) Swedish, Punjabi, English, Hindi (4) Swedish, English, Punjabi, Dari, Hindi (5)

Language repertoires

Home, school and gurdwara

Home and school

Home, school and the Internet Home

Home

Home

Home and school

Contexts for learning Punjabi

Swedish and Punjabi between siblings and Punjabi with parents Swedish between siblings and Punjabi with parents Punjabi within family and Swedish for text messages (mobile) Swedish between siblings and Punjabi with parents Swedish and Punjabi mixed with siblings and Punjabi with parents Swedish with siblings and Punjabi and Swedish with parents Swedish and English with siblings and Punjabi with parents

Languages spoken at home

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to fill in forms at school I used to write Punjabi as mother tongue because we speak this at home. But I’m better in Swedish, even in English” (interview, 5 December 2009). The tendency among teachers and educational institutions to impose relationships with a specific language on the youth because of their ethnic “otherness”, despite the fact that they themselves seem to give this little consideration, can be bewildering. In an interview a young man said, “I perceive Swedish as my mother tongue, but a teacher told me that Punjabi is my mother tongue, so … hmm … I really don’t know” (interview, 6 March 2010). A difference was noticeable between the Afghani Sikh youth and the second generation born and brought up in Sweden: the three informants who migrated from Afghanistan during childhood quickly pointed out Punjabi as their mother tongue, intimately linked to their Sikh identity regardless of their fluency and literacy in the language. Furthermore, all of them pointed out the difference of their Punjabi dialect from Afghanistan compared to the language spoken in gurdwaras. While one young man called this “Punjabi with an Afghani touch”, a woman termed it “Kabli Punjabi [Punjabi of Kabul]”. The conversations also included remarks on the occasionally lax attitudes among some Indian Punjabi families who, in their attempts to integrate into Swedish society, have lost their linguistic and cultural identity. Although all of the youth used Swedish as primary means for interacting with other people outside the home in their daily life, most still perceived the language of the parents as their “mother tongue” regardless of actual linguistic proficiency. In an attempt to understand young Sikhs’ affiliations and associations with the Punjabi language, the interviews also included a question about personal meanings, feelings and ideas associated with the language. Although most respondents claimed Punjabi to be their mother tongue, they articulated a multitude of stances towards the language. Quite irrespective of their religious affiliations some were a bit puzzled with the question and without elaborations just noted that it is one of the official languages in India that can be used as a marketable commodity in resumés for job opportunities. Others stressed the communicative and social functions of Punjabi as the language they employed when speaking to relatives in Sweden, India and elsewhere. One woman said: “We could communicate in English but choose Punjabi because it feels more … like another kind of closeness to relatives” (interview, 29 December 2009). A few also hinted at the significance of language for group cohesion and an ethnic identity while explaining how they have used Punjabi as their “own language” in the school yard and at other places when they did not want other people to understand their conversations. When describing more generally the expectations of others in society, one man said: “I have met people and they say ‘Ah, you are a Sikh and speak Punjabi’. If I did not know Punjabi [in these situations] I would make a fool of myself ” (interview, 7 October 2010). One

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woman simply said: “it is our language”, without any wish to develop this further (interview, 4 March 2010). Even though religion may play an important role for language acquisition, only one woman of the Swedish-born youth identified Punjabi with Sikhism. In contrast to many representations of the Sikh religion, two other women, one of whom had adopted an amritdhari identity, quite strongly emphasized that Punjabi should not be related to religious aspirations and identifications. In different wording the women highlighted the universal message of Sikhism that was translatable to any language and culture. While one of them explained Punjabi as just “a cultural thing”, the other elaborated her views: “to me the language of the guru is love, my guru’s language is not Punjabi. It does not matter if it [the guru’s language] appears in Punjabi or in some other [language]” (interview, 2 November 2010). The perhaps most distinguishable pattern in the interviews was again found among the Afghani Sikh youth, who, unlike the other informants, chose to closely associate the Punjabi language with their social and religious identities. As one man expressed in more straightforward words, “it is used in gurbani and is a part of Sikhism and we are Sikhs. It is Punjabi we should learn” (interview, 16 April 2011). The social contexts for learning Punjabi can of course be numerous, especially when considering that young Swedish Sikhs have extensive transnational ties that are maintained through travelling, social networks of family and friends and various uses of cultural and linguistic tools, such as the Internet and smartphones (see also Smythe and Toohey, 2009, p. 46). When the youth were asked to explain from where they had primarily learnt the Punjabi language they identified three important contexts for learning in which they had encountered different significant tutors and learning materials: home, school and the gurdwara. In the following, each of these social contexts will be discussed in the subsequent order. Language Learning and Uses at Home The home is undoubtedly a significant place for language acquisition with various significant others, parents, grandparents, relatives and friends playing a key role as models for cultural identification. The home is also the venue for various transnational activities and divergent cultural influences that are transmitted through people, artifacts and media, such as the Internet, television and digital recordings of social and religious events, through which the children may experience languages, literacies and learning practices (see e.g. Gillespie, 1995). Immigrant families can to various degrees encourage the children to engage in individual and collective practices that reinforce the cultural values of the homeland and particular language socialization by, for instance, choosing

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specific language uses at home and making more organized efforts to educate their children. These processes are dependent upon differing social and cultural factors, including the values and roles attached to the languages, the parents’ own linguistic proficiency, the material and social conditions of the families, the support and interaction with peer groups and educational institutions, as well as language practices and policies in the majority society (Li, 2006; Smythe and Toohey, 2009). If parents have positive interests and attitudes toward particular languages this will naturally have an influence on the children’s language learning, although the attitudes may change over time depending upon various circumstances. In interviews all the youth have described how their parents have in different ways encouraged them to speak Punjabi at home and valued their multilingual abilities. With transnational lifestyles and family members spread across several countries it seems like the first generation have used various strategies to teach their children Punjabi as the private language of the family at home, while either encouraging them to learn Swedish as the public language associated with successful integration or simply trusting that the school and other resources in society will provide the necessary language skills in Swedish and other languages. It is revealing that all informants mentioned “home” as the most significant context for the acquisition of Punjabi. However, the language proficiency of the youth and the teaching methods of their parents reveal that most families regard speaking ability as the measure of knowing Punjabi. Linguistic fluency is primarily understood as the capacity to converse with others, but does not necessarily include the ability to read and write. All Sikh youth noted their parents’ involvement in their training by using Punjabi as the spoken language at home from an early age. A few specified their mothers and grandmothers as particularly significant agents for language socialization. One female respondent identified her father as the most important teacher since he had a keen interest in making the children aware of their culture, but also because the mother lacked education and was illiterate in Punjabi. The interviews further illustrate how many parents with time and resources trained the children in both spoken and written Punjabi during pre-schooling years, but decreased the activities when the kids began primary school. A young woman said: Our mum taught us how to write when we were younger, but all that disappeared … practice makes perfect, but if you stop practicing it will not end so well. I remember how we used to sit and repeat the alphabet. In India we bought a lot of children’s books in Punjabi and tried to learn how to read and write. But then it ended at the age of six or seven. (Interview, 17 November 2009)

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Four respondents noted the parents’ initially high language aspirations for them as their first child, but with the arrival of the second or third child it became more difficult to maintain ambitions and activities. As one woman said: “after my younger brother things changed … our parents were very strict with [the practice] that we should only speak Punjabi at home, but later on I guess they did not have the energy anymore … I learnt Punjabi before Swedish, but my brother learnt Swedish first” (interview, 22 January 2010). Other factors that influenced the linguistic discrepancy between siblings were the home-school relations and when the children gained Swedish friends, but also the Punjabi parents’ gradual learning and increasing usage of Swedish at home. One woman described how she found the new multilingual environment at home, after the birth of her sister, frustrating since she had been taught by the parents from early childhood to communicate only in Punjabi. These examples may illustrate how the children’s language skills and uses can vary considerably between families and within a single family due to a set of different social and cultural factors during their upbringing. The interviews also unveiled the importance of religion as a motivator for learning Punjabi. Five respondents who had a keen interest in religious practices and regularly performed devotional music and readings from Sikh texts in their personal lives stated that these activities had contributed considerably to their understanding of the language. One man said as follows: When I try to read in gurbani I learn by myself. I recognize pronunciation and so on. I listen to kirtan a lot. I look for translations and then I can understand how to pronounce. Honestly, I have learnt more from kirtan by listening. (Interview, 7 October 2010)

Using different phraseology, all mentioned how they individually have engaged in various kinds of religious media, primarily websites, discussion forums, translation programs and tools on the Internet, to find translations, interpretations and expositions of compositions and excerpts from the Sikh scripture which had caught their interest during recitations and singing, either in solitude or together with friends and family members. When the youth were requested to describe language uses in the home environment and what specific language/s they used in conversations with different family members and in what language/s they most often got replies, the majority asserted patterns somewhat typical of migrant communities (see Smythe and Toohey, 2009). Most of the respondents tended to speak either in Swedish or in Swedish and Punjabi or English with brothers and sisters within the family. In conversations with their parents, on the other hand, they used primarily Punjabi or Punjabi mixed with Swedish and English. Only two

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respondents, one born in Sweden and the other in Afghanistan, asserted family conversations more exclusively in Punjabi (see Table 4.1). Their statements further display a high degree of code-switching among youth and the ability to recognize which languages are suitable for what contexts, as well as a tendency to code-mesh by blending languages in speech events (see Qureshi, Chapter 9 of this volume). One man described how he within a single conversation could alternate between two languages with different bodily gestures and expressions: “I may greet the parents in Punjabi and then turn the head toward a friend and say [in Swedish] ‘tjena, allt bra?’ [‘Hey, all is fine?’] … you see, it is such a fast switching” (interview, 7 October 2010). Another man exemplified a more inclusive blending of languages in everyday conversations with his siblings: “We speak in Swedish, but Punjabi as well … often mixed. In one sentence with three words there can be two Punjabi words and one Swedish or the other way around [laughter]. We just do it in that way” (interview, 16 April 2011). It is noteworthy that several informants specified their awareness of proper language uses in particular speech contexts and explained that the Punjabi language itself has special qualities that better suit certain contexts. For instance, a young man said that he always communicated primarily in Swedish with his siblings in everyday life but quickly changed to Punjabi when they were fighting: “It is a bit crazy. When we fight we speak always in Punjabi. I don’t understand why but it is more forceful in Punjabi. Otherwise we talk only in Swedish” (interview, 11 November 2011). Another man emphasized that Punjabi allowed for more respectful conversations when required, especially with parents and elder family members: one can talk and answer more respectfully in Punjabi than Swedish, with tusi [personal pronoun plural] and so on. But it is a bit exaggerated [laughter] … I use Punjabi more for politeness, but with my friends I don’t need to be polite. With them I feel more comfortable and use swear words. (Interview, 7 October 2010)

Just as Punjabi enables a more respectful conversation, one male respondent said the language was also improper for some informal contexts. As he explained with reference to conversations with siblings at home: “We use Swedish. Like the first [thing in the morning] we say ‘god morgon’ [good morning] not Sat Sri Akal. That would be a bit awkward [laughter]. It is probably not right, but we still have Punjabi in our backbones” (interview, 16 April 2011).3 One woman perhaps clarified what some of these different examples tried to illustrate when 3 With regard to written Punjabi, another man similarly argued that Punjabi is perhaps not the best language for fast text messages on smart phones and for that reason his family used Swedish for this type of communication, whereas they spoke Punjabi at home (interview, 12 November 2011).

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describing their relationships to the language: “whether for respect or let’s say I get angry or I want to show how happy I am, then it will be more nicely expressed in Punjabi. The effects become stronger when told in Punjabi” (interview, 2 November 2010). Mother Tongue Education in School Another context for acquisition of Punjabi is within the mother tongue education in Swedish schools. As a part of the Swedish integration policy implemented in the 1970s, immigrant children who speak another “mother tongue” than Swedish were to be offered lessons and get guidance in their home language when attending school at all stages (see Myrvold, 2012). While the integration policy was based on the ideological pillars of the social democratic welfare system – equality, freedom of choice, and mutual respect and tolerance – the introduction of home language education rested on pedagogical discourses which presumed, from a monolingual framework, that it is essential for children’s emotional and cognitive development to acquire skill in “the mother tongue” before they learn a second language (Ekstrand, 1980, p. 417; Hyltenstam, 1996). Moreover, to place home language within the education of public schools, rather than leave the responsibility solely to families and communities, was considered a strategy to avoid the social segregation of immigrant children (Cabau-Lampa, 1999, p. 181). The municipalities in Sweden are thus responsible for facilitating “mother tongue education” and tutoring in governmental and private schools if there are five or more pupils of the same language group within a municipality. With the increasing immigration of Indians there are today at least 11 official Indian languages represented in the mother tongue education for children in Swedish schools.4 Whereas tuition in Punjabi has functioned well in many places, it has been more difficult in other municipalities to collect the minimum number of pupils required to set up language instructions or to find suitable teachers. Since mother tongue instruction is an optional subject for pupils it is also dependent upon the families’ interest and notifications to the schools. As official statistics suggest, Punjabi-speaking parents have increasingly encouraged their children to attend this language education. Over the past 15 years the total number of children entitled to tuition in Punjabi has been fluctuating between 200 and 300 pupils. While 41 per cent of the eligible children participated in the education in 1997, the number increased to 61 per cent by 2006. In comparison to other Indian communities in Sweden, the Punjabis (along with Gujaratis) seem to 4 These languages are (in alphabetical order): Bengali, Bihari, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu (Statistiska centralbyrån, n.d.).

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have been the most active in making use of the language training with more than half of their children learning Punjabi at school (Statistiska centralbyrån, n.d.). From the interviews with young Sikhs it is evident that their individual experiences and interests in Punjabi classes have been quite different depending on divergent factors. Eight of the respondents had attended mother tongue education in primary and upper secondary school, some during the whole schooling period and others only for a few years, while the remaining seven had not been offered teaching because of too few Punjabi-speaking children in their area. The evaluations of those of who attended mother tongue education indicate that Punjabi teaching in Swedish schools focuses primarily on reading and writing skills. One woman said she learnt spoken Punjabi from home but the school provided the ability to read and write in the gurmukhi script and several linguistic resources, such as books and reading material, to bring home for further studies. A man similarly stated: “for reading and writing it has been good because the parents did not have time for this” (interview, 11 November 2011). Two women also emphasized that their Punjabi classes were not only about improving their language skills but also a process for developing a relationship to the Punjabi culture through different pedagogical projects that were arranged by their teachers. Other respondents, on the other hand, admitted that attending Punjabi classes was more a strategy to get good grades. Both a male and a female respondent asserted that it was quite easy to perform well in the Punjabi classes because of their previous knowledge, while another said: “I got MVG [highest grade “mycket väl godkänt”] because of some reason. I felt I knew nothing. The teacher was too kind. But to be honest, I did not learn much” (interview, 7 October 2010). Since mother tongue education is an optional and additional subject to the ordinary school hours, two male respondents acknowledged a loss of interest when reaching the upper classes in primary school and engaging in sports and other activities and therefore they discontinued their language studies. Regardless of the divergent motivations and experiences among the youth, the interviews seem to suggest a correlation between participation in Punjabi classes at schools and reading ability in the gurmukhi script. Almost all who had attended mother tongue education asserted reading ability in Punjabi whereas most of those who learnt the language solely at home and/or in the gurdwara restricted their linguistic knowledge to spoken communication. As one woman explained this more bluntly: “There was no home language education at that time. My parents tried very long [to get Punjabi education in school], but there were not enough children [within the municipality] … The parents were then supposed to teach me how to read and write, but it was simply forgotten” (interview, 5 July 2011). Researchers have paid attention to the existence of different and sometimes conflicting conceptions of literacy across generations and in migrant situations

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as literacy can be viewed as a social and cultural capital needed for success in different fields of society. Susan Markose and Meeri Hellsten have distinguished between family literacies and community literacies that can be deemed valuable for quite divergent social arenas. Acquiring language competence for recitations of religious texts, for example, can be seen as a valuable family literacy linked with ethnic and religious identities, while this may not be treasured in the mainstream understanding of literacy acquisition (Markose and Hellsten, 2009, pp. 62, 68). Other studies have suggested that reading and writing ability among Punjabis is not always an intrinsic part of their language identifications and perceptions of being knowledgeable in Punjabi (Beynon et al., 2003, p. 20). When looking at how Swedish Sikh youth and their families have negotiated within home–school relations the picture seems to suggest complementary rather than conflicting functions of literacies. Families have ensured that their children succeed with the language acquisition which they value highest – that is, spoken Punjabi – while youth who have taken an interest in mother tongue instructions at schools have learnt the written language according to the mainstream meaning of literacy acquisition. To what extent Punjabi training in schools is successful for young Sikhs, however, requires further research that takes social, cultural and pedagogical aspects in homes and at schools into consideration. Language Training in Gurdwaras The Sikh gurdwaras in Sweden and the religious activities organized within them present another important context for learning the Punjabi language. Research on Sikh gurdwaras has often presented them as social and cultural centres in which traditional religious and cultural knowledge and the Punjabi language are actively maintained and transmitted to community members. The Sikh places of worship have become cultural meeting places shaped as “little Punjabs” with Punjabi as the dominant language of both the liturgy and social communication (Hirvi, 2013; Jacobsen, 2011; Myrvold, 2011; Singh and Tatla, 2006; Smythe and Toohey, 2009). In the Swedish context this is also true for the religious and cultural environment created by the first-generation Sikhs who have made severe efforts in establishing spaces that are identical to gurdwaras in their homeland and present monolingual environments with Punjabi as the religious and social language. The functions of gurdwaras have thus extended far beyond religion and provide important social spaces and “comfort zones” (Ebaugh and Chafetz, 2000), in which individuals residing at different places can gather to speak Punjabi, build social networks, gain information and retain links with the homeland and Sikhs in other countries. In this sense, the gurdwaras are considered to be important spaces in which the youth can cultivate the social and cultural capital required for maintaining a religious and linguistic heritage.

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However, with the second-generation Sikhs the monolingual practices have also been challenged and transformed into multilingual environments with Punjabi, English and Swedish being used sometimes interchangeably. This is illustrated by how the youth in Stockholm and Malmö persuaded their elders of the importance of using Roman transcriptions and English translations of the Guru Granth Sahib in religious liturgies. The argument of the youth was pedagogical and traditional: in order to learn gurbani in the original language and the gurmukhi script the children would need to do this through a language they knew better. Since there were no translations of the religious texts available in the Swedish language, their choice fell on English translations that were easily accessible on the Internet for computer programs and sanctioned by the wider English-speaking Sikh diaspora. Accordingly, the gurdwaras at these places regularly screen English translations of scriptural hymns on PowerPoint before the congregation, while the texts are simultaneously recited in the original language. A similar linguistic adjustment to the second generation is the trilingual language practices used for notices and posters with information about various religious and social events in the community. A notice board in any of the Swedish gurdwaras may contain advertisements of visiting religious preachers and performers in Punjabi, shorter instructions on the behaviour in a gurdwara in both Swedish and English and invitations to various cultural events in both Punjabi and Swedish or English. Even if most Sikh communities continue to perform standardized liturgies in the original language of the sacred texts and maintain religious speeches and sermons in Punjabi, the presence of the second generation with multiple registers is gradually transforming the gurdwaras into more linguistically diverse spaces. Despite these changes the gurdwaras constitute important community-based centres with teaching material transmitted orally and in writing. In the interviews four young Sikhs mentioned the gurdwara as an important context for their learning of Punjabi. All of them had participated in programmes in the gurdwaras and acknowledged the importance of observation and participation in religious practices. The reason why such a small number of respondents attributed to the gurdwara a function for their linguistic development is primarily because active teaching activities are unequally distributed between the gurdwaras in Sweden depending on the size of the congregations and their available resources. The smaller congregation in Malmö, for instance, has not been able to organize any regular language teaching for its children. The gurdwara in Gothenburg occasionally hosts preachers (kathavacaks) from India, the UK and North America for a couple of weeks. To make full use of their time and knowledge, it sometimes arranges more short-term courses in Punjabi and Sikhism for the children. It is primarily in the larger congregation of Stockholm that a few active volunteers have taken the responsibility to teach the younger

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children in the Punjabi alphabet and those with basic reading competence in the correct pronunciation of gurbani text (gurbani santhiya) on Sundays after the ordinary liturgy. Unlike the institutionalized and well-attended Punjabi schools that have been organized in Norway since the end of the 1990s ( Jacobsen, 2011), the language activities in the Stockholm gurdwara are much smaller and informal. As one female respondent explained, in the sessions for older students the teachers usually clarify the meaning of the chosen hymn in Swedish and then read it in Punjabi with the correct pronunciation. The students take turns in imitating the teacher and get “homework” to train their pronunciation until the next Sunday. During the summer holiday the gurdwara also organizes Punjabi and Sikh teaching for children divided in age groups: the smallest children below the age of seven years are organized in a group for beginners who learn the alphabet and greetings, among other things, while the children between the ages of  7 and 14 learn about and read stories from Sikh history. The instructors are community members who teach on a voluntary basis as a kind of “selfless service” (seva) to the congregation with teaching material brought from Punjab. Similar to what Susanne Smythe and Kelleen Toohey have reported from the Canadian context, “the role of these institutions as contexts for literacy and learning has perhaps been overlooked, particularly since there is minimal availability of Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu texts for children in school and public libraries and community-learning centres”; however, the engagement in these learning activities varies considerably between families (Smythe and Toohey, 2009, p. 50). During my visit to the Stockholm gurdwara in the summers of 2010 and 2011, there were approximately 20 children from Sikh families in the area who participated in the Punjabi classes while apparently many families had chosen not to send their children for training. For several years the youth in Stockholm have organized a week-long camp during which young Sikhs from Sweden and other countries get together to discuss history, beliefs and ethics in their religion. These events have become important meeting places to find social support and discuss freely chosen topics, including those which they have found contradictory or rendered taboo by their parents’ generation. As the camps are organized by and for the youth, they themselves take the initiative to invite senior educators from abroad. Classes in Punjabi have constituted a part of the programme and an opportunity to develop linguistic knowledge together with others of the same age. The languages employed during the camps are primarily Swedish and English, depending on the participants, while Punjabi is used for religious sermons and in more formulaic ways when signalling shared concepts, belonging and practices of a larger Sikh community.

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Concluding Remarks These voices of young Sikhs suggest that Punjabi has been transmitted across generations in many Sikh families in Sweden. Home is undoubtedly the most important context for building up “communicative competence” in spoken Punjabi and learning how to deploy a “specialized register” that can be used for specific contexts and situations in language uses (Blommaert, 2013, p. 194), while the mother tongue education in Swedish schools seems to encourage the acquisition of reading and writing ability according to dominant models and ideas of literacy in the majority society. The function of the gurdwaras for supporting language acquisition depends greatly on the available resources of the local congregations and to what extent the Sikh youth themselves take interest in religious and collectively organized activities. Depending on various factors in the lives of young Sikhs, they may, however, express a multitude of divergent affiliations and stances towards a language that they still may perceive as their mother tongue because it is the language that was used at home during childhood for communication with parents and relatives. Although the youth who have been brought up in Sweden identify themselves as Sikhs they tend to associate Punjabi primarily with home environments while not connecting the language with religion, or more deliberately mark out that Punjabi is associated with the culture of their parents and should not be interlinked with Sikh identifications. On the contrary, young Sikhs with experiences of spending their early childhood in Afghanistan and being migrants in Sweden emphasize strongly the representational functions of Punjabi as an integral part of their religious and ethnic heritage and a collective belonging. What these voices further seem to suggest is the importance of conducting thorough field studies and context-sensitive analyses when studying language affiliation and acquisition among Sikh youth and their construction, negotiation and performance of identities, considering that the social lives of youth are organized in relation to many different cultural others in society with both competing and complementary norms. References Beynon, June, Roumiana Ilieva, Marela Dichupa and Shemina Hirji (2003), “‘Do You Know Your Language?’: How Teachers of Punjabi and Chinese Ancestries Construct Their Family Languages in Their Personal and Professional Lives”. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2 (1), 1–27. Blommaert, Jan (2013), “Citizenship, Language, and Superdiversity: Towards Complexity”. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 12 (3), 193–6.

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Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton (2011), “Language and Superdiversity”. Diversities, 13 (2), 1–21. Bradby, Hannah (2002), “Translating Culture and Language: A Research Note on Multilingual Settings”. Sociology of Health & Illness, 24 (6), 842–55. Cabau-Lampa, Beatrice (1999), “Decisive Factors for Language Teaching in Sweden”. Educational Studies, 25 (2), 175–86. Castles, S. and M.J. Miller (1993), The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. London: Macmillan. David, Maya Khemlani, Ibtisam M.H. Naji and Sheena Kaur (2003), “Language Maintenance or Language Shift among the Punjabi Sikh Community in Malaysia?”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 161, 1–24. Detaramani, Champa and Graham Lock (2003), “Multilingualism in Decline: Language Repertoire, Use and Shift in Two Hong Kong Indian Communities”. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 24 (4), 249–73. Dosanjh, J.S. and Paul A.S. Ghuman (1997), “Punjabi Childbearing in Britain: Development of Identity, Religion and Bilingualism”. Childhood, 4, 285–303. Dusenbery, Verne A. (1997), “The Poetics and Politics of Recognition: Diasporan Sikhs in Pluralist Polities”. American Ethnologist, 24 (4), 738–62. Ebaugh, Helen Rose and Janet Saltzman Chafetz (2000), Religion and the New Immigrants: Continuities and Adaptations in Immigrant Congregations. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Eisenlohr, Patrick (2006), Little India: Diaspora, Time and Ethnolinguistic Belonging in Hindu Mauritius. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ekstrand, Lars Henric (1980), “Home Language Teaching for Immigrant Pupils in Sweden”. International Migration Review, 14 (3), 409–27. Gillspie, M. (1995), Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge. Grewal, J. Singh (1999), The Sikhs of the Punjab. New Delhi: Foundation Books. Hall, Kathleen (2002), “Asserting ‘Needs’ and Claiming ‘Rights’: The Cultural Politics of Community Language Education in England”. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 1 (2), 97–119. Hall, Stuart (1996), “Introduction: Who Needs ‘Identity’?”, in Stuart Hall and P. DuGay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE, pp. 1–17. Hirvi, Laura (2013), Identities in Practice: A Trans-Atlantic Ethnography of Sikh Immigrants in Finland and in California. Finland: SKS. Hyltenstam, K. (1996), Tvåspråkighet med förhinder? Invandrar- och minoritetsundervisning i Sverige [Bilingualism with Obstacles? Immigrant and Minority Education in Sweden]. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Jacobsen, Knut A. (2011), “Institutionalization of Sikhism in Norway: Community Growth and Generational Transfer”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold

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(eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 19–38. Jones, Susan (2004), “Shaping Identities: The Reading of Young Bilinguals”. Literacy, 38 (1), 40–45. Jones-Correa, Michael (2002), “The Study of Transnationalism among the Children of Immigrants: Where We Are and Where We Should Be Headed”, in Peggy Levitt and Mary C. Waters (eds), The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 221–41. Joseph, John E. (2004), Language and Identity: National, Ethnic, Religious. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kipp, Sandra, Michael Clyne and Anne Pauwels (1995), Immigration and Australia’s Language Resources. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service. Li, Guofang (2006), “Biliteracy and Trilingual Practices in the Home Context: Case Studies of Chinese-Canadian Children”. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 6 (3), 355–81. Markose, Susan and Meeri Hellsten (2009), “Explaining Success and Failure in Mainstream Schooling through the Lens of Cultural Continuities and Discontinuities: Two Case Studies”. Language and Education, 23 (1), 59–77. Myrvold, Kristina (2011), “The Swedish Sikhs: Community Building, Representation, and Generational Change”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 63–94. Myrvold, Kristina (2012), “Swedish Case Study: Indian Migration and Population in Sweden”, CARIM: Developing a Knowledge Base for Policymaking on India–EU Migration, 6. Available at: http://www.indiaeu-migration.eu/media/CARIM-India-2012%20-%2006.pdf (accessed 29 September 2014). Rumbaut, R.G. (2002), “Severed or Sustained Attachments? Language, Identity, and Imagined Communities in the Post-Immigrant Generation”, in P. Levitt and M. Waters (eds), The Changing Face of Home: The Transnational Lives of the Second Generation. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 43–95. Saxena, M. (1994), “Literacies among Punjabis in Southall”, in M. Hamilton, D. Barton and R. Ivanic (eds), Worlds of Literacy. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters, pp. 195–214. Shankar, Shalini (2008), “Speaking Like a Model Minority: ‘FOB’ Styles, Gender, and Racial Meanings among Desi Teens in Silicon Valley”. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 18 (2), 268–89. Singh, Harpreet (2012), “Sikh Immigrants’ Views and Strategies of Integration into Swedish Society: A Qualitative Study of First Generation Sikhs in Skåne”. Unpublished bachelor essay in Human Rights Studies, Lund University.

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Singh, Gurharpal and Darshan Singh Tatla (2006), Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community. London: Zed Books. Smythe, Suzanne and Kelleen Toohey (2009), “Investigating Sociohistorical Contexts and Practices through a Community Scan: A Canadian PunjabiSikh Example”. Language and Education, 23 (1), 37–57. Statistiska centralbyrån (n.d.), “Elever med annat modersmål än svenska/Sv2 i samtl. skolor (alla huvudmän) efter region, språk, berättigade/deltagare m.m. och tid” [Pupils with a first language other than Swedish/Sv2 in all schools (all principals) by region, language, eligible/participants, etc., and time]. Available at: www.scb.se (accessed 16 August 2014). Takhar, Amandeep, Pauline Maclaran, Elizabeth Parsons and Anne Broderick (2010), “Consuming Bollywood: Young Sikhs Social Comparisons with Heroes and Heroines in Indian Films”. Journal of Marketing Management, 26 (11–12), 1057–73. Tatla, Darshan Singh (1999), The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. London: University College London.

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Part II: Representation and Gender

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Chapter 5

The Impossible Hybridity of Hair: Kesh, Gender and the Third Space Nicola Mooney

This chapter seems to have begun in the moment, almost 20 years ago, when an elongated tangle of lush black locks, once a fulsome jora (topknot), eminently well-loved and cared for in its time but shorn of diasporic necessity and sadly packed away, thrust itself into my consciousness. Stunned by the sheer physicality and magnitude of the encounter in the instant, I have often pondered it since, for this uncanny incident was at the same time deeply compelling, incongruous and painful. In Sigmund Freud’s notion of the “unheimlich” (Freud, 1919), objects and experiences with which we are routinely familiar become estranged from their original contexts, effecting dissonance between subjects and the uncanny phenomena thus encountered, and in the process drawing attention to the normative repression of such strangeness in heimlich or everyday contexts. While fear, repulsion and the stuff of nightmares are central to Freud’s theory of the unheimlich, I would emphasize instead its haunted nature, so imbued with uneasy and painful memories, regret, remorse and recrimination, the ghostly traces of other realities and potentials. Setting aside scholarly critiques of Freud’s work, and the problem of applying Western psychoanalytic theory to non-Western contexts (especially those not manifesting clinical disorders), it is nevertheless worth observing that Freud’s essay considers dread over bodily trauma, the fractured ego, the uneasy presence of the double or imposter, and the repression of the familiar or homely. Although I set Freud largely aside here, each of these themes makes an appearance in what follows. Much more importantly, ideas about the homely and unhomely inspired by Freud’s parsing of heimlich and unheimlich have become commonplace constructs of diaspora (e.g. Mishra, 2006; Mishra, 2007), postcoloniality (e.g. Bhabha, 1992; Sugars, 2004) and modernity (e.g. Collins and Jervis, 2008; Lambek, 2004), and thus have meaning for the interpretation of Sikh hair practice. Kesh assures homeliness or being at home in family and community, and even as cutting the hair might enable new forms of diaspora homeliness and belonging, non-keshdhari Sikhs can experience considerable unhomeliness in Sikh society. This situation is at some odds with how diaspora identity formations are often understood. Academic and popular discourses of hybridity,

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hyphenation and third space are frequently mobilized to explain the production and experience of identity in postcolonial, diaspora and transnational contexts, and particularly among second-generation immigrant youth, who must reconcile parental and “home” community expectations with those of the “host” society (e.g. Hall, 2003; Maira, 2002; Narayan, 2002; Raj, 2003; Visweswaran, 1993). Homi Bhabha’s notion of the third space provides a sympathetic location for and means of negotiating own and other culture(s) in such situations of cultural contact, and thus for becoming at home with one’s identity in diaspora contexts. However, this heterogeneous site of cultural exchange and syncretism does not align with nor accommodate religious commitments, and particularly those taking a publically symbolic, hypervisible and somewhat inflexible external form. Issues of kesh are particularly pressing for Sikh youth, among whom – as among youth everywhere – homeliness is strongly linked with notions of conformity, peer pressure and individuality. Although the iconic, singular image of the Sikh is that of a bearded male whose hair remains intact under a turban, the range of Sikh hair practices in reality approximates that of any community at large in which Sikhs might live, and particularly for Sikh youth, for whom hair is closely linked to fashion and popular culture, the development of personal style, acceptance within a peer group, and at times, distanciation from family and community. This is especially the case among diaspora youth, who must forge an identity reconciling disparate family, community and societal expectations alongside urges to peer group belonging, notions of personal style and impulses towards Western individualism, all relational and shifting. While hair enables the expression of personal meanings, it also communicates social meanings, and thus is a public symbol. As personal and public symbol, hair marks one’s membership within and affiliations to a range of possible social groupings – familial, social, religious, ethnic, professional, subcultural – as well as expressing a sense of one’s identity. This is no less the case for diaspora Sikhs. Thus, one may encounter, ethnographically, in media, on the Internet and at large a great range of Sikh hair practices and styles, with the maximal variation among Sikh youth. Among women and girls, hair may be found in the more traditional forms, bound in buns and adorned with chunnis, or plaited or ponytailed; but also is worn swept into elegant updos, long and loose, fringed and layered, bobbed, spiky and razor cut, permed, straightened, hennaed, streaked red and blonde and, occasionally, turbaned. Among men and boys, no less variety abounds: the traditional form of long hair secured in patkas and adorned by turbans; cut hair hiding beneath the same; casually tied joras, at times hidden beneath baseball caps; shortback-and-sides, crewcuts, French cuts, Caesar cuts, ponytails, fauxhawks and even mohawks and combovers; meanwhile facial hair is found in open beards, wrapped beards, bound beards, trimmed beards, sculpted beards, goatees, soul patches, pattern-shaved sideburns, moustaches, barely-there stubbles

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and clean-shaven forms. Even the turbans which dress the hair are subject to considerable stylistic variation: while they have always signalled differences of caste and ethnicities in diaspora (e.g. with distinct Jat, Khatri-Arora, African and Malaysian forms), and can communicate particular personal meanings in the colour of cloth (e.g. religious leanings, stage of life and ritual status such as marriage or bereavement), they are today objects of everyday experimentation and fashion among young Sikh men, with smaller, shorter, closer to the head and more precisely tied, as well as circular wraparound styles finding greater favour than among other generations, and black the most frequent colour. Not insignificantly, turban fashions often closely reflect those found in bhangra videos, while women’s hairdos often reflect the styles of the heroines of Punjabi videos as well as Bollywood films. While the hair practices of Sikhs are clearly heterogeneous, Sikhism enjoins a homogeneous form in which Sikhs are to refrain from cutting or otherwise removing hair of all types from the body. This is known as keeping kesh. While keeping kesh may be a family and community ideal, it is not necessarily a personal one, as attested by the large number of Sikh youth – particularly male – with cut hair in both India and the diaspora. Of course for some Sikh youth, many of whose fathers often cut their own hair, or had it cut for them – whether for safety or from disillusionment – in the troubled 1980s, kesh has ceased to be family practice. At the same time, a proportion of Sikh youth maintains or adopts kesh (and turban) as a matter of both belonging and individuality. These youth are privileged within the community – as well as within most of their families – for having prioritized the public expression of their Sikh identity despite the frequent personal challenges of embracing this claim within a society that is largely non-Sikh, and thus kesh (and turban) objects of significant difference. Yet the heterogeneous hair practices of perhaps a majority of young Sikhs are aligned with and developed in response to largely non-Sikh trends and fashions. This difference creates the potential for schisms within the community around hair practice and its evaluation: although the heterogeneity of Sikh hair practices would seem to suggest that Sikhism permits the negotiation of kesh, Sikhs who do not maintain kesh are constituted as “lesser” Sikhs. Thus, hair practice has in some senses become the essence of what it is to be a Sikh. This chapter explores the possibility of third-space identities for diasporic Sikhs in relation to kesh. I argue that the religious obligation to refrain from cutting the hair, keeping kesh, challenges the potential for hybridity as an accommodative strategy and raises debates about the appearance and nature of the “true” Sikh, some of which evoke ongoing anxiety over Hindu antecedents and incursions. I demonstrate that these challenges are particularly significant for Sikh men, and point here to a curious inversion of normative gender paradigms. Using a multi-sited approach and interspersing my analysis with narrative descriptions of a few of my encounters with Sikh hair and its social contexts,

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I seek to explore a range of instances and interpretations of Sikh hair and its meanings for and amid hybridity, and to survey the heterogeneity of everyday Sikh hair practice against the fixed form of kesh. My research is informed by several stints of fieldwork in India, primarily among Jat Sikhs, by marriage into this particular Sikh community, and by interactions with Sikhs in general in the Canadian diaspora. It is important to state that much of this work sits within an uncomfortable nexus of culture and religion, so desirous of separation in the scholarship of Western modernity, and yet so impossibly enmeshed in actuality. I approach hair analytically, but I recognize and try to respect its spiritual and personal meanings among those whose hair I analyse. As well, while I endeavour to take an anti-essentialist view of what constitutes a Sikh (cf. Jordan and Singh, 2011), and while indeed it is my ethnographic experience that there are many Sikh forms, it is important to note that this perspective is at odds with the religio-legal definitions as established by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in its Rahit Maryada or Sikh Code of Conduct (1994). Hybridity Hybridity theory emerges from postcolonial criticism, and particularly its critique of cultural imperialism. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha introduces the notion of the third space as that between cultures, whether imperial and colonized, or “native” and migrant (Bhabha, 1994 [2004]). The apparently borderless third space is located between cultures, in acts of intersection, interrogation and insertion. Drawing from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Bhabha argues that the third space is a site of translation as much as transformation, an “alien territory”, based not in pluralism or multiculturalism, but (an undefined) internationalism and (a provocative) hybridity. In his essay “The Commitment to Theory”, relying on a realization of the construction of history, memory, culture and identity, Bhabha writes that the third space is a cultural intervention “which makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process” and “destroys th[e] mirror of representation” by “which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed as an integrated, open, expanding code. Such an intervention quite properly challenges our sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force, authenticated by the originary Past, kept alive in the … tradition of the People” (Bhabha, 1994 [2004], pp. 54–5); “It undermines our sense of the homogenizing effects of cultural symbols and icons, by questioning our sense of the authority of cultural synthesis in general” (Bhabha, 1994 [2004], pp. 51–2). This interstitial site of cultural tension and productivity is one in which cultural authority, the assertion of racialized power, and ethnic and national exclusivities can be challenged and resisted via the construction of hybrid identities. The third

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space of hybridity and cultural identity seems to offer choice and agency to the postcolonial migrant, subverting and transforming normative and dominant hierarchies of social order and enabling progressive and empowering admixtures and amalgams at and from the margins. Stuart Hall suggests that hybridity posits identity as “not an essence, but a positioning” that can reattach meaning to homes, selves and cultures in contexts of migration, colonialism and postcoloniality (Hall, 1996, p. 226). Hybridity practice enables essentialized identities to escape the confines of imposed social difference, and hybridity theory enables scholars to move beyond essentialized and socially charged identity categories to a critical consideration of multiple subjectivities (cf. Papastergiadis, 1997). Much hybridity theory thus uncritically posits (Brah and Coombes, 2000), if not celebrates (Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk, 2005), a creative and empowering syncretism of disparate elements in novel, differenceaccommodating, transcultural and potentially transgressive (Clifford, 1997) forms of identity that refuse essentialized and externally imposed modes of subjectivity. The third space is familiar terrain to anthropologists, for as a zone of cultural synthesis and redeployment, it bears the dynamic and dangerous implications of the liminal, and the creative juxtapositions and fusions at and of the borders of the syncretic. In both anthropology and postcolonial studies, the liminal, the syncretic and the third space are typically viewed as generally positive means of reconciling disparate cultures or social states across radical differences and amid significant power imbalances, variously enabling accommodation, acculturation and the survival and even growth of indigenous and local antecedents, elements and “essences” amid what are often gross discrepancies of colonial and neocolonial power, but glossed as benevolent indulgence. Like theories of the liminal and the syncretic before it, the third space is a cultural borderzone, a site of efflorescence, growth, adaptation and compromise that flourishes where binaries meet, transform, hyphenate and ultimately hybridize. The postmodern deployment of multiple intertextual cultural forms such as pastiche ( Jameson, 1991), bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, 1966; Hebdige, 1979) and the carnivalesque (Bakhtin, 1965 [1984]) also engender the hybrid, and thus draw attention to the fluid boundaries of the globalized world, although their discourse perhaps remains largely in specialized zones of artistry and ritual rather than practices of everyday life. The term itself proliferates as it is in process: along with hybridity, Hannerz enumerates “collage, mélange, hotchpotch, montage, synergy, bricolage, creolization, mestizaje, mongrelization, syncretism, transculturation, third cultures, and what have you” (Hannerz, n.d., p. 13). There is something analytically fruitful for all in the third space. This discourse of hybridity suggests that cultural mixture is dynamic and progressive, the cosmopolitan mode of globalized modernity, the creative fusion of fragmentary and disparate essences given new meaning. As exemplified by

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popular cultural productions that mix South Asian and Western elements – whether in the remix bhangra of artists such as Bally Sagoo, Jazzy B and DJ Sanj, or in the intercultural literary and filmscapes of works such as Bend It Like Beckham and Anita and Me – hybridity is celebrated as an accommodative and exciting “cutting edge” (Sharma, 2007), with the potential to subvert racism and create new and positive third-space identities. But hybridity continues to rely on the assimilative dominance of a white/Western/metropolitan centre against which others are located and assessed, and on the presumption of plasticity around the continuance of and insistence on traditions and values from the non-white/non-Western/non-metropolitan. Kalra has mounted a similar argument in which the turban is incompatible with modernity; this irreconcilable encounter is characterized as a ‘confrontation’ in which the turban ‘transgresses’ the modern (2005, pp. 78, 89). These impossible hybridities exist beyond theory; in actuality, the first migrant generation is often incapable of hybridity, while the second remains constrained in its agentive potential to embrace its opportunities. It is also true that hybrid forms of cultural production depend on the prior presence of borders, core cultural constituents and their localized confinement. That this is problematic has been articulated by a number of scholars (e.g. Appadurai, 2006; Asad, 1993; Anthias, 2001 Chow, 2002; Werbner, 1997; Yuval-Davis, 1997; and Gilroy, cited in Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk, 2005). Despite that which is postcolonial and diasporic being “nowhere to be found in its pure, pristine state … always-already fused, syncretized, with other cultural elements”, the idea of identity as a positioning, rather than an essence, “is much less familiar, and more unsettling” (Hall, 2003, pp. 243, 237). For instance, the presumption of anterior pure states, however imprecise, cannot but effect the hybrid as “grotesque” (Stallybrass and White, 1986, p. 113). Moreover, the heterogeneous third space may not necessarily be accommodating of religion, nor of race, for it has been variously charged that the hyphen relies upon problematic states of prior cultural (or other forms of ) purity, glosses hierarchy and inequality, and can be or become a limiting site of racialized otherness (Ahluwalia, 2001; Anthias 2001; Hall, 2002; Young, 1995). As well, hybridity does not automatically engender cultural progress, positive social change and choice around identity (Yuval-Davis, 1997, p. 202); it is complicated by the further intersections of gender and class (Anthias, 2001, pp. 619–20); and reactionary, hegemonic and even “predatory” ethnicities can emerge from the contact zones (Appadurai, 2006). Indeed, hybridity “is a condition perceived by actors themselves to be potentially threatening to their sense of moral integrity, and hence subject to argument, reflection and contestation” (Werbner, 1997, p. 12). Amid all of this, it is not insignificant that the syncretic, which has been most often applied to religious hybrids, is at risk of being scorned and even persecuted by “true believers”.

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Hair It was long ago established, indeed in the era of myth, that hair is not just hair, and this observation remains true today. Hair is a polysemic symbol. It is variously a personal statement of style, an articulation of personality, an expression of femininity, masculinity, or androgyny, a signifier of wealth, class and social aspiration, a bearer of sexuality or modesty, a statement of conformity or resistance, a marker of group identity, whether ethnic, racialized, subcultural and so on (and thereby simultaneously a refutation of others), and, for some, a signal of spiritual leanings and religious commitment. Hair is an object of self, of fantasy, of pollution, of magic and of community; it is a talisman, a fetish, a vow, an obligation, a devotion, a burden, a charm; it sometimes bears all of these meanings in one. Certain communities, often ritualized ones, are known for their hair practices. For Sikhs, uncut hair or kesh is a sacred obligation and a signifier of community belonging. It is also a symbol with and of power in the Sikh context: kesh is a powerful expression of commitment to Sikhi (Sikh faith), and thus gives its wearers power within the community. Sikhs without kesh, who comprise a sizeable number of the Sikh community today, and perhaps even a majority, are regarded as apostate or “fallen” ( patit); thus no longer considered “true” Sikhs, they lose cultural authenticity, authority and voice. Kesh thus bears very real meanings and power. Yet in an overwhelmingly shorn world, keeping kesh is not always an easy practice, and given the close relationship between hair, fashion and belonging among one’s peers, this is perhaps particularly so for Sikh youth. In order to apprehend the impossible hybridity of Sikh hair, it is necessary to rehearse a very brief history of kesh. The origins of kesh are most clearly linked to the history of oppression Sikhs suffered under late Mughal rule. The formation of the Khalsa, which aimed to mark the orthodox Sikh community as separate from all others, fulfilled a military destiny for Sikhs that had begun midway through the succession of the 10 Gurus, following the martyrdom of Guru Arjan at the hands of Muslim torturers . When the ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, was beheaded amid a forcible conversion campaign under Emperor Aurangzeb’s orders in 1675, no one from the terrorized community came forward to claim his body. In 1699 his son and successor, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and final living guru, established the Khalsa, or community of the “pure”, variously viewed as the orthodox and authentic Sikh community, or a sort of Sikh military wing, which in either case is physically marked by particular ritualized treatments and objects known as the five Ks (or kakke). To become Khalsa, Sikhs undergo an initiation rite known as amrit in which they swear to bear the five Ks as symbols of their Sikhism. Uberoi explains the five Ks as follows: kesh (uncut hair), prescribed by Guru Gobind Singh to make Sikhs visible and force them to represent their faith; the kirpan (sword/dagger), prescribed so that Sikhs might

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defend their faith and fight injustice; the kara (steel bangle), worn to remind Sikhs of their integrity, honour and duties; the kangha (small comb worn in the hair), symbolizing order and cleanliness in both body and community; and the kachha (briefs or shorts worn beneath the pyjama, salwar or lunghi), representing both sexual engagement and moral restraint. The kachha, like kesh, is symbolic of the guru’s injunction that Sikhs be eternal householders, outside of the Hindu system of ashramas that permits and even encourages asceticism (Uberoi, 1996). Although it is the most visible of Sikh symbols, the turban (variously, dastar, pagh, or pagri) is not among the five Ks, but has an essential connection to kesh, as well as its own elaborate social, ritual, and cross-cultural contexts and nuances (e.g. Kalra, 2005, McLeod, 1999, Walton-Roberts, 1998); while I focus on kesh in this chapter, the turban must also be considered in many instances, although the two must not be conflated. The Khalsa manifested a profound ethic of social justice. Initiation was intended to obliterate hierarchy and destroy caste observances among Sikhs, as Guru Gobind Singh’s first initiates, the panj piare or five beloved ones, were assembled from different castes and transformed into a singular “brotherhood” whose corporate and collectively unshorn body was in and of the guru. Guru Gobind Singh’s famous invocation raj karega khalsa – the Khalsa will rule – established a call for Sikh political authority, indivisible from religious affairs, that has remained significant in orienting Punjabi political development (Pettigrew, 1987). Importantly, Khalsa Sikhs, as members of Guru Gobind Singh’s pure community, have become hegemonic in representing and interpreting Sikhism (cf. Axel, 2001). The kesh and its turban symbolize continued engagement an enchanted world despite the lures of disenchanting modernity (Weber, 1963 [1993], Oberoi, 1994); they are charismatic icons of religiosity, spiritual expertise and the social power that so derives. This is not to say that kesh (and turban) are not modern, but rather that they refuse dualistic interpretations. Having said this, dichotomous interpretations around kesh abound in the community at large, such that the privileged, sacralized position of Khalsa Sikhs is debated among and contested by non-Khalsa Sikhs. Today, Sikhs continue to be defined by their relative adherence to the five Ks. However, the Rahit Maryada begins with a “Definition of a Sikh” that states that a Sikh believes in God, the 10 Gurus and their teachings, the Guru Granth and Khalsa initiation, and in no other religion. Although a later statement under the section entitled “Living in Consonance with Guru’s Tenets” elaborates on the injunction to maintain hair, the latitude here expressed via the privileging of belief over practice suggests a certain ambiguity as to who is a Sikh. Indeed, during fieldwork in the urban middle-class Sikh community of Sri Ganganagar in the late 1990s, there was considerable debate around the question of belief, as the SGPC definition seemed to enable Hindus by swearing a belief in the gurus to become voting members of the local Khalsa College in a contentious managing

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committee election (Mooney, 2011). Thus there are several potential measures of orthodoxy in Sikhism, although all concern kesh and the turban to which it is symbolically linked, as these are the most visible and indeed hypervisible of Ks. In my observation, one might be a Khalsa, amritdhari or gursikh, literally a pure or guru’s Sikh, having taken amrit (nectar) in the initiation ceremony and abiding thereafter by all of the five Ks. One might be a keshdhari Sikh, one who has intact hair and typically observes the five Ks but has not taken amrit; indeed until the 1980s, this form was perhaps the most widespread, and remains so within a particular demographic. Or one might be a sahejdhari Sikh, with cut hair, and generally thought to be on the “slow” (sahej) or “easy” religious path, although sahejdhari Sikhs may continue to wear a turban with trimmed hair and beard. However, despite the association of sahej with the state of blissful, “mystic consciousness” (Lal, 1999, p. 109) aspired to in Sikh meditation (nam simran), sahejdhari Sikhs are rather disparagingly referred to as mona (having cut hair, or clean-shaven) or even patit (renunciant, apostate, fallen) by apparently more orthodox keshdharis and amritdharis. These forms of classification indicate that amritdhari status is considered the most realized form for Sikhism and, as religious ideal, it becomes an exclusive form. Nevertheless, mixed strategies and commitments are evident in kesh and turban-wearing practice in both Indian and diaspora contexts. Several of Laura Hirvi’s informants described situational turban-wearing and re-adoption of kesh after having cut hair; her perceptive interpretations of the turban in Californian and Finnish contexts suggest that it conveys solidarity where Sikhs are prevalent and otherness where they are not (Hirvi, 2013, pp. 84–7). Likewise, Harjant Gill’s informant Pali, featured in his compelling documentary Roots of Love (2011), wears a turban at home, but is in his own words a “cut sirdar” outside. More than homogeneity and heterogeneity are at issue. While it is difficult – and perhaps futile – to attempt to separate broadly sociocultural and specifically religious explanations, my interviews in India suggested that keshdhari hair practice is more likely to invoke social meanings such as family and community membership, belonging and solidarity, while amritdhari hair practice is more explicitly about religiosity. Hirvi’s observations also make this case (Hirvi, 2013, pp. 85, 88), and Gill’s film similarly suggests that hair practices are first and foremost located in family contexts. That kesh and dastar must be read polysemically does not deny that they remain fixed symbols of a Sikh identity defined in “khalsacentric” (cf. Ballantyne, 2006) terms. For instance, Sikh author Swarn Singh Kahlon, speaking in Gill’s film, suggests that the turban is an encapsulation of the values and virtues of Sikhism, and links its demise to theirs. There remain clear connotations here that sahejdharis are not “good/ proper/authentic” Sikhs (cf. Oberoi, 2001, p. 188). Indeed, over the past decade, the SGPC has insisted that Sikhs who do not maintain their hair are patit (apostates), while sahejdhari refers only to those Sikh novices or converts who

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are still to adopt the full spectrum of Sikh practices, and at the same time, are not patit. This kesh-privileging definition not only holds those born into Sikh families to a higher moral standard concerning kesh, in its present formulation, it also challenges its own categories, for Sikhs who are not patit must in effect be keshdhari so as to maintain their hair.1 While each of these notably Sikh forms may be roughly distinguished from the others, there are also shared distinction between Sikhs and Hindus. The power of hair in Sikhism no doubt emerges in part from the power of hair in other north Indian traditions. While from a Sikh perspective it is problematic to attribute Sikh meanings around hair to Hindu practices prior to the advent of Sikhism, kesh seems to renounce shaving traditions among Hindu priests, rites of passage participants, and renunciants. But kesh may also respond to mythological themes in the north Indian milieu. For instance, in Shaivite Hinduism, Shiva’s locks symbolize both his austerity and his virility (cf. O’Flaherty, 1973), thus placing asceticism at the centre of generativity and world renewal, although it is the former symbolism that is taken up by the sadhus that follow his order. Hair grown long and matted into dreadlocks is also an important marker of certain Sufi sects (Ridgeon, 2010), although other Muslims, like many Hindus, favour particular regimes of grooming and shaving. In contrast to both Muslims and non-Shaivite Hindus, Sikhs grow long hair, but are categorical in their commitment to its cleanliness and order, as well as to the very this-worldly asceticism that Sikhi proposes (cf. Mooney, 2012). In responding to broader north Indian significations of hair and society, elaborating a practice apart from Hindu rituals and their caste, gender and social meanings, Sikh hair may illustrate C.R. Hallpike’s thesis that long hair symbolizes being outside of normative society, and yet is a statement “about the world” (Hallpike, 1969, p. 263). It is important to note that while kesh may well be interpreted to refute Hindu practice, in its ideal state it is an explicitly singular practice and thus innately non-oppositional. There are no transitional rituals or differential states of kesh; it is never cut or unnaturally absent; there is only growth, until there is none. As such, it is a fixed sign. Similarly, the turban is meant to be ever present, for men at least. This non-dualistic framework communicates both public and private meanings: kesh marks identity and social belonging, and is an act of religiosity. Edmund R. Leach distinguished between public symbols as means of communication and even the essence of “Culture” (with a capital C), and private symbols as modes of subconscious psychological power with the ability “to arouse emotion and alter the state of the individual” (Leach, 1958, p. 148). He argued that only the 1 This framework, which is linked to the SGPC’s efforts to ban non-keshdhari Sikhs from voting in gurdwara elections, has been questioned on the grounds that only amritdhari or initiated Sikhs can become patit (N.A. 2011).

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former is readily assailable, and their interface remains a conundrum, although he posited that there must be some connection. In response to Leach, and in what appears to be an early allusion to polysemy, Paul Hershman elaborated, based on Punjabi examples, that public symbols such as hair bear different messages than the symbols themselves, so that while generative (or genital)2 theories may lend symbolic power to hair, the meanings of hair practice, both ritual or everyday, can differ substantively from this script (Hershman, 1974). Gananath Obeyesekere extended Leach’s analysis to argue that private symbols themselves must be divided into two forms, those which are psychogenetic or emergent from the symbolically unconscious, and those which are embedded in and generating of deep personal meanings and motivations (Obeyesekere, 1979 [1984]). In other words, the private symbol also has penetrable and thus potentially social meaning. Of course, Mary Douglas observed that the living organism is well suited to the representation of complex social forms, for it is a model of a bounded system, but in a curious inversion, when the body is a site of public symbolism, it is treated – particularly in psychoanalytical interpretations – as if expressing only private meanings (Douglas, 1966 [2002]). What is most important in these ideas about hair to the present chapter is the interpretation of public and private symbols, the intervening issue of polysemy, and the intersection of public and private with gender. An Uncanny Encounter I am helping my soon-to-be husband to pack up his things ready to move into our first apartment together, deep in a closet, toiling among cardboard boxes filled with items picked up here there and everywhere, an assemblage for a rainy day. There are two kinds of immigrants, minimalists and hoarders, and we are both the second kind. He came from India in the 80s, just twenty years old with a suitcase and $20 in his pocket. Came through the ‘riots’ and turmoil of 19843 with his 2 As Edmund R. Leach observed 50 years ago, “hairdressing is an extremely widespread feature of ritual behaviour” (Leach, 1958, p. 150). However, his interpretations of “magical” hair practices are now outdated. In a Freudian formulation, Leach suggested that there is widespread ethnographic evidence that the head represents a magical phallus, and hair symbolizes semen and thus fertility; by extension, hair-cutting – which is often associated with mourning rites – represents castration. Applying this to an examination of Indian renunciants whose long-haired asceticism would otherwise counter his argument, Leach wrote: “In ritual situations: long hair = unrestrained sexuality; close shaven head = celibacy”, while matted hair grown long without care or concern “means total detachment from the sexual passions” (Leach, 1958, pp. 154, 156). 3 In June 1984, the Indian state ordered a highly contentious military attack (Operation Blue Star) on the Harimandir Sahib complex in response to its occupation by

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Young Sikhs in a Global World turban and his hair intact, but like lots of others at the time, had to lose them within weeks in Canada on his own, couldn’t find a job. Then suddenly he had three of them, none much more than minimum wage, crazy long hours, making ends meet before he finally had enough to go to grad school, where we met. I pull out cheap chopping boards and balls of string and packets of tube socks from one box, sort them, and start on the next. On top, a brown paper bag, the ends crumpled over in a fragile seal sits atop a bundle of clothing, no longer worn. Expecting to find a knot of out-of-fashion ties bundled up inside, I prise open the twisted tops of the bag and thrust my hand inside. As my fingers crasp around something I cannot identify, I pull out the contents and let out a slight shriek. I am holding a twisted bundle of hair. Long, thick, curly, black, lush, but lifeless all at once, my hands are full with it as they have never been with my own. I am alarmed, I cannot fathom what I have in my hands. I call him over, and he is there instantly, registering the panic in my voice. He says softly, ‘you have found my hair’. I exhale but am not yet soothed. I ask ‘but why is it here, tucked away in this bag?’ He looks forlorn as he replies, sotto voce, ‘I could not leave it on the barber’s floor, but I did not know what to do with it’. I gently roll the locks in on themselves, place them back in the bag, fold its ends over, and place it in the single box of keepsakes that we each permitted ourselves to carry to our tiny new flat. That bag is still tucked away in that box in our home, having moved with us multiple times, and though my husband’s hair has greyed, his kesh remains a poignantly youthful black. He’s never addressed what to do with it, and after a faltering discussion that fateful evening - in which the inadequacies of my own fledgling understanding encountered a quiet, almost inarticulable wound, I have not wanted to invite the obvious pain of pursuing this question. But I think he intends it to be burned with him, when he goes.

If my monumental encounter with this precious, lifeless bundle of kesh was uncanny, how much more so for the person thus shorn? Is the self still recognizable, and one’s own, when one takes on the appearance of the other? What longings and traumas are hidden in the transformation of the familiar to the strange? In conversations and through participant-observation with Sikhs at large in subsequent years, I have been privy to glimmerings into the emotional a band of separatist Khalistani Sikhs under the leadership of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, despite the presence of many pilgrim-bystanders marking the anniversary of Guru Arjan’s martyrdom; that October, in revenge, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by her two Sikh bodyguards, and in retaliation, several days of anti-Sikh pogroms erupted. The symbolic and actual violences of these events, and the several thousand deaths in these instances, precipitated over a decade of state-sponsored violence, community reprisals, and flight from Punjab, often by young Sikh men, the primary targets of state suppression.

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magnitude of kesh-cutting in such instances. There is often an element of reluctant pride, of having done what was necessary to provide for oneself or one’s family, whatever the cost. But there is also a mixture of sadness, shame and guilt over having done something that seems like disloyalty to, or rejection of, the norms and expectations of one’s family, community and faith. There is a tinge of bitterness over pronouncements over the physical requirements of Sikhs that issue forth from the Akal Takht, refusing shorn Sikhs their very claim to being Sikh, and in instances, outbursts of anger over the imposition of keshcentric identity in the community at large. There is a sense of embattled if not tortured duality that some Sikhs should be judged better than others in a community that prides itself on equality and overcoming ego, a strong insistence on being “just as Sikh” in these circumstances, and a tired recognition that wishing does not make it so. And hanging over all of this is the spectre of emasculation, a violent loss of self. This most intimate and profound meeting with kesh unfolded long before I read of Obeyesekere’s first encounter with the ecstatic Sri Lankan priestess Karunavati’s “Medusa hair”. Recoiling from her snake-like locks, Obeyesekere questions, invoking both Freud and Douglas, “Was it the anthropologist’s own castration anxiety that provoked this reaction? Or was it the ordinary disgust of a fastidious scholar for something dirty and anomalous sticking out of her head?” (Obeyesekere, 1984, p. 7). He finds reassurance that his is not an ethnocentric reaction in Hershman’s observation that Punjabi sadhus’ “matted locks are snakelike” (Hershman, 1974, p. 287). My own encounter was startling and sad, indeed uncanny, but upon reflection, not mythologically or psychoanalytically provocative. Instead, it drove me to try to understand the manifold pains of “the price of admission” to diasporic modernity and social citizenship, among other attractions of the West, as well as their costs to Sikh solidarity, religiosity, and identity however idealized and problematically singular these objects might appear. Reflecting today on the intimate yet ethnographic gift that was this kesh incident, I propose that kesh presents a particular challenge to young Sikh men struggling to create hybrid subjectivities in the third space of diaspora. Amid the traumatic aftermaths of violence to kesh, dastar, and indeed Sikh life in the decade of “the Punjab crisis”, and even as new religio-legal pressures manifest to keep an exclusively keshdhari form which is in some ways related to the suppression of Sikh sovereignty, decisions about kesh remain difficult. Having said this, these are not new pressures. Simeran Man Singh Gell reminds us that the urge to remove kesh began early in the colonial encounter, with the youthful Maharaja Dalip Singh’s decision to cut his hair – and indeed his conversion to Christianity – under British influence in the 1850s: “Dalip’s predicament was that he was obliged to exist in a nether world poised between identity and difference” (Gell, 1996, p. 51). Gell argues that among secondgeneration youth today, “the moral demands of ethnicity” as captured in kesh

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mean that “for them, and for all others, Sikhism has become identifiably and primarily, a ‘look’” (Gell, 1996, p. 38). He notes a common ethnographic narrative among first- and second-generation British Sikhs of the necessity of cutting one’s hair to get a job and support the family in which the loss of kesh is seen as a sacrificial act, and kesh is often restored in mid-life once economic stability is more assured. (In our case, this idea has on occasion been considered, but is as yet unreconciled.) As highly visible and public symbols of an anti-renunciatory tradition, kesh and turban paradoxically mark Sikh engagement in the world at large even as they separate Sikhs from its mainstream. While the expectation of kesh asserts a uniformity upon the Sikh community, the (male) Sikh body is nevertheless an “instrument for worldly action” and Sikhs thus court the external gaze and engage the broader society (Gell, 1996, p. 61). What Gell calls “the Sikh look” joins the appearance and form of the Sikh to a corporate body that is in and of its form conjoint with the guru (Gell, 1996, p. 58). However, and importantly, Gell argues, “this emphasis upon ‘form’ renders Sikhism particularly vulnerable to appropriation and disguise by those whose content does not warrant it”, thus raising the spectre of the döppelganger, the false Sikh, even as the adoption of the orthodox form might curtail suspicion with regard to the truth of their Sikh practice. Curiously, these anxieties focus on Sikh men. Arguably, there is an alignment of hair as private symbol and feminine register and turban as public symbol and male register. Thus, although keshdhari practice is expected of Sikh women, and they are otherwise charged with maintaining tradition, and their bodies regimented and representationalized accordingly (Mooney 2010, 2011), the turban securing the kesh – which is worn primarily by men – places the significant public burden of community identity on men. Living and Gendering Kesh In the years since my encounter with my husband’s shorn kesh, I have met with Sikh hair in both India and the diaspora in a good many guises – as described at the outset of this chapter – but none so unnerving. The range of hair practices is at times dictated by ritual or social occasion, but it is also true that personal preferences are also thus expressed. While family patterns are certainly evident, there are also sons with kesh-filled patkas whose fathers are shorn, daughters with brushcut hairdos whose mothers keep kesh, sisters and brothers with radically different commitments to kesh, and keshdhari husbands whose wives have sleek bobs; meanwhile, everywhere, grooms wear turbans and beards for their Anand Karaj regardless of their quotidian hair practice. This plethora of practices is at obvious odds with the religious injunction to keep kesh, even as it attests to a vigorous embrace of other forms, so that observationally at least,

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Sikh hair encompasses both normative keshdhari and a heterogeneous range of other styles. Thus at first glance, the accommodative promise of the third space is realized. In university, through a friend in one class, I meet a friend in another. She is a Sikh, and although she is not the first Sikh I’ve known, she is the first to become my friend. Bright, smart and fashionable, she still keeps her long tightly-curled hair tied back, generally braided. She introduces me to Bollywood movies and how to make chai, to her family, and to Sikhism. A year or two later, I become aware that she’s wearing her hair down, mid-back; she doesn’t need a curly perm to have great 80s hair. As more time elapses, she begins to wear her hair in a shoulder-length bob. Rather surprised to see this, I say ‘great haircut! But what did your mother say?’ She replies ‘she doesn’t know I’ve cut it. I just told her it is getting so curly, now I wear it loose, the curls have tightened up’. She pulls at a strand to show me that it is indeed longer than it looks, and she can still pull it back to wear with the family and at the gurdwara.

Kesh occurs within a nexus of related, and gendered, cultural practices which suggest that while women’s bodies are otherwise significant bearers of community, tradition and identity, men’s kesh is more visibly and publically representative of these social concerns than is women’s, or at least while most women keep their hair long. That men’s hair is the consummate public symbol of Sikhism is so commonplace as to be stereotypical: Sikh men wear turbans, which, theoretically and ideally, conceal their kesh. The hair is braided into a jora (topknot), which is covered and secured with a patka (thin cloth) and finally wrapped around with a turban, which has both religious (as dastar) and cultural (as pagh or pagri) significance, and can convey particular meanings with its colour and the style in which it is tied. Adult men are supposed to maintain all three of these practices, while youth wear patkas and young boys wear only joras, typically covered with a small white or black cloth. Meanwhile, most Sikh women wear their hair in a bun, most girls wear their hair in plaits, and teenaged girls most often wear a single plait or ponytail; my Canadian Sikh students wear their hair long, and often layered, but tie it back for class. Sikh women may well cut their hair – and depilation of facial and bodily hair is widely practised – but most are careful to maintain its overall appearance in such a way that normative hairstyles can be worn or approximated. So, while considerable latitude or heterogeneity of form is accepted among non-amritdhari women’s hair practices, and although as girls their kesh may be less of a public symbol than that of their brothers, it is still a gendered tradition to maintain long hair. Infrequently, women wear the dastar, but it is an important symbol for some Sikh women, including those who adopt it as a matter of Sikh feminism, and for the small but visible community of Sikhs in the 3HO/Sikh Dharma. There appears to

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be a lesser focus on women’s hair practices, whether because women tend to wear their hair in ways that do not draw attention to its being cut, or because women are not the public representatives of Sikhism that men are. Women’s hair – like their sexualized bodies in their entirety, in keeping with the Punjabi gender code of honour and shame (Mooney, 2010, 2011) – is more important in terms of family honour, while it is men’s kesh that most frequently represents and embodies Sikh community in the public sphere. The emphasis on the male Sikh body as symbol of community suggests a realignment of more typical patriarchal gender formations in which women, even within purportedly gender egalitarian societies such as this, embody their communities (e.g. Butalia, 2000; Menon and Bhasin, 1998; Sarkar and Butalia, 1995; Sarkar, 1998). Women’s bodies and identities are mutable, changing in accordance with patrilineal traditions upon marriage and motherhood, while men’s more fixed social statuses are more readily aligned with and able to represent fixed forms of body and identity. It has at times been a lesson in gender to observe the ways in which my Canadian Sikh nieces negotiate hair and other bodily practices. As girls, most but not all of them have unshorn hair, which they keep in braids and ponytails, although many of their brothers have cut hair (and often hyperstylized facial hair when in their teens). As they become teenagers, and particularly in the year or two before their ‘sweet sixteenth’, often celebrated with an elaborate party in a hall, they begin to request haircuts, make-up, and threading, to wear saris and heels at other sweet sixteenth, lohri, and wedding parties, and sometimes, coloured contact lenses. While the clothing and cosmetics are adopted temporarily, the hairstyles demand permanent modifications to their kesh. I have been present during a number of these conversations, which usually take place over several months or even years, although they are almost always successful. The girls are careful to deploy a cultural script for their wishes, frequently modelling their requests on the fashions in the latest films from India (although the contact lenses are harder to substantiate). They also might deploy parental guilt, articulating their wishes in relation to the privileges granted to older cousins for other parties by equally loving parents. And, on occasion, I have heard promises of gendered modifications of behaviour in other ways in return – to wear a salwar-kameez rather than jeans and a sweatshirt to the gurdwara, to make more of an effort in the kitchen, to speak Punjabi more exclusively with their grandparents, etc. – all of which will make them more attractive prospects should they be subject to an arranged marriage, despite their cut hair, which may well account for their strategic success. It is also interesting to observe that their mothers sometimes adopt new hairstyles that require haircuts alongside or in the aftermath of those of their daughters.

Although individual wishes are not always aligned with familial ones, parents, siblings, peers and other role models play an important role in decisions to

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maintain kesh. If young Sikhs are immersed in kesh-keeping families and engaged in friendships and community activities with other keshdhari Sikhs then they are more likely to keep kesh themselves (cf. Singh, 2010). Glenn Jordan and Satwinder Singh suggest that “being cool” and cultivating a “cool” demeanour via clothing and accessories, turban included, are strategies of kesh-confidence among male Sikh youth ( Jordan and Singh, 2011). While these researchers only detail this strategy among Sikh youth whose “carefully tied turbans complement their stylish Western trousers, shirts, jackets and suits” ( Jordan and Singh, 2011, p. 420), it is equally clear that Sikh youth with cut hair practise coolness via their clothing, haircuts and shaving styles, as indeed do young Sikh women in their own ways. Significantly, in the late 1990s, a number of Indian Sikh youth, entirely sahejdhari, told me that the most fashionable Punjabi singers had cut hair. The rise in popularity of turbaned bhangra performers such as Sukhshinder Shinda, Jassi Sidhu and the members of the band Tiger Style indicate that this is no longer the case. Indeed Sikh stylings around the turban – not the index of kesh, after all – can be taken to some extremes: in his fascinating study of twenty-something Sikh attitudes towards hair in Britain, Jasjit Singh describes one instance in which the style of the turban superceded the kesh to such a degree that the head was shaved beneath (Singh, 2010, p. 214). Nevertheless, Kathleen Hall observes that for keshdhari diasporic youth, “the turban comes to symbolize the tensions in their everyday lives”, and they can feel considerable pressure to cut the hair (Hall, 2002, p. 185). She further notes that these are often connected to questions of popularity and dating, or what we might consider hybrid practices of the third space, given the preference for arranged marriage among more traditional Punjabi parents. When parents are kesh- and amritdhari, hair may well be a means of maintaining tradition and traditional values against the incursions of social change, which are perceived in some ways as threats to Sikhi. Despite or because of intense parental love, and intense commitments to religion, the conflicts can also be intense. One niece pleads for several years to have a fringe cut, creates a gum-accident to achieve this end, and then cuts and colours her hair quite radically while away at university, I suspect as much to trouble her amritdhari mother as to be fashionable. Along with other more Westernized behaviours that did not meet with parental approval, this contributes to a significant and painful family rift. Meanwhile, her younger sister, still keshdhari – whether under her mother’s sway, or of her own volition as yet undetermined – becomes the model daughter. After she finishes school, the elder niece wears her hair in a ponytail daily, easier for work, but on weekends ‘lets her hair down’ to go out, a phrase that is used by some young Sikh women to refer to their socializing according to Western paradigms and fashions. Still and all, happily she is reconciled with her parents.

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Hair can become a symbol of personal agency, and perhaps defiance, apparently rendering the individual at home in their own decisions, but unsettling their ability to be at home with kin and community. This is especially true for men and boys. Given that Punjabi culture continues to relegate women to domestic roles and the private domain, whether in reality or the imagination, men’s kesh and the associated turban are by default the more public symbols of Sikh hair practice, both in India and abroad. In an article marking the tercentenary of the Khalsa in 1999, Khushwant Singh wrote: “[t]he Khalsa find themselves losing ground, as an increasing number of their youth cut their hair and shave their beards to become no different from Hindus believing in Sikhism”. Indeed, in the late 1990s, the only Jat Sikh youth I met in a year and a half in India who had kept kesh was the visiting American nephew of family friends. Without a doubt the terror and oppression of the 1980s, when for male Sikh youth to keep kesh was to risk “disappearance” and thus life, had considerable impact; although it is also true that some Sikh youth at the time had other, less serious reasons for cutting their hair. In the diaspora, it is clear that Sikhs feel considerable pressure, whether from within or without, to cut their hair. Sikhs everywhere live in plural and changing cultural circumstances, in which hair is linked – whether desirably or not – to other significant issues, family, school, work, race, personal identity and so on, which often may compete. In and of itself, and as a cultural practice, cutting hair is quite widely understood, if not always accepted. But Singh’s charge that Sikh youth with cut hair are “no different from Hindus believing in Sikhism” articulates serious fears about the reintegration of Sikhism into the syncretic Hindu milieu in which it originated and even the destruction of the community via the failure of male Sikh youth to keep kesh. The Potential of the Third Space Such is the emotional charge of kesh and dastar, lovingly tended and attended by mothers, aunts, sisters and grandmothers throughout life, mirrored in the faces of fathers, grandfathers and brothers, badge of belonging, identity and honour, that cutting kesh is deeply shameful. There have been a number of cases – often reported in the media – in which youth who wish to cut their hair have faked racial attacks to avoid the guilt and recriminations that they fear are attendant to their decision at home (cf. Singh, 2010). The fact that it is almost always teenage boys whose cases feature in the press when such attacks are alleged as the reason for kesh-cutting incidents suggests that the magnitude of kesh in representing community weighs very heavily on males, even as it suggests that females and their hair are not the focus of this public representation. Issues of beauty and the apparent imperative to groom and remove facial hair, however antifeminist, can impact Sikh women’s practice of kesh (cf. Singh, 2010, p. 209; Mahmood

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and Brady, 2000, p. 67), but seem to have less spectacular repercussions. However, when women choose to wear the dastar, their kesh can become the public symbol of religion and community that men’s hair normatively is, as suggested in the recent case of Balpreet Kaur.4 Maintaining and being marked by a hypervisible, fixed external symbol prompts surveillance from within and beyond the community (cf. Verma, 2006, p. 96). Experiences of racialization, racial and religious discrimination, and the at-times-colonial habitus and struggles of migration can also influence kesh. The conflation of turban-wearing with Khalistani militancy in the 1980s and Islamic terrorism after 9/11 also factors in to some decisions to cut hair (cf. Nayar, 2008; Verma, 2006). Indeed, the diaspora association of the turban with terrorism after 9/11 has a regional prehistory in the image of ‘the Sikh terrorist’ in the popular imaginary in India in the aftermath of 1984. Stereotypes of turbaned Sikhs among non-turbaned Sikhs might at times repeat these connotations, but it is also notable that in the relatively safe diaspora, where the threats of detention, torture and disappearance so common in India were absent, 1984 was a catalyst for espousing the Khalsa form among some Sikhs (cf. Nayar, 2004). Ganda Singh has claimed that kesh is “indispensable and perhaps the main symbol of the Sikh faith” (Singh, 2000, p. 39). As kesh, in association with the turban, is certainly the most visible symbol of Sikhism, this in itself is unsurprising. But the ready association of kesh, the turban and religiosity is not so simple. Many Sikhs maintain kesh and wear a turban from a sense of ethnic, community and family belonging rather than from an overt sense of commitment to faith (McMullen, 1989; Mooney, 2011). Indeed, some see amrit as a burden or promise that they are not willing or spiritually ready to undertake, thereby potentially validating the derogatory meanings of their sahejdhari status. The widespread presence of such Sikhs in the broader community would seem to render the claims of orthodox Sikhs to represent the community more convincing. However, this is merely an escalation of the claim that kesh- and amritdhari Sikhs make to the privileges of authenticity and representation over sahejdhari Sikhs. On the other hand, many sahejdharis present themselves as largely nonpractising, essentially secular Sikhs, claiming a primordially Sikh identity innately related to their Sikh origins. But several such apparently “irreligious” Sikhs with whom I have spoken still maintain impassioned opinions on what they perceive An American Sikh college student, Balpreet Kaur was photographed without her knowledge or consent by a passerby who circulated her image on Reddit so as to mock her appearance; after she responded with a dignified explanation of how her appearance was guided by her Sikhi, the poster apologized in the same forum (West, 2012) and the story made the news (Bennet-Smith, 2012). In 2012, Kaur wrote about this experience in an article in The Guardian (Kaur 2012), and in 2013 she presented a TEDx Talk, “The Power Behind Kindness”, about it (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blgf YLhFN0Y). 4

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as a generalized failure of contemporary Sikh practice in recognizing the “true” importance of Sikhism, and an increasing marginalization of Sikh interests, as well as the meaning of being Sikh. One of my closest interlocutors in India, Jasleen, claims to have cut his hair on a college dare but enacts, thinks deeply about, and is clearly committed to the social and religious ideals of Sikhi. He has told me on several occasions that one does not need kesh and a turban to behave as a Sikh. But some kesh-keeping Sikhs would deny his being a Sikh, even though he might behave as one, and perhaps even more so than they – however, they would seem to have the support of the Rahit Maryada and other Sikh institutions. Indeed, I soon noticed that often Jasleen’s young keshdhari son – whose mother claimed she had insisted on his hair – was referred to as Jeet Singh by other keshdharis, while Jasleen was just Jasleen. Now in his teens, Jeet maintains his kesh, while his sister has her hair discreetly cut at a fashionable beauty parlour with her mother’s approval. In a similar instance, one of the female respondents in Jasjit Singh’s study poignantly remarked: “At one stage I stopped doing paat [prayers] because I thought, ‘I’m cutting my hair and all these Sikhs are telling me that I’m going to hell anyway, so what’s the point’?” (Singh, 2010, pp. 209–10). There is a double trauma, at least, around the loss of kesh in these circumstances: the pain of marginalization in whichever society at large is perceived to demand Sikh haircutting, and the pain of marginalization within a Sikh community that then denies the ‘true’ Sikh identity of Sikhs without kesh. Identity is a matter of both internal agency and external imposition, of performance and representation. Private and public symbols, whatever the gap between them, thus become conflated. Kesh symbolizes a commitment to Sikhi in both the private and public spheres, which are effectively one and the same in Sikhism. Therefore, the private meanings of hair that might otherwise be freely deployed in a hybrid strategy of admixture and accommodation cannot be loosed from the uniform public form of the gursikh. Despite the differential forms of Sikh orthodoxy that might be related to uncut hair and other practices, the Khalsa designation is always central, privileged and imbued with social and religious power. According to Brian Keith Axel’s study of the Sikh diaspora and the construction of the notion of a Punjabi homeland, “the amritdhari body has attained a hegemonic quality so extensive that all other ways of being a Sikh are constituted in relation to it”; in an important corollary of this, “according to the discourses of many amritdharis today, people who are not amritdhari cannot be considered Sikhs even though they claim to be Sikh” (Axel, 2001, p. 36).5 Orthodoxy is certainly easier to classify – and perhaps thus to value – than more heterodox and hybrid forms of Sikhism, but other forms of Sikh 5 At the same time, Nayar reminds us that amritdhari Sikhs are “a minority within a minority” and victim to negative stereotypes of fundamentalism within the broader society and defensiveness from other, non-orthodox Sikhs (Nayar, 2008, p. 28).

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practice are certainly present and significant among the Sikh community at large. Hair aside, it seems that what is lost in these identity contests are the substantive ‘fundamentals’ of Sikhism – its commitments to radical egalitarianism, social justice, selfless and devotional service and the defence of other ways of being religious. And yet the question of hair and other matters of form remain at the forefront of community concerns and debates. Sikhi is not only or necessarily best expressed by those who keep kesh, for kesh does not in and of itself guarantee virtue.6 There is a gap between practices of form and practices of substance, which is in effect a gap between public and private symbols. Even as orthodoxy and orthopraxy are collapsed with militancy in the popular domain, even as amritdharis embody the gursikh and thus religious and social capital, even as external form is privileged over ethical and spiritual practice, and even as sahejdharis are pained at and dispute their marginalization as Sikhs, kesh remains a consummate public symbol, and as such a locus for the negotiation and contestation of important questions of religiosity and identity within the community as well as beyond it. It is indisputable that the question of kesh and the question of who is Sikh are inextricable. But those gradations between the various categories other than amritdhari are religiously contentious, socially charged and theoretically challenging. Kesh cutting is an attempt at hybridity, sometimes chosen, sometimes forced, where none is welcome. Indeed, what may be variously interpreted as Sikh pride, purification or reconversion campaigns proliferate in the diaspora, frequently targeting Sikh youth; this is evident, for instance, in the jathebandia movement, of which the Akhand Kirtani Jatha, which demands kesh and turbans for both men and women, is just one example. But even outside of these formal movements, the growing incidence of turban-tying competitions for young men demonstrates that their concerns are more widespread. Sikh hair has no liminal, syncretic or hybrid state; one either has kesh, or one doesn’t. Against the ready and demonstrable boundaries of orthopraxy, heterodoxy has no purchase. And, just as there is no reconciliation of the Sikh subject and the modern project when “the paramount signifier of male Sikh identity” remains the turban (Kalra, 2005, p. 75), there is no possibility for a Sikh hybridity while the kesh remains the underpinning of the turban. Clearly the symbolic form of the Sikh corporate body, internally meaningful and externally articulated and recognized, and thus both privately and publically powerful, responds to the historical emergence of Sikhism in a context of two prior world religions. Guru Nanak’s Sikhi itself established a third space, neither Hindu nor Muslim. But with the formation of the Khalsa, Guru Gobind Singh 6 Importantly, Kalra notes that some verses of the Guru Granth Sahib suggest that those who wear turbans are more interested in communicating their social stature than in contemplating “the path to God” (Kalra, 2005, p. 84).

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fixed this fluid religio-cultural space, at least in its bodily and public form.7 The subsequent history of Sikhism through Islamic, British and now arguably Hindu colonization has refused syncretism and insisted on allegiance to this homogeneous, traditionally pure state as a means of overcoming the anxiety of uncertainty that is unleashed in the hybrid. In circumstances of modernity and diaspora, the lures and threats of hybridity encourage concern over, scrutiny around and reinforcement of kesh amid the apparent promise of the third space. As the communicative public meaning of kesh is not obvious beyond India, the impulse to keep kesh, as well as to cut it, are paradoxically enhanced in the diaspora. To be experienced positively, diaspora hybridity demands supportive accommodation and the acceptance of heterogeneous forms from both cultures coming into contact, thus assuming an absence of prejudice against kesh and its associated turban in society at large, and the presence of flexibility around kesh and the turban in its own cultural context. Given that neither condition fully exists, Sikh hair practices cannot be positioned in nor benefit from the potential of the third space. While many diaspora Sikh youth experiment with kesh, they do so in a context in which their Sikh identity is suspect. As they cannot realize the promise of hybridity, their experience of diaspora is unheimlich. Cutting kesh is suffused with uncanny affects: a religiously vital bodily element is lost, fear circulates over the proliferation of such loss, those without kesh-dastar are no longer identifiable as being of the community and thus are potentially imposters or double-agents, and the ready association of hair practice with familial and social expectations is obscured. In all of this, Sikh men are less at home than Sikh women, as they bear a greater burden of kesh as public symbol of religious identity, commitment and authority. In a keshcentric context, the keshless döppelganger – uncanny harbinger of Hindu reincorporation and Western contamination – is anger on the familiar terrain of Sikhi, a fracturing of the Sikh self, a denial of values, community, and at times even family.8 Sikhs without kesh may be at home in broader diaspora circumstances – and in this are perhaps more so than their keshdhari peers – but they are not equally at home among keshdhari members of the Sikh community. Do they then really participate in the potential of a third space in which identities may be chosen and new subjectivities created? Moreover, when the community divides itself on the question of kesh because of the impossible hybridity of hair, can any Sikh be truly at home? Although it has become conventional to position the turban in relation to British interventions concerning Sikhs as a “martial race” (Cohn 1990, McLeod 1999, Mooney 2013), it is vital to reiterate the role of Sikhs in determining its importance. 8 Revisiting Freud, a metaphorical manifestation of castration anxiety might after all afflict Sikh hair: although clearly not a matter of Eurocentric and outmoded issues of repressed sexuality, concern over kesh may well reflect a fear around the ultimate destruction of the Sikh community via its emasculation in keshlessness. 7

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Obeyesekere, Gananath (1979 [1984]), Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger (1973), Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Śiva. London: Oxford University Press. Papastergiadis, Nikos (1997), “Tracing Hybridity in Theory”, in Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books, pp. 257–81. Pettigrew, Joyce (1987), “In Search of a New Kingdom of Lahore”. Pacific Affairs, 60 (1), 1–25. Raj, Dhooleka Sarhadi (2003), Where Are You From? Middle Class Migrants in the Modern World. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ridgeon, Lloyd (2010), “Shaggy or Shaved? The Symbolism of Hair among Persian Qalandar Sufis”. Iran and the Caucasus, 14, 233–64. Sarkar, Tanika (1998), “Orthodoxy, Cultural Nationalism and Hindutva Violence: An Overview of the Gender Ideology of the Hindu Right”, in Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri (eds), Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 166–81. Sarkar, Tanika and Urvashi Butalia (1995), Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Sharma, Sanjay (2007), “East Is East and the Pitfalls of Hybridity”, Dark Matter: In the Ruins of Imperial Culture. Available at: http://www.darkmatter101. org/site/2007/02/10/east-is-east-and-the-pitfalls-of-hybridity/ (accessed 1 November 2013). Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) (1994). Sikh Rehat Maryada. Translated by Kulraj Singh. Amritsar: Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. Available at: http://www.sgpc.net/sikhism/sikhdharma-manual.html (accessed 21 May 2013). Singh, Ganda (2000), “Importance of Hair and Turban”, in Mohinder Singh (ed.), Sikh Forms and Symbols. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 39–44. Singh, Jasjit (2010), “Head First: Young British Sikhs, Hair, and the Turban”. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25 (2), 203–20. Singh, Khushwant (1999), “The Poets of Enterprise”, Outlook India. 29 March 1999 (web edition). Stallybrass, Peter and Allon White (1986), The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sugars, Cynthia (2004), Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Toronto: Broadview Press. Times of India (2011) “Who is a ‘sehajdhari’?” Times of India. 2 September 2011. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Who-is-a-sehajdha ri/articleshow/9830416.cms (accessed 1 April 2015).

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Uberoi, J.P.S. (1996), Religion, Civil Society and the State: A Study of Sikhism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Verma, Rita (2006), “Trauma, Cultural Survival and Identity Politics in a Post 9–11 Era: Reflections by Sikh Youth”. Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory, 2 (1), 89–101. Visweswaran, Kamala (1993), “Predicaments of the Hyphen”, in Women of South Asian Descent Collective (eds), Our Feet Walk the Sky: Women of the South Asian Diaspora. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books, pp. 301–12. Walton-Roberts, Margaret (1998), “Three Readings of the Turban: Sikh Identity in Greater Vancouver”. Urban Geography, 19 (4), pp. 311–31. Weber, Max (1963 [1993]), The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon Press. Werbner, Pnina (1997), “Introduction: The Dialectics of Cultural Hybridity”, in Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–28. West, Lindy (2012), “Reddit Users Attempt to Shame Sikh Woman, Get Righteously Schooled”, Jezebel, 26 September 2012. Available at: http:// jezebel.com/5946643/reddit-users-attempt-to-shame-sikh-woman-getrighteously-schooled (accessed 1 April 2015). Young, Robert (1995), Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge. Yuval-Davis, Nira (1997), “Ethnicity, Gender Relations and Multiculturalism”, in Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books, pp. 193–208.

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Chapter 6

Marking the Female Sikh Body: Reformulating and Legitimating Sikh Women’s Turbaned Identity on the World Wide Web Doris R. Jakobsh

Julie Byrne, in an introduction to a course entitled “Lived Religion in America: Institutions, Innovations, and Individuals”, explains that the study of “lived religion” “offers that single chewy question to introduce and frame the course: What do we see when we look at religion as lived religion? – and what do we miss?” (Byrne, 2004). For others, lived religion offers scholars the opportunity to move beyond what have and likely will continue to be the dominant foci of the study of religion – namely, the history, texts, hierarchies, philosophy and theology thereof – and turn instead to what is vastly understudied and often misunderstood, the practices and “everyday thinking and doing” of lay people within religious institutions. Hall suggests that while traditional approaches continue to be vital modes of inquiry “we owe a questioning of boundaries, a sympathy for the extra-ecclesial, and a recognition of the laity as actors in their own right” (Hall, 1997, pp. viii–ix). Lived religion, then, can be understood as an approach to the study of religion that embraces those activities, performances, narratives and texts that are often considered inherently meaningless or simply too trivial to merit attention. Religious practice is central to this approach, for it is in practice that the “tensions, the ongoing struggle of definition” come to the fore. Practice, in its varied manifestations, “always bears the marks of both regulation and what, for want of a better word, we may term resistance. It is not wholly one or the other” (Hall, 1997, pp. viii–ix). Nancy Auer Falk grapples with similar issues in an attempt to represent accurate and “lived” accounts of Indian religious traditions, most especially within the study of Hinduism within university class rooms. She suggests that traditional approaches of teaching world religions have tended to privilege belief over practice, very much a remnant of a European Christian heritage. Instead, Falk argues that more accurate portrayals of the religious lives of our students, in particular, include transitioning from

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primarily historical, theoretical and textual approaches within the study of religion toward a particular focus on the performance of religion as it exists today (Falk, 2006, p. 1). The focus on lived religion by an increasing number of scholars has also turned toward the study of religion within online realms. For many religious adherents who have an active presence within online religious realms, “the Internet is not some place ‘other’ but recognized as a part of their everyday life and they are merely extending their religious meaning and activity into this environment” (Helland, 2005, p. 12). And certainly, interest and research in religion online have fostered the emergence of a number of academic initiatives and research opportunities, including academic conferences, research centres and projects alongside the publication of academic journals, articles and books. The Internet has clearly “arrived” as a legitimate area of research. Issues surrounding religion and public/private life have become touch-points of interest and necessity within our globalized village, as scholars and pundits alike attempt to make sense of our multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multicultural societies. As we struggle to understand, attempt to gain scholarly insight into religious life, it is perhaps within these social networking sites that those aspects of private lives becoming increasingly public, including religious beliefs, practices, opinions, aspirations, castigations and, I would warrant, countless other aspects of religious life, come quickly to the fore. As scholars of religion and media, the theoretical, practical and ethical dimensions are countless. Issues of authority (both online and offline), religious identity construction, portrayals of religious ideology, community development and awareness, notions of the sacred and the creation of sacred space, in-group and out-group dynamics, come to the fore with an abrupt and almost overwhelming immediacy. It is, as I have found, a forum for glimpses into worlds often otherwise denied. There is little that is value neutral in an increasingly interconnected world because each and every act is an act of participation ( Jenkins, 2006). In this chapter I look specifically at the construction of Sikh women’s identity through new media, especially the Internet, as well as mass media. The medium of web pages offers “possibilities both for the ‘presentation’ and shaping of self which are shared neither by text on paper or face-to-face interaction”. It is not only the possibility of “instant publication” that personal web pages or blogs involve, “but a web page is potentially a conquest of space rather than time: subject to the appeal of its content its audience can be global. On the Web, the personal function of ‘discovering’ (or at least clarifying) one’s thoughts, feelings and identity is fused with the public function of publishing these to a larger audience than traditional media have ever offered” (Chandler, 1998). This personal act of discovery, presentation and representation within the online realm is of central importance both to the wider study of religion and with the particular focus of religious identity construction. In fact, not to look at the

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proliferation of chat room discussions, opinion lists, blogs, personal web pages, YouTube or Facebook or the myriad of other online media outlets will likely lead to a profound lack of connection to some of the most honest, vulnerable, religiously motivated, community oriented and devotional content available today. Sikhs and Identity Questions of identity within Sikhism have a long and storied history within the tradition, largely and most importantly given that external identity markers are deeply etched within the very development of Sikhism, historically and today. Early texts, for the most part, focus on the male Khalsa identity and are either silent about women’s inclusion into the order or are highly contradictory. I will not be going into great detail, but let me just touch on a couple of major historical works. For the most part, gender distinctions are significant. The Chaupa Singh Rahit-nama, one of the earliest codes of conduct, strongly prohibits the administration of the sword ritual to a woman; any man who does so is to be strictly censured (McLeod, 1987, p. 186). Women are to be initiated by the rite of the “nectar of the foot” (charan pahul). Another text that is receiving renewed attention, the Prem Sumarg, variously dated from the early eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century (McLeod, 2006, pp. 3–6), stands alone in that it maintains that both women and men are to be initiated into the Khalsa order (Malhotra, 2009, p. 182). Important gendered components remain within the normative naming practices and military uniform of the Khalsa in the Prem Sumarg. For males, the turban, the kacheera (breeches) and weapons are clearly prescribed (McLeod, 2006, p. 22). For females, the prescriptions are not at all indicative of the traditional Khalsa military attire. Instead of the traditional blue of the Khalsa, women are to wear a black skirt and bodice. They are also to study scripture in the company of other Sikhnis and obediently serve their husbands (McLeod, 2006, p. 27). Clearly, “dress and appearance often reinforces existing power structures. However, within ritual display dress often challenges existing structures and initiates a process of transformation and reconstruction” (Lynch, 1999, p. 6). In terms of caste dynamics, Khalsa ideology and ensuing rituals clearly confronted hierarchical structures. Gender hierarchy, however, continued to reinforce those power structures that were already firmly in place. Women did not represent “the body of the Guru”, they were not called “Singhs”, they were not weapon-bearers and they did not wear turbans. The developing Khalsa was in a process of “gendering” in that distinctions, symbols and images were put in place to reinforce divisions between males and female. Ideology, language, high and low cultures alongside dress serve to reinforce those divisions (Acker, 1991). As I have noted elsewhere, the Khalsa’s ritualized call to arms

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represented a new ideal of Sikh identity, that of the warrior-saint, which, would appear to apply exclusively to males. Through militarized and masculine external markings, symbols and rituals, what I have called a “theology of difference” based on gender contributed to the already established political, cultural and social gender hierarchy of Punjabi society ( Jakobsh, 2003, pp. 22–49). Both within historical and contemporary realms, the turban for Sikhs, more than any other identity marker, epitomizes Sikh identity. Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Tatla describe the turban as “synonymous with Sikhs and because of this association the turban has become the premier symbol of communal identity and its honour, whereas an inability to wear it is a sign of collective dishonour” (Singh and Tatla, 2006, p. 127). As such it has become and continues to be the ultimate male signifier, long associated with notions of honour and strength in Punjab. In fact, as Purnima Dhavan has indicated, for the Khalsa elite of the eighteenth century, the two primary repositories of family honour and prestige were women and the turbans worn by men. When important alliances took place between Sikh leaders, they did so through marriage of their womenfolk (daughters) and through turban exchanges (Dhavan, 2010, pp. 72, 74). The centrality of the turban in terms of life-cycle rituals also highlights its gendered aspect. The turban tying ceremony, Rasam Pagri or Rasam Dastar, takes place once a man passed away and his oldest son takes over the family responsibilities by tying a turban in front of a gathering. It signifies that now he has taken on the responsibilities of his father and he is the head of the family (Gursewa Charitable Society, n.d.). Within wedding rituals, a bridegroom, irrespective of whether he normally wears a turban, will don one for the marriage ritual of Anand Karaj. The turban as indicative of a Sikh’s religiosity is also stressed in that the turban is not simply an “element of passing fashion or indicia of social standing – it is an essential part of their faith. Sikhs are required to wear a turban pursuant to religious mandate and consider the turban to be an outward manifestation of their devotion to God and solemn adherence to the strictures of their belief system” (Gohil and Sidhu, 2008, p. 1). According to Amrik Singh Ahluwalia, legal advisor to United Sikhs: Guru Gobind Singh, instructed the Sikhs, just as Moses instructed the Israelites, to wear their God-given, unshorn hair under a turban (dastaar), and they have sacrificed their lives to protect this honor. Guru Gobind Singh, thus created a mandatory dress code for the Sikhs that included wearing a turban and keeping a beard. He said, ‘No Sikh of mine need hide. Instead, people who see a Sikh will feel safe’. All practicing Sikhs wear the turban as a mark of commitment to the faith. (A. Ahluwalia, 2004)

Clearly, the turban has acquired significance as both “material and metaphor” (Turner, 1984, p. 43). It is imbued with an “immense spiritual as well as

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temporal significance. The symbolisms of wearing a turban are many from it being regarded as a symbol of sovereignty, dedication, self-respect, courage and piety but the reason all practicing Sikhs wear the turban is just one – out of love and obedience of the wishes of the founders of their faith” (Sikh Symbols, n.d.). These pronouncements become significant in light of the fact that most Sikhs, particularly within diasporic contexts, do not wear turbans. This is also increasingly the case within Punjab, the heartland of the Sikhs. While estimates vary, Jaswinder Singh, Akaal Purkh Ki Fauj leader and part of the “turban pride” movement in Amritsar, believes that about half of Indian Sikhs both forgo the turban and cut their hair. Estimates from a couple of decades earlier put that number at 10 per cent among Sikh males (Gentleman, 2007). Words such as “required”, “devout” and “practising” “all” immediately exclude “the other”, in this case, non-turbaned Sikhs. Except for a minute number, the “other” includes Sikh women. And it is this question of the turban as requirement for all Sikhs, regardless of gender, that is receiving a great deal of attention online. The Sikh Coalition, which has become an important voice of authority for Sikhs within the virtual realm, states that “Just like Sikh men, Sikh women are not supposed to cut their hair. In the Rahit Maryada, it is explicitly written that Sikh men wear a turban. There is nothing explicitly written about women, except that the turban is optional” (The Sikh Coalition, FAQ, n.d.). Whereas the notion of “choice” in this regard for females has long seemed to satisfy inquirers, it would appear this is no longer the case. Increasingly, this central aspect of Sikh identity is being negotiated, highlighting questions of legitimacy vis-à-vis turbaned Sikh women. One commentator insists that “[i]n Sikh Religion all rules are common between man and woman. Women enjoy as much as spiritual bliss as would a man. Then why should a man wear a turban and woman need not?” (Sikhi, Turban and Woman, 2005). Mainstream media are also beginning to ask similar questions, largely I would suggest, because of this representation of the hair and turban as mandatory for Sikhs, largely within the online realms. In fact, issues of identity that include gendered aspects of “keeping kesh” (uncut hair) are “often avoided at the gurdwaras, or Sikh temples, but are discussed online in forums or in intimate discussions among younger women … [M]en say, ‘Oh, I keep my hair so it’s OK if my wife doesn’t, because my kids will still do it’” (Abdulrahim, 2011). The issue of the turban as personal “choice” for females is receiving considerable discussion among young, self-identified feminist Sikhs in particular. This is “something I’ve been wondering for a while. What is it that makes you feel that the dastaar [turban] is empowering for ‘some’ women? Or that it is a ‘personal decision’? As a feminist, how can one reconcile the fact that for women it is just a personal decision, but for men it is a must? As a feminist myself it’s something I have to contend with” (Recasting Gender for Sikh Women, 2008).

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Importantly, the issue of Sikh women’s turbaned identity is closely associated with the Sikh youth. While a small number of young Sikh women have made decisions to wear turbans, as indicative at university campuses in the UK, some parts of Europe or North America, it is rare to encounter middle-aged or elderly women donning turbans regardless of their context, in gurdwaras or in their homes. Moreover, as shall be further explicated, turbaned Sikh women in India, whether young or old, are virtually non-existent. Clearly, young women wearing turbans is a diasporic phenomenon. Sikh Women and Turbans in Historical Perspective In light of the centrality of the turban as an indicator of Sikh identity, the question of female Sikh identity becomes complex. I have written about the Singh Sabha movement’s attempts to conclusively carve out Sikh ritual space and distinct Sikh identity markers for their womenfolk, with a view to separate Sikh women unambiguously from their Hindu and Muslim counterparts. It is within the colonial timeframe that a minor tradition of women wearing turbans can be traced. The Panch Khalsa Diwan, a radical Sikh group on the margins of the Singh Sabha movement, advocated that both women and men were required to wear uncut hair and turbans. Those women who did not agree to wear the traditional male headgear were simply refused initiation ( Jakobsh, 2003, pp. 213–14; Barrier, 1970, pp. xvi–xxvii). Teja Singh Bhasaur, the leader of the group, was eventually excommunicated and the group largely disintegrated, increasingly marginalized by the increasingly powerful Tat Khalsa (True Khalsa) that the Singh Sabha reinforced. Nonetheless, Teja Singh Bhasaur’s radical mandate requiring women to don turbans re-emerged in another group known as the Akhand Kirtani Jatha under the leadership of Bhai Randhir Singh (1878–1961). The AKJ remains on the margins of mainstream Sikhism while having a significant online presence. Another group mandating that both males and females wear turbans is the 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization) and its sister organization, the Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere, both composed of American converts to Sikhism in the 1960s and 1970s inspired by the leadership of Yogi Bhajan. As noted by Verne A. Dusenbery, the 3HO, established in 1969, was registered as a tax-exempt educational organization, while the Sikh Dharma was registered in California in 1973 as a tax-exempt religious organization (Dusenbery, 2012, p. 343). His message was largely directed towards a white, middle-class, counter-culture audience. 3HO Sikhs’ insistence on women’s equal access to all forms of ritual and identity markers

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has also been extended to women wearing turbans (Elsberg, 2010, p. 308).1 The flagship 3HO website (www.sikhnet.com) is the most accessed Sikh site today. Increasingly, the small, but highly visible identifiable trend of women wearing turbans has moved beyond these marginal groups into the mainstream. I would suggest that the vicissitudes of globalization and increasing mediatization of the turban as central identity marker for Sikh women are playing important roles in this trend. Simply by conducting an image search on the World Wide Web on “Sikh women” the results are indicative of a “shift” in attitudes, since many, if not most, images are of Sikh women wearing turbans ( Jakobsh, 2012, pp. 141–64). A Toronto, Canada-based “Vaisakhi Awareness Resource Kit” posted online also highlights this shift. Its front cover features women in turbans in procession (World Sikh Organization of Canada, n.d.). Clearly, images are not neutral. They form an important role in the creation and construction of knowledge, becoming the “innovator’s instrument for probing reality” (Gombrich, 1960, in Gifford-Gonzalez, 1993, p. 23). The image-search producing a majority of turbaned Sikh women is remarkable in that only a very small number of Sikh women in diasporic contexts wear turbans and turbaned females are “almost unheard of in India”, as a turban is a “male symbol par excellence” (Dusenbery, 1990, pp. 346–7). As the turban is the ultimate male symbol, turbaned Sikh women are unequivocally not representative of Sikh female identity. Generally, Sikh women who are not initiated into the Khalsa only cover their hair when in the presence of senior family members (especially male) and when visiting gurdwaras. When hair is covered it is generally done with the traditional Indian head scarf (chunni or dupatta). While there are no statistics available on turbaned Sikh women, a small, but highly visible number of Sikh women are making their mark within diasporic contexts. It would appear that the turban, as a significant and highly visible “marker” of gender, is being utilized to subvert and negotiate symbolic boundaries (Crane, 2000, p. 1) and Sikh women’s position within the religio-social structure of Sikhism in the diaspora.

Apparently 3HO women donning turbans was at least not initially mandated by Yogi Bhajan. In a private email correspondence with Rami Katz, previously known as Ram Das Kaur, I was told that the decision to wear turbans was actually initiated by a small number of 3HO women, including Ram Das Kaur, on their second trip to India in 1973 (the first having taken place in 1971 with Yogi Bhajan). “The women on that tour started wearing turbans which we fashioned and shared upon [our] return to America … Men wore them, why not women? They felt really good and looked regal” (23 May 2013; 2 November 2013). 1

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Globalization and the Search for Meaning Globalization understood as the “meta-context” (Salzman, 2008, p. 318) of our time offers a background perspective in coming to an understanding of this remarkable transformation of Sikh female identity construction and representation. Globalization literature stresses that intensified levels of insecurity and existential anxiety are often experienced by individuals within minority religions within diasporic contexts. While globalization is not new, the speed, scale and cognition of the phenomenon has led, according to Catarina Kinnvall, to fears of threat to self-identity. As she writes, “[a]ny collective identity that can provide such security is a potential pole of attraction … religion [and nationalism] are two such causes or ‘identity-signifiers’ that are more likely than other identity constructions to provide answers to those in need” (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 742). Individuals often turn to powerful stories, beliefs, images and ideals associated with their religion because they offer simple answers within an increasingly complex world. They also render a more stable and secure foundation within a world that appears increasingly ungrounded and insecure, giving location within a space of dislocation. An important part of this “turning” toward religious identity in the search for stability includes a re-negotiation, or, at times, an invention of history or identity through foundation myths, symbols, memory or heroic narratives. Susan S. Friedman identifies identity as a narrative of formation, or a sequence developing and evolving through space and time. Narrative texts, written or oral, fictional or fact, verbal or visual, are the primary tools of cultural expressivity (Friedman, 1998, pp. 8–9) in the search for social location. Central to this formation is a search for a “‘narrative about the self ’ about ourselves” (Hall, 1992, p. 277), identity not being sui generis or static, but a fluid “process of becoming” (Kinnvall, 2004, pp. 747–8). Moreover, this “process” is situational and can be reshaped and reformed (Alba, 1990, p. 306). In other words, “constructions of diasporic Sikh identity … are constantly made and remade” (Ahluwalia, 2011, p. 108). Importantly, there are ties to the past as new cultural codes and identities come to be constructed out of historical (real or imagined) materials (cf. Castells, 2010, p. 82). However, the search for a stable identity does not mean that such an identity exists or ever existed (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 747; see also Jakobsh, 2003). Bhai Vir Singh’s (1872–1957) novel Sundri (alternately written as Sundari), published in 1898, provides a fascinating lens to this pursuit. A recent animated film in her name attests for her popularity with trailers and images abounding. The pixelated version of Sundri initially appears in what might be considered normative women’s Punjabi dress but she becomes transformed into a true Sikh woman donning a turban (Vismaad Films, n.d.). The use of a fictional character of mobilization is not new of course. Puran Singh in his Spirit of the Sikh also turns to Sundri as the example par excellence of Sikh womanhood: “Never was

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eastern or western woman so free as when she rose like Sundari, the nurse-sister of the Khalsa in times when the Sikhs were pitched against the Mughal Empire. Sundari chose her own vocation, dedication her whole freed life as the sisternurse alike of the Khalsa and his foes” (Puran Singh, 1981, p. 54). Another central image having received legendary status online is Mai Bhago, both within Sikh art and online narrative (Bedi, 2008). She has her own Facebook album (with nearly 1,500 “Likes”) and is consistently portrayed as having donned a turban while on the battlefield (Facebook, n.d.). Despite little definitive historical knowledge about Mai Bhago, she has become the beau ideal of Sikh women, for some, the ultimate female warrior ideal; she remains that most legitimizing historical figure and model for contemporary turban-wearing Sikh women. Pal Ahluwalia has recently made an important distinction within Sikh diasporas – namely, the “‘old’ diaspora, born out of the age of colonial capital, and ‘new’ diaspora, those who are part of the age of globalization” (Ahluwalia, 2011, p. 103). I propose that the creation of new religious identity markers such as the turban on the part of Sikh women is closely tied to the “new diaspora” as well as the increasing complexity of the “global-local nexus” (Kinnvall, 2004), and a need to find a sense of place, stability and clarity in terms of identity. An important aspect of this process is a reformulating, recasting, redefining of the “signs” of Sikh female devotionalism, spirituality and piety. Similar to the veil within contemporary Islam as “metaphor” for Muslim women (Moallem, 1999, p. 338), “signal” of piety or protest (Patel, 2012, p. 298), or a “marker” of special status and membership (El Guindi, 1999, p. 61), the turban trend among a small group of diasporic Sikh women may well be understood as the central indicator of this reformulation process, despite the turban being imbued with wide variety of meanings. As a part of a symbolic marking system turbaned Sikh women may be chastised as “religious zealots or radical feminists” in comparison to the traditional (not turbaned) devout (Mahmood and Brady, 1999, p. 56). The turban also distinguishes Sikh women from non-Sikh women, the “non-traditional” from “traditional” Sikh woman, the devoted from the not-sodevoted Sikh and the “manly” or androgynous from the feminine. While for Sikh males the turban has historically been a premier symbol of masculinity, for Sikh females the turban may instead represent an obscuring, a “de-feminizing” or “de-gendering” of their female identity (Recasting Gender for Sikh Women, 2008). What is of central importance is the “significance” accorded to turbans and, subsequently, to women wearing turbans. Meanings accorded to female Sikhs donning turbans often differ from those associated with male turbanwearing Sikhs (Singh, 2011). One woman noted that in wearing the turban: people will think of me as a strict Sikh and will think ‘how come you don’t know everything about Sikhi?’ For others, this extra responsibility was a reason not to wear a turban, despite having taken Amrit. For ‘I think it’s an additional

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Young Sikhs in a Global World responsibility … I don’t want to have to live up to someone else’s ideals … if I were wearing a Dastaar the behaviour they expected of me would be over and above a male contemporary wearing the Pag [turban]’. (Mahmood and Brady, 1999, pp. 54–60)

A Sikh blogger concurs, noting that for “many, this (wearing a turban) proves that I am a devout Sikh woman. What has changed? The mind and heart belong to the same woman. Unfortunately, in order to be taken seriously as a Sikh woman, this is what I have to do” (mormaranwe, n.d.). Actions and attitudes may be more circumscribed and behavioural standards held higher in claiming to represent “tradition” (Kelly, 2010, p. 222). According to a Sikh Inspirational WeBLOG: Now that I have lived my life experiencing the benefits of the turban, I can tell you honestly that you are missing a great advantage by not doing so. I have been given the respect and the status of a spiritual woman, even when I myself have been filled with self-doubt and misgivings … This beautiful dastar proclaims to the entire world that I belong to Guru Gobind Singh and that is a reality I will never deny. (Sikh Inspirational WeBLOG, 2005)

Clearly, clothing choices often assume a moral dimension (Lindisfarne-Tapper and Ingham, 1997, p. 8). The Turban as Ultimate Signifier of Difference Another important aspect has to do with the creation of difference through identity politics that serve to distinguish Sikh women from non-Sikh women. Laurent Gayer has written about the reconstruction of identity and the emphasis on difference from other communities, particularly Sikhs needing to be distinguished from other Indians and Pakistanis (Gayer, 2007, p. 15). Identity politics from this perspective can best be understood as Sikhs constituting their own distinct ethno-religious national identity within multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious diasporic contexts. With regard to Sikh identity within the UK, Parminder Bhachu has argued that clothing plays a significant role in the forging of identities, with women in particular acting as cultural brokers in multifaceted negotiations (Bhachu, 2004, p. 4). Ready-made salwar-kamez worn by Sikh women in Britain in the 1990s after the tragedy of 19842 had 2 Editors’ note: The military attack on the Harimandir Sahib complex in Amritsar in June 1984 (Operation Blue Star) and the anti-Sikh riots after the killing of Indira Gandhi in October the same year.

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symbolic significance that included highly charged “subversive outcomes of the shared cultural geographies” (Bhachu, 1997 pp. 187–99). The salwar-kamez distinguished Sikh women from Hindu women wearing saris, which Bhachu labels “suit defiance” (Bhachu, 2004, p. 10). Clearly, forms of dress, particularly when associated with a particular religio-cultural group, can serve to insulate group members from non-group members while at the same time serving to bond members in affirming in-group loyalty (Arthur, 1999, pp. 3–4). Moreover, since 9/11, Sikhs have repeatedly been the victims of “mistaken identity”, steadfastly having to explain that they are not Muslims. As Alphonso Lingis noted, “the other reaffirms his [sic] otherness in questioning me, disturbing the order of my perspectives and of my reasons, contesting me” (Lingis, 1989, p. 135). Diasporic Sikh identity has more often than not been defined as “that which it is not”, most particularly as non-Muslim, while upholding Sikh claims to a unique identity (Ahluwalia, 2011, p. 97). Katy Sian takes this one step further by positing Islamaphobia as central to the production of a distinct diasporic Sikh identity (Sian, 2013, pp. 93–108). I would suggest that turban for a small number of Sikh women has become the most distinctive identity marker distinguishing them from their Muslim counterparts. This was recently highlighted in a Canadian newspaper that ran a story on Sikh women and turbans. The young woman interviewed had initially covered her hair with a scarf after her initiation, “but many mistook it for a hijab” and she decided instead to don a turban. “That’s my identity”, she said” (Aulakh, 2010, italics mine). From an online blog the reasons why Sikh women wear turbans are stressed in contradistinction to Muslim women and the hijab: In Punjabi it’s called a dastaar, and in English it’s known as a turban. I wear it by choice, neither of my parents wear it … Why Muslim women wear the hijab and why Sikh (baptised) women cover their head are for quite different reasons … for Sikhs, it’s more so symbolic of royalty, grace, and meditation. (That Thing on Her Head, n.d.)

For another young Sikh woman, the issue of “choice” was stressed as well as making a distinction between notions of “modesty” associated with headcoverings and Islam (Turnbull, 2012). These comments, I would suggest, need to be situated within current identity politics within global contexts. Particularly in the UK, there is a growing body of research documenting animosities and clashes between Sikh and Muslim youth (Sian, n.d.; Singh, 2010). While these animosities have likely led to a perceived need to distinguish Sikhs from Muslims, this is only one aspect of the proliferation of Muslim and Sikh identity politics. Online discourse about the turban would also suggest that there is a process of co-creation, or “coming into

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being” (Sian, 2013, p. 4) in terms of the production of identity politics between these two groups. My mum was born here in London too, and we have school photographs of her playing sports in shorts. But my wife … my cousins … my nieces … only swim in Muslim ladies swim clubs … and work out (wearing tracksuits) in South Asian ladies only gym nights … I realize and understand that a lot of it has to do with the Muslim influence in England … bearing in mind that British born Punjabi Muslims are the most radical, extreme, politically minded Muslims on earth … (The Langar Hall, 2011)

Here, the linkage between the developing processes of Muslim and Sikh identities through association is clearly made. Another online discussion thread distinctly points to the heavy influence the hijab discourse has had on Sikh women, noting that “these girls (SIKHS) see every one of their Muslim South Asian friends and colleagues wearing the hijab and its almost become the normal thing to do with the non-covered female standing out like a freak … The Sikh girls see that and think it must be the same with sikhi … i.e. as long as they don’t cut the hair on their head and wear a turban anything else goes” (Kaur, 2011). Clearly, the production of self-identity is not static and is part of a larger process in that it involves a “stranger-other” (Kinnvall, 2004, p. 749). Muslim identity politics appear to be playing a significant role in the feminization of the turban. Unique dress forms, such as the turban or hijab, can both insulate group members from outsiders as well as bond members to one another, particularly if they are understood as symbols. As such religious head gear may be constructively utilized to delineate the social unit and visibly define its boundaries in giving non-verbal information about an individual or a group (Arthur, 1999, pp. 3–4). Within contemporary Sikh identity politics, the turban has come to play the role of an “orientating device” (Tarlo, 1996, p. 141) similar to that of the hijab increasingly being adopted by middle-class Muslim women. Paul Vallely and Andrew Brown argue that “modern” Muslim women’s identity in the UK has been formed by the British education system, alongside “the demands it makes of them to have enquiring minds”, leading to a new, more individualistic, highly politicized “British form of Islam” (Vallely and Brown, 1995). This can, I would argue, be expanded to include a “British form of Sikhism”, and, within the wider parameters and impact of globalization, to include a distinct “diasporic form of Sikhism” and ultimately a “diasporic Sikh female identity”. In other words, Sikh diasporas are “creative site[s]” in the contestation and reinterpretation of identity and place (Tatla, 1999, p. 63). Women donning turbans are perhaps best understood as part of this process, given that the turban for women is for the most part not a product of Sikh women’s socio-cultural or historical background. Rather, it is part and parcel of the globalization forces

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within “the trans-cultural encounters they experience in a cosmopolitan urban environment”. In adopting the turban, Sikh women are in a transformational process, not only with regard to a sense of self but also in relationship to their wider environment (Tarlo, 2007, pp. 131–41). Young Sikh women in asking difficult questions about their “place” within traditional Punjab-Sikh societies are creating innovative and more individualistic interpretations and approaches to understanding their religio-cultural identities (Vallely and Brown, 1995). The “new tradition” of the turban, similar to the hijab, “far from an indication of submission or docility” instead puts wearers into the “public gaze; something the parents and kin groups do not necessarily wish to see. It may be seen as a clear indication of their new radical interpretation of the faith that they define as liberating rather than constraining” (Afshar and Franks, 2005, pp. 277–8). The turban is posited as a fundamental “right” of Sikh women and unabashedly celebrated as such. As a “daughter of the tenth guru”, notes one commentator, any suggestion of the inappropriateness of wearing a turban is highly offensive. “My blood literally boils … I wear a turban and I reckon it looks amassing [sic] on me. I love my turban ” (Should Sikh Women Wear Turban? 2012). Distinguishing Sikhism from Punjabi Culture Another important feature of the turban as Sikh women’s identity marker within the online realm has to do with a perceived need to clearly distinguish Sikh religious ideals from Punjabi cultural ideals. However, caution must be exercised in attempting to delineate, define and categorize particular aspects of identity. Categorizations, terms, delineations, often taken for granted as “easy and obvious markers of our social lives are, in fact, merely the storefronts for great webs of highly complex social systems of historical, political, economic, and cultural force” (Smith, 2008, pp. 191–2). The problematic surrounding categorizations become even more marked when attempting to ascertain the specific meanings of traits within an increasingly globalized world. Religious, ethnic or cultural characteristics within diasporic locales are often brought into a more defined comparative focus through a process of intensified differentiation in relation to dominant cultures. In other words, the modern world may be characterized as being propelled “by a new set of disjunctures” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 41). There is need for a complex “multisited” analysis of how identities are “created, circulated, debated, and contested across social contexts and levels of scale” (Hall, 2004, p. 109). Simply put, religio-cultural identities are not, and never have been, neat and tidy categories. Perhaps most importantly, distinctions between “culture” and “religion” are not universally accepted, religion understood as “mediated, administered, lived, contested

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and adapted by socially situated agents, just like other forms of culture – and in relation to them” (Bailey and Redden, 2010, p. 3, italics mine). Purnima Dhavan challenges what are often presented as gendered “cultural” accretions from Sikh historical perspectives and notes instead that early religious texts “established the basic framework upon which later constructions of Sikh masculinity and honour would be constructed” (Dhavan, 2010, p. 66). Yet there is a need to make clear distinctions between that which is religious and that which is cultural: Sikhism is one religion where you can’t have both culture and religion; to maintain either you have to take one out of the equation. Punjabi culture is all about drinking, dancing, and sex discrimination. Sikhi is abstaining from all negative stuff that harms our body (like drinking); exercising instead of dancing and against all forms of discrimination. (Sanmukh’s Blog, 2010) Sikhs … talk a great deal about women’s equality, but we are steeped in an old patriarchal culture that makes us complicit in the erasure of women, past and present … The real life consequence? Sikh girls today are told they’re fully equal, and yet many are expected to carry out traditional gender roles – with few role models to suggest otherwise … Just as in most patriarchal traditions around the world, the bodies of women have been considered vessels of honor in Punjabi culture. (Kaur, 2012)

Those values stressed as being “Sikh” generally include: • Gender egalitarianism/liberated women • Justice-oriented/politically active • Strength/bravery Punjabi “cultural” codes and values include: • Modesty (Sharam)/honour (Izzat) • Submission • Domesticity • Shame Many of the expectations surrounding family values in Punjab, particularly for women, are unwritten religio-cultural codes and values that are deeply etched into the very fabric of Punjabi Sikh society. Women’s social identities and women’s status have traditionally been linked to their roles as daughters, daughters-inlaw and mothers – in other words, to the status of male members of society, or “the male ego” (Wilson, 1978, p. 5). As custodians of izzat, women have the ability to “alter, destroy or enhance izzat” (Bhopal, 1997, p. 65). By ensuring that religio-cultural norms are followed within families, power and honourable

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position within society at large are gained. As the “upholders of izzat” ( Johal, 2003, p. 36) women’s dishonourable conduct can lead to a perceived and very real understanding of ruination of family honour, shame (Toor, 2009, p. 241; Malhotra, 2002, p. 130) and lack of marriageability (Mahmood and Brady, 1999, p. 70). Nicola Mooney has written extensively on the religio-cultural aspects of materiality of clothing (kapre) for both women and men Jat Sikhs for signalling both propriety and community identity. She argues that important strategies regarding “proper” clothing techniques have long been put in place to ensure that gendered formations of identity continuously “re-establish hegemonic codes of honour”. The dupatta (like the turban) is highly gendered and is best understood as a […] bodily extension of the restrictions of purdah, the manner in which the dupatta is worn, if properly demure, connotes the gendered expectations of modesty, respect, and humility. To communicate these meanings, the dupatta is worn fully draped over the chest, and by new bahus (daughter-in-law), or those in more traditional or conservative families, partially covering the head also … As they must constantly take care that their dupattas are modestly draped about the neck, chest and shoulders – and it is not easy to balance a thin and often slippery chiffon veil about one’s upper body, particularly when moving about – women are constantly reminded of the requirement of bodily attending to honour. (Mooney, 2011, p. 63)

Sikh women donning turbans and in doing so claiming to ‘represent-Sikhismsince-Sikhs-wear-turbans’ may be criticized for not performing true Sikh womanhood (head-coverings traditionally understood as the dupatta and not the turban) and what may be identified as Sikh moral tradition (modesty in particular). The “seva” controversy that took place when two turbaned Sikh women claimed their right to take part in the Sukhasan ritual at the Harimandir Sahib brought many of these issues to the forefront of this highly politicized issue ( Jakobsh, 2006; Jhutti-Johal, 2011, pp. 47–9). There is no gender discrimination for seva at Sri Darbar Sahib. The petition is for a futile exercise on a non-issue. As per our culture, we do not consider it desirable that our daughters and sisters should jostle in a crowd of men even at a religious gathering. It will be immodest for a girl and disparaging for her father, brother or husband if she unashamedly subjects herself to pushes and pulls in a crowd of men, may it be for the shouldering of the Palki at Sri Darbar Sahib … Bibi Mejindarpal Kaur and her companion should not waste their energy on a

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non-issue. There are many more aspects of seva needing the attention of energetic persons like Bibi Mejindarpal Kaur. (Goshti, 2003)

The concern lies not in gender egalitarian principles, but rather in deeply imbued notions of shame and modesty, both of which are called into question by “jostling” in a crowd of men. A turbaned Sikh woman reflected on her role as a Sikh in the aftermath of the shootings at the Wisconsin Sikh temple on 5 August 2012 in the USA: “What does this mean for me as a Sikh woman living in London wearing a dastaar (turban)? … I have received a lot of insults for wearing my crown. Interestingly though they were more often from the Sikh community” (Dalveer’s Universe, 2012).3 Women as “invisible” Sikhs have not been perceived as “essential” to manifesting Sikh identity, nor have they been outward representatives of Sikhism (Dusaj, 2012). They have also not easily embodied “difference” vis-à-vis other religious groups (Aulakh, 2010). In the wearing of turbans, Sikh women exchange invisibility for conspicuousness, enabling women to become part of “the Sikh look” (Gell, 1996, p. 38). Importantly, to return to “Dalveer’s Universe”, critique focused on her wearing of the turban […] as an accessory or sign of fashion. There is nothing wrong with you doing fashion, wearing make up, jewelry, etc. etc. but please do not misrepresent what khalsa is by doing all of this while wearing a turban … The question is: who are you representing? (Dalveer’s Universe, 2012; Kaurista, 2012; see also Shirazi, 2000)

The issue of contention appears to have been the clothing that was worn alongside the turban. Conclusions Pal Ahluwalia’s notion of the “‘new’ politics of resistance” in the maintenance of a unique identity in the face of a hostile environment may be helpful (P. Ahluwalia, 2004). While he is referring to political subjectivity, particularly for male Sikhs in the post-Operation Blue Star scenario, for women, the politics of resistance are multiply layered in terms of their attempts to negotiate gendered as well as political and domestic subjectivities – “the demands of old and new patriarchies” (Clifford, 1997, p. 259). In the resistance, negotiation and contestations of Sikh female identity vis-à-vis the turban, women are caught within a “production 3 The site Dalveer’s Universe was abruptly shut down by its creator following the outburst to her writings. It was subsequently reposted at Kaurista (www.kaurista.com), at http://www.kaurista.com/2012/07/11/religious-police/.

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of ambiguity” (Nijhawan, 2006, p. 168) in the performativity of gender (cf. Butler, 1997). Sikh women’s actions in donning the turban may “exemplify how concepts about personal choices and moral judgments about rights and fairness can produce oppositions, subversion, and conspiracy” (Turiel, 2002, p. 73). The turban, given its time-honoured association with the male body, may for some women be understood as “acts of rebellious rituals” (Guha, 1988), embedded as they are in a field of power relations (Nijhawan, 2006, p. 169). Yet, as Meena Dhanda has noted, “practical identities” tend to prevail, bound to time-honoured institutions and “embedded in norm-governed interpersonal relations, both institutional as well as non-institutional” (Dhanda, 2012, p. 284). While traditional gender roles, symbols and institutions may be questioned by a small yet highly visible number of turbaned, diasporic Sikh women who have a significant presence on the Internet, the “clash” or the “disconnect” with the actual situation and attitudes of the vast majority of Sikh women is palpable. Natasha Behl’s interviews with women in Punjab attest to the powerful intertwining of “proper” attire and shame within traditional Punjabi Sikh society. One respondent observes that […] [n]owadays, forget a woman wearing her dupata [scarf ] on her head; there are some who don’t even wear it around their neck. The dupata has flown away. Sleeveless arms, very very small blouses … The meaning of this is that today’s woman has become shameless. She is showing off her body, like many Hindustani [Indian] women. (Behl, 2010, p. 29)

When questioned about what constitutes “bana” for Sikh women, the respondent answered that bana is “[m]odest attire; a modest kurta-pajama [shirt and pants], a modest kameez-pajama [long-shirt and pants], and dupata [scarf ] on one’s head” (Behl, 2010, p. 29). Here, improper attire and deeply ingrained notions of shame are means by which women’s bodies and behaviours continue to be monitored and controlled. Clothes are “visual symbols” through which operant social control systems may be examined (Graybill and Arthur, 1999, p. 9) and understood as material culture, “the chains along which social relationships run” (Evans-Pritchard, 1976, p. 89). Within Indian contexts (and many others as well) “the major links of such chains are often forged in cloth” (Tarlo, 1996, p. 155). Women wearing turbans is a primarily diasporic aspect of Sikh female identity formation that must be put within the larger, Punjabi-Sikh female context where not wearing the dastar remains the norm. There is little indication that this is likely to change, for it is the dupatta, not the turban, that is the link to the majority of Sikh women’s identity “forged in cloth”.

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Bhachu, Parminder (2004), Dangerous Designs: Asian Women Fashion the Diaspora Economies. London: Routledge. Bhopal, Kalwant (1997), “Race” and Patriarchy: A Study of South Asian Women. Aldershot: Ashgate. Butler, Judith (1997), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York and London: Routledge. Byrne, Julie (2004), “Lived Religion in America: Institutions, Innovations, and Individuals”, Course Syllabus, Duke University. Available at: http://www. iupui.edu/~raac/downloads/syllabi/Byrne2.pdf (accessed 4 April 2013). Castells, Manuel (2010), The Power of Identity. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Chandler, Daniel (1998), “Personal Home Pages and the Construction of Identities on the Web”, Aberystwyth University. Available at: http://www. aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html (accessed 15 March 2013). Clifford, James (1997), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Crane, Diana (2000), Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dalveer’s Universe (2012), “The Religious Police”, 9 July. Available at: http:// dalveer.posterous.com/ (accessed 11 April 2013). Dhanda, Meena (2012), “Negotiating Practical Identities”, in Manidipa Sen (ed.), Self-Knowledge and Agency. New Delhi: Decent Books, pp. 277–302. Dhavan, Purnima (2010), “Tracing Gender in the Texts and Practices of the Early Khalsa”, in Doris R. Jakobsh (ed.), Women in Sikhism: History, Texts and Experience. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 60–82. Dusaj, Tresa Kaur (2012), “A Sikh Woman’s Response to Wisconsin Gurdwara Shooting”, Huffington Post, Religion, 7 August. Available at: http://www.hu ffingtonpost.com/tresa-kaur-dusaj/a-sikh-womans-response-to_b_1750 044.html (accessed 17 September 2012). Dusenbery, Verne A. (1990), “Punjabi Sikhs and Gora Sikhs: Conflicting Assertions of Sikh Identity in North America”, in Joseph T. O’Connell, Milton Israel and Willard G. Oxtoby (eds), Sikh History and Religion in the Twentieth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre for the South Asian Studies, pp. 334–55. Dusenbery, Verne A. (2012), “3HO/SIKH DHARMA: Some Issues for Consideration”. Sikh Formations, 8 (3), 335–49. El Guindi, Fadwa (1999), Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. New York: Berg. Elsberg, Constance Waeber (2010), “By and Indirect Route: Women in 3HO/ Sikh Dharma”, in Doris R. Jakobsh (ed.), Women in Sikhism: History, Texts and Experience. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 299–328. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. (1976), The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Facebook (n.d.), “Mai Bhago – Noble and Brave Sikh Women”. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150592710250825.3733 29.129697635824&type=1 (accessed 10 March 2013). Falk, Nancy Auer (2006), Living Hinduisms: An Explorer’s Guide. Belmont: CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Friedman, Susan S. (1998); Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies of Encounter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gayer, Laurent (2007), “The Volatility of the ‘Other’: Identity Formation and Social Interaction in Diasporic Environments”. South Asian Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, 1 (Fall). Available at: http://samaj.revues.org/195. Gell, Simeran Man Singh (1996), “The Origins of the Sikh ‘Look’: From Guru Gobind to Dalip Singh”. History and Anthropology, 10 (1), 37–83. Gentleman, Amelia (2007), “Young Sikh Men Get Haircuts, Annoying Their Elders”, The New York Times, Amritsar Journal, 29 March. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/29/world/asia/29turban.html?_r=0 (accessed 28 April 2013). Gifford-Gonzalez, Diane (1993), “You Can Hide, But You Can’t Run: Representation of Women’s Work in Illustrations of Palaeolithic Life”. Visual Anthropology Review, 9 (1), 21–41. Gohil, N.S. and D.S. Sidhu (2008), “The Sikh Turban: Post-911 Challenges to this Article of Faith”. Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, 9 (2), 1–60. Available at: http://lawandreligion.com/sites/lawandreligion.com/files/sid hu.pdf (accessed 22 March 2011). Gombrich, Ernst H. (1960), Art and Illusions: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. New York: Pantheon. Goshti, Kartar Singh (2003), “There Are Other Forms of Seva Too”, The Tribune, 21 May. Available at: http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030521/edit. htm#6 (accessed 18 April 2013). Graybill, Beth and Linda B. Arthur (1999), “The Social Control of Women’s Bodies in Two Mennonite Communities”, in Linda B. Arthur (ed.), Religion, Dress and the Body. Oxford: Berg, pp. 9–30. Guha, Ranajit (1988), “The Prose of Counter-Insurgency”, in Ranajit Guha and Gayatri C. Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 45–88. Gursewa Charitable Society (n.d.), “Importance of Turban (DASTAAR) in Sikhism”, gursewa.org. Available at: http://www.gursewa.org/Literature/Ar ticles_English/General_Knowledge/Importance_of_Turban.pdf (accessed 2 July 2013). Hall, David (ed.) (1997), Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Hall, Kathleen D. (2004), “The Ethnography of Imagined Communities: The Cultural Production of Sikh Ethnicity in Britain”. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 595 ( January), 108–21. Hall, Stuart (1992), “The Question of Cultural Identity”, in Stuart Hall (ed.), Modernity and Its Futures. London: Polity, pp. 276–323. Helland, Christopher (2005), “Online Religion as Lived Religion: Methodological Issues in the Study of Religious Participation on the Internet”. Online – Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, 1 (1). Available at: http:// archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5823/1/Helland3a.pdf (accessed 18 May 2011). Jakobsh, Doris R. (2003), Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jakobsh, Doris R. (2006), “Sikhism, Interfaith Dialogue, and Women: Transformation and Identity”. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 21 (2), 183–99. Jakobsh, Doris R. (2012), “‘Sikhizing the Sikhs’: The Role of ‘New Media’ in Historical and Contemporary Identity Construction within Global Sikhism”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 141–64. Jenkins, H. (2006), Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Jhutti-Johal, Jagbir (2011), Sikhism Today. London: Continuum. Johal, A. (2003), “Struggle not Submission: Domestic Violence in the 1990s”, in R. Gupta (ed.), From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers. London: Zed Books, pp. 28–50. Kaur, Birpal (2011), “Sikh Identity: Separate but Equal?”, Comments, www. thelangarhall.com. Available at: http://thelangarhall.com/sikhi/sikh-iden tity-separate-but-equal/ (accessed 10 April 2012). Kaur, Valarie (2012), “10 Sikh Women You Should Know and Why You Should Know Them”, Huffington Post, 22 March. Available at: http://www.huffing tonpost.com/valarie-kaur/10-sikh-women-you-should-know_b_1353700. html (accessed 19 March 2013). Kaurista (2012), “Religious Police”, www.kaurista.com. Available at: http:// www.kaurista.com/2012/07/11/religious-police/ (accessed 12 April 2013). Kelly, Marjorie (2010), “Clothes, Culture, and Context: Female Dress in Kuwait”. Fashion Theory, 14 (2), 215–36. Kinnvall, Catarina (2004), “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security”. Political Psychology, 25 (5), 741–67. Lindisfarne-Tapper Nancy and Bruce Ingham (eds) (1997), Languages of Dress in the Middle East. Richmond: Curzon Press.

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Lingis, Alphonso (1989), Death Bound Subjectivity. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Lynch, Annette (1999), Dress, Gender and Cultural Change: Asian American and African American Rites of Passage. New York: Berg. Mahmood, Cynthia and Stacy Brady (1999), The Guru’s Gift: An Ethnography Exploring Gender Equality with North American Sikh Women. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Malhotra, Anshu (2002), Gender, Caste and Religious Identities: Restructuring Class in Colonial Punjab. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Malhotra, Karamjit K. (2009), “Contemporary Evidence on Sikh Rites and Rituals in the Eighteenth Century”. Journal of Punjab Studies, 16 (2), 179–98. McLeod, W.H. (1987), The Chaupa Singh Rahit-Nama. Dunedin: University of Otago Press. McLeod, W.H. (2006), Prem Sumarag: The Testimony of a Sanatan Sikh. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Moallem, Minoo (1999), “Transnationalism, Feminism and Fundamentalism”, in Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcón and Minoo Moallem (eds), Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminisms, and the State. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 320–48. Mooney, Nicola (2011), Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity among Jat Sikhs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. mormaranwe (n.d.), “Stay Humble, Stay Hungry”. Available at: http://www. tumblr.com/tagged/sikh-woman (accessed 13 June 2012). Nijhawan, M. (2006), “Ritual, Identity, Reflexivity”, in Klaus-Peter Köpping, Bernhard Leistle and Michael Rudolph (eds), Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality. Münster: Lit Vertrag, pp. 167–93. Patel, David S. (2012), “Concealing to Reveal: The Informational Role of Islamic Dress”. Rationality and Society, 24 (3), 295–323. Recasting Gender for Sikh Women (2008), www.thelangarhall.com. Available at: http://thelangarhall.com/general/recasting-gender-for-sikh-women/ (accessed 21 February 2012). Salzman, Michael B. (2008), “Globalization, Religious Fundamentalism and the Need for Meaning”. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 32, 318–27. Sanmukh’s Blog (2010), “Punjabi VS Sikh – Picking Sides”, 7 September. Available at: http://fromthese5tothose5.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/pun jabi-vs-sikh-picking-sides/ (accessed 14 March 2013). Shirazi, Faegheh (2000), “Islamic Religion and Women’s Dress Codes: The Islamic Republic of Iran”, in Linda B. Arthur (ed.), Undressing Religion: Commitment and Conversion from a Cross-cultural Perspective. New York: Berg, pp. 113–30.

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Should Sikh Women Wear Turban? (2012), answers.sikhnet.com, November. Available at: http://answers.sikhnet.com/question/711/should-sikh-wom en-wear-turban/ (accessed 8 April 2013). Sian, Katy P. (n.d.), “Forced Conversions within the British Sikh Diaspora”, unpublished paper, Centre for Ethnicity & Racism Studies (CERS), School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds. Available at: http:// www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/assets/files/research/cers/final%20cers%20 working%20paper%20katy.pdf (accessed 29 August 2011). Sian, Katy P. (2013), Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions and Post-colonial Formations. Plymouth: Lexington Publishers. Sikh Inspirational WeBLOG (2005), “The Spiritual Position and Strength of Sikh Women”, 12 June. Available at: http://nirankar.blogspot.ca/2005/06/ spiritual-position-and-strength-of.html (accessed 26 March 2013). Sikh Symbols (n.d.), “The Turban”, sikhworld.co.uk. Available at: http://www. sikhworld.co.uk/page6.html (accessed 9 April 2013). Sikhi, Turban and Woman (2005), DiscoverSikhi.com. Available at: http:// forums.waheguroo.com/index.php?/topic/12041-sikhi-turban-and-woman/ (accessed 21 April 2013). Singh, Gurharpal (2010), “The Adab – ‘Respect’ Programme. Report: A Perspective on Muslim-Sikh Relations in the United Kingdom and Causes of Tensions and Mistrust between the Two Communities”, Faith Matters. Available at: http://turbancampaign.com/resources/muslimsikh_relations. pdf (accessed 8 July 2011). Singh, Gurharpal and Darshan Singh Tatla (2006), Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community. London: Zed Books. Singh, Jasjit (2011), “Sikh-ing Beliefs: British Sikh Camps in the UK”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 253–78. Singh, Puran (1981), Spirit of the Sikh, Vol. 1. Patiala: Punjabi University Press. Smith, Leslie E. (2008), “What’s in a Name? Scholarship and the Pathology of Conservative Protestantism”. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 20 (3), 191–211. Tarlo, E. (1996), Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. London: Hurst and Company. Tarlo, E. (2007), “HIJAB IN LONDON. Metamorphosis, Resonance and Effects”. Journal of Material Culture, 12 (2), 131–56. Tatla, Darshan (1999), The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. London: UCL Press. That Thing on Her Head (n.d.), http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/kaur?before =1337674236 (accessed 11 March 2012).

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The Langar Hall (2011), Sikh Women in Sports, Comments. Available at: http://thelangarhall.com/sports/sikh-women-and-sports/ (accessed 4 June 2013). The Sikh Coalition (n.d.), “FAQ”. Available at: http://www.sikhcoalition.org/ resources/about-sikhs/faq (accessed 24 April 2013). Toor, Sunita (2009), “British Asian Girls, Crime and Youth Justice”. Youth Justice, 9 (3), 239–53. Turiel, Elliot (2002), The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context and Conflict. New York: Cambridge University Press. Turnbull, Lornett (2012), “For Faith and Much More, Women Choose to Keep Covered”, The Seattle Times, Pacific NW Magazine, 31 August. Available at: http://seattletimes.com/html/pacificnw/2018971334_pacific pheadcover02.html (accessed 2 May 2013). Turner, Bryan S. (1984), Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Vallely, Paul and Andrew Brown (1995), “The Best Place to Be a Muslim”. Independent, 6 December, 2–4. Vismaad Films (n.d.), “Sundri: The Biggest Movie Ever about Sikh Women”. Available at: http://www.sundrithemovie.com/index.aspx (accessed 3 November 2013). Wilson, Amrit (1978), Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain. London: Virago Press. World Sikh Organization of Canada (n.d.), “Vaisakhi Awareness Resource Kit”. Available at: http://www.worldsikh.ca/sites/default/files/VAISAKHI%20 resource%20kit.pdf (accessed 29 April 2013).

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Chapter 7

Young Sikhs and Literature: Identity Formations in Sikh Creative Writing in Norway Knut A. Jacobsen

In a recent article about the study of the religious socialization of Sikhs, Eleanor Nesbitt recommended that researchers on Sikhism in Europe should “look at as wide a range of literature as possible” (Nesbitt, 2009, p. 53). She notes that “[B]iography, autobiography, novels, short stories and poetry offer valuable insights and can generate hypotheses and provide rich contexts of lived experience”, and asks how long it will be before “creative writing … produced by and about Sikhs in mainland Europe will become a focus of study?” (Nesbitt, 2009, p. 53). This chapter responds to this challenge and analyses books written by three Norwegian Sikhs, two born in India who migrated as children to Norway with their parents, and one born in Norway to Sikh parents from India. One is from an interfaith mixed-marriage family, in which the father is a Sikh and the mother is a Hindu. The books are two autobiographies and an autobiographical novel, the second volume of a trilogy.1 In this chapter I am not evaluating the literary quality of the books, but rather using them to analyse the history and experience of young Sikhs in Norway. The books give insights into the processes of growing up in between cultures, the clash of values between generations and between the Punjabi and the Norwegian cultures, the importance of locations and relations, the development of Indian Sikh immigrant culture in Norway and the impact on a personal level of the institutionalization of Sikh traditions in a new country. They problematize concepts such as “cultural” Sikh, “religious” Sikh, Norwegian Sikh and Punjabi Sikh. The books show the difficulties for the second generation to separate Punjabi culture from Sikhism as a religion. All three books describe persons moving away from Punjabi culture, and for some that also means moving away from Sikhism, but for one author there is, instead, an embracement of Sikhism.

1 An autobiographical novel is here defined as fiction with many similarities to the author’s own life.

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In this chapter I am interested in what the books tell about the role of religion in the life of young Sikhs and the dilemmas they face and the choices they make. The books were written in Norwegian and published quite recently, in 2011 and 2012. That they are in Norwegian, and not in Punjabi, shows that their authors are “Norwegian Sikhs” and not merely “Sikhs in Norway”.2 In these books the three authors make no references to Punjabi or Sikh fictional literature but to famous Norwegian novelists, the Nobel laureates Knut Hamsun, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Sigrid Undset, and to Camilla Collett and Henrik Ibsen. Such references place the books in the tradition and history of Norwegian literature and support the emphasis on the authors as Norwegian Sikhs and not merely Sikhs in Norway. One of the books makes, in addition, references to New Age writers/gurus, such as Osho and Deepak Chopra, which indicates the author’s move towards Hindu-inspired New Age spirituality. These references are made in the autobiography of the author from a mixed Sikh-Hindu family, but she is also the author who makes most references to Norwegian novelists. Sikh Diasporic Literature In Europe, outside of Great Britain, it is probably unique to Norway that several second-generation Sikhs, children of Sikh immigrants, have written autobiographies and autobiographical novels in the local language. This could be just a coincidence, since all three books were published in 2011 and 2012, but both autobiographies and autobiographical fictions are important genres in current Norwegian literature, the six-volume book by Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, being the most famous representative of the genre. It has been argued that autobiography is the most obvious choice for the second-generation Sikh writers because they need to tell their stories as a validation of their life choices, and as examples for others in similar situations (Chanda, 2014, p. 93), and this would certainly be the case for the authors of these Norwegian Sikh autobiographies. However, Darshan Singh Tatla (2004) has noted that even in Great Britain very few emigrants from Punjab have published their memoirs and Nesbitt in her “Introduction” to the recently published autobiography of Kailash Puri, The Pool of Life (Puri and Nesbitt, 2013), notes that this is one of a very small number of such memoirs (Nesbitt, 2013, p. 2).3 It is perhaps illustrative Kristina Myrvold has noted in the case of another Nordic country, Sweden, that “with regard to the younger generation born and brought up as Swedish citizens, it is more relevant to talk about the Swedish Sikhs rather than the Sikhs or Sikh immigrants in Sweden” (Myrvold, 2011, p. 63). 3 A notable recent autobiography about growing up in a Sikh community in England is Sathnam Sanghera, If You Don’t Know Me by Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton (2008), republished as The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets 2

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Figure 7.1

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Book covers of the autobiographies Jeg er Prableen by Prableen Kaur, Min annerledeshet, min styrke by Loveleen Rihel Brenna and the autobiographical novel Ung mann i nytt land by Romeo Gill

Source: Used by kind permission of Gyldendal, Cappelen Damm and Romeo Gill

that the Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies has included a separate section on Sikh literature, but nothing is said about the genre of Sikh autobiographical/fictional writings in the diaspora (Singh and Fenech, 2014, p. 107–221). This is a recent type of Sikh literature that has not yet received much attention in scholarship.4 The three books by Norwegian Sikhs cover the period from 1970 to 2012. Together they cover the whole history of Sikhs and Sikhism in Norway. The books certainly belong to the genre of Sikh literary expressions, but are on the periphery of this larger category of literature, and should perhaps be categorized as Norwegian autobiographies/fictional writings. However, it is their upbringing in Indian immigrant families in a non-Indian culture and society that is the main topic of the books. Their parents’ diaspora situation becomes fundamental for and Lies in Wolverhampton (2009). Other memoirs/biographies/autobiographies written in English mentioned by Nesbitt are Tandon (1969); Bains and Johnston (1995); Sato (2011); Shan (1985); Sanghera (2007); Barton (1987); and Syal (1997). See also Tandon (2000). 4 One exception is a short article about diaspora Sikh women’s memoirs by Geetanjali Singh Chanda published recently in the journal Sikh Formations (Chanda, 2014). Chanda focuses in particular on Sikh female autobiographies: Ahluwalia and Gupta (2007); Gill (2011); Puri and Nesbitt (2013); Sanghera (2007, 2011); and Shan (1985).

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their own experience of growing up. They are placed in between their parents’ diaspora and the surrounding Norwegian culture. Tejwant Singh Gill (2014) has argued that a certain number of themes have dominated ideas about Sikhism in twentieth-century Punjabi literature. According to Gill, Punjabi literature was dominated by authors who primarily drew inspiration from the following themes: the Singh Sabha reform movement (Bhai Vir Singh 1872–1957), pantheism of the nineteenth-century romantics and Sikhism as an inclusive vision (Puran Singh 1881–1931), Sikh history and society (Avtar Singh 1906–72, Mohan Singh 1905–78, Sant Singh Sekhon 1908–97), the female experience (Amrita Pritam 1919–2005), or religious concerns (Pritam Singh Safeer 1916–99, Gopal Singh Dardi 1917–1990, Jaswant Singh Neki 1925–). Gill notes that except for Bhai Vir Singh none of the above authors were great fiction writers and those who wrote fiction in Punjabi did not write about Sikhism. Sikh characters are, however, part of the novels of Nanak Singh (1897–1971), Sohan Singh Seetal (1909–98) and Gurdial Singh (b. 1933), although motifs drawn from Sikh doctrine, society and history are not present in determining the lives of their characters (Gill, 2014, p. 199). The case is similar with the new genre of Sikh autobiographies from Europe and North America; often “religion is subsumed under the broader category of culture and they are read as synonyms” (Chanda, 2014, p. 102). The three Norwegian books belong to the category of Sikh diaspora autobiographical and fictional writings as well as Norwegian autobiographical and fictional writings. The diaspora context as well as the Norwegian environment is decisive for the topics treated. They focus on female experience as well as male experience. A characteristic of autobiographies and fictional autobiographies is to exaggerate real-life events and personal characteristics and to use a type of exaggerated honesty to create empathy and sympathy among the readers for their life choices.5 In that sense, all autobiographies are also fiction. The three books here analysed are Romeo Gill’s novel Ung mann i nytt land (Young Man in a New Country) published in 2011, Prableen Kaur’s autobiographical narrative Jeg er Prableen (I Am Prableen) published in 2011, and Loveleen Rihel Brenna’s autobiographical narrative Min annerledeshet, min styrke (My Difference, My Strength) published in 2012.

5 Geetanjali Singh Chanda has noted that the autobiography or memoir is the most obvious choice for those who need to tell their story as a “validation of their life choices and as examples for others in similar situations” (Chanda, 2014, p. 93).

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Young Man in a New Country Romeo Gill’s novel Ung mann i nytt land is the second volume of a trilogy. The first volume, Harjeet, was published in 2008, and the final volume has not yet (2014) been published. The narrative is told in chronological order, and Ung mann i nytt land starts where Harjeet ended. The narrator is omniscient and knows the thoughts and feelings of everyone in the narrative, but the author’s alter ego is Akas, the youngest son in the family who has many similarities to the author himself, which is the reason Ung mann i nytt land can be read as an autobiographical novel. Harjeet tells about Harjeet Singh, a fictional character, the life of his family in Punjab and his migration to Norway. Harjeet Singh leaves his family, his young wife, Kaur, and his two sons, Suraj and Akas, to take care of the farm, while he migrates to Norway to earn money. He is not poor and had income both from the farm and a job in the military, but he wants to be able to save money to buy more land. Earning and saving money becomes an obsession. After several years he returns for a short visit to Punjab because his father is sick and dying, and decides then to take his wife and children with him to Norway. Ung mann i nytt land starts with the arrival of Suraj and Akas in Norway and the book follows them until Akas is 17 years old. Akas finally moves out, disgusted by his father’s violence and hypocrisy. At this time Harjeet’s wife has returned to India after she discovered that Harjeet had a mistress for many years, a Norwegian woman. Harjeet forces her to return to Punjab to avoid the dishonour associated with divorce among the Indians in Norway. Much of the book describes the suffering of Suraj and Akas due to a cynical and greedy alcoholic father. Harjeet beats his sons and forces them to work long hours to earn him money under the pretext that if they work hard the family will return to Punjab sooner. For this reason he denies them an education. He is obsessed with power and prestige, and manages to become a powerful person among Indians in Norway. He is selected as an Indian representative to meet with Indira Gandhi, when she visited Norway in 1983. In Ung mann i nytt land, Harjeet succeeds in realizing his ambitions of power and prestige, but he has abused and destroyed his family for those egoistic pursuits. At the end of Ung mann i nytt land, with his mother back in India, Akas manages to get away from his father. What his new life will be is the subject of the not yet published final volume of the trilogy. I Am Prableen Prableen Kaur’s Jeg er Prableen is a heroic autobiography of growing up as a Sikh in Norway. Kaur was born in 1993, and in the book she tells about her life up to 2011. Like Ung mann i nytt land, Kaur’s book is a story of suffering,

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placed between parents and the wider society. In Ung mann i nytt land, the cause of suffering is within the family; in Kaur’s book the causes are people in the Norwegian society outside of the family. The book’s front cover has a photo of her in a black turban. On the back cover is a quotation in English: “I am going to take that fear and wear it like a crown”, a quotation from a song by the Norwegian musician and songwriter Rebekka Karijord, a reference to both the turban and her overcoming of suffering. The theme of the turban as a crown is a main topic in the book. “Fear” and “crown” refers to her decision when she was 12 to wear a turban, but also to the fact that the autobiography is about a very difficult and painful childhood and youth. She was harassed for years by her schoolmates, but Prableen Kaur is also one of the survivors of the terrorist attack on the youth camp of the youth organization of Arbeiderpartiet, the Norwegian social democratic party, on Utøya on 22 July 2011 in which 69 people were massacred by a Norwegian fascist. The overcoming of fear, symbolized by the turban, refers as much to her surviving the Utøya massacre. Kaur was hiding together with a large group and most in the group were killed. She survived probably because those who were shot fell on top of her and she was covered with their blood and assumed to be dead by the terrorist. She wrote a feature article printed in the newspapers shortly after the massacre,6 and she became one of the public faces of the survivors of the Utøya terror attack. In the book she describes her activities in Arbeiderpartiet, and after publishing the book she became, in September 2011, the youngest member ever to be elected to the city council of Oslo. She has been active in the organization Young Sikhs and is a public speaker at the annual celebration of Turban Day, which has become a large public event in Oslo. My Difference, My Strength Loveleen Rihel Brenna’s book is about the fear of being an outsider, the difficulty of handling an in-between identity and the embracement of Norwegian middleclass individualism. This book is about suffering caused by the Indian community in Norway. Rihel Brenna came to Norway in 1973 as a five-year-old. Her father arrived in 1971, and was among the earliest immigrants from Punjab. The book is about herself and her parents. In her youth she felt like a person divided in two, being a foreigner in India as well as in Norway, and her wish has been to become whole, “to be accepted as neither Indian nor Norwegian, but primarily a human being” (Brenna, 2012, p. 25). She wants to be human first, beyond culture and religion. Her main point in the autobiographical text is that she managed to become Norwegian and at the same time to accept herself as different. In the

6

For the English version, see Kaur (2011b).

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book she also tells the story of her father’s village in Punjab and the migration and struggle to create a good life in Norway. She focuses on her fear of the social control and moral judgements of the Indian community, the dilemmas she has faced, the choices she has made and the difficulties of growing up feeling like neither an Indian nor a Norwegian. She narrates an episode in which on vacation in Shimla in India, in her late teenage years, while talking to some Indian youth, she wanted to be accepted by them as Indian, but disappointedly realized that for them she was a foreigner. After high school she married a man from India, and she then tried to become in all respects Indian. After a few years they divorced, and she then decided to become Norwegian (which meant being surrounded by and spending most of her time with Norwegians; becoming Indian meant spending most or all of her time with Indians in Norway and often travelling to India) and also married outside of the Indian community. The book is a criticism of those who view preservation of the culture and religion of the parents and grandparents’ country of origin as important. Rihel Brenna feels neither Sikh nor Hindu. She is a successful writer and administrator, and the book focuses as much on her successful career as on the difficult choices she had to make. Stories of Being in Between Suffering and rebellion are notable themes in all the three Norwegian books. This is in accordance with the autobiographical genre, and in the books suffering and rebellion are described as the results of the authoritarian patriarchy of the Punjabi families described, the rules of honour of Punjabi culture, the difficulty of mastering the codes of Norwegian society and the realization that one has become something very different from the Punjabiness or Indianness of the parents. At the same time, the people described in the books also feel different from the “mainstream” Norwegian culture and they are treated by Norwegians as different. Prableen Kaur’s book in particular focuses on how to become a Norwegian Sikh and raises questions about how Norwegian Sikhism can be different from the religion of the parents. How can one be a Sikh and at the same time feel at home in Norway, but not in Punjab or India? All the books first narrate the migration of the parents, explain their reasons for migrating, their gains and losses and their place in the Indian immigrant social network as well as in the larger society. But the main story of the books deals with those from the second generation, their path to adulthood, of growing up with Punjabi parents in Norwegian society, and the focus is on the situation of being in between cultures, as either Indian and Norwegian, or neither Norwegian nor Indian. Considering the criticism of in-between interpretations of the new generation Sikhs in scholarship about other countries such as England (see Hall, 2002), there is a need to take into account the genre of autobiographies in analysing

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the sociology of second-generation Sikhs in Europe and North America in order to get a balanced view on the in-between situation. The authors of these autobiographies tell about immense struggles of identity formation, in a dual struggle, both at home and in the larger world, and a tension between isolation and assimilation. In the autobiographies of the second generation, the writers on the one hand want to assimilate and on the other they are guarded by their firstgeneration parents, who represent “fortresses that protect language, religion, lifestyle and traditions” (Chanda, 2014, p. 97). Geetanjali Singh Chanda in her analysis of Sikh autobiographies notes that while the longing of the parent generation was for material well-being, the longing of the second generation is for assimilation and “belonging to the new home and culture” (Chanda, 2014, p. 96). This is a dominant theme in the three Norwegian Sikh narratives. Romeo Gill’s autobiographical fiction Ung mann i nytt land, volume 2 of a trilogy, is a narrative about growing up as a Sikh immigrant boy in Drammen in the 1970s and 1980s, and the other two books are autobiographical accounts of growing up as Sikh immigrant girls, one in Oslo in the 1990s and 2000s and one in Kristiansand in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. The books deal with childhood and youth and focus on the difficulty of navigating in and between different worlds, generations, countries, cultures, values, ideas of family, honour and gender. The themes of homelessness and the feeling of foreignness are present in all three books in the accounts of growing up. The books document Sikh experiences in Norway, and provide subjective voices. The books add to other sources of knowledge about Sikh presence in Norway such as interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, but as sources they have the benefit of following persons over time, from childhood, through youth and into adulthood, and the books present the persons’ feelings and thoughts. The narratives are meant for a Norwegian audience and the authors have made choices about how they want to represent themselves in the Norwegian society. There seem also to be attempts, especially in Rihel Brenna’s book, to address the South Asian communities in Norway and to justify the authors’ choices of identity formation. Unhappiness is a dominant theme in the books and may confirm Vijay Mishra’s statement in his analysis of Indian diaspora literature in general that “[a]ll diasporas are unhappy, but every diaspora is unhappy in its own way” (Mishra, 2007, p. 1), which is a word play on the opening line of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. As he continues: Diasporas refer to people who do not feel comfortable with their non-hyphenated identities as indicated in their passports. Diasporas are people who would want to explore the meaning of the hyphen, but perhaps not press the hyphen too far for fear that this would lead to massive communal schizophrenia. (Mishra, 2007, p. 1)

The books by these Norwegian Sikhs explore the meaning of the hyphen, the Norwegian-Indian in-between world, and they describe the traumas of growing

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up in the diaspora situation, a condition which adds to the confusion that often accompanies youth and adolescence and the attempts to master the codes of adult life. The autobiographies are about the youth’s attempts to move away from the diaspora consciousness and homelessness of their parents to become Norwegian and feel at home in Norway, while the parents often attempt to transfer the diaspora project, the preservation of Indian culture in a foreign place, to their children and thus prolong the situation of homelessness. For the parents, the socialization of the children to the social norms of their Punjabi heritage expresses the diaspora project, with the culture of their Norwegian surroundings being perceived as a threat to that project. The Norwegian young Sikhs, as narrated in the autobiographies, do not share the Indianness or the diaspora consciousness of the parents but they want to feel at home in the society in which they have been raised. It is this tension in the life of young Sikhs between the diasporic consciousness of the parents and the Norwegianness of the second generation that is the dominant theme in the three Norwegian Sikh autobiographies. The autobiographical novel and the autobiography that focus on the 1970s and 1980s differ dramatically from the book that focuses on growing up in the late 1990s and in the 2000s. In the books that take place on the 1970s and 1980s, the focus is on Indian identity; in the book that takes place in the 1990s and 2000s, the focus is on Sikh religious identity. One reason for this is that Prableen Kaur grew up in a religious family. Another reason might be the availability in the 2000s of institutional religious support for the Sikh youth, and the greater emphasis in the gurdwaras on young Sikhs with the creation of the organization Gurmat Naujovan Sabah (GNS)7 as well as monthly programmes in the gurdwaras for Sikh youth (see Jacobsen, 2011a, pp. 30–32).8 Religion and religious identity became in the 1990s a dominant way of conceptualizing immigrants and their descendants in Norway (see Jacobsen, 2011b). GNS changed its name to Unge Sikher (Young Sikhs) in 2010. The development of Indian Sikh immigrant culture in Norway is marked by several stages of change. In the early periods (1969–81), although most of the Indian immigrants were Sikhs, the Indian identity was paramount and the Sikhs were organized in Indian Associations. It was only after 1981 with the collection of money for a gurdwara building and the establishment in 1983 of the first gurdwara, Gurduara Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, as a response to the necessity of transferring Sikhism to the next generation in Norway ( Jacobsen, 2011a, p. 23), especially in the 1990s, that Sikh religious identity became predominant among Indians in Norway. This development reflected global processes, but nevertheless depended on local initiatives and hard work. It signified also that the Sikhs in Norway had realized that their stay in Norway would be permanent. The gurdwara organization in Lier was established in 1991, and the new Shri Guru Nanak Niwas Gurdwara Sahib in Lier, one of the largest gurdwaras built from the ground in Europe outside of Great Britain, was opened in 2010 ( Jacobsen, 2011a, p. 24). 7

8

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Religious Experiences and Lives Religion is present in all three books, but is most prominent in Prableen Kaur’s book, and most problematic perhaps in Rihel Brenna’s, probably because of her Sikh-Hindu background. Religion does not play a big role in Romeo Gill’s Ung mann i nytt land. However, there is a notable difference in the description of Sikhism in the two books by Gill, Harjeet and Ung mann i nytt land. Harjeet is described as a secular Sikh. But in Harjeet the author describes in some detail life in the gurdwara in Harjeet’s village in Punjab. The emphasis is on service, equality, teachings and elements of Sikhism such as Guru Granth Sahib, Ardas (parts of which are translated into Norwegian), langar and the childhood experience of gurdwara life. In Ung mann i nytt land there is a notable absence of religion. There is no gurdwara at this time in Norway, and nothing is said about the performance of any Sikh rituals except for some references to the wearing of a turban. The book ends in 1983 just after the Oslo gurdwara opened, and just before the cataclysm of 1984 (the military attack on the Harimandir Sahib complex in Amritsar in June 1984 and the anti-Sikh riots after the killing of Indira Gandhi in October the same year). The few references to religion give a cynical view, which reflects the experience of the disillusioned Akas. The cynical observations of the gurdwara in Oslo contrast with the romantic view of gurdwara life in the home village in Punjab which perhaps illustrates a nostalgic diasporic perspective. The Indian adult males described in the book are often presented as hypocrites. They smoke, drink, beat their children and are mostly interested in money, power and prestige. However, the descriptions in Harjeet of the gurdwara in Punjab are more similar in tone to the description of gurdwara life in Oslo given by Prableen Kaur in her book, Jeg er Prableen. In her book, the gurdwara is a place where the ideals of life are realized. It is a place of refuge from the suffering of life. In the gurdwara, life is lived as it ideally should be. Where Ung mann i nytt land sees hypocrisy and power struggles, and males using the gurdwara to gain the prestige they do not get from their work in society, Prableen Kaur sees the gurdwara as a refuge from the cruelty of her schoolmates. In Ung mann i nytt land the gurdwara represents the Sikh male society in Norway of the 1970s and early 1980s, which the author’s alter ego, Akas, hates. In Prableen Kaur’s book the gurdwara in Norway of the 2000s represents the Sikh values of equality and struggle that give her strength to deal with Norwegian society. She sees the similarity between the Sikh values and those of the social democratic party (Arbeiderpartiet), which she joins. Akas, on the other hand, is disgusted with the Indian community in Norway. In the case of his father, his violence and greed for power and money seem to be no hindrance for gaining honour in the gurdwara organization.

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Prableen Kaur’s parents came from families for whom religion was important (Kaur, 2011a, p. 44) and she grew up in an actively religious family. This is probably one reason for the great impact of religion on her; the other is the availability of the gurdwara in Oslo in which she spent much time during childhood and teenage years. She became interested in religion when she began school at the age of seven. She thereafter started to learn about Sikhism and she then realized how much equality, charity and freedom of speech meant for her, according to her autobiography. In third grade she started to play harmonium and sing gurbani, and she performed numerous times in the gurdwara (Kaur, 2011a, p. 45). She writes that she became a practising Sikh when she was 11, and wore the turban from the age of 12. Prableen Kaur is able to distinguish Sikhism from Punjabiness and Indian culture – she feels Sikh and not Indian – and is able in this way to realize herself as a Norwegian Sikh. Religion seems to provide a means to navigate between different identities and cultures, contrary to Rihel Brenna who did not separate Sikhism from Indian culture. In interviews, Norwegian Sikhs sometimes refer to those growing up before the gurdwara was established in Oslo in 1983 as the lost generation (see Jacobsen, 2011a). In Rihel Brenna and Romeo Gill’s books we get inside views from those who grew up in the 1970s. The absence of religious institutions in their lives is notable. Prableen Kaur on the other hand finds in Sikhism the solution to her identity issues. She emphasizes how the external symbol of Sikh identity, the turban, gives her selfconfidence. The turban becomes a resource for female empowerment because, she argues, the turban symbolizes Sikh identity and promotes gender equality and religious freedom. She writes: The Sikhs condemned the gender and class differences that existed in India. The religion rejected all rituals and superstitions that had no foundation. The turban is a religious duty. It is obligatory for males and voluntarily for females. It is gender neutral and has throughout history become the symbol of the fight of the Sikhs for equality, the rights of the minorities and women, and of freedom of religion. The Sikhs used the turban to fight the caste system in which the right to wear turbans was a privilege only of the highest castes and the kings. That is why the turban symbolizes a crown and the fundamental values of equality, solidarity and the freedom of religion. (Kaur, 2011a, pp. 45–6)

In a newspaper interview, Prableen Kaur elaborated: To me the turban is about freedom of expression, equal worth, gender equality and democracy … But in addition to that the values the turban represents are important for me to promote, I also feel that it has become a symbol of identity (identitetsmarkør). (Paramalingam, 2011)

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Female empowerment and gender equality are the exact opposites of those values that Rihel Brenna experienced in the Indian community and it was a lack of these values that made her break away from the Indian community in Norway. However, she reveals at the end of the book that her father and mother had recently (perhaps in 2011 or 2012) visited the gurdwara in Lier and that in the speech given in the gurdwara gender equality and female empowerment were emphasized (Brenna, 2012, p. 218). Rihel Brenna notes that it is excellent that the gurdwara promotes these values, but that there are other Indians who live in Norway who condemn those women who seek gender equality and consider them as traitors to their own culture. During a six-week visit to the family in India in the summer of 2010, Prableen Kaur experienced that she was uncomfortable with their customs and views on society, and she noted that she did not follow their cultural norms. She writes: “For me, religion was the important thing. Something that I have managed to balance in the Norwegian society, but I felt as an outsider in India” (Kaur, 2011a, p. 79). In India, among the traditionalists she was a foreigner, and to the religious she was too liberal, and she concludes that during the visit: “I realized that I had very little connection to that country [India]” (Kaur, 2011a p. 80). The diasporic link was missing. Rihel Brenna writes that when she struggled with identity issues she realized that the largest and most important question was religion (Brenna, 2012, p. 166). She wished to become a person that transcended both the cultures of the Indians in Norway and the Norwegians (Brenna, 2012, p. 166). She did not want to choose a specific religion, but wanted to select values thought to be common to all religions such as love, charity, compassion, empathy, patience, tolerance and responsibility, which she thinks transcend culture. She wanted to develop these universal values in herself. She dislikes religion as identity, and values “spirituality”, not “religiosity and temple” (Brenna, 2012, p. 166). Growing up with a Sikh father and Hindu mother who are both quite secular, judging from the descriptions in the book, she embraces New Age spirituality (without naming it in that way), but of a Hindu kind. New Age spirituality is typically individualized and a main activity is reading “spiritual” books. Rihel Brenna mentions Deepak Chopra, Osho, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama as her favourites. Such books are particularly popular among the contemporary Indian upper-middle classes, especially those with a Hindu background, but the books are also global bestsellers. Her favourite is the New Age guru Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. Deepak Chopra’s background is in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation and his earliest books were dedicated to Maharishi. Rihel Brenna’s autobiography is about individual success, and Chopra’s teaching can be seen as representative of this spirituality of individualism and personal achievement. Having felt like an outsider, she felt

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that having success in Norway would make her become admired both among the majority population and the Indian community in Norway. Rihel Brenna states that she feels as much at home in a church as in a temple. The only Sikh practice she writes about is in fact in connection with two visits to gurdwaras (the second only by her parents) which perhaps, but not necessarily, means that no Sikh ritual practice took place in the home (or she chooses not to mention any). The first gurdwara description is in the beginning of the book (Brenna, 2012, pp. 20–21), but chronologically closer to the end of the story, relating to the death of her sister. The other gurdwara visit is told at the end. After the cremation of her sister, they had a religious ceremony in the gurdwara in Oslo, with 250 guests. There was a reading from Guru Granth Sahib, a woman sang and langar was served, and, interestingly, Brenna comments that the temple’s support and voluntary communal work to take care of a family in grief was a new experience for her. This might indicate that it perhaps was the first time she had visited a gurdwara in Norway. The family lived in Kristiansand, far away from the gurdwaras in Oslo and Lier. She writes that she had never previously experienced this type of solidarity in the Indian culture in Norway, and that this experience gave her a different view of the Indians in Norway. She realized that the Indian community also constituted a safety net to rescue people who had lost their balance. She notes that they were not told in the gurdwara who made and served the langar, which indicates the religious motivation of the seva as selfless service and the Sikh ideal of jivanmukti ( Jacobsen, 2013). But strangely, she does not ascribe the values of the gurdwara of community solidarity and selfless service in this instance to the religion of Sikhism, but to Indian culture. The author does not seem to distinguish between the religion of Sikhism and Indian culture, an indication of ignorance about Sikhism and perhaps of a secular environment. On the issue of what to do with the ashes of her dead sister, her family discusses the possibility of having a family grave in Norway that they can visit or to scatter the ashes in a river, and the father says “Many people have given advice of what to do. What Sikhism says and demands. But I will not respect anyone else than my children and what we two want” (Brenna, 2012, p. 24). They decide to have a family grave in Norway. As a literary device this functions to show that after her conflict with the family due to adolescence and divorce from her Indian husband, the family had now become united and that it would be so in eternity in a family grave. It can also be interpreted as nostalgia for family typical of cultures of extreme individualism. The contrast between Prableen Kaur’s and Rihel Brenna’s books is remarkable. For Prableen Kaur, Sikhism is a religion that “rejected all rituals and superstitions that had no foundation”. Rihel Brenna did not find “self-spirituality” or “innerlife spirituality” in Sikhism, but in the books of New Age figures such as Osho,

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Deepak Chopra and the Dalai Lama.9 Prableen Kaur got her strength from being active in the organized collective activities and meetings at the gurdwara, she gave lectures about Sikhism to school classes that came to the gurdwara and became better and better at singing and playing the harmonium. She became one among several young Sikhs in Norway who became successful in the gurdwara environment. Kaur writes that she gained strength from being with other “practicing Sikhs” (praktiserende sikher) and that “religion became more and more important during adolescence. I sought refuge in the community, it felt like God saw me, that God was with me, took care of me. Then I always knew that whatever I went through, God took care of me” (Kaur, 2011a, p. 57). The tension between Indian and Norwegian cultures is a main theme in the descriptions of young Sikhs by Romeo Gill, Prableen Kaur and Rihel Brenna. Religion becomes part of that conflict. What is Indian, what is Norwegian and what transcends culture? Should the characters attempt to become Indian or Norwegian? Rihel Brenna first makes the choice of becoming Indian and breaks contact with all her Norwegian friends, but after a few years of marriage with a husband from India, she divorces and then breaks all contact with the Indian community in Norway. The book concludes with a synthesis in which she has contact with both, and she has found an identity in between them that she enjoys. Prableen Kaur solves the conflict by choosing a Sikh religious identity and she identifies Sikhism with universal values that transcend culture. Akas, the character in Gill’s novel, at the end of the second book of the trilogy, chooses Norwegian culture as a refuge from Indian culture, and he sees the same values, which he dislikes, being maximized in the gurdwara in Norway as in the Indian community in Norway as a whole. In other words, the three books narrate strikingly different experiences. They experience the in-between conflicts but they find their own way to deal with them. They are not victimized but display strong agency. They make different choices and thus point to the many options available for identity formations for those growing up with the in-between conflicts. The books illustrate how some of the second-generation Sikhs gravitate towards religious identification while others move away from such identifications, and also how some have adopted reflexive attitudes towards religion and identity in order to attempt to negotiate between the contradictory perspectives surrounding them (see chapters by Singh Brar and Singh Jandon in this book), and the different options that have been available for young Sikhs in Norway, such as religious or “practising” Sikh, cultural or “non-practising” Sikh, and New Age Hindu-Sikh. Using autobiographies to understand the identity formation of young Sikhs reveals a multiplicity of voices, choices and opportunities. The Norwegian autobiographies are interesting reading for the field of Diaspora Studies. The autobiographies narrate how the struggle of the

9

For self-spirituality, see Heelas (1996); for inner-life spirituality, see Heelas (2008).

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second generation differs radically from that of the first generation. The diasporic project of the first generation is rejected by the second, and the autobiographies show how they struggle to understand what it means to be a non-diasporic Norwegian Sikh and how to separate Punjabi or Indian culture from Sikhism as religion. References Ahluwalia, Kiranjit, and Rahila Gupta (2007), Provoked: The Story of Kiranjit Ahluwalia. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Bains, Tara Singh and Hugh Johnston (1995), The Four Quarters of the Night: The Life-Journey of an Emigrant Sikh. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Barton, Rachel (1987), The Scarlet Thread: An Indian Woman Speaks. London: Virago. Brenna, Loveleen Rihel (2012), Min annerledeshet, min styrke. Oslo: Cappelen Damm. Chanda, Geetanjali Singh (2014), “The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Diaspora Sikhs Women’s Memoirs”. Sikh Formations, 10 (1), 91–104. Gill, Romeo (2008), Harjeet. Oslo: Forlaget Oktober. Gill, Romeo (2011), Ung mann i nytt land. Oslo: Forlaget Oktober. Gill, Rupinder (2011), Looking Indian: How My Second Childhood Changed My Life. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. Gill, Tejwant Singh (2014), “Sikhism in Twentieth-Century Punjabi Literature”, in Pashaura Singh and Louis E. Fenech (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 191–200. Hall, Kathleen D. (2002), Lives in Translation: Sikh Youth as British Citizens. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Heelas, Paul (1996), The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Heelas, Paul (2008), Spiritualities of Life: Romantic Themes and Consumptive Capitalism. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Jacobsen, Knut A. (2011a), “Institutionalization of Sikhism in Norway: Community Growth and Generational Transfer”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 19–38. Jacobsen, Knut A. (ed.) (2011b), Verdensreligioner i Norge. 3rd edn. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Jacobsen, Knut A. (2013), “Jivanmukti – sikhismens frelsesmål”. Religion og livssyn: Tidsskrift for religionslærerforeningen i Norge, 25 (2), 17–22. Kaur, Prableen (2011a), Jeg er Prableen. Oslo: Gyldendal.

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Kaur, Prableen (2011b), “Norway Shooting: Politician Describes Witnessing Utoya Massacre on Her Blog”. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/worldnews/europe/norway/8656963/Norway-shooting-politiciandescribes-witnessing-Utoya-massacre-on-her-blog.html (accessed 2 September 2014). Mishra, Vinay (2007), The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary. Abingdon: Routledge. Myrvold, Kristina (2011), “The Swedish Sikhs: Community Building, Representations and Generational Change”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 63–94. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2009), “Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikh and ‘Mixed-Faith’ Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues”. Journal of Religion in Europe, 2, 37–57. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2013), “Introduction”, in Kailash Puri and Eleanor Nesbitt, Pool of Life: The Autobiography of a Punjabi Agony Aunt. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, pp. 1–5. Paramalingam, Rita (2011), “Fra mobbeoffer til forbilde: Møt Prableen Kaur (18) fra Lørenskog, bystyremedlem i Oslo Ap, Utøya-overlevende og mobbeoffer”. Available at: http://www.rb.no/zoom/article5784197.ece (accessed 24 July 2014). Puri, Kailash and Eleanor Nesbitt (2013), Pool of Life: The Autobiography of a Punjabi Agony Aunt. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Sanghera, Jasvinder (2007), Shame. London: Hodder. Sanghera, Jasvinder (2011), Shame Travels: A Family Lost, A Family Found. London: Hodder and Stoughton/Hachette Books. Sanghera, Sathnam (2009), The Boy with the Topknot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton. London: Penguin. Sato, Kiyotaka (2011), Mrs Jasvir Kaur Chohan: Life Story of a Sikh Woman and Her Identity. Tokyo: RCHRCD/Meiji University. Shan, Sharan-Jeet (1985), In My Own Name: An Autobiography. London: The Women’s Press. Singh, Pashaura and Louis E. Fenech (eds) (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Syal, Meera (1997), Anita and Me. London: Flamingo. Tandon, Prakash (1969), Punjabi Century 1857–1947. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Tandon, Prakash (2000), Punjabi Saga 1857–2000: The Monumental Story of Five Generations of a Remarkable Punjabi Family. New Delhi: Rupa. Tatla, Darshan Singh (2004), “Preface”, in A. Chandan, Gopal Singh Chandan: A Short Biography and Memoirs, The Punjabi Diaspora Series No. 4, Jalandhar:

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Punjab Centre for Migration Studies. Available at: http://www.sikh-heri tage.co.uk/heritage/sikhhert%20EAfrica/GSChandan-BioFinal%20with %20illustrations-%20May%2006.pdf (accessed 21 March 2015).

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Chapter 8

Becoming Men in the Global Village: Young Sikhs Reenacting Bhangra Masculinities Anjali Gera Roy

The historical production of Punjabi masculinities, largely viewed as disjunctive with Indian hegemonic masculinity, has received considerable academic attention in the past two decades. The production of Sikh masculinity in relation to the metaphor of “the saint warrior” (sant-sipahi) in the khalsa discourse of Sikhism, of “the martial races” in British imperialism and of “the hardy cultivator” in Indian nationalism has been revealed to be crossed over by sect and caste in addition to gender and race. Historians have thrown considerable light on the social and ideological construction of certain colonized bodies as the martial races and traced the construction of the Sikhs as a martial race to Sikh loyalty to the British during the First War of Independence in 1857 (Sinha, 1995; Chowdhury, 1998; Streets, 2004). In contrast to postcolonial historians who have largely focused on the ideologies of race and gender in producing Sikh masculinity, Sikh scholars have situated it in the androcentric hermeneutics governing Sikh studies in interpreting Sikh scriptures (Kaur Singh, 1993). More recent work has uncovered the workings of gender within Sikh religious identity ( Jakobsh, 2005; Dhavan, 2011), or the imbrication of caste with gender and religion (Mooney, 2011). It is only lately that the complicity of other Punjabi masculinities in producing hegemonic Sikh masculinity and its relation to non-hegemonic Sikh masculinities has been uncovered (Ram, 2008). Together, these studies complicate the unified narrative of Sikh/Punjabi masculinity that has dominated both descriptions of Sikhs in the national imaginary and in Sikh self-ascriptions and demonstrate that Sikh masculinity has been produced through the emasculation of Hindu trading (Bania), learned (Brahmin), artisanal and scavenger castes (Das, 2001). How do young Sikhs negotiate the intersections or disjunctions between multiple, multi-layered identity discourses through which Sikh masculinity has been historically constituted as they navigate complex modernities and postmodernities? How do certain Sikh masculinities enable young Sikhs to produce a discourse of masculinity through which they resist other hegemonic masculinities structured by race, religion,

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caste and gender relations? Young Sikhs respond to the crisis in Sikh masculinity triggered by the increasing movement of Sikhs through multiple geographies and masculinities by affirming their allegiance to primordial identifications attached to specifically Jat Sikh identities. This chapter examines contemporary bhangra1 texts that converge on the Jat, often interchangeable with the Sikh, narrative of masculinity through which young Sikhs dispersed across the world perform masculinities in the global era. Hegemonic Punjabi Masculinity The Punjabi term vir (meaning “brave” as an adjective and “brave warrior” as a noun) reinforces the etymological origins of hegemonic Punjabi masculinity in the Latin vir2 from which the term virility has been derived. Jat Sikh masculinity, in emphasizing characteristics such as violence, aggression, courage, emotional restraint, toughness and risk-taking, provides a textbook illustration of hegemonic masculinity (Donaldson, 1993). As an exclusive male fraternity predicated on an appeal to primordial qualities that reinforce males as protectors of female chastity and honour and providers, it upholds the domination of men and suppression of women (Donaldson, 1993). Regulated by an elaborate code governing male and female behaviour, Jat Sikh masculinity reveals itself to be structured by gender relations predicated on the relationship between male izzat (honour) and female sharam (modesty), as Nicola Mooney has convincingly demonstrated (Mooney, 2011). In its being structured through the opposition between the public and the private, the outside and the home, modernity and tradition through which masculinity and femininity have been traditionally defined, the Jat Sikh narrative of masculinity naturalizes the superiority of men to women and perpetuates patriarchal Punjabi hegemonies. In the Jat Sikh self-imagination, the construction of men as strong, courageous and providers has been so deeply entrenched that its ideological production in the historical discourse of the khalsa and British imperialism is effectively concealed. As a consequence, an essentialist narrative of Jat masculinity has historically emerged through the complicity of the family and community that continues to be invoked by Jats in the present (Mooney, 2011). While it may be argued In this chapter, the term bhangra has been used as a generic label to refer to both traditional and hybrid bhangra genres. But the specific differences between a wide variety of ’bhangra genres produced in India and the diaspora would be foregrounded in the analysis of bhangra texts. 2 According to Wiktionary, the meanings of vir (genitive viri) include a man, a brave man, hero, husband or (in military contexts) foot soldier. The term is related to virilis (from noun vir, man [male human] + adjective suffix -ilis), which means manly, mature, masculine. Its cognates include Sanskrit vira (Wiktionary, n.d.). 1

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that the British military had a vested interest in constructing a specific form of masculinity through “the martial race” theory, the existing khalsa discourse of the sant sipahi would traditionally have predisposed Sikhs towards military service, making Punjab the preferred region for military recruitment by British administrators. Similarly, the production of hegemonic Punjabi masculinity has been continuous with patriarchal subordination of women in Punjab. Jat Sikh masculinity is a particularized narrative of masculinity that has been appropriated in the production of a hegemonic discourse of masculinity in Punjab. Although the claims of Jats, roughly translated as cultivator or peasant, to a separate caste have been highly contested, Jats have appropriated the traits of the caste of the warrior or Kshatriya in the Hindu caste division in their self-constitution ( Jaffrelot, 2010, p. 442), an upward mobility facilitated by the support provided by the community to the Sikh misls (Dhavan, 2011).3 Jats’ appropriation of Kshatriya traits in their self-production, particularly under the influence of the Arya Samaj (Dutta, 1999, p. 79), has been possible through their denial of other caste masculinities in which cultivators have traditionally been situated. The crossing over of caste boundaries in Punjab in response to a historical contingency has altered traditional caste hierarchies through the elevation of the Jats over castes such as the Brahmins, who enjoy a more privileged position in the rest of India. The collapse of the two categories, of the cultivator and the warrior in Jat self-constitution, has been so naturalized in the Sikh imaginary that the subordinate status of Jats as peasants in traditional caste hierarchies is often overlooked. This synonymy of the cultivator with the warrior undergirding Jat Sikh masculinity is reiterated in the nationalistic rhetoric in the refrain “Hail Soldier! Hail Farmer!” (Jai Jawan! Jai Kisan!). The appropriation of “Jatness” (Jatpana) in constructing Sikh masculinity often occurs through the exclusion of other regional or sectarian constructions that converge on the same caste. As Mooney and others have revealed, primary identifications with caste often subsume other identifications with region or religion (Mooney, 2011; Kalsi, 1992). The Jat “brotherhood” (biradri) crosses regional, religious and national boundaries with an essentialized Jatpana uniting Jats in Punjab with those in Haryana and Muslim Jats with Sikh Jats. However, the hegemonic narrative of masculinity in Punjab has been produced not only in relation to hegemonic Kshatriya masculinity but also to non-hegemonic masculinities of certain castes such as the Ramgarhias, Lohanas, Chamars and so on. Given the fact that hegemonic masculinity has always revealed relations of domination Hardip Singh Syan argues that “in medieval Punjab there seems to have developed a common ‘Punjabi’ culture which possessed a shared notion of elite violence”, by which he means “Punjabis expressed their power of violence through certain common methods such as having a Kshatriya identity” but that “Jats expressed their violent identities through tales of honour and vendettas” and Khatris through “codes of chivalry” (Syan, 2012, p. 26). 3

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and subordination between groups of men, the Jat narrative has always been disrupted by other structures such as caste and sect. With the consolidation of non-hegemonic masculinities such as that of the Ravidasias in recent years, Jat Sikh identities have been compelled to relocate themselves within traditional caste hierarchies. The emergence of these repressed narratives that lay a claim to the forms of masculinity ascribed to the Jat caste foregrounds the existence of different, competing forms of masculinity. These emerging forms of masculinity reveal hegemonic Punjabi masculinity to be flawed in so far as it imposes a false unity on an extremely complex and contradictory reality. It does not account, for instance, for Hindu Punjabi masculinity that appropriates the ethic of self-restraint and moral uprightness from Hindu nationalism and articulates it to the corporeality of Jat Sikh masculinity. Similarly, hegemonic Punjabi masculinity, defined in opposition to the values of the Hindu trading class, rejects the economic capital embodied in the figure of reviled “trader” (bania). Valourizing the manly cultivator ethic, its devaluation of the learned Brahmin similarly appears to be contradicting the new focus on intellectual capital in contemporary Punjab. Finally, the Jats’ switch to professions attached to the menial castes including singing and dancing reveals hegemonic masculinity to be restricted in its inability to incorporate competing and changing definitions of masculinity. In view of Punjabi hegemonic masculinity as revealed to be internally fragmented, the reason why certain groups use it to legitimate, reproduce and generate their dominance over others needs to be examined in detail. Crisis in Punjabi Masculinity Masculinity has been perceived to be in a state of crisis since the industrial revolution through an increasing number of women joining the workforce and has evolved in response to new gender dynamics. The Indian media has also attributed the crisis in Punjabi masculinity to female empowerment and to the consequent emergence of the independent female whose presence threatens to disrupt traditional Punjabi patriarchy and requires a readjustment of gender relations. However, the crisis in Punjabi masculinity through alteration of gender relations must also be viewed as being complicated by structures of class, caste and race and as impacted by local, regional, national and global histories and geographies. Both internal and external hegemonies have resulted in the destabilization of traditional socioeconomic hierarchies through divesting certain groups of men from their positions of power, if not ending the subordination of women. Irrespective of the factors that might have influenced it, the shared experience of disempowerment by certain elite groups at the local, national and global level has created anxieties that may be described

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as a crisis in Punjabi masculinity. This shared experience of disempowerment and the anxieties it has produced accounts for a transnational mobilization of primordial narratives of masculinity that are reproduced and legitimated at the local, national and global level through the transnational media. At the basis of this crisis is the feeling of real or imagined emasculation through the perceived loss and recovery of normalized masculine attributes (Das, 2001, p. 39). The intensity of the crisis may be comprehended through the role of gender relations in producing not only Punjabi masculinity but also Punjabi identity due to the militarism of the region. However, the crisis is manifested in different forms at the local, national and global level. At the national level, the crisis has been occasioned by the need for Punjabi identity to reproduce itself in relation to the caste equations among other Indian ethnicities. In contrast to the traditional privileging of the warrior in Punjab over other castes, the privileges accorded to the new Brahmins in the knowledge economy or of the bania industrialist in the capitalist, postcolonial reproduction of Punjab as the granary of the Empire and the Punjabi as the peasant has marginalized the Punjabi Jat or peasant in modern, industrial India. Irrespective of the privileged position of Jats within the state of Punjab and Haryana, the under-representation of the Jats in modern professional or occupational hierarchies consigns Punjab to premodernity within Indian modernity and the Punjabi to an exoticized or lampooned rurality. The Punjabi is increasingly subjected to reverse the stereotyped association of Punjabiat (“Punjabiness”) with rusticity in the national imaginary and Punjabi masculinity is made to engage with non-corporeal masculinities such as those of the brainy Tamilian or of the intellectual Bengali. At a conceptual level, it is required to readjust to the feminine redefinition of Indian masculinity by Mahatma Gandhi in reply to the martial races theory of imperialism through an emphasis on non-violence, self-restraint, compassion that has been used to produce postcolonial Indian masculinity (Das, 2001, p. 38). At the local level, the crisis in masculinity is brought about through the production of Punjab as the granary of the nation and of the Punjabi as the peasant. The valourization of the Punjabi soldier and the peasant in nationalism by the postcolonial Indian state to appropriate Punjabi labour in the nationbuilding agenda and the promise of prosperity through the Green Revolution in the 1960s has been reversed with the depletion of Punjabi farmlands through the overuse of fertilizers and the devaluation of farming as an occupation. Punjab, in hindsight, appears to have been a failure of Indian modernity and uneven development (Padhi, 2012). With the acute agrarian crisis in Punjab and its manifestation in rural indebtedness, farmers’ suicides, rampant unemployment and drug addiction, the postcolonial Punjab experiment resonates with the lessons of Land Reforms Acts of the nineteenth century that impoverished the Punjabi peasantry and triggered Punjabi migration overseas. The crisis in

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Punjabi masculinity may be seen as emanating from the Punjabi male’s inability to conform to hegemonic Jat Sikh masculinity that enjoins every male to be the family provider (Padhi, 2012, p. 133). The socioeconomic crisis that disables the male from providing for the family is directly linked to the crisis in masculinity through the shame and humiliation caused by imagined emasculation. This crisis in hegemonic masculinity has been seen as intersecting with the emergence of marginalized masculinities through the emergence of sectarian movements among the lower castes in Punjab that have transnational connections. Large-scale Punjabi migration overseas introduces the structure of “race” in the production of Punjabi masculinity. Unable to conform to hegemonic masculinity produced in the West, the Punjabi migrant retreats into an idealized Punjabi masculinity through which he attempts to retain control. The migration of Jats overseas and their consequent demotion from a position of power and privilege to that of marginalization has led to assertions of solidarity with other marginalized masculinities that have been similarly disempowered through hegemonic masculinity in the West that reiterates the domination of heterosexual, white, middle-class men over women as well as other men. The intersection of Punjabi with marginalized African Caribbean masculinities is facilitated not only through the shared experience of subordination but the convergence of Punjabi with black masculinities. Both respond to their marginalization through the production of a hypermasculinist discourse that draws on a primordial Punjabi or black essence. The masculinity so constructed becomes a means of resisting the disempowerment and emasculation perceived by both groups in their real lives through unemployment, devaluation of traditional skills, switchover to occupations perceived as demeaning, empowerment of female counterparts and social exclusion. The hypermasculinist discourse also responds to Western hegemonic masculinity at the conceptual level through reversing the imperial myth of “the effeminate Indian”. The overcompensation thesis used to elucidate the production of hypermasculine self-assertions among marginalized groups might be a way of explaining the misogynist underpinnings of global narratives of Punjabi masculinity. Production of Hypermasculinity The origins of Punjabi hypermasculinity have been attributed to colonial ideology and militarism following the production of Sikhs as one of the martial races after 1857 (Streets, 2004, p. 75). The vested interests of the British army in mapping masculinity on the large framed, well-built Jat Sikhs, it is believed, led to the privileging of the Khalsa over other narratives of Sikh identity and Guru Gobind Singh over the earlier gurus (Dhavan, 2011; Streets, 2004, p. 219). While earlier gurus and expressions of Sikhism appear to have incorporated

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the celebrated Hindu ideal of the Ardhanarishvar,4 the emergence of khalsa as the definitive narrative of Sikh ideology produced a hypermasculinist Sikh subject (Kalsi, 1992; Dhawan, 2011; Das, 2001, p. 41), which continues to dominate popular perceptions of Sikhs in India. Although the stereotype of the hypermasculine Sikh largely continues to be invoked to produce humour in the popular media, the appropriation of the hypermasculine emphasis on physical strength, aggression and sexuality in the production of a transnational Sikh masculinity needs to be investigated further (Mosher and Sirkin, 1984). Violence has been integral to the constitution of Sikh subjectivity since the production of the khalsa. The idealized figure of the saint soldier has been reproduced through the centuries in the heroic figure of Bhagat Singh as well as in that of the brave Sikh soldier. Even though violence is legitimized in the figure of the Sikh martyr, it is reinscribed as pathological when it is juxtaposed against the normative non-violence of the postcolonial Indian state (Das, 2001, p. 39). The disavowal of militant resistance embodied in the figure of Bhagat Singh by leaders of the Indian nationalist movement following Gandhi’s strategic formulation of non-violence as a weapon of resistance led to Bhagat Singh’s incorporation into the pantheon of Sikh martyrs and to the labelling of Hindus as effeminate (Das, 2001, p. 40). The cult of violence legitimized in Sikhism through ritual invocations of the martyred gurus explains its appeal for Sikh youth in the 1980s and the sanction of militancy that unfortunately became interchangeable with terrorism in the national imaginary. In other words, the ritual sanction of violence in Sikh self-constitution offers a hermeneutic problem through its twin interpretations as heroic and pathological. This religion of hypermasculinity finds affirmation in the diaspora space through its articulation to older black masculinities particularly as they are expressed through black musical genres such as rap. Hypermasculinity, in this case, may be viewed as an exaggerated response to the marginalization of both black and Punjabi minorities in the West through the assumption of those qualities that are in opposition to hegemonic masculinity as it is defined in practice in the West. Denied the possibilities of conforming to the idealized masculinity in real spaces for a number of reasons, black and Sikh youth indulge in exaggerated expressions of strength, vigour and courage. Through their performance of hypermasculinity, black and Sikh youth attempt to seize control in an environment that divests them of power and privilege. In both cases, hypermasculinity is articulated positively through a valourization of strength, vigour and sturdiness as virility. The flip side of this hypermasculinist gesturing is misogyny and indulgence in abusive behaviour towards women as a form of



4

Ardhanarishwar is a form of Shiva as half male and half female.

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self-assertion. In contrast to Sikhism, which does not explicitly encourage hatred against women, misogyny is a generic feature of some forms of rap music that has been hybridized with bhangra to produce new masculinities by Sikh youth to negotiate alien geographies. Bhangra that traditionally licenses indulgence in forms of hegemonic masculinity becomes appropriated in the production of these new masculinities. A close examination of bhangra texts can be instructive in the discursive engagement of different hegemonic masculinities in the diaspora space. Performing Masculinity through Bhangra The term bhangra is loosely used to refer to a number of Punjabi performance genres that emerged in different regions of Punjab and the Punjabi diasporas over several centuries. Although bhangra is now understood to be a hybrid music produced in the UK by second- and third-generation British Asians, it is derived from a Punjabi genre of the same name (Gera Roy, 2010). The hybridization of bhangra in Britain in the 1980s was accompanied by its reinvention as Punjabi pop or bhangra pop in India. As a consequence, the contemporary bhangrascape is constituted by multiple traditional and hybrid bhangra genres produced in the diaspora as well as India (Gera Roy, 2010). The sonic collaborations of bhangra and African Caribbean music producers in the UK were welcomed as forms of resistance to forms of hegemonic masculinity animating white youth cultures as well as of solidarity against different forms of racism. However, in the production of bhangra as a South Asian music that cut across lines of religion, caste, class and nationality, the generic origins of traditional bhangra as a Punjabi male dance deeply entrenched in Punjabi patriarchal structures are often concealed. Following the initial euphoria over bhangra as the voice of marginalized Asian youth in Britain, bhangra has been revealed to be deeply implicated in the production of hegemonic Punjabi masculinity through its exaggerated emphasis on physical strength, aggression and virility, the traits through which machismo has been traditionally defined. These traces of hegemonic Punjabi masculinity appear to have been carried over in hybrid bhangra mutants from traditional bhangra genres that support, glorify and normalize Jat masculinity. Glorifying Jat Machismo Although it may have had less definite caste origins, as Mooney argues, bhangra is not only claimed as a Jat art but the imagined subject of bhangra songs is

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invariably the Jat (Mooney, 2011).5 The title song from a Punjabi film Put Jattan de (1981) has acquired an iconic status in assertions of Punjabi masculinity and spawned a number of songs that celebrate Jat valour, strength and virility: “The sons of Jats call out challenges, the sons of Jats ( put jattan de bullaon de bakre, put jattan de)/The sons of Jats call out challenges ( put jattan de bullaon de bakre)/Balancing bamboo poles over their shoulders (modeanh te dhanganh dharian)/wearing golden necklaces (keithe sone de)/long strings of the necklaces (sone de karithna lambian)/they lift their feet with a strong attitude (maruk nal paer chukde)/wearing white robes (chitte chadre)/The white sheets lift the earth when they walk (chadre sambharte dharti)/they hide bottles in their turbans (pugan which band botalan)” (Shinda, 1981). Hyperbolic descriptions of physical strength articulated through metonymical physical objects, such as bamboo poles (dhangan), machetes ( gardasa) or effects (the earth shaking as they lift their feet), are conventions that bhangra has borrowed from the bardic tradition of var, which consists of formulaic praises heaped on the royal patron by the bard in his employ. Jat machismo legitimizes aggressive behaviour and the Jat’s alacrity to take up challenges through the socially approved practice called “bakre bulauna” signalled through the martial cry “bruuaaaaah”: “The Jat got drunk ( Jat hogaya sharabi)/ after drinking a full bottle of vodka ( peeke pori vodka)/He had a machete on his shoulder (mode te gardasa)/and was twirling his moustache (oh muchan nu charda)/He was calling out challenges (oh bakare bulaunda)/”Bruuaaaah!” (Manak, 1997). Rather than violence through which Sikh masculinity has been traditionally constituted, virility, mapped on the Jat body, is either expressed as unbridled hedonism or as unrestrained sexuality: “The Jat enjoys life to the brim ( jatt maujan karda eh)/The Jat enjoys life to the brim ( jatt maujan karda eh)/God has not spared him anything (rabb ne thod koi na rakhi)/The Jat enjoys life to the brim (jatt maujan karda eh)/God has not spared him anything (rabb ne thod koi na rakhi)” ( Jazzy B, 2008). The problem with the representation of the Jat as the imagined subject of bhangra is the confusion of a particular Punjabi masculinity – namely, the Jat Sikh – with hegemonic Punjabi masculinity. In contrast to Kuldeep Manak singing praises to Jat honour and pride in the 1970s, Pammi Bai’s call to fellow Bobby Friction from BBC Radio 1’s Asian underground music programme notes: “There are many songs about jat pride, about the life of a jat … jat nationalism is running rampant in bhangra music now to the point where every bhangra album that comes out in Britain has at least one track that alludes to the power of the jats” (quoted in Puri, 2003). Since traditional and hybrid bhangra albums produced in India also revealed an equally strong Jat dominance, it is possible to speak about a transnational bhangrascape of Jatpana or Jat identity through which the narrative of hegemonic Jat masculinity is being globally mobilized. 5

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Jats to be proud of being Punjabi in the 1990s reflects the eventual conflation of Punjabiat with Jat identity ( jatpana) in the Punjabi imaginary: “Yes Jat Punjabi friends, we are proud to be Punjabis (han jatt Punjabi dosto, sanu maan punjabi hon da)/We are proud to be Punjabi! (sanu maan Punjabi hon da!)” (Pammi Bai, 2005). Fetishizing the Female Body Jat Sikh male subjectivity, strongly structured by gender relations, has been traditionally constituted in relation to the reification of the female. The convention of objectification of the female dates back to the traditional “calls” (bolian),6 which finds its most unambiguous expression in Surjit Bindrakhiya’s rendering of the traditional bolian: “Your outfit is worth 700 rupees and your jewellery worth 2600 (ho sat soh da suit tere shabi soh de gehney)/You are wearing your mother’s shoes that cost at least 250 (dhai soh di joti teri bhabi diye pehne)/ All of which adds up to 3500 (pureh penti soh)/I hope I have not made an error in totalling (pureh penti soh pujaj koi pul hoyi na)/But your hips (nitere lak de)/ Your eyes (hoye akh de)/The sway of your hips is priceless (hoye lak de hularay dul mul koi na)/The signs you make with your eyes are priceless (tere akh de ishareya da mul koi na)” (Bindrakhiya, 1993). This convention of reifying the female body was continued by the legendary folksinger Lalchand Yamla Jat, who compares his beloved to a bottle of whisky: “Like a bottle of whisky (whiskey di botal vargi)/I have hooked a girl who is like a bottle of whisky (whiskey di botal vargi main ik kudi fasa li oye)/My heart was empty I poured it in that (mere dil da boja khali si ohde wich pa li oye)/Like a bottle of whisky (whiskey di botal vargi)” (Yamla Jat, 2011). The hypermasculinist space in which the objectification of the female by the Punjabi male subject is legitimized within the conventions of bhangra music is carried over in another song that compares a young woman to a bottle (of liquor): “Village lads, what are you waiting for? ( pind deo mundeo hun ki vekhde)/She put on airs and breezed past us (lang gayi majajan kheh ke)/The girl like a bottle [of liquor], savour it uttering the name of the Lord (ran botal wargi, chak lao rab da na lai ke)” (Taz, 2005). The female subject is permitted to enter bhangra space only as an object of the Jat’s adoration. Folksinger Malkit Singh’s fetishization of the beloved, articulated through traditional bhangra bolis (“calls”), epitomizes these ritually sanctioned sexualities that find reiteration in other bhangra singers: “oh ho with

6 Traditional bhangra dancing is punctuated by short nonsensical, formulaic calls and responses called bolian. Nonsensical, formulaic lyrics are inserted between rounds of vigorous dancing in traditional bhangra to permit dancers to pause for breath.

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your kohl-rimmed eyes (oh akeeyan ch’ pake kajla)/you have cast a spell on the lad with the slanted turban (munda moh leya ni tehdi pug vala)” (Singh, 1997). This tradition of the fetishization of the female body through ritualized formulaic expressions of devotion to the beloved has been inherited by the Canadian-born and Birmingham-based Jazzy B: “Gazing at your rosy countenance (dekh ke tera rop gulabi)/Young men are floored ( gabru pani bharda)/Drums and other musical instruments, what should I say, girl (dhol waja ki akhan kudiye)/Hold no charm without you (bin tere nahin sarda)/ The son of Jats, oh beautiful One (put jatan da sohniye ni)/The son of Jats, oh beautiful One ( put jatan da sohniye ni)/is crazy about you (tere te marda)/is crazy about you (tere te marda)” ( Jazzy B, 2002). In the song “Arranged Marriage”, the British Asian bhangra pioneer Apache Indian, satirizing the stereotypical Jat Punjabi male who consents to the institution of arranged marriage and endorses patriarchal expectations of the Punjabi kudi/kuri (girl), critically engages with the nostalgic production of patriarchy and masculinity in the diasporic space: “Me wan gal fe me don rani/ Me wan gal dress up in a sari/Me wan gal say soorni logthi/Me wan gal sweet like jelebee/Me wan gal from jullunder city/Me wan gal say a soorni curi/Me wan gal mon to look after me/Me wan gal to mek me roti” (Apache Indian, 1993). The relationship between the idealized Punjabi female of the Punjabi male imagination and the imagined empowerment of the male as the don raja (king) illustrates the overcompensation thesis through which emasculated marginalized identities find agency in altered geographies. However, feminists, confusing the British Asian bhangra pioneer’s voice with that of his Punjabi persona, criticized Apache Indian’s “Arranged Marriage” for perpetuating Punjabi patriarchal ideologies through the character seeking a submissive Punjabi bride, who would willingly submit to male domination. Malkit Singh and Apache Indian subsequently collaborated to sing a paean to the new independent female in “Independent Girl” in which the contemporary independent girl is glorified as “the modern day dusky Heer” (ajkal di tu Heer saleti) but simultaneously sexualized (Apache Indian, 2007).7 Similarly, Panjabi MC’s chartbusting “Mundian ton bach ke rahin” transferred Punjabi patriarchal anxieties about a pubertal daughter to the diaspora space particularly as they negotiated black sexualities in Jay Z’s rapping on it in “Beware of the Boys” (Panjabi MC, 2002). Through their borrowing from traditional bhangra genres in which the female is reified, contemporary diasporic bhangra composers, who

7 Heer is the eponymous heroine of the legend of Heer Ranjha, the founding epic of Punjab. Heer, who was conventionally represented as dusky, the colour of slate, the writing slab used by schoolchildren, did not conform to the image of the fetishized light-skinned Punjabi beauty.

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might be otherwise supportive of feminist agendas, often become complicit in the perpetuation of hegemonic masculinist ideologies. Resisting Bhangra Masculinity The resistance narrative centred on bhangra is revealed to be fissured along lines of both gender and caste with the emergence of female and non-Jat sonic identity narratives. Sanjay Sharma, John Hutnyk and Ashwani Sharma critiqued readings of “Bhangraas engendering a discourse of Asian youth identity that ultimately flattens out differences and contestations across class, caste”, religion and ethnicity (Sharma, Hutnyk and Sharma, 1996, p. 36). Similarly, Rajinder Dudrah has argued “how selected British bhangratracks which contain dubious lyrics in relation to dominant caste and gender groups can be contested by its listeners” (Dudrah, 2002, p. 249). Gendered Resistance The Jat space is represented in bhangra texts as an exclusively male space from which the female subject must be banished or controlled and invited to play the role of the machista by admiring the Jat’s manliness: “Step out of our way (pase hut ja hut ja)/make way for the sons of Jats ( juttan nu rah chhad de)/you, the one with the silk skirt (ni reshmi garare waliyeh)/They put their hands to their ears and walk with pride (launde kaliyan kaliyan kanna te hath dhar ke)/ Stand and watch, you girl (ni khadi ho ke tu we sun lai)/and the sons of Jats make calls and responses, hey beautiful maiden (nare jattan de put paun boloyan, ni mutiyareh)” (Shinda, 1981). However, the genre of women’s songs accompanying giddha8 performances have traditionally provided females as well as female performers a space in which they can resist their occlusion from hegemonic male spaces and produce themselves in opposition to their fetishized representation in bhangra. Traditional bolis enable the female subject to negotiate a feminine space within the hegemonic masculinist space in which she can recover her agency. Within a patriarchal set-up in which males enjoy the licence to throw a wife out, the imagined wife in the following folksong negotiates an equal position for herself within the domestic space by arguing that she is the only one who can put up with the male’s idiosyncracies. The powerful image of the male and the female holding each other by the hair subverts the proverbial representation of a male 8 Giddha is a traditional Punjabi dance genre characterized by gentle, swaying, graceful movements that is usually performed by women to the accompaniment of songs through which women negotiate highly patriarchal structures to recover agency.

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throwing an errant wife out of the house by catching her by her braid: “Tana tanak/Your topknot in my hands (teri bodi mere hath)/My braid in your hands (meri gutt tere hath)/Keep me if you wish (maeno rakhna e rakh)/Throw me out if you wish! (maenokadna e kad!)/But don’t forget that I am the only one who can put up with you (maeyon tere nal vasiyan)/No one else can live with you (te hor koi vase vi na)” (Guleria, 2013). Unlike the radio era ruled by female performers like Surinder Kaur, who has been immortalized as the voice of Punjab, the contemporary bhangrascape is dominated by male performers. The only female singer who was able to break into this masculinist bhangra space was Miss Puja, who, while corroborating the stereotyped image of the beloved in traditional bhangra songs, subverts them by assuming an independent persona and by taking an unambiguous delight in her sexuality: “O I am more beautiful than fairies, O there is none like me … (vey mey pariya toh vadh sohni vey na koi mere wargi honi …)/O I am more beautiful than fairies, O there is none like me … (vey mey pariya toh vadh sohni vey na koi mere wargi honi)/There is none like me, O I adore my youth … (na koi mere wargi honi vey menu man jawani da … )/Everyone is besotted with my mischievous eyes (har koiashiq hoya firda vey meri akh mastani da)/ Everyone is besotted with my mischievous eyes (har koiashiq hoya firda vey meri akh mastani da)” (Miss Puja/ Panjabi by Nature, 2009). Similarly, her machista-like affirmation of hegemonic Jat masculinity in the song Charche is undercut by her female gaze objectifying her male lover: “He speaks without mincing his words (gal karda ae sada hik thok ke)/None can stop him (koi very tan vikhave ohnu rok ke)/He speaks without mincing his words (gal karda ae sada hik thok ke)/None can stop him (koi very tan vikhave ohnu rok ke)/He is very courageous (bada ankhi daler)/He would spray bullets (la du goliyan de dher)/Into anyone who dares to stare at me (koi take zara mainu akh bhar ke)/Everyone is talking about my lover ( full charche ne mere shone yar)/The world is sitting up and watching (te vekhe jag khad ke)” (Miss Puja, 2011). With “Jattitude”, Miss Puja appears to have transcended the machista role, recovering the agency of the Jatti (female Jat) in order to reply to Jat machismo. But she does so within the convention of patriarchal Jat cultural values underpinning bhangra. The gendered narrative of resistance to hegemonic Jat masculinity reaches a new phase in the career and music of the British Asian rapper Hard Kaur, who claims to be “the first female hip-hop artist in the world” (Subramanian, 2011). Like Miss Puja, who recovers agency for the Jatti within the hypermasculinist Jat space, Kaur creates a space for the female within the male-dominated universe of rap in which misogyny is adopted as an assertion of masculinity or to make claims to authenticity and tends to support, glorify and naturalize the objectification, exploitation and victimization of women. Hard Kaur’s music both contests and resists the objectification and exploitation of women in rap

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music by Kaur’s adoption of a hardened, sexualized, alcohol-guzzling female persona. However, in order to make a dent in a genre in which females have traditionally faced barriers and have been marginalized as performers, Kaur appears to have empowered herself by following male rules and emulating male behaviour as reflected in her self-description as “hard” and one “with balls”: “Larger, larger, jonn Annotatey walkaa/Weneva we strt we can’t stop/Paa mix it up widda lil soada water/Getting nitey nite, while u gals keep strippin ona/ Diamond whyt yo/Gotta tell u da brandys high, Punjabi style, always/Cause a fyt now/Girlfrnd dnt u have noe fear, grab ur beer, lets hav/A cheer/Getting mashed up, ay no dout, I think am gunna fall/sumbody hold me now” (Kaur, 2006). Caste Resistance In her analysis of the song “Put Jattan De”, from the 1981 film, Mooney cites the rendering of the song by non-Jat singers, Sukhshinder Shinda (Tarkhan by caste) in the original film and Kuldeep Manak (Mirasi Muslim) in the new version, as an example of Jat inclusivity. But it could be equally viewed as the marginalization of the performing castes to the dominant Jat group through its disruption of the established tradition of Muslim Mirasis9 performing for the entertainment of aristocratic or Jat patrons.10 The self-invention of the Jat as a singer dancer in the present contradicts the denigration of singing and dancing as an effeminate vocation assigned to the performing castes, who were expected to entertain their Jat patrons: “We sing dholas and mahiyas (asi dhole mahiye lavnde)/We are fond of dancing and singing (asi dhole mahiye lavnde, sanu shauq e nacchan gaun da)/ Yes, Jat Punjabi friends (han jatt punjabi dosto)” (Pammi Bai, 2005). Singing and dancing have traditionally been viewed as feminine vocations in Punjab that may be practised only by lower caste hereditary performers. Gurnam S.S. Brard shares his family’s outrage when he declared his intentions to learn to play the instrument sarangi, which they associated with less respectable people and believed that it would disgrace the family (Brard, 2007, p. 227). The initial reception of the singer dancer Gurdas Mann as the effeminate performer (interview, Anupam Sharma, March 2006) who dances like a woman (wo to auraton ki tarah nachta hai) was addressed by Mann himself in the film Yaariyan (2008) with characteristic Jat humour: “First Jats started singing and dancing. And now the Jat turns into a cook (halwai)” (Yaariyan, 2008). Mirasi (miras, “inheritance” in Arabic) refers to “a group of low status genealogists of higher ranking castes” who are “also musicians and minstrels” (Lybarger, 1998, p. 98). 10 Manak hailed from a family of hereditary musicians who had performed at Sikh shrines for generations and Shinda belonged to the marginalized artisanal caste. While his father, Nikka Khan, was a singer, Kuldeep Manak’s ancestors were the Hazoori ragis (designated cantors) of kirtan for Maharaja Hira Singh of Nabha (Wikipedia, 2014). 9

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The convention of marginalized musicians performing for Jats has become so naturalized that bhangra producers and consumers of the non-Jat castes continued to embrace it as an anthem of Punjabi masculinity until the emergence of marginalized identity narratives in the past five years or so (Ram, 2008). While issues of gender and caste had been largely suppressed in the production of a monolithic bhangrascape, Ravish Kumar reported an event in 2009 that interrogated the imagined Jat subject and address of bhangra songs (Kumar, 2010). The simmering discontent of non-Jat groups, particularly the Dalits, against the glorification of Jat values in bhangra albums exploded in a music album titled Bibe Put Chamara De by S.J. Tajpuri that celebrated the upward mobility of the Dalits: “Sons of chamars (put chamaran de)/Good sons of chamars (bibe put chamaran de)/In their red Safari jeeps (lal Safari jeepan)/ and Land Cruisers (Land cruiser yaaran de)/Look, sons of chamars are leaving for the fair (vekh mele non chale ne put chamaran de)” (Tajpuri, 2009). Other Dalit singers set songs celebrating the material success of Dalits to bhangra beats in the years that followed, which enjoyed a huge popularity among Dalit groups in Punjab and Punjabi diasporas. Through the substitution of the term Jat with the derogatory description Chamar11 in songs, such as “Cool Chamar”, “Fighter Chamar” and “Proud Sons of Chamar”, singers like Pammah Sunarh proudly reclaim Chamar identity. “We use the word ‘chamar’ with pride”, says Roop Lal Dhir, a popular singer from Nawanshahr (quoted in Nigar, 2013). An intersection of resistance of gender and caste to hegemonic Jat masculinity emerges in Rajni Thakkarwal’s song “Dhee Chamara Di”, which invokes Chamar women to take up arms, if necessary, to fight both caste and gender oppression: “If the need arises, we will lift arms (lod payi tan mauke te hatiyar wi chakange)/ … The daughter of Chamars will enter the battlefield (jang maidane utr gayi dhe chamaran di)” (Thakarwal, 2012). Celebrated Sufi singer Hans Raj Hans’s rendering of the song “Put Chamaran De Maiya” at the Boota Mandi Mela12 in August 2010, in which he calls all groups to transcend caste divisions and unite, broke new grounds by Hans’s singing the praises of Chamars rather than of Jats: “Let us all unite (asi iko jaye ho jayiye)/…/To face the Jat (age jat de khalo jayiye)” (Hans, 2010). A number of these songs proclaim their mission to end upper caste oppression and call upon Dalits to abandon their former submissive postures and respond to their humiliation by lifting arms against their oppressors. In doing so, they attempt to appropriate the same qualities of the warrior that had Chamar refers to leatherworkers who are considered one of the lowest castes in the Hindu caste hierarchy. 12 Bootan Mandi on Nakodar Road in Jalandhar has been the nerve centre of Dalit politics for several decades and is the site of a mega annual festival or mela held to celebrate Guru Ravidas Jayanti. 11

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earlier been incorporated by Jats in their self-production and also reproduce patriarchal structures. The emerging Dalit masculinities appropriate features of Jat masculinity such as aggressive behaviour, strength, valour and courage to resist their emasculation. While the new bhangra songs celebrating Chamar identity have played a crucial role in Dalits acknowledging their histories of oppression with a sense of pride, Punjabi caste divisions have simultaneously been intensified (Gera Roy, 2011). Two abusive videos produced by Jats have received virulently misogynist responses: Jatt vs Chamar, which warns Dalits not to produce songs celebrating Chamars, and Chamari Di Seal Todi Jatt Ne, which features an obscene conversation about a married Jat man and his Dalit ex-girlfriend who refused to sleep with him. Surinder Jodhka is right in viewing the misogynist responses as “an attempt to attack the masculinity of the men through the women” (quoted in Nigar, 2013). But they also foreground the process of the classic constitution of hegemonic masculinity in relation to non-hegemonic masculinities, in this case Jat masculinity, which has been constituted in relation to non-Jat masculinities. Hypermasculinist Gestures Hegemonic Punjabi masculinity in bhangra texts does not explicitly engage with violence but legitimizes aggressive behaviour in certain spaces (street), times (night) and age (youth) as an essential rite of passage from youth to manhood (Chopra, 2004, p. 40). As Radhika Chopra demonstrated, the fragmentary nature of the male world and masculinities in agrarian Punjab became the context for the production of counter-hegemonic masculinity by Punjabi youth in the space of the street (Chopra, 2004, pp. 40–41). The imagined space of the bhangra texts is this space of the street where “gangs-in-the-street” are permitted to participate in a highly masculinist street culture. Therefore, the street-smart Punjabi youth, who bonds with other males through masculine rites of initiation such as getting drunk, throwing challenges, teasing females, is valourized in these texts as conforming to hegemonic images of masculinity: “My name has currency in the entire world, woman (sari duniya te challe mera na ni)/I am the talk of every place, light-eyed one (gallan hundiyan ne Billo than than ni)/My name has currency in the entire world, woman (sari duniya te challe mera na ni)/I am the talk of every place, light-eyed one (gallan hundiyan ne Billo than than ni)/I will gild you with gold (tainu sonhe ch madah deyan sari)/ Make friends with me (la mere nal yari)/and I promise (ni eh gal pakki)/friends would have a party (lagdi mehfil mitran di)/life begins to bloom in the company of friends (hudiyan yaaran nal bharan)/We mix with those (sadi behni uthni eh)/who are in power (jediyan same diyan sarkaran)/everyone salutes us (sanu chuk ke salaman karde)/everyone is afraid of us (sade ton darde)/those who are hellbent on doing something (jinhan ne si at chakki)” ( Jazzy B, 2008).

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While the generic fetishization of the female in bhangra “calls” (bolis), which are essentially praise songs to the beloved’s beauty often expressed through the fetishization of an object worn by the beloved, has been accepted as a bhangra convention in which both men and women have been complicit as consumers, the expression of violence against women, a recent phenomenon, has generated a debate on the hypermasculinity of bhangra’s lyrics. Bhangra masculinity intersects with that of certain forms of rap and, together, the two marginalized masculinities resist hegemonic white masculinity through the production of a discourse of hypermasculinity that permits the objectification of femininity. Singer Honey Singh’s explicit misogyny and violence that has invited censure may be viewed as emerging from the intersection of Punjabi patriarchal control of women’s bodies with black sexualities articulated through the genre of rap: “Come here light-eyed beauty, listen to me (urey aa billo, ik gal sun)/Life is too short to being wasted away (niki jehi jind teri khat lai pun)/try out a step with me (sade nal vi ik la la step)/or else I would turn (nahi ta main aj ho jana tun)/when I am drunk (daru mainu jado chadh jandi ae)/my pulse comes to a halt (nabz meri othe khad jandi ae)/gets stuck in my throat (grari uto ad jandi ae)/makes me turn upside down ( putha kara kar jandi ae)/my girlfriend from Delhi used to tell me (dilli wali saheli kehndi si ke)/drink a little at a time (thori-thori piya karo)/when you are drunk don’t behave so ( jab itni pe lete ho to aise to mat kiya karo)/why do you making such a racket? (innaraula rappa kyu pate ho)/why do you sing dirty songs? (gande gaane kyu gate ho)/Someone reason with (Yo Yo Koi YO YO ko samjha lo nahi toh)/or lock up your doors (gharan de kunde la lo)” (Singh, Yo Yo Honey/Jazzy B, 2011). The First Information Report (FIR) lodged against Honey Singh in Lucknow for offensive lyrics, asking him to put a “stop to these subversive lyrics that infiltrate the minds of people who don’t know better and who then justify to themselves the rightness of a crime that harms another human being, sometimes so severely that they lose their lives”, recently played on the psychological theory of the relationship between rape and hypermasculinity. However, the petition did not deter the video from being viewed in more than 150 countries and being ranked as “the No.1 most watched video in India on YouTube and among the Top-5 most watched videos in UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand” within a few days (Aulakh, 2013). Nor did it prevent some, such as India’s bestselling writer Chetan Bhagat, from coming out in defence of Honey Singh’s artistic freedom. However timely, the ban on Honey Singh’s misogynist lyrics following the rape of a young woman in Delhi in 2012 is predicated on a simplistic understanding of media effects. In a fashion similar to traditional bhangra songs valourizing Jat qualities, the misogynist strains in Honey Singh’s lyrics can be attributed to the generic misogyny of rap music. Alternatively, as the sonic experiment results in a public declaration of violence that has not been part of bhangra lyrics, his

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lyrics can be seen as reflecting the tensions within Punjabi masculinity that get articulated as a violent form of hypermasculinity. Conclusion Indian resistance to colonial hypermasculinity has swung between recovering similar hypermasculinist indigenous narratives (Bhagat Singh) and its inversion (Gandhi). While Gandhi’s inversion of colonial hypermasculinity through a positive femininity served as a powerful ideological weapon in his decolonizing mission, the valourization of the spiritual east in orientalist discourse did not alter the popular perception of the Asian as effeminate. In the 1980s, British Punjabi youth reversed the stereotype of the studious, effeminate Asian in the British imaginary through recovering a hypermasculinist Jat memory, which intersected with aspects of black culture that were adopted as cool. In other words, the need for reversing the negative perception of Asians in the white imaginary enhanced the appeal of a primordial narrative of masculinity originating in Punjabi patriarchal structures for British Asian youth. Through recovering a model hypermasculinity in the Punjabi past, British Asian youth attempted to negotiate their emasculation in their lived spaces. But Jat Sikh masculinity has defined itself in opposition to marginalized masculinities internally and in alliance with them globally. While transnational productions of Jat Sikh masculinity converge on a racialized blackness to redefine Sikh identity through expressions of solidarity with other marginalized masculinities, they are enabled through disavowal of marginalized Sikh masculinities. The convergence of young Sikhs on bhangra that valourizes Jat Sikh masculinity in their self-production in the present may be attributed to their representation of aggression, strength, virility and even misogyny as desirable. While the reinvention of the Jat as an epicurean resonates with the ethic of consumption in neo-capitalist national masculinities, it reverses the stereotype of the mystical-spiritual Indian in Western masculinities. The transnational production of Sikh youth as fun-loving takes places through the rejection of the Gandhian ideals of abstinence and self-denial enjoined by Hindu nationalism. In opposition to the ideological production of masculinity in the narrative of hindutva defined through extreme self-restraint, Sikh youth cultures converge on the ideologies of hedonism and consumption that have been mapped on the Jat body. These ideologies of endless consumption are articulated to those of exaggerated sexuality expressed through traditionally sanctioned vocabularies of teasing and calling out praises. As the bhangra subject is generically represented as Jat, its complicity in the production of a particularized Jat subject as Punjabi or Asian was concealed as a generic convention. This would explain the convergence of not only Sikh but other Punjabi and Asian ethnicities on bhangra in resisting

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hegemonic masculinity in the West. The hypermasculinist self-production of the Jat has been incorporated not only in the re-inscription of the Punjabi as macho in the national imaginary but also as cool in global youth cultures. References Aulakh, Dinesh (2013), “Honey Singh Raps about ‘Gande Gaane’, Gets Over 1 Mn Views!”, The Hindustan Times, IANS [Indo-Asian News Service], 2 January. Available at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/mu sic/honey-singh-raps-about-gande-gaane-gets-over-1-mn-views/article 1-983885.aspx#sthash.A4LYDjCp.dpuf (accessed 12 August 2014). Brard, Gurnam S.S. (2007), East of Indus: My Memories of Old Punjab. New Delhi: Hemkunt Publishers. Chopra, Radhika (2004), “Encountering Masculinity: An Ethnographer’s Dilemma”, in Radhika Chopra (ed.), South Asian Masculinities: Context of Change, Sites of Continuity. New Delhi: Kali for Women & Women Unlimited, pp. 36–59. Chowdhury, Indira (1998), The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, Veena (2001). “Crisis in Representation: Rumor and the Circulation of Hate”, in Michael S. Roth and Charles G. Salas (eds), Disturbing Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute, pp. 37–62. Dhawan, Purnima (2001), When Sparrows Became Hawks: The Making of the Sikh Warrior Tradition, 1699–1799. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, Mike (1993), “What Is Hegemonic Masculinity?”. Theory and Society, 22 (5), 643–57. Dudrah, Rajinder K. (2002), “Cultural Production in the British Bhangra Music Industry: Music-Making, Locality, and Gender”. International Journal of Punjab Studies, 9 (2), 219–51. Dutta, Nonica (1999), Forming an Identity: A Social History of the Jats. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gera Roy, Anjali (2010), Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond. Farnham: Ashgate. Gera Roy, Anjali (2011), “Celebrating ‘The Sons of Jats’: The Return of Tribes in the Global Village”. South Asian Diaspora, 3 (1), 89–102. Jaffrelot, Christopher (2010), Religion, Caste and Politics in India. Delhi: Primus. Jakobsh, Doris (2005), Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transforming Meaning and Identity. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Kalsi, Seva Singh (1992), The Evolution of a Sikh Community in Britain. University of Leeds: Community Religions Project, Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Kaur Singh, Nikky-Guninder (1993), The Feminine Principle in the Sikh Vision of the Transcendent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kumar, Ravish (2010), “Ankhi Putt Chamaran De”, Ravish ki Report, NDTV, 25 June. YouTube – Ankhi Putt Chamaran De – NDTV Report – Part 2. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi-LCSZvbfI (accessed 15 August 2010). Lybarger, Lowell H. (1998), “Hereditary Musician Groups of Pakistani Punjab”. Journal of Punjab Studies, 18 (1/2), 97–130. Available at: http://www. global.ucsb.edu/punjab/journal/v18_1-2/articles/4_Mirasis.pdf (accessed 12 August 2014). Mooney, Nicola (2011), Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity among Jat Sikhs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mosher, Donald L. and Mark Sirkin (1984), “Measuring a Macho Personality Constellation”. Journal of Research in Personality, 18 (2), 150–63. Nigar, Shazia (2013), “Redemption Songs”, tehelaka.com, Vol. 11 (10), March 16. Available at: http://www.tehelka.com/redemption-songs/ (accessed 30 November 2014). Padhi, Ranjana (2012), Those Who Did Not Die: Impact of the Agrarian Crisis on Women in Punjab. Delhi: SAGE. Puri, Naresh (2003), “The Caste Divide”, BBC Radio, 4 April. Available at: http://newint.org/features/2005/07/01/casteout/#sthash.OJX4FDxp. dpuf (accessed 30 October 2013). Ram, Ronki (2008), “Ravidass Deras and Social Protest: Making Sense of Dalit Consciousness in Punjab (India)”. Journal of Asian Studies, 67 (4), 1341–64. Sharma, Sanjay, John Hutnyk and Ashwani Sharma (1996), Disorienting Rhythms: The Politics of the New Asian Dance Music. London: Zed Books. Sinha, Mrinalini (1995), Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Streets, Heather (2004), Martial Races: The Military, Race, and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Subramanian, Aishhwariya (2011), “Hard Kaur, India’s First Female Rapper”, The New Indian Express, 5 February. Available at: http://www.newindianexpress. com/entertainment/interviews/article393269.ece (accessed 12 August 2014). Syan, Hardip Singh (2012), Sikh Militancy in the Seventeenth Century: Religious Violence in Mughal and Early Modern India. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wikipedia (2014), “Kuldeep Manak”. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Kuldeep_Manak (accessed 12 August 2014).

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Wiktionary (n.d.), “Vir”. Available at: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vir (accessed 12 August 2014). Yaariyan (2008). Film by Deepak Grewal, Pinky Basrao Films. Songs Apache Indian (1993), “Arranged Marriage”, No Reservations, Island. Apache Indian (feat. Malkit Singh) (2007), “Independent Girl Sohniaye”, Wild East, Oriental Star. Bindrakhiya, Surjit (1993), “Boliyan”, Best of Bindrakhiya, World Music, Roma Ii Limited/Empire Music Limited. Guleria, Dolly (2013), “Ambarsare”, Sony Music. Hans, Hans Raj (2010), “Put chamara de mayia”, Live Performance, Bootan Mandi Mela. Jazzy B (2002), “Putt Jattan da”, Tera Roop, MovieBox/Tips/Music Waves. Jazzy B (2008), Jatt. Rambo, MovieBox/Speed Records/Planet Recordz. Kaur, Hard/The Sona Family Ft. (2006), “Glassy”, Bombay Bronx. Manak, Kuldeep (1997), “Jatt ho gaya Sharabi”, Nale Baba Lassi Pee Geya, Saregama. Miss Puja (2011), “Charche”, Breathless, MovieBox Records/T-Series. Pammi Bai (2005), “Jatt Punjabi”, Nachde Punjabi, Finetouch. Panjabi by Nature (PBN) Ft. Miss Puja (2009), “Aashiq”, Homegrown, Limitless Records. Panjabi MC (2002), “Mundian Ton Bach Ke Rahin”, Legalised, Urban. Shinda, Surinder (1981), “Put Jattan de”, Putt Jattan de, Original Motion Film Sound Track. Singh, Malkit (ft. Bally Sagoo) (1997), “Gur nalon ishq mitha”, Bally Sagoo on the Mix: The Story So Far. Polygram. Tajpuri, S.J. (2009), “Bibe putt chamara de”, Ankhi Putt Chamara De, Kingstar. Taz, E. (2005), “Ran Botal wargi”, Look Again, The Sound Pipe Records. Thakarwal, Rajni (2012), “Dhee Chamara di”, Surme Putt Kahonde A, Kingstar. Yamla Jat, Lalchand (2011), “Whisky di botal wargi”, Yamla Jatt Live in Punjab, Smile. Yo Yo, Honey Singh/Jazzy B Feat (2011), “The Party is Gettin Hot”, This Party Gettin Hot, Kamlee Records.

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Part III: Reflexivity and Translation

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Chapter 9

Beyond Code-Switching: Young Punjabi Sikhs in Britain Kaveri Qureshi

Later in life, when asked to reminisce, young Punjabi Sikhs in the West Midlands talked about school as the first time when they came into extensive contact with other children who were not Punjabi. Up until starting school, they said they had spent their lives mostly in the company of close family and their parents’ circles of extended family and friends. Primary school was where they came into extensive contact with the “outside culture” and started “mixing up” with other people. Inderjit’s interview offers a representative example of how young people talked about the cultural changes that schooling brought in their lives. I met Inderjit, aged 21, at a talk organized by one of the university Sikh Societies. She was curious about what I was doing at the talk and why I was taking notes. When I explained that I was researching identity and how British Punjabis felt about India she agreed to talk to me again. She was born in Cardiff to professional parents from East Africa but her family moved to Birmingham when she was 10 in order to be closer to the aunts, uncles and grandparents. She talked movingly about how she appreciated spending time with her grandmother, as she’d had the chance to learn a lot about her history, culture, cooking and language. Picking up on that, I asked her how she had learnt about Punjabi culture, growing up in Cardiff and Birmingham. Inderjit: It’s quite funny because when I was little I couldn’t speak English, I’d just be speaking Punjabi, because at home that’s all anybody would talk to me in y’know, that’s all I kinda understood. I know a lot of kids that are like that, from when they were born … from when they were born to when they hit nursery could just, they just knew their own language and their own culture [my emphasis], they didn’t know anything else. It’s when they start getting into school and they start mixing with everybody from every culture, from every religion, all sorts, that they start to pick up other languages, English being the main one. But when they hit high school they’ve gotta learn French, German, whatever. So you kind-of, as you grow up, I think school’s probably the main influence for y’know, the outside culture. But I think … I dunno … it depends on your parents as well and who they are, it depends who you choose to hang around with when you’re out there.

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Young Sikhs in a Global World K: So were your parents particularly clear about wanting you to understand your heritage and your Punjabi culture and things like that? Inderjit: That’s just my parents, though. I know a lot of parents that aren’t … they kind-of just … they haven’t taught their kids anything like that. They’ve just kind-of lived their life as their parents have told them whereas my parents would teach me about it. I’ve never actually been to India yet. My dad’s side of the family moved to Africa from India, a lot of the family is there so I’ve been to Africa quite a few times but I’ve never been over to India, not yet anyway. But yeah, so we’ve got like a bit of Swahili and stuff in our family as well and things like that so we’re kind-of mixed up. But it’s good to be like that though ’cos you kind-of become a more rounded person, you get a bit of everything but … what was the question sorry? K: You were talking about how you learnt Punjabi culture and you said that your parents were quite different from the parents of other people your age because they were more …? Inderjit: They did … they did teach. They encouraged it if you like, encouraged me watching Punjabi films and things like that rather than … well they kind-of mixed it up, they didn’t mind y’know watching English TV and stuff like that but they … Like at home they preferred to speak Punjabi, they preferred to do that sort of thing, so you just grow up and it’s like a … just a second side of you. I think it is important, especially if you’ve been born here, whereas if you were born over in India it would be automatic, it would just be normal to you, whereas here you kinda have to embrace it because you’re always out there y’know, with complete different society than if you were over in India so yeah, but this is what you have to teach your kids … y’know … history.

What I’m interested in drawing out here is how Inderjit tried to divide her life into “English culture” and her “own culture” or “own language”. She said that she started off being and speaking Punjabi, but when she went to school she started picking up the “outside culture”. She attributed her successful biculturalism to her parents’ efforts in inculcating an understanding of Punjabi culture and language, recognizing that, once you go to school, English ways start to dominate over a Punjabi upbringing and Punjabi ceases to be “automatic” or “normal to you”, as they would be if you were growing up in India. This habit of dividing life down the middle, into its Punjabi and English components, was a common feature of young people’s discourse, along with associated terms like “culture clash” and being “between two cultures”. However, Inderjit’s own testimony hints at the conceptual exclusions that creep in when you try to divide social life and experience down the middle. How to account for her mention of French and

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German? How to figure in the East African connection, which she foregrounds as an unassailable part of the complex migration and cultural history of her family, to such an extent that she even forgets her train of thought? And what to make of the “kind-of mixed up” home environment that her parents gave her, in which Punjabi language was encouraged but not to the exclusion of English TV? These kinds of complications are the ethnographic focus of this chapter. From the 1970s, the growing-up of a generation of British-born Punjabis gave rise to concerns about the “culture clash” experienced by young people growing up in Britain, “caught between” the values of their families and communities and their educators and peer groups at school. While the first generations of post-war migrants lived largely within a social world of other migrants, the socalled “second generation”1 spending their childhoods mostly in Britain had to move between a wider variety of social arenas, home and school, organized around different cultural conventions. The parallel demands of supposedly very different cultures and moralities were assumed to produce psychological distress and confusion (see Saifullah Khan, 1979; Watson, 1977). This assumption came under major critique in the 1990s, when the linguistic practice of ‘code-switching’ was developed as a root metaphor to describe the everyday movements effected by young people between different cultures or codes. In the introduction to Desh Pardesh, Roger Ballard describes young British Asians as skilled “cultural navigators”. Their linguistic proficiencies are taken as a template for broader cultural transactions made in their lives. If multilingualism is a perfectly normal human capacity, and the ability to switch from one linguistic and cultural code to another is not a recipe for psychological confusion, then “as with language, so with culture” as Ballard says (Ballard, 1994, p. 31). He sees the “second generation” enjoying effervescent, creative processes of mixing between cultures. They “take delight in drawing eclectically on every tradition available to them” and “carve out new styles of interaction among themselves” (Ballard, 1994, p. 34). The metaphor of “code-switching” has been supported by sustained ethnographic explorations of young British Punjabis’ cultural productions such as that of Kathleen Hall, who extends the idea of codes as languages or linguistic registers to entire social fields (Hall, 2002, drawing on Gumpertz, 1982; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Picking up on her informants’ discourse that “you can’t be religious and be westernized” (pp. 147–69) and “there’s a time to act English and a time to act Indian” (pp. 170–93), she uses the idea of “translation” to describe the situational performances of identity through which British Punjabi youth negotiate the opposed social fields of temple, home and 1 “Second-generation” is a term I am uncomfortable with, because it seems to fix young people within a perennial immigrant imaginary. However, I am retaining this term in my academic writing because it has such wide currency among the people with whom I have carried out research (Qureshi, 2014a, p. 2).

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school. Bilingual acts of “code-switching” become an extended metaphor for the kinds of fluid and situated bicultural competences performed and embodied by young people in the diaspora, as they transition between different social fields. In this chapter, however, I seek to go a little deeper into the literature on code-switching in linguistics, in which this extension of the analytic of “codeswitching” to ideas of “dual habituses” and “social fields” has been viewed with ambivalence, and these debates should surely have a bearing on discussions of the wider cultural productions of diasporic youth. For a linguist, “code-switching” is understood as occurring when, for instance, a metropolitan speaker of Hindi comes across a group of Bhojpuris in north India and they abandon their Bhojpuri and adopt a more mainstream set of Hindi features (Gumpertz, 1982). More complicatedly, it can also be said to apply when a British Asian schoolgirl interrupts her use of standard English in an interview with a sociolinguist in order to tease her interrupting friend by impersonating an elder with “tun shut up ho ja’”, mixing the languages within a conversation to such a great and expert extent that she manages to pronounce “shut up” in an Indian English phonology (Sharma, 2011, pp. 15–17). Linguists Roxy Harris and Ben Rampton have welcomed the ways in which cultural analysts have taken up the code-switching as an example of interdisciplinary exchange, but they warn that “it’s important not to mistake the metaphorical resonance of linguistic concepts for the weight they have in the field where they have their centre of gravity” (Harris and Rampton, 2000, p. 17). They bring to the attention of a non-linguist reader more recent debates in linguistics that have shaken the assumptions undergirding the extension of “code-switching” to bicultural competences. For example, early research on “code-switching” looked for patterns in stable bilingual in-groups, whereas Rampton’s work emphasized that in situations of domination, inequality and ethnic difference, which characterized historical situations of language genesis such as pidgins and creoles as well as today’s metropolitan linguascapes, half-understanding and uneven linguistic proficiency are pervasive and constitutive (Rampton, 1994). In later work, Jan Blommaert and Ben Rampton have shown how fundamental linguistic concepts have been unsettled by developments in post-structuralist and postmodernist theory. Rather than there being things that we can stably call languages, what they find is “ideologies of language” (Blommaert and Rampton 2011, pp. 3–4). Rather than there being bounded and homogeneous speech communities, we find that people have personal “linguistic repertoires” and deploy them complexly in accordance with their “linguistic sensibilities” and “structures of feeling” (Blommaert and Rampton, 2011, pp. 4–5). Rather than looking at the structures of language, linguists have increasingly studied communication, in which meaning-making is unshored from linguistic structure and treated as an “active process of here-andnow projection and inferencing” (Blommaert and Rampton, 2011, p. 5). Other more applied linguists have questioned whether pure “code-switching” happens

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at all, using biologistic examples such as accent. Veshawn Ashanti Young has worked extensively on Black American English, and writes about the “excess” of Black English accents (and other linguistic forms) in the speech even of President Obama. He demonstrates that Black language forms “break through” into standard English, and argues that this is an inextricable feature of Black American speech. Trying to separate the two languages is impossible; “codemeshing”, rather than “code-switching”, is what happens in practice (Ashanti Young, 2009). I argue that these debates in linguistics should be given more attention by those in sociology and anthropology who are making use of the metaphor of “code-switching” to understand the cultural translations of second-generation youth. In this chapter I explore the complexities of naturalistic mixing of language and culture, rather than emphasizing temple, home and school as separate and total social fields. Like others before me, I argue that work on the hybridity of bicultural youth predicated on “code-switching” is flawed in that it assumes the prior existence of whole cultures, an idea of culture that is much discredited in contemporary anthropology. Cultures, like languages, “are always hybrid … to speak of cultural mixing makes sense only from inside a social world. Hybridity is meaningless as a description of culture because it museumises culture as a thing” (Werbner, 1997, p. 15). Rather than being museum collections, cultures “may be grasped as porous, constantly changing and borrowing” (Werbner, 2001, p. 134). Moreover, I argue that the metaphor of “code-switching” unduly dichotomizes everyday life. Such compartmentalizing reinforces binary categories that are actually confounded through the practices of young Punjabis. Rather than “code-switching” between social fields, I suggest that the kind of “messiness” that Harris, Rampton, Blommaert and Ashanti Young describe – what Inderjit in the beginning of this chapter referred to as the “kind-of mixedup” culture in which she grew up – can be understood through Donna Haraway’s discussion of cyborgs and other sci fi monsters (Haraway, 1991). Although there are other theoretical models of hybridity around, I am drawn to Haraway’s, as her sensitive reading of black and postcolonial feminists makes her attune to something hinted at in the ethnography discussed here, which is the gendered burden of ideas about cultural authenticity, which rests disproportionately on the female gender. Her framing of hybridity in the figure of the cyborg offers an alternative to theories of hybridity premised on the coming together of different cultures. Haraway argues for a redefined model of identity that gives up the desire for “pure origins”, and works instead with illegitimate fusions, noise and pollution (Haraway, 1991, pp. 175–6). From Octavia Butler’s feminist science fiction about xenogenetic communities produced by interactions between humans and gene-peddling aliens, to Chicana feminist Cherrie Moraga’s exposition of Malinche (the indigenous South American woman who was Cortez’s first

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interpreter, mistress and the “mother of the mestizo ‘bastard’ race of the new world” [Haraway, 1991, p. 175]), Haraway develops the idea of the cyborg as a fantasy counter-self who has no pure origin story to tell. The cyborg emerges at the breakdown of boundaries between human and animal, organism and machine, physical and non-physical, nature and culture (Haraway, 1991, pp. 150–53). Like Butler’s hybrid communities and Moraga’s Malinche, the cyborg frees us from the quest for a unitary identity, which Haraway sees as generating problematic dualisms. That’s to say that the dualisms that have generated domination – male/female, public/private, nature/culture, self/other – can be seen as resulting from people trying to define themselves in counterpoint to that which they are not. Haraway’s challenge to the characterization of women’s lives by the public/private distinction is particularly useful here for an attempt to muddy the analogy drawn between bilingualism and biculturalism, and the movement of youth between Punjabi and English social fields. In her explication, ideal spaces like “home”, “market”, “paid work place”, “state”, “school”, “hospital” and “church” are shown to be not separate but “logically and practically implied in every other locus, analogous to a holographic photograph” (Haraway, 1991, p. 170). More pertinently, she shows that none of these ideal spaces can be taken as a locus for the identification of a unitary self: the issue is dispersion, partiality and contradiction. In the final part of this chapter I will return to the suitability of the cyborg as a critical conceptual resource to muddy the dualisms in the discourse of British Punjabis like Inderjit, who talk about “culture clash” and “identity crisis”, and contrast their “own language” and “own culture” with the “outside culture”. The material I discuss in this chapter puts ethnographic substance to Inderjit’s description of a ‘kind-of mixed-up’ upbringing, moving between the ideal loci of “home” and “school”. The examples deal with children in their first years of mainstream schooling, as I believe that Inderjit was right when she insisted on primary schooling as the source of these conceptual dualisms between “own” and “outside”. Unlike Harris, Rampton and Blommaert’s linguistic ethnography, I did not tape-record the informal interactions I describe below. There is a bias in my fieldnotes towards situations in which language itself became the focus of the interaction. I’m suggesting, though, that the ethnography suggests resonances between linguistic and other cultural competences. The ethnography is based on a year of residential fieldwork2 spent in and out of the home of Mandeep Kaur3 in Greenham4 in the West Midlands. Mandeep This research was carried out as part of the “Transnet” or “Transnationalisation, migration and transformation” project, funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Research Programme between 2008 and 2011. 3 A pseudonym, like all the other personal names used in the chapter. 4 A pseudonym. 2

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was born and brought up in Delhi, to parents who were from Gurdaspur district. She married another Delhi Punjabi at the age of 19, and had with him four children. In the early years of the marriage, her husband worked in Saudi Arabia (1980–82) and central Asia (1983–4) and then migrated to Britain in 1990 as a consequence of the 1984 Delhi riots, which decimated their business in Delhi and left them penniless. In Britain he had, with great difficulty, established a construction business that afforded them rented housing and a working-class lifestyle. Mandeep had joined him in Britain in 1992 and over the next five years managed to marry off three of her four children into the Punjabi community in Britain. She now lived in Greenham with her husband, her son Phinda, daughter-in-law Suman and two grandchildren, Jujhar (aged six) and Jaikara (aged four). Shortly after I got to know them, Mandeep’s divorced daughter Bubbly, who had a council house in the adjacent street and was being harassed by her ex-husband, moved in to Mandeep’s with her own two children, Kiran (aged seven) and Kamaljit (aged five). At Home with Mandeep A matriarch, Mandeep was a dominant figure in her grandchildren’s upbringing. She wanted them to get a better education than her own Matric-pass children, but more importantly, she wanted them to be loving and respectful. She wanted to maintain a close family and couldn’t bear the idea of the grandchildren drifting too far from her. Prior to living in Greenham, they had lived in another town in the West Midlands where they had purchased a house in a “white people’s area”. Mandeep told me that the school Jujhar was going to was very good “educationwise”, it was full of white children and quite strict. Jujhar was one of only two Asian children in the whole school. Although she didn’t understand much English herself, everybody told her that Jujhar had picked up a very posh English accent from that school. However, Jujhar had also been picked on because of being Asian, and so they decided to shift out of the area to a dilapidated rented house in Greenham, an area full of “our Punjabi people” that promised a better environment for bringing up children. What had bothered her in particular was when Jujhar had gone off his roti and started insisting that he only eat “English food” at home. “He used to say that children make fun of him and they don’t understand his food”. This devaluing of his domestic culture and particular visceral racist teasing about his food – familiar from my memories of school in the 1980s (Bhachu, 1991; Bhatti, 1999; Gillborn, 1990; see also Thapan in this volume) – and Jujhar’s resulting disavowal of Punjabi food and fascination for all things “English” were very distressing to his parents and grandparents. They were relieved to see that in Greenham, at a school where the majority of pupils were Punjabi, he started eating roti again. This reassured Mandeep, as she

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asserted, “our mahol [situation/environment of one’s upbringing] is such that we have to eat roti, we can’t feed them English food”. When they had moved to Greenham the school year had already begun, and there were no places at St John Fisher School for Kamaljit and Jaikara, the younger grandchildren. They stayed at home, watched TV and got under Suman’s feet during the day, waiting for Jujhar and Kiran to come home. Suman and Bubbly were responsible for dropping the older children at school in the morning and picking them up in the afternoon. When the older ones came home from school, Suman and Bubbly prepared them a snack of processed foods, such as crisps, processed cheese strings, and yogurts in plastic tubes. The kids would run around the house and play as a four-some of cousins, along with a couple of other children their age whose parents popped in every day to visit Mandeep. The evening meal was chapatti or rice (roti or chawal). The children would be variously cared for and disciplined by all the adult members of the family, although Mandeep wielded the most authority. It was also Mandeep who bathed them in the evening and put them to bed, patting them gently on their backs, singing them a song about Guru Gobind Singh ji and asking Baba ji to give them good sleep and good health. Mandeep had the idea that “English” people insisted on more rules and controls on their children’s behaviour than Asian people, and that their young children were better behaved. Mandeep did not worry much about the children being undisciplined and said that it was good for children their age to be naughty: “if a child isn’t naughty, it means their brains aren’t developing properly”. However, that didn’t mean that it was ok for children to be wild. In fact, the whole issue of disciplining children was a major subject of conversation as Mandeep urged family friends like myself not to let the children be too “free”, to assert ourselves and build some “fear” (dar). Creating dar with children was a moral imperative. Mandeep considered that of all the adults in their family, only she and Bubbly had successfully mastered the art of dar. “Myself ”, she explained to another visitor, “I never raise my hand to the kids and I never did to my own children either, but they still have that dar of me. You’ve seen how I am. I can be down here in the living room and they could be all over the house, but they know I can hear them and they stay in control”. Creating dar involved a range of intimidating gestures including the fixed stare, the frowning eyebrows, the sudden gesture of hand locked in mid-smack, the sharp shout of “eh!” and finally the full-on shouting. These went hand-in-hand with a lavishing of praise, cuddles and kisses, inventing endearments and songs based on the children’s names, giving out confectionary and other small and inexpensive gifts. The summer holidays were spent in a constant state of flux between giving out love and creating dar, as the women spent entire days trying to keep the kids from squabbling. Bubbly summarized the summer holidays as “they fight, they

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come to us, we make them apologise, they fight, they come to us, we make them apologise”. And so it went on. Although Mandeep wasn’t fazed by the children’s unruly play, she disliked numerous aspects of the British youth culture of boyfriends–girlfriends, pop music, hooded tops, untidy, casual or revealing street clothing – although in my company she was always careful to state that the worst offenders were the British Indians rather than the white people themselves, which was why she emphasized defiantly that she was “proud to be a freshie”. When she looked at teenagers in Britain she disliked the assertive, resistive nature of the youth culture and its opposition to parental authority. She recognized the whims and vagaries of peer group influences and wanted to ward off the risk that the children might get into “bad company”. Good parenting also entailed giving a strong and concerted effort to give the children a wholly Punjabi upbringing and educate them about the religion. She was resolute that “main is ghar ko India hee rakhti hoon” (“I keep this house like India itself ”), and the mantra “main England ko andar ghussne nay deti hoon” (“I don’t let England sneak inside this house”) cropped up repeatedly in my fieldnotes from Mandeep’s home. She was toying with the idea of sending Jujhar and Jaikara back to Delhi to stay with her sister when they became teenagers, so that they wouldn’t be “exposed” to negative influences (see Qureshi, 2014b, 2015). The shift to Greenham had sorted out the problem of Jujhar’s racist teasing and going off his roti. Although Mandeep wanted to keep the home hermetically sealed from the “outside society”, however, there were important ways in which the culture of St John Fisher School entered and transformed the relations of the home. The most obvious was through language. Before his first day of school, Jujhar had grown up in a Punjabi-speaking home environment and “he did not know a word of English on his first day of school”. Without the help of a special language tutor at school, Mandeep estimated that he’d picked it up within three months. However, Jujhar’s English was now stronger than his Punjabi, as was Kiran’s.5 Jujhar reported to me that he never spoke Punjabi at school, even with his siblings and cousins, and this would be in keeping with many studies of bilingual children which have found that “when it comes to an analysis of language and power, young children have greatest investments in situations and texts that arise in their immediate social classroom worlds” (Comber, 2003, p. 359; Pagett, 2006). The home liaison officer at St John Fisher confirmed that the Punjabi children spoke English with one another in the classroom, but added that she often observed children using Punjabi in the playground and dinner

5 Kiran’s story was somewhat different, as her father was British-born and had used more English with her at home from the start.

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hall. This was something that irritated her – a Black Caribbean women – as she saw it as exclusionary to the other children.6 At home, there were linguistic patterns of “between-turn code-switching” whereby the language of interaction with their siblings and cousins was English, with parents they spoke a mixture, and interaction with their monolingual grandparents was in Punjabi, to the extent that this could be mustered (see Ng and He, 2004). They spoke to their grandparents and other visiting monolingual elders in Punjabi, out of respect. Otherwise, they engaged in “within-turn codeswitching” due to a lack of expressiveness and fluency. With their parents, they mixed English and Punjabi within sentences depending on topic-specific expressions, as the following excerpt exemplifies: Kiran having breakfast during the summer holidays, grizzling because she has a fever; the adults were worried that it might be ‘swine flu’. Bubbly gave Kiran a cup of hot sweet milk and slices of bread for breakfast. Kiran [to Bubbly, who ignores]: Mummy, main eh crusts nu like nay kardi! (Mummy, I don’t like these crusts!) [pushes plate] Kiran [turns to Kaveri Aunty]: When you’ve got bukhar (fever) you don’t feel like eating anything. Bubbly [tries to give Kiran aspirin for her fever]: Eh vee khao. (Have this as well.) Kiran [complains, as she chews pills to swallow them]: Nay mummy, yucky aa! (No mummy, it’s yucky!) Bubbly [snaps at Kiran]: Yucky aa to ky aa! Dawai aa, golian ta nay aa! (So what if it’s yucky! It’s meant to be medicine, not sweets!)

In this brief exchange, Kiran used a mixture of “between-turn” and “within-turn code-switching”. With me, she spoke in English, using Punjabi only for the word bukhar, which, like other key cultural vocabulary concerning intimate, domestic and base functions, is often retained in Punjabi in conversations with bilingual peers7 (see Sharma, 2011). With her mother, she spoke in Punjabi, although her The confinement of Punjabi to the playground and its importance for a multi-ethnic youth culture is explored in Rampton (1994). 7 While I was obviously much older and white, due to my unfluent Hindi and Punjabi, enjoyment of children’s company and freedom from the core adult functions and concerns of the household I was often treated as a child in the families I spent time with during fieldwork. 6

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grammar and range in this language was less than in English. She used “crusts” in English, which makes sense as leavened white bread with crusts has not historically been cooked in Punjab, and so it serves as a key cultural vocabulary for these kinds of breakfasts. She used “like karna” as a mixed auxiliary verb, a very common way in which English elements have been borrowed into Punjabi and Hindi both in South Asia and the diaspora (Snell, 2011). “Like karna” is also used in adult Indian Punjabi speech, to the extent that it has become a long-established variant of the language – albeit inflected by class, education, urban living and media exposure. “Mummy” is so established in adult Punjabi that there are in fact no contemporary Punjabi variants in use, making it hard to distinguish what is Punjabi and what English (Martin et al., 2003, p. 251). Kiran also used “yucky” in English, a word from children’s own peer language, to resist parental authority. Bubbly understood “yucky”, got annoyed and responded appropriately, incorporating “yucky” into her own admonishing response. What was significant to note was the extent to which the children’s use of English was responsible for introducing English more widely in the home. Bubbly told me that she had learnt her English mainly from her children, and that if she made any mistakes Kiran would tell her “no mummy … it’s not like that, it’s like this”. Mandeep said that although she did not know “proper English” and felt hesitant to speak English with white people, “we do talk to each other in broken (toti photi) English at home”. The extent to which Jujhar and Kiran had succeeded in changing linguistic practices at home was illustrated by the differences between Jujhar’s first day at school, and Jaikara and Kamaljit’s. Jujhar, as I mentioned, did not know any English at all when he started school. By comparison, Jaikara and Kamaljit had passive knowledge of English which resulted from the “mixed” linguistic environment they were embedded in at home as well as media exposure via TV and radio (see Romaine, 1995, pp. 183–5). When I first got to know them, before they started school, Jaikara could follow English speech but replied mostly in Punjabi, inflecting any borrowed English words with Punjabi phonetics and morpho-syntactic constraints. Kamaljit could produce some English although everyone apart from Kiran and Bubbly found it difficult to follow what he was trying to say as many of the sounds from Punjabi had transferred onto his English (e.g. he used a heavily aspirated “t” for “thoilet” instead of “toilet”) and his grammar was jumbled. These differences between the linguistic environments of Jujhar and his younger siblings and cousins point to some of the difficulties in distinguishing between models of “simultaneous” or “consecutive” bilingualism, or “endogenous” and “exogenous” bilingualism as assigned according to the presence of English speakers in the environment (e.g. Hamers and Blanc, 2000). As the children’s use of English increased at home, their Punjabi speech became increasingly inflected with English phonology, grammar and vocabulary. Mandeep was aware of this linguistic interference and analysed some aspects

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of it. Criticizing the British-born generations – one of her favourite topics of conversation – she complained that “they’re supposed to be speaking Punjabi, but it sounds like they’re speaking English”. She pointed out that they were not able to pronounce tonal consonants, meaning that words like bhabhi (sister-in-law), paji (brother) or ghar (home) came out sounding “flat” rather than with the tonality and punch of Indian Punjabi. “They can’t say paaji, poor things”, she scoffed, “they just say ‘paji’” – the slight falsetto voicing for the latter signalling the effeminate and less convincing charisma of an inferior language in practice. She also teased the British-born generations for not being able to pronounce retroflex consonants such as rh. Sitting upstairs in a mixed linguistic group with Bubbly, Suman, some British-born neighbours and the grandchildren, I was asked mischievously to demonstrate my pronunciation of words like kurhi (girl) which were received with hoots of laughter and then used to admonish the British-born generations that “if Kaveri Aunty can learn to say it, why can’t you?”8 The children were self-conscious about their Punjabi and aware that elders disapproved of their lack of fluency. One mundane but painful episode I observed was from Amarpreet, aged eight, when he was visiting Mandeep with his mother, Pam. Pam was one of the British-born friends who used to visit Mandeep on a daily basis and Amarpreet spent hours after school tearing around the house with Jujhar, Kiran, Kamaljit and Jaikara. Amarpreet is so-called “third generation” and his knowledge of Punjabi had therefore been filtered down through his imbalanced bilingual parents. Amarpreet was talking boisterously about some Punjabi songs in my mobile phone while sitting in Mandeep’s bedroom. Mandeep was getting fed up with the noise so I confiscated the mobile and he tried to get it back from me. Mandeep snapped at him and told him off for speaking in English: “Punjabi vich keh do, menu samajh nay laggdi”, meaning “say it in Punjabi, I can’t understand”. Amarpreet understood the Punjabi reprimand, but became panicky, gave up attempting the simple sentence “where is the mobile?” and tried to run away, at which Mandeep scolded him again for not being able to speak his “own language”. His mother, Pam, intervened and helped him to translate, but protected him and took the blame, apologizing to 8 The awareness that Indian Punjabi speakers had of grammatical changes in the Punjabi spoken by the British-born generations, as well as the fact that they used more English words in their Punjabi, gives ethnographic validity to Martin, Krishnamurthy, Bhardwaj, and Charles’s analysis of “interference” from English in a corpus of British-born primary school children’s Punjabi speech, from grammatical case to word order and vocabulary changes. They show that children are commonly applying English subject-verb-object word order to Punjabi, using Punjabi pronouns to indicate grammatical subject instead of omitting and leaving it implicit as in Indian Punjabi, confusing the oblique case, transitive and intransitive verbs and omitting nu in dative constructions. They also show that English equivalents are being used for “core” vocabulary and not only for “cultural loan words” (Martin et al., 2003).

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Mandeep that “I don’t speak that much Punjabi with them”. This small example conveys the horror that I found most monolingual/imbalanced bilingual children had of speaking Punjabi with elders. There were ways in which the pull of Punjabi continued to inflect the children’s English speech, too. Kiran became extremely abashed when chatting to me about her favourite and least favourite foods and found that I could not understand the expression “closed cauliflower” in English, which – when she quickly translated it as band gobhi – turned out to be a literal, word-for-word translation of the Punjabi word for cabbage. As she explained, “sometimes I don’t know what it is in English because we only say the word in Punjabi”. Another example was the consistent use of the phrase “wearing your hair open” instead of “down”. The use of phatic words, such as slipping in hu na (isn’t it) at the end of English sentences, or ke (that) in Punjabi to break clauses, was also unconscious. Moreover, Punjabi grammatical use of ke was frequently transposed into entirely English sentences so “that” comes to be used grammatically in the same way, as in “go and tell Ajit that ‘wake up’”. Punjabi phonology was lurking under the surface of their speech and could spring up when least expected. Another embarrassing incident for Kiran was when she was picked up at school for saying “womited” instead of “vomited”: “I didn’t mean to, but it came out in a Punjabi accent”. Despite the discomfort they had about these slips of the tongue, resulting from linguistic interference and the normative pressures on them from home and school to demonstrate fluency in both languages, in the context of their British Punjabi peers the mixing of languages was not a source of embarrassment but of pleasure and pride as they demonstrated their shared heritage by incorporating Punjabi words, with appropriate phonology and morpho-syntactic constraints, into their English. “Kuti” and “sali”, Kiran teased her friend from St John Fisher as we walked out of the school gates one afternoon. The use of high prestige Patois and urban elements in their speech with their friends from school – such as Sahil greeting his friend at school with “wha a gwan” (“what’s going on in”, in Patois) – combined with exaggerated Punjabi phonology in their West Midlands English – such as enhanced retroflexion of words like “India” – in playground speech. For Amarpreet, it was particularly striking that the embarrassment he had at his Punjabi in front of monolingual elders was lifted among his peers with whom the shared linguistic heritage was indexed through this multi-ethnic street-smart language rather than native Punjabi speech. The children’s identification with Punjabi language as their notional mother tongue – not only being, but doing Punjabi – was extremely important to them even if their actual language was mixed. One afternoon Kiran decided to demonstrate to me her newly acquired ability to count up to 24 in Punjabi, learnt from the gurdwara Punjabi class. Her pride at the achievement was palpable. She told me in her West Midlands accent, “I’m half Punjabi, mum says”. When

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I asked her what she meant, she replied, “I mean like, mum says I can speak half Punjabi”. Listening to us, her grandmother Mandeep intervened, pulled Kiran into a bear hug and treated her with “nahi, Kiran meri desi girl hai, meri desi girl! ” (“no, Kiran’s my Punjabi girl, my Punjabi girl!”) – encouraging her to value her Punjabi heritage and think of herself as a pure Punjabi rather than a hybrid. Language was an example of a host of cultural changes initiated by the children at home. The children’s demands for “English food” introduced the adults to pizza, chips and the various “junk” items they bought for the children’s afternoon snacks. Accompanying Mandeep and Bubbly for their “rations” shopping, I was interested to discover the depth of Mandeep’s knowledge of English confectionary, her skilful distinguishing between Milky Bars and Kinder Buenos, Fab Bars and Soleros. Later in the year as we approached the Christmas holidays, the adults began discussions about which computer game console to gift the children for Christmas. I was again intrigued by Mandeep’s detailed knowledge of computer gaming, her mastery over the distinctions between the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo Wii, the range of games that could be played on each console, the various attachments and plug-ins that were needed to be able to play the games that were on offer. The last time I saw them before the Christmas break, Kamaljit gifted me a Christmas card that he had made at school and I went with Mandeep, Suman and Bubbly to a cash and carry in Birmingham. Mandeep and Bubbly made discerning choices between different strings of Christmas lights, Mandeep taking a string of multicolour flashing ones, Bubbly taking a net. Mandeep bought a plastic tree with lights on the ends of the branches and two plug-in flashing Santas, explaining to me that “Jujhar is crazy about Christmas, he’s always bothering me ‘oh please, please, let’s get a tree’”. We wandered over to the toys section and selected some racing cars and girly hairdressing kits. Bubbly played with the idea of buying a more expensive radio hand-controlled car for Kamaljit, but Mandeep warned her that there was no point in getting more of these kinds of gifts as the kids were getting the Nindendo Wiis after all. As we worked through the aisles, I was struck by how completely absorbed they were in their Christmas shopping, wrapped up in the fine distinctions between the material culture of local customs such as Christmas: and all at the children’s demand. Concluding Discussion The contrast between Mandeep’s firm statements about “not letting England sneak into the house”, and “bringing our children up as we were brought up in India” and the kinds of pervasive cultural changes that I could see the children introducing inside the house make me critical of approaches to hybridity that centre around the idea of biculturalism, dual habituses and social fields.

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Kathleen Hall’s assumption that the home was, for Punjabi youth in Leeds, “a world transplanted to England”, seemed increasingly unconvincing (Hall, 2002, p. 173). I suggest that these kinds of analytics privilege ideologies that reiterate the idea of two museumized cultural traditions at odds with each other, albeit with the twist that these museumized traditions now provide the basis for crafting hybrid identities. Mandeep kept a close rein on the grandchildren’s interest in the assertive, resistive youth culture of British teenagers, derided them for their loss of Punjabi speech and charisma, terrified Amarpreet for his inability to make sentences in his “own language”, and told Kiran off for entertaining ideas of herself as “half Punjabi”. Kiran was meant to be a desi girl. Speaking, or doing Punjabi was crucial for that. Equally, the disapproval expressed by St John Fisher’s home liaison officer over children’s use of Punjabi in the playground shows us the normalization of monolingual English and the power of school pedagogy. Here we see the discourses about total social fields, bounded cultures in and of themselves that are reiterated by young people like Inderjit, with whom I began this chapter, with her distinctions between “our own language” and “our own culture” and the “outside culture”. However, detailed mini-ethnography muddies the binary categories of home and school that underlie these linguistic and cultural ideologies. Home was a “kind-of mixed-up” place. We could see the culture of school life entering and transforming the relations of the home, at the children’s instigation. English language came to pervade “home”, as the children responded to schooling not by compartmentalizing linguistic and cultural codes but with their English becoming dominant, affecting interactions with their parents and grandparents with the end result that home became a mixed linguistic environment. Younger children Kamaljit and Jaikara were exposed to a different linguistic set-up than Jujhar and Kiran, who were only two or three years older. At the children’s demand, a whole host of other cultural changes were introduced into the house, such as pizza, chips, confectionery, Cheestrings, Frubes, material culture and Christmas. Home became a mish-mash. At the same time, though, school was also “mixed-up”. The standard English spoken in the classroom was only one of multiple linguistic registers in which they acquired proficiency, including the pleasurable multi-ethnic speech of the playground. Haraway’s fantasy of the cyborg can help us here. The shape-shifting figure of the cyborg rejects recourse to ideas of unified cultural origins and has its origins “in the middle”. Moreover, unlike other accounts of hybridity, the cyborg confounds the antagonistic dualisms that have been systemic to the domination of less powerful groups, rather than perpetuates them. Like the idealized spaces of “home” and “market”, which Haraway show to provide no stable ground for the identification of women’s lives, the social fields of “home” and “school” have been shown here to be “logically and practically implied in one another”, like

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a holographic photograph (Haraway, 1991, p. 170 passim). Moreover, neither of these ideal spaces can be taken as a locus for the identification of a unitary self. Young people do not switch between Punjabi language and habitus at home and English outside, but rather, their hybridity is dispersed across these sites, confounding the idea of linguistic or cultural compartmentalization. References Ashanti Young, Vershawn. (2009), “Nah, We Straight: An Argument Against Code-switching”. JAC, 29 (1–2), 49–76. Ballard, Roger (1994), Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain. London: Hurst & Co. Bhachu, Parminder (1991), “Ethnicity Constructed and Reconstructed: The Role of Sikh Women in Cultural Elaboration and Educational Decisionmaking in Britain”. Gender and Education, 3, 45–60. Bhatti, Ghazala (1999), Asian Children at Home and in School. London: Routledge. Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton (2011), “Language and Superdiversity”. Diversities, 13 (2), 1–20. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic J.D. Wacquant (1992), An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Comber, Barbara (2003), “Critical Literacy: What Does It Look Like in the Early Years?”, in N. Hall, J. Larrson and J. Marsh (eds), Handbook of Early Child Literacy. London: SAGE, pp. 355–68. Gillborn, David (1990), Race, Ethnicity and Education: Teaching and Learning in Multiethnic Schools. London: Unwin Hyman. Gumpertz, John J. (1982), Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Kathleen (2002), Lives in Translation: Sikh Youth as British Citizens. Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press. Hamers, Josiane F. and Michael H.A. Blanc (2000), Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haraway, Donna J. (1991), Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge: New York. Harris, Roxy and Ben Rampton (2000), Creole Metaphors and Cultural Analysis: The Limits and Possibilities of Sociolinguistics. Available at: https://kclpure. kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/creole-metaphors-in-cultural-analysis-onthe-limits-and-possibilities-of-socio-linguistics(a3f97763-c71b-47b6-a5f17166bf62b71e).html. Martin, Deirdre, Ramesh Krishnamurthy, Mangat Bhardwaj and Reeva Charles (2003), “Language Change in Young Panjabi/English Children: Implications

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for Bilingual Language Assessment”. Child Language Teaching and Therapy, 19 (3), 245–65. Ng, Sik Hunh and Anping He (2004), “Code-switching in Tri-generational Family Conversations Among Chinese Immigrants in New Zealand”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23 (1), 28–48. Pagett, Linda (2006), “Mum and Dad Prefer Me to Speak Bengali at Home: Code-switching and Parallel Speech in a Primary School Setting”. Literacy, 40 (3), 137–45. Qureshi, Kaveri (2014a), “Culture Shock on Southall Broadway: Re-thinking ‘Second-generation’ Return through ‘Geographies of Punjabiness’”. South Asian Diaspora, 6 (2), 161–71. Qureshi, Kaveri (2014b), “Sending Children to School ‘Back Home’: Multiple Moralities of Punjabi Sikh Parents in Britain”. Journal of Moral Education, 2 (3), 213–26. Qureshi, Kaveri (2015) “Sending Children ‘Back Home’ for their (Mis)education”, in S. Irudaya Rajan, V.J. Varghese and A. Nanda (eds), Migrations, Mobility and Multiple Affiliations: Punjabis in a Transnational World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 281–95. Rampton, Ben (1994), Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman. Romaine, Suzanne (1995), Bilingualism. Oxford: Blackwell. Saifullah Khan, Verity (ed.) (1979), Minority Families in Britain: Support and Stress. London: Macmillan. Sharma, Devyani (2011), “Return of the Native: Hindi in British English”, in R. Kothari and R. Snell (eds), Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. New Delhi: Penguin, pp. 1–22. Snell, Rupert (2011), “Hindi: Its Threatened Ecology and Natural Genius”, in R. Kothari and R. Snell (eds), Chutnefying English: The Phenomenon of Hinglish. New Delhi: Penguin, pp. 22–36. Watson, James L. (ed.) (1977), Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain. Oxford Blackwell. Werbner, Pnina (1997), “Introduction: The Dialectics of Cultural Hybridity”, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds), Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-racism (London: Zed Books), pp. 1–26. Werbner, Pnina (2001), “The Limits of Cultural Hybridity: On Ritual Monsters, Poetic Licence and Contested Postcolonial Purifications”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7 (1), 133–52.

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Chapter 10

Young Sikhs in Italy: A Plural Presence for an Intergenerational Dialogue Barbara Bertolani

In the common feeling and in the public Italian discourse in mass media at a local and national level, Sikhs are generally considered a supportive and cohesive community of good and pacific workers, immersed in a religious dimension of life (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco, 2011; Sai, 2009). Despite some exceptions,1 Sikhs embody the “ideal” of well-integrated immigrants and this is partially the result of some positive stereotypes that Italians share in their collective imagination towards Indians in general. The memory of Mahatma Gandhi and his life based on “non-violence” and of Mother Teresa’s actions foster the definition of a positive and homogeneous community, where internal religious and cultural distinctions are played down. This general stereotype is even strengthened by the first-generation Indians’ tendency to be invisible and “encapsulated” in their community, at least in what concerns everyday social and working life. This “invisibility” is felt as non-threatening by Italians; on the contrary, it is conceived as the clear sign that these immigrants are devoted to hard work and spiritual life. Many Sikhs in Italy work in the agricultural sector, employed in cattle farming and vegetable growing, at least in the first years of their migratory process. Italians frequently interpret the choice of these jobs by Indians as a productive vocation, due to cultural and religious predispositions and the cult of the “holy cow”. In contrast, the existence of complex processes of hierarchization and ethnicization in the national labour market is systematically ignored by Italians. Similarly, the role of ethnic networks in the search for and the maintenance of a job is generally underestimated (Bertolani, 2013b; Provincia di Cremona, 2002). The assumed devotion to duty, strengthened by specific cultural and religious stereotypes, is the reason why Italians generally consider Sikhs as well integrated in spite of their religious difference and contrary to other immigrants, especially Muslims (Frisina, 2013). Indeed, if Sikhs are invisible because of their 1 Annalisa Frisina agrees about the positive reputation that Indians generally have in the Italian mass media, but reports as well some exceptions and speaks about an “ambivalent visibility”, which is constructed of ridiculous and grotesque images (Frisina, 2013, p. 240).

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economic occupation, they become very visible in the public space during precise occasions – for example, during Vaisakhi celebrations and Nagar Kirtan. The acquisition of visibility occurs at different times and ways in the diverse Italian territories, depending on the socioeconomic strength of the local Sikh communities; nevertheless all recent researches in Italy demonstrate that, at least in the north of Italy where Sikh immigration is more stable, religious identity may be a positive resource for Sikhs, a resource that facilitates the dialogue with the local institutions and population (Ferraris and Sai, 2013; Gallo and Sai, 2013; Gallo, 2012). This fact contradicts a general tendency that has been ongoing in Italy over the past few years. Barbara Bertolani, Federica Ferraris and Fabio Perocco speak about a growing assimilationist policy, “Italian style”, that has led to a tightening of immigration laws. This trend is on the whole oriented towards the detraction of cultural and religious differences, as if these were the main causes that limit immigrants’ integration in Italy (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco, 2011). According to the authors, both Sikhs and Senegalese – Muslims who mostly belong to the Muridiyya confraternity – represent exceptions, as they enjoy a positive public image as good workers. This outcome seems to be the result of two opposite communicative strategies. “Contrary to the Senegalese in Italy, who have adopted a strategy of making Islam invisible while highlighting their national and African identity or their belonging to a spiritual Islam of the brotherhoods, the Sikhs [have] emphasize[d] their religious identity” through the public display of their difference (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco, 2011, p. 141). But the questions of defining identity and what kind of identity is to be shown in the public space are completely open, since identity construction is subject to manipulations and internal tensions. Second-generation immigrants are the protagonists of tensions due to intergenerational confrontation (Frisina, 2013; Mannheim, 1952). As I will show in the following sections of this chapter, processes of identity definition mostly do not originate from extreme conflicts or radical choices (as, for example, the complete refusal of proposed behaviours and values): normally the intergenerational debate among Sikhs fosters negotiations and creative interpretations of the endowment of cultural and religious symbols that the youth have at their disposal (Bertolani, 2012). Indeed, the concept of collective (cultural/ethnic and religious) identity should not be intended as if it were something univocal, homogeneous and immutable, and the relation between subject and culture is a dynamic and complex process (Gallissot and Rivera, 1997). According to Anthony Cohen, it is possible to define a group as a set of individuals that share the same symbolic heritage (Cohen, 1985). Some of these symbols work as identification boundaries between the group itself and the “others”, and may have a normative nature (Barth, 1969). Nevertheless, these

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boundary symbols do not rigidly condition people’s free will, as they are open to interpretation. Subjects are therefore able to integrate their present experiences and their past memories in a unitary framework, thanks to their creative ability, maintaining the sense of their continuity over time (Maher, 1994; Sciolla, 1983). This chapter is about the intergenerational debate among Sikhs living in northern Italy. I will discuss the question of religious identity among Sikhs (among the youth themselves and between young people and their parents as well) and between Sikhs and the local Italian society. I will present some results of an ethnographic research, which is still in progress, based on the “collaborative video” in its version of “study” rather than as “project” (Chalfen, 2011). The research has involved a group of young Punjabi Sikhs in the province of Reggio Emilia, from April 2011 to May 2013.2 In the first part of this chapter I discuss the main communicative strategies that are adopted by Sikhs and the religious identity that originates through them. I therefore consider how Sikhs living in the province of Reggio Emilia present themselves to Italians and to local institutions. In the second part of the chapter I point out how young Sikhs relate to those prevalent discourses, interacting and debating among themselves, with their parents and with Italians too. Sikh Religion in the Public Space Religious belonging has “contributed in a crucial, if not unique, way to an ‘emplacement’ process” of Sikhs in the province of Reggio Emilia (Sai, 2009, p. 133, my translation) – that is, their collective integration in the public space.3 The first gurdwara in Italy, opened by Punjabis in a town in the province of Reggio Emilia, dates back to the early 1990s.4 The opening of the gurdwara in Novellara The video, by Barbara Bertolani, Annalisa Frisina and the filmmaker Stefano Collizzolli, is still in progress. We met 20 young men and women, doing participant observation with the use of the camera, carrying out video interviews and filming several group discussions. The youth discussed with us questions that they consider important or problematic in the dialogue with their parents and directed us to their friends, so we adopted a snowball sampling technique, trying to create a heterogeneous discussion group. On one occasion, some parents asked to attend the video recording and this circumstance partially influenced the spontaneity of the discussion. In this chapter I will present just a part of the issues discussed in the group. 3 I refer here to the complex concept of “integration” as a process of socioeconomic, symbolic and political inclusion of somebody in the local public life, and I refer to “space” as a symbolic and material concept. 4 The first gurdwara was opened from 1991 to 1996 in the municipality of Rio Saliceto by a group of local promoters, who afterwards supported the purchase of a site, the construction of a building and the opening of another gurdwara in the city town of Novellara 2

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encouraged some Sikhs to regain their religious symbols and to turn back to orthodoxy, and this led to the increase of religious visibility and to a growing process of community institutionalization. According to Sai, this process occurred in ways that are familiar to the local society, such as the presence of a definite place of worship, the existence of a hierarchical community organization and a group of devotees, celebrations on Sunday and so on (Sai, 2009), allowing Italians to identify a precise, homogeneous and cohesive religious community, which could be involved in implementing multicultural policies at a local level (Gallo and Sai, 2013). This process of interaction and mutual identification has fostered through time the reinforcement of a precise type of religious identity in the public space. In a sort of “mirror game” in the relationship with local Italian institutions, Sikhs have promoted a collective image by defining themselves primarily as a religious group and emphasizing the most formal and normative aspects of their religious belonging (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco, 2011). In fact, the majority of society retains a unitary and monolithic representation of Sikhs as Khalsa Sikhs, even if amritdharis are in reality the minority group. In 2004 Sikhs were for the first time allowed to perform the Nagar Kirtan during Vaisakhi and since 2005 the government of Novellara has included these celebrations into a multicultural programme aimed at promoting a dialogue between immigrants and natives and a reciprocal knowledge of all main religious and ethnic celebrations. Since then, every year Vaisakhi is celebrated twice, first through the Nagar Kirtan and then at the council theatre. There, Sikhism is introduced to Italians, Vaisakhi is explained, Khalsa is presented, and gatka is performed, although according to Ester Gallo and Silvia Sai, everything is framed in a folkloristic and ethnic way, accompanied by Indian spicy food and colourful dresses (Gallo and Sai, 2013). Moreover, Sikhs have also started to be involved in town festivals within the surrounding area, where they present ethnic performances such as bhangra dance,5 Punjabi cooking and music. In the case of Sikhs in Reggio Emilia, therefore, religion has revealed itself to be a resource for integration, but at what cost? I argue that this process was made possible through two different strategies of communication. On the one hand, Sikhism has been illustrated as a universal religion which is respectful of all other confessions and people, according to which all men are equal in sight of God and have the same chances of salvation regardless of their social and caste in 2000. This temple is still a very important reference point for the Italian Sikh community. Over the years its activity has favoured the institutionalization of various local communities, leading to the inauguration of about 40 temples all over Italy, with a more than proportional growth in recent years (Bertolani, 2013a; 2013b). 5 The bhangra dance originated as a ballad by farmers to celebrate the arrival of spring. See Roy, this volume.

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origins (Bertolani, 2010). In this way, some values of Sikhism are stressed and religion is made compatible with some elements of the local historical, religious and political identity (this point will be discussed later); at the same time, some critical aspects of social practice (as, for example, the enduring importance attributed to caste among Punjabi Sikhs) are ascribed to Indian culture and traditions rather than to religion. On the other hand, Sikhism is made acceptable to Italians through a process of “ethnicization” and “reduction to folklore”, in order to present it in a familiar and non-threatening way (Sai, 2009; Gallo and Sai, 2013; Bertolani and Singh, 2012). Therefore, some aspects of the Sikh religious culture are presented to Italians as harmless ethnic features, in order to be more easily accepted. For example, during religious festivals the martial symbols are often displayed as ritual objects which are part of tradition, together with coloured dresses, spicy food and Punjabi music. In this way, external Sikh symbols, such as kirpans, turbans and beards, and public religious events like Nagar Kirtan, respond “to the lure of exoticism, which Italian society looks for within an orientalist discourse” (Bertolani, Ferraris and Perocco, 2011, p. 133). In other words, the ethnic and the religious dimensions are made to overlap, while the internal pluralism of the local Sikh community and the politicized and institutional aspects of religion are systematically minimized (Gallo and Sai, 2013). In some respects, the Sikhs have somehow actively interiorized the gaze of others, adhering as much as possible to the expectations of the local social context. We could perhaps consider this as a “small steps pragmatism” that has allowed them to reach results that for others are unattainable (Bertolani and Perocco, 2013, p. 112). How do young Sikhs relate themselves towards these prevalent discourses? The results of my research have shown a polyphony of voices that contradicts the homogeneous picture of a cohesive and reconciled community. Who is the “True” Sikh? The Issue of Orthodoxy among Young Sikhs Young Italian-Indian Sikhs that I have met have discussed vivaciously about who is the “true” Sikh, showing that there are different ways of living their religious belonging. All of them have defined themselves as “Sikhs”, and none of them has stated that religion was not important in their lives. Despite these similarities, the group was very plural as regards the ideas expressed, the dialogue with parents on religious matters, and also the personal characteristics and social origin of the participants. Table 10.1 summarizes some socio-demographic data of the youth whose words are reported in the text; their words and opinions should be contextualized bearing in mind that information. Young Sikhs embody a creative and original potential of change through intergenerational dialogue

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23 19 22 18 18 20 22

16 20 20

Balginder Rajvir K. Arminder Ranjit Jaspreet Pretty Jessy

Harry Amrit Rajvir S.

M M M

M F M M M F M

Sex

Born in Italy 9 7

9 10 Born in Italy 7 Born in Italy 2 3

Age at arrival in Italy

Saini Saini Jat

Jat Jat Saini Chamar Tarkhan Saini Saini

Caste

Rural Rural Rural

Rural Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Rural No No No

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes No (keshdhari) No No (keshdhari but trims) beard) No Yes No SMC

SMC SMC

Ravidasis

DT DT

Family origin Parents’ membership Youths’ membership Main group (rural/urban) to Khalsa to Khalsa of reference

Note: DT (Damdami Taksal); SMC (Sikh Missionary College).

Age

Social characteristics of the youth interviewed

Name

Table 10.1

Student Student Factory worker

Truck driver Student Student Unemployed Student Student Student

Current position

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and confrontation; nevertheless, this potential needs specific historical, social and political contexts to be turned into action. Analisa Frisina points out that to achieve this result, teenagers must become conscious of themselves (Frisina, 2013, p. 235), and this process does not occur for everybody in the same way, as it also depends on other social differences such as those of class, gender and the family’s social origin (Merico, 2005; Saraceno, 1986). According to a first group of youth, the “true” Sikh is only the amritdhari and the “5 Ks” are indicators of the Sikh identity and of membership in the Sikh group. In particular, the turban, kara and kesh are religious symbols, but perform the function of “ethnic markers” as well, distinguishing between “we” and “they”, the inside and the outside of the Punjabi Sikh group. The same importance is given to the name “Singh”, which should be used only by Khalsa Sikhs. If you aren’t ‘baptized’ you can’t […] even let other people call you ‘Singh’ … you aren’t even a ‘Sikh’. (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)6 [In ancient times], everybody had his family name before being ‘baptized’ […], and people adopted the name ‘Singh’ only after being ‘baptized’ […] Only nowadays the children of a ‘Singh’ receive the name ‘Singh’ … only nowadays! Therefore, in my opinion a person who is not ‘baptized’ can’t have the name ‘Singh’ […] In every religion you have to be ‘baptized’ if you want to practice it, but in other religions people get ‘baptized’ when they are children, so the person is not aware. Instead, in Sikhism you have the choice … [A person who isn’t ‘baptized’] can define himself a ‘Sikh’ only with quotation marks, just because he is the son of Sikh parents, but in reality you can’t enter a community without ‘baptism’, that’s true for every religion! (Rajvir K., 19-year-old amritdhari girl, born in India, in Italy since she was 10 years old)

This way of conceiving one’s religious belonging has some consequences, as the individual feels first of all that he is “part of a group” and shares some symbols, traditions, values, a language and a common historical and geographical origin with other members (Helweg, 1999). That is to say that the collective dimension of religious belonging is a very important element, and that for certain aspects the religious identity tends to coincide with the cultural and ethnic one. From an analytical point of view, I define this process as the “ethnicization” of the religious message – that is, the tendency by the subject to assemble together different issues like social rules, collective practice of the cult, membership in a culturally definite group and religious teachings (Bertolani and Perocco, 2013). 6 Since people participating in the video formally gave consensus for the use of the images and content of the video, true names and identity characteristics are reported in the text.

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This way of conceiving one’s religious membership is mainly based on the respect of many rules and prescriptions, which are at times very rigid: for example, to be vegetarian, not to smoke or drink alcohol, not to associate with other people that drink or smoke, not to wear Western clothes or make up and to adopt precise rules concerning personal cleanliness.7 Another example concerns prayers that must mandatorily be said every day, according to precise ways and timing. If someone prays every day, even if this person doesn’t understand what he is saying, something will remain inside because, even if he prays mechanically, something will remain in his brain. Therefore, if he prays daily, maybe one day he will desire to understand or to read the prayer another time … but you have to begin: there is always a first time … (Rajvir K., 19-year-old amritdhari girl, born in India, in Italy since she was 10 years old)

In general, the importance attached to the adoption of precise rules of living seems to differentiate the Punjabi-Sikh group between those who respect such rules and those who do not, and, even within the first group, between Sikhs who follow the rules in a very “complete” manner (adhering to the Khalsa), and others who do not (i.e. keshdhari Sikhs who wear a few symbols without being “baptized”).8 In this sense, it seems that initiation to the Khalsa has some very precise social consequences, since it may cause divisions and lead to an internal hierarchical structure within the Sikh community. It separates those who believe in putting the word of God into practice to the end from all the others, as if there were different “degrees of Sikhness” in relation to which one can define oneself from the rest (Nesbitt, 1991). Within the community, this way of conceiving the Sikh identity may be similar to what Karen Leonard has defined as “locally based Sikhism” (Leonard, 1999), since it fosters the strengthening of a certain self-representation: a Sikh is chiefly a saint soldier – that is, a follower who fights for the preservation and the diffusion of his religious identity, standing out from those who adopt more distant or moderate behaviour. Therefore, religious membership may combine itself with militancy inside the group and the religious arena can become a place where the acquisition of status is possible, a site where one can look for prestige and visibility or obtain someone else’s respect (Pace, 2007). These rules are normally attributed to the code of conduct of Khalsa Sikhs (Rahit Maryada); nevertheless there are distinct interpretations and different degrees of strictness concerning the rules between followers of Damdami Taksal or sympathizers of the Sikh Missionary College. The youth of this first group follow mainly Damdami Taksal and interpret the rules in a very rigid manner. 8 We use this term as it was notably adopted by young men and women during their interviews. 7

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A second group of youth, instead, is very critical towards this way of defining who is the “true” Sikh. Some non-Khalsa teenagers, for instance, decisively reject being considered as Sikhs only with quotation marks by their amritdhari peers, maintain that some formal behaviours of “baptized” Sikhs are nothing but hypocrisy, and sustain the necessity of revaluating the “sense” of religious symbols and practices. One example concerns prayers. Some of these youth pray very frequently, even if not every day, as they declare the importance of praying with the right concentration as a sign of respect toward the religious message. To pray every day mechanically is nonsense. I think that it would be better to pray when you are concentrated on the words that you are saying, because if you pray daily it is very difficult to be concentrated the whole time and to understand each word that you are saying … it becomes something mechanical and I don’t think that this is the right thing to do … ( Jessy, 22-year-old keshdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was three years old)

According to some youth, to live one’s religiosity also means the effort to combine the sense of the sacred with one’s adhesion to scientific and technical knowledge, through a process of secularization and above all of “deinstitutionalization” of religion. This process is “linked to the assertion of the individual’s primacy and of his experience with respect to the conformity, determined in an institutional way, to rules of believing”, so that the religious experience is made compatible with the participation in the secular culture (Hervieu-Léger, 1996, p. 267, my translation). I am very scientific … […] For now religion has always been imposed on me, it is not my decision, and now that I am growing up I am trying to build my own philosophy which is rather different [to what my parents think] … […] I have studied here [in Italy] and I have a scientific mentality, so I do not feel at ease so much with religiosity … ( Jessy, 22-year-old keshdhari male, in Italy since he was three years old)

These youth define themselves as “Sikhs”, but they are looking for a different way to live religion, compared to what is “imposed by parents” or by the religious community. They are trying to combine the experience of faith with their own rationality and maybe with other things such as, for example, the desire to associate with “mixed” groups of young people – in other words, even with Italian young people who do not respect those rules a Sikh should observe. In the words of some youth, it seems that an orthodox and institutional way of conceiving one’s religious identity might have consequences for Sikh teenagers’ social relationships, by promoting or inhibiting their possibility to spend time even with Italian peers.

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Young Sikhs in a Global World Even if I am not baptized, I think I am a Sikh in the same way because I believe in Sikhism … I choose not to be amritdhari, because I am afraid that in the future I will not be able to respect all prescriptions that religion imposes … I also play volleyball … […] I do not think that, [if I am amritdhari] I am able to play wearing long trousers or all the five kakkar … Concerning prayers, I do not think that I would be able to wake up every morning very early, to take a shower and to recite all the five prayers, because I must go to school … Nevertheless, since I believe [in God], before going to school I pray the same … and at night as well. […] Maybe those [amritdhari girls that have different opinions] do not have the same problems that I have because they do not play sports, maybe they just go to school and then stay at home and that’s all. Instead, I also have Italian friends, I get on very well with them, I play volleyball in a team, so I believe that this is the biggest difference between me and [other Sikh girls] […], as I am more sociable towards Italian society … (Pretty, 20-year-old female, born in India, in Italy since she was two years old) I define myself a ‘Sikh’ because I respect my religion, even if some rules … as for example [not to eat meat] […] … I eat meat … […] these things are sometimes difficult to respect. Since I was born I never had the turban as the [amritdhari Sikhs] […] have. My parents ask me even now to wear it, but I, considering the way the world turns now, honestly I would not like to wear it, because then it would change my life … I prefer to remain like this for the moment, in the future I do not know … for the time being I prefer to remain like this, everybody knows me like this … (Harry, 16-year-old boy, born in Italy)

Young amritdhari men and women that belong to this group believe that religion is above all a matter of belief, independent of being a Khalsa Sikh or not. One can define oneself a “true” Sikh even if he/she doesn’t wear the “5 Ks” or is not “baptized”, as being Sikh is “a matter of the heart”, of what one really feels inside, and not a matter of exterior looks. According to this self-representation, maybe it would be better to be keshdhari or amritdhari, but symbols are not sufficient in themselves, they are simply signs that need to be filled with the right significance, values, ideas and behaviours. Religion is at least in part referred from the institution to the faithful individual, who becomes the one that attributes a religious sense to symbols, on the basis of his/her personal experience (HervieuLéger, 1996). I think that being a Sikh is not something that can be seen outwardly … OK, if you have long hair, then it is even better, but a ‘true’ Sikh is recognizable from [the heart], because religion is something inside. If a person wears long hair, wears the ‘5Ks’ and then behaves in the wrong way, then he is not a Sikh! […] I could be baptized and behave in the wrong way and [another boy] […] could be non-

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amritdhari but behave in the right way: in God’s eyes he is better than me. (Amrit, 20-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)

According to this way of conceiving one’s religious belonging, it is better not to be baptized if someone is afraid that he will not be able to respect some rules; this choice doesn’t mean being less religious than someone else but, rather, to be religious in a different way, which is likewise “true” and maybe more “sincere”. I speak about me and about my father: […] [he] doesn’t want to take amrit because he saw some amritdhari that do things that they should not do. So he says: ‘Rather than baptize myself and make mistakes, I prefer not to become a khalsa Sikh … but I believe in God and in the ‘church’ [gurdwara] in the same way … […] If you make a mistake as an amritdhari Sikh this is a bit more serious than if you are not ‘baptized.’ (Rajvir S., 20-year-old male, born in India, in Italy since he was seven years old)

From an analytical point of view, I define “ethicization” this process of individualization of religious behaviour (Bertolani and Perocco, p. 2013). This means that the tight link between practices, rules and religious message is relinquished and that the emphasis is placed by the youth on the universal message of Sikhism and on the idea of religious belonging as a “private matter” (Marchisio, 2005). Young people that understand religious identity in this way normally consider positively the internal pluralism which is to be found inside their group, as if it were a sign of the progressive adjustment of their Punjabi Sikh families to the Italian context, and proof that parents trust their children and respect their religious choices, independently from their exterior appearance. [In our group of friends there are three amritdhari Sikhs, one keshdhari and me – I am shaved]: you can easily get from this the idea that, besides us, even our families are adjusting to Italian culture. They [do not want to] force their children to […] [become amritdhari], and […] [this is different] from what happened ‘before’ … since those who came [first to Italy] forced a little bit more … in India there is [still] a greater [pressure on the youth] than here … (Rajvir S., 20-year-old male, born in India, in Italy since he was seven years old)

According to young Sikhs in this second group, it seems that the choice of being baptized or not is not an argument of intense intergenerational conflict: parents may express a desire, but the choice of becoming an amritdhari or of wearing the “5 Ks” is left to the youth’s will, in a dialogue that seems to be mutually respectful of everyone’s choice. Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that the majority of the youth’s parents of this group has a moderate attitude towards religion or is not a Khalsa Sikh as well, and possibly their flexible

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attitude on this point is due to this fact. This issue could be another important difference between the two groups of youth, as all people of the first group are Khalsa Sikhs with amritdhari parents who are very close to religious orthodoxy, as shown above in Table 10.1.9 What about Castes and Gender? Some Issues for an Intergenerational Dialogue I have argued that there was a high internal pluralism within the group of people that participated in the video on the issue of Sikh identity. On the contrary, the youth expressed similar opinions about castes and about their parents’ idea on this subject. Everybody expressed complete indifference towards castes. At the same time, male and female teenagers are aware that castes still matter for their parents, even if they are Khalsa Sikhs and even if the Sikh doctrine clearly abolishes them. This question is therefore a source of possible intergenerational conflict, even because it is tightly linked to the matter of “arranged marriage”, to gender and, in general, to young men’s and women’s desires to meet their peers regardless of their caste origin. Parents do not know always what you are doing, you meet a girl and if you like her you present her to your parents and if they agree … there is no problem. […] Honestly, I really don’t care about castes … but that’s a problem for parents […] Not just for my parents, but for everybody! ( Jaspreet, 18-year-old amritdhari boy, born in Italy) If you are baptized, castes shouldn’t exist for you anymore. It doesn’t matter if somebody is rich or poor, we are all at the same level … For those baptized, they [castes] do not exist, for non-baptized people, I do not know … (Arminder, 22-year-old amritdhari male, born in Italy) Parents say: ‘we do not care about castes’, but […] when the time comes to put it into practice … then it comes out that 70 per cent of them still have this [mentality. They say] […] ‘no, that person is of lower caste than ours, no marriage, we do not even want to have anything to do with them …’ But it is difficult to […] [convince] them that caste doesn’t change the person. […] Among us young This point deserves more investigation. For example, Rosy Hastir, in her Italy-based research about the attitude of parents towards the religious education of their Italy-born children, has affirmed that there is the growing tendency to let one’s offspring be “baptized” during early childhood, in order to limit the influence of the Italian society on them (Hastir, 2013). 9

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people, we have friends of all castes, we never cared about this, friendships are much more important. (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old) The majority [of young people] think as I do. Even if their parents … some of them are obsessed [by the idea that their children] […] must marry with an Indian boy of the same caste, but […] [my parents] agree with me. I must live with that boy, so it’s me that has to choose him, not my parents! (Pretty, 20-year-old female, born in India, in Italy since she was two years old)

The interviews show that castes and arranged marriage are arguments of debate and possible intergenerational conflict. Young men and women decisively reject castes as a parameter of selection for their spouses and refer to Sikhism to support this opinion. At the same time, they seem to keep an open mind concerning the possibility of an arranged marriage, because it seems easier to find some type of compromise between them and their parents. For example, a marriage can be arranged starting from a clear indication from the youth themselves. In Italy it seems easier for young people to get in touch, meet and get to know each other (sometimes even through the help of social networks such as Facebook) and only afterwards involve their parents, in order to keep the exterior semblance of an arranged marriage. Otherwise, parents can present different candidates to their children, bearing in mind that they can refuse freely until they find the right person. What is clear is that it is hardly possible for the youth to choose their partner without involving their parents or relatives at any stage, as if this choice were a “private matter”. Marriage remains a “family matter”, but degrees and times of family involvement are generally subject to dialogue and negotiation: Among us … it is not accepted that a boy simply asks the girl [to marry him], or that his parents speak directly to the girl … […] The important thing is that you warn your parents, they go and have a talk with [the girl’s] parents, they make arrangements together … (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old) [This is part of ] our cultural tradition … […] We cannot simply say ‘I like this girl, I’ll marry her!’ […] [In any case], since we are integrated we would like to marry a girl that has the same mentality as we have. […] Our families are integrated too, so they do not [think] as they did once upon a time, but they simply would like to have an important role when we decide by ourselves the persons that we like. When we go to meet a girl they want […] to play an important role in our lives and maybe say ‘OK, let us speak [with the girl’s parents]’ … (Rajvir S., 20-year-old male, born in India, in Italy since he was seven years old)

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Young people have clear ideas about where they can find their partner: the majority prefers to look for a Sikh Punjabi man or woman who has been born in Italy, or at least grew up there. The reasons for this preference are of a practical nature and pertain to the different responsibilities (economic, moral, human and so on) that a transnational marriage entails. It would be better for us to choose an Indian girl ‘here’ that already knows Italian … […] [Otherwise] it will be the same as it was for our families, that don’t know a word of Italian and that it’s always us that have to go [as translators] … (Ranjit, 18-year-old amritdhari boy, born in India, in Italy since he was seven years old) Some […] [young men] bring their wives from India … […] I wouldn’t like this, because I have grown up here and have a different mentality … […] It’s nonsense bringing [a girl] from there and then teach her Italian … (Amrit, 20-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)

The desires of some young people may also reflect concerns about the cultural habits of the future partner, whether this person will adjust to a Western lifestyle or not. These concerns among young people mirror possible intergenerational conflicts: parents may be more influenced by the expectations of their transnational networks (Bertolani, 2012); moreover, they may wish that their children choose partners who live in India starting from the same assumptions as their children (i.e. that Sikh teenagers who grow up in India may be less Westernized and more concerned with traditional family rules and roles) but with opposite desires (Ballard, 1990). Castes and the criteria for selection of one’s spouse are issues about which the youth’s desires for change are clearly manifested compared to their parents’ ideas. Another important question is that of gender and of the disparity of power between males and females that manifests itself in the different degrees of freedom and autonomy granted by parents to their children. Both young men and women who took part in our research state that, in India, females are discriminated against starting from their conception, as in the Indian culture they are normally considered “a burden” for their parents, unlike males, who are desired by families. Girls are normally more controlled and limited in their free will and autonomy, since they embody the family honour, so their reputation has to be protected. Some girls have lost their reputation just because they [changed their boyfriends] […], in fact our people have this bad habit: to think about everything ‘topsy-turvy’. They do not know what happened [in reality], but they […]invent all kind of stories. […] [Because of ] this habit […] they ruin themselves and even

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other people’s lives. (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)

The collective attention on a girl’s behaviour is always very present and judgemental. These things occur in India, but they may happen in Italy too; this limits the real possibility that girls have to truly make free choices and to establish their opinions and wishes, even concerning their partners: [Parents] say to the son: ‘Tell us the girl that you would like to marry. Is it this one? OK, we will speak with her parents’. If everything goes well, then the match is decided. They tell daughters: ‘You will marry in the USA with a person that […] [you don’t even know] …’ You cannot say either a ‘no’ or a ‘yes’, because they simply don’t listen to you and just say ‘It’s done! Next month you’ll be married!’ (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)

The question of gender and the claim of equal treatment between the sexes may be a topic of conflict between young people and parents. Both young men and women interviewed showed great awareness and a critical attitude towards the parents, but also the desire to continue the dialogue in search of a subtle compromise. Nevertheless this question deserves further study and should be analysed considering, once again, the social characteristics of families and children, and their age on arrival in Italy. Redefining a Historical Memory? At the beginning of this chapter I claimed that Sikhs in the province of Reggio Emilia have successfully turned religion into a positive resource for their emplacement and integration in the public space. I also stated that this is the result of two different strategies of communication towards the Italian society: the first one, which I have already explained, consists in a process of “ethnicization” of religion. The second one, instead, implies representing Sikhism as a universal religion. According to this discourse, Sikhism is defined as respectful of every person and religion, and Sikhs are represented as people that fight, even at the cost of suffering death, to secure the rights of the feeblest and the oppressed. Sikhs refer to history to prove that they have always struggled to defend universal values such as truth, freedom, equality and justice. According to Federica Ferraris and Silvia Sai, this discourse fosters the integration of the Sikh community because it fits positively together with some ethics and characteristics that the local population tends to recognize as specific to its own identity (Sai, 2009; Ferraris and Sai, 2013). These ideals are those attributed to

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the partisans, who during World War II, struggled against the fascists and the Nazis to free Italy from dictatorship and to support the birth of a democratic state. The local identity is deeply permeated with that historical memory. In this sense, both these self-representations of natives and Sikhs seem to be compatible. Indeed, there is a real historical event that fosters the definition of a common memory between Sikhs and Italians; in fact Sikhs actually fought during World War II to free the territory that they now inhabit, as the partisans did. Many other soldiers of the Allied Armies did the same, but it is worth noticing that nobody speaks about Hindus and Muslims who died for the same reason: in Italy only Sikhs have been able to refer to this historical circumstance, to ascribe it to their religious identity and to transform it into a positive resource for the present integration of their group in the local community. Each year since 2007, a public ceremony, dedicated to the memory of the Sikh soldiers who died serving in the British Army during World War II, takes place during the summer in the Commonwealth War Cemetery of Forlì, which is a small municipality about 150 km from Reggio Emilia.10 The Sikhs of Reggio Emilia “invented” and proposed this commemoration first: local public institutions, the Italian National Association of Partisans (ANPI), trade unions and many Sikhs from various gurdwaras in Italy take part in it. Every year the Sikh soldiers are commemorated through a collective prayer, a langar, the distribution of books and leaflets in Italian about Sikhism and through public speeches by all participants. In 2011 the Italian Sikh community even financed the building of a bronze statue dedicated to the Sikh soldier, which has been placed at the cemetery entrance at a cost of about 60,000 euros. These initiatives seem to establish in a permanent way a founding ritual of Sikhs in Italy. According to Ferraris and Sai, the public ceremony at the Cemetery of Forlì and the presence of the statue have a clear symbolic value: they represent the effort to find in the past some “similarities” between Sikhs and the local Italian population, at the same time recalling some precise differences which mark the boundaries between the two groups and which are identified positively through some symbols, such as the Sikh turban (Ferraris and Sai, 2013).11 The statue and the celebration in Forlì may be interpreted as an attempt 10 This commemorative crematory cemetery is the place where 492 Indian and 3 British soldiers have been buried. There is also a cremation memorial, where the rests of 768 Sikh soldiers that fought and died on the border between Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany have been buried. 11 The newspaper Il Resto del Carlino reports the inauguration of the statue in these terms: “This year the manifestation […] was particularly suggestive and participative, thanks to the inauguration of a war memorial. This is a big bronze statue, about 3 meters high, that represents Sikh soldiers while they are helping an Italian [person]; a plaque was posed on the monument reporting a phrase of Winston Churchill, that stresses the importance of Sikhs’ contribution during World War II: ‘Thanks to their precious help today we are able to live

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to recall some historical events that may legitimatize the current situation. As Eric J. Hobsbawm states, the invocation of history (Sikhs fighting to liberate Italian soil) indicates a specific use of tradition as a form of justification of what is contemporary and present (the presence of Sikhs on that same territory) (Hobsbawm, 1987).12 What do young Sikhs think about this self-representation? Young men and women that I have met agree with this discourse and take part actively in the celebrations in Forlì. In this respect, it is possible to argue that these commemorations have a symbolic value not only towards Italians, but also in the building of a shared collective memory among Sikh generations. Nevertheless the youth claim the right to be more involved by the “elders” in all public occasions during which the Punjabi-Sikh community relates with Italian society, as well as in the management of gurdwaras. In fact, young people claim to hold specific competences as “cultural mediators”, since they attended local schools, speak Italian fluently and know much better the natives’ mentality. However, according to those young men and women, the “elders” involve them only at their convenience and nobody cares when they propose new ideas. To give more attention to the youth implies accepting their innovative potential within the community (and not only, for example, within families), and this might have some consequences for the processes of identity definition of the Sikh group in the public sphere. Concerning the statue, for example, they think that it could have been even more effective towards Italians, if only the “elders” had sought advice from them. [The ‘elders’] have done something according to their mentality … [the statue] represents a Sikh who stands forward and another Sikh who is helping another [man], but some important things are missing … as the ‘5 Ks’ … Indeed in Italy it is forbidden to wear the kirpan, but not to wear it is not admitted in our religion … […] [Sikh soldiers in the statue] had to be represented in a way that, looking at the statue [Italians could] […] say ‘Look, this soldier wears the ‘5 Ks’!’ and looking at the first Indian with a kara or the turban […] everyone could say […] ‘Look, this [person is like the ones represented] in the statue in Forlì!’ […] [The project of the statue] has not been [shared with us] … Just the ‘elders’, those Sikhs that drive the same route every day from home to factory from Monday to Friday, and that sometimes have the chance to speak with Italians with honor, dignity and independence. During war they have fought and have died for us wearing the turban’” (Il Resto del Carlino, 2011; see also Virdi and Holland, 2011). 12 Kaveri Qureshi states that a similar use of historical events is adopted by Punjabi communities in Britain to demand recognition from the state and stake a claim for citizenship, but with different results, as in “the ‘new imperialism’ (…) it is not equally possible for Sikh and Muslim Punjabis to argue for their inclusion on the terms of militarized citizenship” (Qureshi, 2013, p. 400).

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Young Sikhs in a Global World about religion … [had this idea]. (Balginder, 23-year-old amritdhari male, born in India, in Italy since he was nine years old)

The words of the young people interviewed indicate a strong need for positive and overt identification through the “5 Ks”, conceived as ethnic markers that distinguish them from Italians as well as from other immigrants, and it is noteworthy that both Khalsa and non-Khalsa Sikhs seem to agree on this point. At the same time, even if the youth accept and share the same symbols and communication strategy as their parents, they seem to me more interested than their families in confronting Italian society and Italian peers, and to explain, exchange, mingle and share new ways of behaving or new meanings. One example of this attitude concerns the Sikhi Sewa Society, which is an association founded in 2009 on the initiative of a group of young Sikh men and women attending high schools in the province of Reggio Emilia. According to one of the first promoters, this association today has more than a thousand members throughout the whole of Italy and some other European countries; among them there are some Italians as well. The main scope of the Sikhi Sewa Society is to explain Sikhism to Italians, especially young people, in order to foster mutual knowledge and integration. This association is financed through donations from all Italian gurdwaras and has published some books in Italian that are distributed free of charge during religious celebrations or ethnic festivals which are organized throughout the whole of Italy. Young members decide the contents of those books, and everyone contributes to their realization through the collecting, writing, editing and translating of the texts. Italians help as well as proofreaders for the Italian text. Contact among members is kept online, thanks to the use of new technologies and social networks. Three years ago, when I attended school … [there were] some persons that thought that I was a Muslim, as I keep a long beard, I wear the turban … so, I didn’t like this thing. We thought that we had to do something to let people know that we are not Muslim, we are ‘different’ … So we began with a leaflet every Sunday, [distributed] just in Novellara at the gurdwara. There was a part in Punjabi and another [in Italian, so that young people could distribute it in their schools] … This was on our gurus … Then we published the first book, about 20 pages … […] We have registered an association which is called ‘Sikhi Sewa Society’ … [and] is […] aimed to foster integration, we want to integrate Sikhs and Italians. […] We have published a first book on our 10 gurus … […]and we have distributed it throughout Italy, then we have written [a second book entitled] ‘Sikhi and Sikh’ […], [then a third book entitled] ‘The martyrs’, and a fourth [book entitled] […] ‘Generals and valorous soldiers’ […] [that speaks about] Indian and Italian generals […]: Caesar, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giovanni Ventura, and then ours: Ranjit Singh [and others]. […] [The third book] ‘The martyrs’ speaks about

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martyrs of Sikhism … and of Italian [martyrs] as well. It speaks also about World War II, the Italian campaign, the Sikh military enterprises in Europe … (Daljit, 18-year-old keshdhari boy, born in India, in Italy since he was 15 years old)13

It is interesting to notice that this initiative was created at school, as a consequence of young people’s relations, and as a necessity to distinguish themselves from Muslims, which in the common sense embodies a difference that is difficult to integrate (Frisina, 2013). This makes it clear that the process of defining Sikh identity cannot be separated from the comparison not only with the Italian society but also with other immigrant minorities ( Jakobsh, 2013). Exactly as their parents in the case of Forlì, these youth have tried to underline some similarities between Sikh and Italian history and values, at the same time proudly pointing out some specific differences. History, much more than current events, may be a neutral “territory” that permits reinterpretations, and maybe even the definition of parts of a common memory with Italians that can explain contemporary times (Hobsbawm, 1987). The evocation of historical events can justify the claim for inclusion and for a “militarized” citizenship (Qureshi, 2013). Therefore, the books published describe the courage of Italian “Generals and valorous soldiers” that are studied in Italian schools, and of Sikh ones as well, and the importance of their actions in the history of Italian and Sikh communities.14 Moreover, Khalsa symbols are explained in order to distinguish Sikhs from Muslims, “good” immigrants from all others. These young Sikhs use the same communication strategy as their parents, but in an original way. In fact, they seem to be more “peer-oriented” and to take into account concrete and symbolical places other than the gurdwara (like public libraries, schools, etc.), where they try to display and explain their differences and similarities to the context in a positive way, starting from those reference points that they share with their peers. These young Sikhs feel “different” from their parents and this emerges clearly when they are asked to define themselves in comparison to the “elders”. We have a different scope … They [the elders] operate to foster ‘religion’, [whereas] our goal is ‘integration’ … They […] write books, but [they are only in Punjabi. Everything they do, it is done] for Sikhism in the gurdwara … We work for ‘integration’, that is, we go to schools, in public libraries, in public offices with our books … this is the difference … (Sonny, 18-year-old keshdhari boy, born in India, in Italy since he was 15 years old) 13 Daljit (indicated here with a pseudonym) did not take part in the video, but was interviewed as one of the promoters of the Sikhi Sewa Society. 14 The association Sikhi Sewa Society has a website (www.sikhiesikh.com) where it is possible to read the books in Italian (see Sikhi Sewa Society, 2011, 2012, 2013).

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As far as our research has shown, it seems that being and conceiving themselves as Italian Indians is a useful element for young Sikhs in the process of redefining a common memory and a collective identity which may involve their parents, and which may also be shared (at least in part) with the local Italian society. References Ballard, Roger (1990), “Migration and Kinship: The Differential Effect of Marriage Rules on the Processes of Punjabi Migration to Britain”, in C. Larke, C. Peach and S. Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas: Migration and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 219–49. Barth, Fredrik (1969), “Introduction”, in Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organisation of Culture Difference. London: George Allen & Unwin, pp. 9–38. Bertolani Barbara (2010), “Il singolare pluralismo dei giovani sikh”. Mondi migranti, 2, December, 101–15. Bertolani, Barbara (2012), “Transnational Sikh Marriages in Italy”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 68–83. Bertolani, Barbara (2013a), “The Sikhs in Italy: A Growing Heterogeneous and Plural Presence”, in Swatos W. and Giordan G. (eds), Testing Pluralism. Leiden: Brill, pp. 75–93. Bertolani, Barbara (2013b), “Etica Sikh e processi di integrazione nel contesto locale: riflessioni a partire da uno studio di caso”, in M. C.Giorda, S. Palmisano and M. G. Turri (eds), Religioni & Economie. Idee ed esperienze. Milano: Mimesis, pp. 197–216. Bertolani, Barbara, Federica Ferraris and Fabio Perocco (2011), “Mirror Games: A Fresco of Sikh Settlements among Italian Local Societies”, in Knut Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold K (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 133–61. Bertolani, Barbara and Fabio Perocco (2013), “Religious Belonging and New Ways of Being ‘Italian’ in the Self-perception of Second-generation Immigrants in Italy”, in R. Blanes and J. Mapril (eds), Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe. The Best of All Gods. Leiden: Brill, pp. 93–114. Bertolani, Barbara and Iqbal Singh (2012), “The Journey of Guru Granth Sahib to Italian Sikhs: Defining ‘National’ Leadership in Transnational Mass Media”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs Aaross Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 211–31.

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Chalfen, Richard (2011), “Looking Two Ways: Mapping the Social Scientific Study of Visual Culture”, in Margolis Eric and Luc Pauwels (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. London: SAGE, pp. 186–200. Cohen, Anthony P. (1985), The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Routledge. Ferraris, Federica and Silvia Sai (2013), “Sikhs in Italy: Khalsa Identity from Mimesis to Display”, in E. Gallo (ed.), Migration and Religion in Europe: Comparative Perspectives on South Asian Experiences. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 171–92. Frisina, Annalisa (2013), “Le nuove generazioni”, in E. Pace (ed.), Le religioni nell’Italia che cambia. Mappe e bussole. Roma: Carocci editore, pp. 235–43. Gallissot, René and Annamaria Rivera (1997), L’imbroglio etnico in dieci parole chiave. Roma: Edizioni Dedalo. Gallo, Ester (2012), “Creating Gurdwaras, Narrating Histories: Perspectives on Sikh Diaspora in Italy”. Samaj, 6, December. Available at: http://samaj. revues.org/3431#quotation. Gallo, Ester and Silvia Sai (2013), “Should We Talk about Religions? Migrant Associations, Local Politics and Representations of Religious Diversity in Central Italy”, in R. Blanes and J. Mapril (eds), Sites and Politics of Religious Diversity in Southern Europe. The Best of All Gods. Brill: Leiden, pp. 279–308. Hastir, Rosy (2013), “Inter-generation Difference: A Study of Sikh Immigrant in Italy”, paper presented at the conference “Young Sikhs in a Global World: Negotiating Identity, Tradition and Authority”, Lund, 18–19 June. Helweg, Arthur W. (1999), “Transmitting and Regenerating Culture: The Sikh Case”, in P. Singh and G.N. Barrier (eds), Sikh Identity. Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 299–314. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle (1996), Religione e memoria. Bologna: Il Mulino. Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1987), “Introduzione: come si inventa una tradizione”, in E.J. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds), L’invenzione della tradizione. Torino: Einaudi, pp. 3–17. Il Resto del Carlino (2011), “Il monumento ai caduti ha i colori sgargianti dell’India”, 13 August. Available at: http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/forli/ cultura/2011/08/13/562299-monumento_caduti.shtml (accessed May 2013). Jakobsh, Doris (2013), “Marking the Female Sikh Body: Reformulating and Legitimating Sikh Women’s Turbaned Identity on the WWW”, paper presented at the conference “Young Sikhs in a Global World: Negotiating Identity, Tradition and Authority”, Lund, 18–19 June. Leonard, Karen (1999), “Second Generation Sikhs in the US: Consensus and Differences”, in P. Singh and G.N. Barrier (eds), Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change. New Delhi: Manohar, pp. 275–97.

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Maher, Vanessa (1994), “Razza e gruppo etnico: il mito sociale e la relatività dei confini”, in Vanessa Maher (ed.), Questioni di etnicità. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 15–32. Mannheim, Karl (1952), Sociologia della conoscenza. Bologna: Il Mulino. Marchisio, Roberto (2005), “Ripensare la laicità: tra pluralismo e individualismo religioso”. Rassegna italiana di sociologia, 46 (4), 605–39. Merico, Maurizio (2005), Giovani e società. Roma: Carocci. Nesbitt, Eleanor (1991), “‘My Dad’s Hindu, My Mum’s Side Are Sikhs’: Issues in Religious Identity”. Available at: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ savifadok/234/1/identity.pdf (accessed August 2014). Pace, Enzo (2007), Introduzione alla sociologia delle religioni. Roma: Carocci. Provincia di Cremona (2002), “Turbanti che non turbano. Ricerca sociologica sugli immigrati indiani nel cremonese”, Rapporto di ricerca, December 2002. Available at: http://www.provincia.cremona.it/politichesociali/all/ 20111129-1015470.pdf (accessed May 2013). Qureshi, Kaveri (2013), “Diasporic Citizenship and Militarization: Punjabi Soldiers in the World Wars”. Citizenship Studies, 17 (3/4), 400–13. Sai, Silvia (2009), “I sikh, immigrati ‘buoni’ e ‘integrati’? Una riflessione critica su migrazione, religione e integrazione degli indiani sikh a Reggio Emilia”. Religioni e sette nel mondo, 5 (1), 129–40. Saraceno, Chiara (ed.) (1986), Età e corso della vita. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sciolla, Loredana (1983), “Teorie dell’identità”, in Loredana Sciolla (ed.), Identità: Percorsi di analisi in sociologia. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier, pp. 7–59. Sikhi Sewa Society (2011), Sikhi e Sikh, Mantova. Sikhi Sewa Society (2012), I martiri, Milano. Sikhi Sewa Society (2013), Grandi generali e valorosi combattenti. Available at: http://sikhiesikh.org/libri/ (accessed May 2013). Virdi, Ranvir Singh and Bhupinder Singh Holland (2011), “Sikhs of Europe Inaugurate the First Sikh Military Monument in Forli, Italy”, 24 August. Available at: http://www.sikhnet.com/news/sikhs-europe-inaugurate-firstsikh-military-monument-forli-italy-13th-august-2011 (accessed May 2013).

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Chapter 11

London Sikh Youth as British Citizenry: A Frontier of the Community’s Global Identity? Gurbachan Singh Jandu

In 1967 Gurdip Singh Aurora described first-generation Sikhs in London as “frontiersmen” due to three challenges they faced (Aurora, 1967). Nearly five decades later Britain’s Sikhs are less concerned about employment and housing, but “cultural distance” still persists. This prohibits socio-psychological acculturation and prevents Sikhs being rightly perceived as citizenry by some of their non-Sikh peers. Much of this erroneous perception is based on earlier settler Sikh generations who do still retain some elements of being “unsettled citizens”, although most of their youth overwhelmingly self-label as British. One consequence of this complication is that the community’s position within national identity politics is both allochtoon and autochtoon or “foreign” and “born of the soil”.1 One possible reason for this generational divide are these youths’ formative socialization circles or Aurora’s “cultural contact”. These have widened significantly, and rapidly, beyond their natal community or qaum, a change I reflectively use here to describe the present Sikh youth as extra-qaumic. The term is itself inspired by Roger Ballard’s work on Punjab’s “religious dimensions” (see Ballard, 2000, 2006 and in particular 2012, where he introduced the term qaumic). By using these terms I seek to understand the effect on Sikh youth identity of the following observation: London’s Sikh youth balance their inherited Indic religio-culture alongside the capital’s secularizing youth circles, but the former’s influence is in decline while the latter’s is in ascendancy. This in itself is not a new reflection as many previous writers, including Ballard, have noted this change. However, in searching for a way to understand Sikhs as Britons, I discovered a new way in which these youth explore this intersection of Sikh upbringing in Britain: citizenship and belonging. So the advancement I 1 I have used the Dutch rather than the English terms (autochthonous /allochthonous) to signify the politicization of citizenship for immigrant communities in, for instance, the Netherlands. This is explored in works such as Geshiere (2009).

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hope for in this chapter is to evaluate whether Britain’s Sikhs, having successfully overcome physical welfare concerns abroad, are, through their youth, now tackling citizenry as a niggling “frontier”. Overview and Background The concepts of citizenry, belonging and identity may not always be interchangeable but neither are they singularly exclusive in practice, particularly in hubs of globalization such as London.2 This would appear to be the case for minority groups such as the Sikhs in this city who, while continuing to contribute to and identify with British national character, still retain parts of their ancestral Indian heritage. It may then be reasonably suggested that under some circumstances the measures of this mix could change and national identity could overlap and even perhaps replace minority identity politics as the overwhelming theme of belonging. One potential motivation for London’s Sikh youth doing so could be their peer groups’ (both Sikh and non-Sikh) wider social desire for a unifying national identity to which they could contribute their own identity markers such as Sikhism and bhangra. Due to the social appeal and acculturation effect of this motivation I suggest that Sikh youth asserting their place among citizenry heralds a new direction for their identity development. Using literature on Sikh migrants in 1950s London and correlating it to longterm ethnographic research in Greater London’s jurisdiction suggests that for these youth, their identity change is part of a larger one, that of a change in the relationship between Sikhs and British society. The change to this relationship resembles Émile Durkheim’s description of a society changing from “mechanical” to “organic” social solidarity. Applying this to my own research, I found that the formative character of Sikh youth identity is less influenced by their own “traditional” community and more by the wider “modern” society (Durkheim, 1997). So, for instance, in contrast to previous Sikh generations, the present (mainly British-born) third-generation Sikh appears to undergo an identity process that involves more than acquiring real estate or professional work. This Sikh is also not worried about the attainment of British citizenship or a passport as residential political status, after all for them juridical status is a nation state birthright. Their goal is a less tangible one. These youths’ identity formation appears to breakthrough Aurora’s “frontier”, the same one that many preceding generations of Sikhs found challenging: social belonging. As a result 2 To try and introduce a geographical nuance to this London-based research, Vertovec’s work in the English Midlands (2007) and Delanty’s on Cosmopolitanism (1999) were used to contextualize and support this work’s theory that London’s “super-diverse” environment encourages a deviation away from an earlier form of Sikh identity.

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of this, their identity creation process involves dialogue increasingly based on their lives as “in situ citizens” in the nation state of their birth rather than the countries of their familial origin, an acculturation process I review here as being an integral part of “social citizenship” or becoming citizenry.3 For these youth, the identity formation process could be as Paul Gilroy suggests: “It ain’t where you’re from – it’s where you’re at” (Gilroy, 1993, p. 120). One consequence of exploring Sikh youth identity in London is the coterminous examination of British identity itself – albeit only from these youths’ perspective. In researching the connection between this minority group and national politics I realized that citizenship4 studies are somewhat underutilized in considering the future character of identity in diversity-rich locations such as London. The approach’s usefulness lies in the results of its field research, which in most cases attempts to understand the British citizen’s everyday lived and varied experiences of belonging. Although the scale of my study was small, it did demonstrate that using “country-specific” ideas of national belonging such as citizenship could also be useful in understanding the identity politics of other young Sikhs abroad – for instance, in Italy or North America. Finally, as these Sikh youth will one day be adults, capable of identity “carriage” and “transmission”, it does also mean that the future of British citizenship can provide researchers on Sikhs with an opportunity to understand the future of the contemporary community’s identity outside India.5 Recent events in the Sikh diaspora make these discussions politically significant if Sikhs are to be perceived and treated as equal and protected citizens of the nations they reside in globally.6 Britain and Sikhs form a good starting point for these discussions given that their century-plus relationship has already yielded an extraordinary The use of the terms “citizenry” and “social citizenship” here is built on their classical historical origin where society was considered not as a centralized governance system within a nation state but one where citizens bore the responsibility for its character and future (for the application of this idea to contemporary society see, for instance, Brubaker 1998). The term “acculturation” is used here to describe the youths’ “integration politics” much in the same way as Aurora considered Sikhs to be an “adopted” and not a “separate but equal” community in Britain (Aurora, 1967, p. 16). 4 This work uses the definition of citizenship in a contemporary and political sense – for instance, as a “self-sustaining system of values, characteristics and vision that are commonly held by persons with a jus soli [right of the soil] or jus sanguinis [right of the blood] link to a political entity such as a nation” (Karatani, 2003, pp. 85–6). 5 Sikhs in India also have substantial literature with regards to a national versus Sikh identity trope in India, see among others Singh Tatla (1998). 6 Among other incidents referred to here are the Oak Creek Temple shootings in Wisconsin, USA (August 2012), the expulsion of Sikhs from Afghanistan in the 1990s, the high media profile given to Sikhs in the British armed forces, and the position Sikh soldiers occupy in Italy’s history in places like Forli. 3

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record in challenging and forming British identity through one of the nation’s most important institutions: the law. As a result of this storied political history Sikhs in Britain are often thought of as early practitioners of multiculturalism and, although much less commonly so, also of cultural relativism.7 Could this qualify them as future identity developers? Given the import and influence of the diaspora element within the global Sikh population, I suggest so. Outside of these post-war challenges by Sikhs, contemporary British citizenship and identity has been placed under critical analysis by other groups too, a process that has speeded up since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. For instance, proposed changes to “sacrosanct” institutions such as the House of Lords and the consideration of a new Bill of Rights may eventually define a new Briton (Everson, 2003). Influences also include liberal European Community ideas such as “universal citizenship” and post-nationalism.8 Both are examples of ideas used to test British identity “beyond the nation” in a time of freer migration and trade, as well as accessible global communications technology. British youth in general also eagerly absorbs many of these new ideas, perhaps due to a gap developing between an identity based on “British themes” and one based on the “Perennial themes of youth” (see, for example, Ipsos MORI, 2007, p. 134). Sikh youth, as part of this generation, could prove to be important identity developers for their own community; a prediction further reinforced by the relatively high percentage (39 per cent) of Sikh youth aged 18–35 when compared to the national average of respondents self-identifying with a religion (29 per cent) (Office of National Statistics, 2011). In a wider sense, Sikhs in London could also be a good test in Britain for considering national identity through the everyday experiences of a community that may or may not be thought of as being part of society by a dominant majority. Although invoked here, these two approaches to communities as citizenry are at present predominant mainly within European national identity politics – for instance, in the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (see Tonnies, 2001), and as already mentioned earlier, autochtoon and allochtoon. I set out in this chapter to unravel Britain’s national identity through the lived experiences of Sikh youth in London. However, the task complicated – for example, while Sikh youth in London may share their non-Sikh cohorts’ identity debates on being “beyond For legal challenges by Sikhs see, among others, the outcome of the 1983 court case ruling of Mandla (Sewa Singh) v Dowell Lee [1983] 2 WLR 620, [1983] ICR 385, [1982] UKHL 7, [1983] 2 AC 548, [1983] 1 All ER 106. Available at: http://www.bailii.org/uk/ cases/UKHL/1982/7.htm.For the right to wear the Sikh turban and other articles of faith as ethnic group identity markers see Beetham (1970). 8 See among others, Delanty who, for instance, defines post-nationalism as “the civic dimension to cosmopolitanism, conceived of in terms of discourses of self, other and world. This is tied to a notion of nations without nationalism” (Delanty, 1999, p. 365). See Baban (2006) among others for the concept of “universal personhood”. 7

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the nation”, one significant difference sets them apart: the topical “nation” is not just Britain but also that of their families’ transnational origins e.g. Singapore, Kenya or India. Seeking a point of departure, I realized that it was these origins that were necessary for me to first understand. Being then in need of an approach based on ancestry, I chose Roger Ballard. Ballard’s Model Roger Ballard, in trying to understand the religiosity of Britain’s Punjabi groups, including Sikhs, researched the “process of religious re-construction amongst Britain’s South Asian minorities” (see in particular Ballard, 2012, p. 9, Table 1). Within this research, Ballard conceived a model that I utilized to structure my ethnography’s investigative lines. His five-part model tried to move away from what he described as a “Judeo-Christian” model of religions and devised new abstract terms, and while declaring that there are significant overlaps in practice, individualized them as follows: the spiritual/occult (this covers panthic and kismetic) the social (dharmic and sanskaric) and finally the political or qaumic. His conclusion describes the effect these aspects have on the socialization of Punjabi settlers and, more important to my work, their offspring in Britain from the 1950s to the present day. As my interest lay in understanding Sikh youth as citizenry, I used Ballard’s concept for two main reasons; firstly, I had observed that a significant part of these Sikh youths’ identity was ethno-religious – although I was unaware of this influence’s depth and limits – for instance, in the role of gurdwaras.9 Secondly, Ballard’s ethnographical experience in Britain and literature (including the overlapping use of Aurora [1967] in Ballard, 2012) spanned the same time period as that of my own interest: post-war to present. So, using his delineation of “religious tradition”, below are some examples that my research on Sikh youth as citizenry suggests (see Table 11.1). Other research literature I considered included: the role of religion as discussed by Nazli Kibria (2008) and Pyong Gap Min (2005), urbanization and diversity in Gerard Delanty (1999) and postcolonial synthesis in W. Marian Smith (1948). To take into account national identity politics, I consulted works by Robin Cohen (1996), Navdeep Mandair (2007) and Steven Vertovec (2001). In the end I used Ballard’s “disaggregation” of daily religiosity due to the framework’s success in analysing the South Asian communities in Britain, if perhaps not specifically Sikh youth. However, and perhaps because of this, the model’s limitations became apparent early into the ethnography – it does not (nor was it, I suspect, designed to) cover secular and “non-South Asian” 9 I found this during local research carried out as part of my MA thesis on the role of one local gurdwara in British Sikh identity transmission ( Jandu, 2011).

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elements.10 As these youth are “cross-cultural navigators” (Ballard, 2012, p. 7) across British and Sikh identities, both areas proved to be important influences on the Sikhs I studied. Table 11.1

Ballard’s dimensions in relation to Sikh youth as citizenry

Ballard’s dimensions My research panthic dharmic qaumic kismetic sansakaric

Religion – the belief in the tenets of Sikhism, e.g. the 10 Gurus Gender – demeanour associated with being a Sikh male or female, e.g. purdah or Raksha Bandan Political activity – interactions with local and national politics, e.g. 1984 demonstrations, the Sikh manifesto or lobbying the All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Sikhs Oral tradition – inherited secular oral histories, e.g. the moralizing story of Sarban and his parents Culture – acts and rituals associated to tradition and heritage, e.g. karva chaud

Methodologically, I collected qualitative primary-source data via interviews and general participant observation with most of the voluntary discussions being semi-structured one-to-one sessions with 22 youth aged 18–30 in London, England. The research was centred on a gurdwara in Hounslow and included the attendance of management meetings, religious discussion groups, weekly prayer ceremonies, weddings, birth/death ceremonies and youth-only events. Self-published literature such as the monthly magazine Gobind Marg was also used. I also interviewed gurdwara staff and parents of Sikh youth as perceived “transmitters” and “carriers” of Sikh identity in four other gurdwaras across London as well as in Birmingham and Glasgow. Avoiding snowball sampling, the makeup of the randomly selected discussants was as follows: 10 female, 12 male, all self-identified as Sikh, Punjabi and British. Among these were two from a mixed white-English and British-born Sikh parental background. The majority of these interviewees were British-born and attended higher education and vocational courses, or they were employed in their first professional jobs. As

The term “non-South Asian” is used here to represent any aspect of identity formation not associated to the heritage of the South Asian sub-continent. However, I found the term of limited use at times in this research as the division between South Asian and non-South Asian was far from clear in, for instance, Sikh youth whose families were from Afghanistan or East Africa and spoke a “non-South Asian” language such as Dari or Swahili. 10

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context, a further 10 non-Sikh youth, a mix of white, black and Asian, were also interviewed, all of whom belonged to a similar social setting in the same region. Most interviews were conducted at the gurdwara but some took place offsite and via telephone. There was no online data collection. The fieldwork reported here was conducted over three months from June to August 2011 with interview times ranging from 30 minutes to an hour. The data recording was done electronically as well as in written form both during and after the interviews, in all cases using aliases. No binary or structured-reply questions were used and all responses remain subject to data protection. The discussion data received in English was transcribed verbatim while that in Punjabi was translated by the author – a Sikh male who is not British-born nor a youth. Ongoing long-term research continues. The United Kingdom and National Belonging: A History of Controversial Politics The challenge of defining citizenship and identity in the UK and Britain in particular is not a new one. Tracing the debate from the attempted Union of the Scottish and English Crowns in 1606 to the jus soli amendment in the British Nationality Act 1981 shows the long-standing “problematic nature of Britishness” (Kearney, 2000, pp. 15–25). In the midst of this timeline (around 1800) British identity politics firmly became mainstream political debate as part of the rise of Tory Anglicanism following the creation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This establishment of forceful rule over Ireland also freights an unrelenting theme in British identity politics: the failure to politically unify divergent territories, in the case of Ireland, EnglishProtestant and Irish-Catholic. As a result of this failure, both civic unrest and independence movements closely shadow ensuing debates on national identity. Both effects remain publicly evident today in national politics – for instance, in the controversial Orange marches and the Scottish independence movement. This disunity continues to affect political debate regarding “Britishness”, with menacing tones of nativist nationalism present, particularly in radical parties such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP), the English Defence League (EDL) and the British National Party (BNP). Debate has recently also developed around “state versus civic” or “collective versus personal” notions of belonging and identification, centring on questions such as, should national identity be the remit of an elected state body, perhaps one that acts as “gatekeeper”? (Mattausch, 2012). One example of this unfinished discussion is the criticism directed at the national citizenship test designed for prospective Britons by the UK Border Agency. This obligatory assessment contains questions such as the following true or false test: “Halloween is a

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modern American festival that has recently become popular in the UK” (see Life in the United Kingdom, 2013).11 British identity politics also includes a European narrative, which has added further dimensions, such as that of a postnational identity and a citizenship that goes beyond a nation state’s political and physical boundaries (see Abizadeh, 2004; Cohen, 1996; Everson, 2003). These kinds of ideas appeal to many Sikh youth I meet as they offer proprietary context to their own transnational families now resident in Britain’s postcolonial hubs such as London. Britain’s political and historical heritage is further deepened by this colonial history and the possibility of once having hundreds of millions of citizens globally, the majority of whom had short-lived migratory rights to call Britain home. Sikhs as part of this episode have an ambivalent relationship with Britain, having made up significant numbers in the British armed forces in both World Wars but then being denied automatic citizenship and settlement rights in Britain post-war.12 Comparing the Sikhs to another of Britain’s minority religion immigrants, the Jewish community, Irina Kudenko and Deborah Phillips chart a similar developmental pattern, stating: “changing forms of British citizenship have shaped the evolution of Jewish identities” (Kudenko and Phillips, 2010, p. 77). For many immigrants and their children, the relationship between the sense of feeling “British” and the political debate on the definition of citizenship is closely linked – a situation in which London’s Sikhs are no exception.13 A further trend is the recent regionalization of national identity – for example, “Englishness” within British identity (see among others Kearney, 2000, p. 15). As part of this identity development, “institutional” changes including the mooted devolution of Whitehall-governed regions such as Scotland and possibly Wales have been initiated through the formation of the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly of Wales. Although these are relatively small-scale geo-political identity politics, when combined with the easier movement of Criticism surrounds the usefulness and relevance of this test as a significant number of extant citizens consistently fail to answer many of these questions correctly. 12 Hansen (1999) and Kearney (2000) among others discuss the controversial attempt to define British citizenship with the adoption of the 1981 British Nationality Act. 13 I found that an interesting parallel can be traced between these two communities in London’s recent history, and that the pattern of identity development in the capital’s Jewish population is one possible framework direction for Sikh identity also. Public perception during the following two incidents reflects the change in dominant views regarding the Jewish community and may one day be applicable to Sikhs in London also. During the Marconi scandal of 1912, ethno-religious elements of the Jewish defendants were made very obvious, despite the nation having already elected a Jewish-born PM in Disraeli (in office 1874–80). However, during the Guinness business scandal of the 1980s there was very little of the same differentiation, despite three Jewish community members being involved. Notably, by this time significant members of Margaret Thatcher’s government were Jewish. 11

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people they substantially reduce the social, political or practical usefulness of category labels such as ethnicity – that is, “white” or “Asian” or nationalities such as English, Welsh, Scottish and British currently applied to residents in these regions. It is no longer easy to distinguish between classifications such as indigenous, citizen, resident or visitor for these regions. In some ways, a return of regional political control after these regional developments could end up defining twenty-first century British citizenship by using distinct political, socio-cultural and territorial aspects (see among others Condor, Gibson and Abell, 2006, pp. 123–5).14 It is also notable that Britain is not alone within Europe in this debate. France is one example where jus soli has also been unsuccessful at engendering civic consensus of the republic’s secular citizenship model. On the other hand, Germany is an example where jus sanguinis causes civic disparity in connection with the more recently arrived communities such as those with Turkish ancestry in Berlin. Both citizenship models are problematic and may signify the changing role of the state in national identity formation.15 It is within this changing nationalist versus individualist discourse that many of the Sikh youth I interviewed found galvanising contextual experiences – for instance, among transnational European migrants from East and Central Europe or Spain, Sikh refugees from Afghanistan, Scots seeking law-making in Holyrood and the Welsh campaigning for heritage language preservation. Sikhs and Britain: The Historical and Social Setting The 2011 national census reported over 423,000 Sikhs in England and Wales, a population size that could be the largest outside of India.16 Mass migration started post-World War II and today over half the Sikh population is Britishborn and a high percentage (39 per cent) are aged under 35. From the early twentieth century onwards Britain has gained an ever-increasing presence of 14 Linda Colley also suggests that in 1707 Britain was “much less a trinity of three self-contained and self-conscious nations than a patchwork in which uncertain areas of Welshness, Scottishness and Englishness were cut across by strong regional attachments, and scored over again by loyalties to village, town, family and landscape” (Colley, 1992, p. 17). 15 This is an argument particularly favoured by post-nationalists who ascribe to the universality of basic human rights (see, for instance, Baban, 2006; Everson, 2003; and Abizadeh, 2004). 16 Putting this into perspective, this outnumbers Irish citizens in England and Wales and people who self-classify as “Jewish” (Office of National Statistics, 2012). Figures for the other large Sikh diasporas are not as readily available but of the 20 million-plus Sikhs worldwide, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland host the largest population outside India, save perhaps North America.

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Sikhs, firstly as soldiers during and after World War I, then as migrant workers from the 1920s onwards in cities such as Coventry and Liverpool. Before that, records of travellers such as Baron Hugel and Emily Eden suggest early British encounters with Sikhs occurred in Punjab during the reign of Ranjit Singh (1780–1839), whose heir, Duleep Singh, could be the first recorded Sikh on British soil, travelling as an exile in the 1850s. The Partition of India (1947) also created Sikh immigration to Britain. In many cases the Sikhs were the “sons of the empire”, who had served in World War II as colonial armed forces and were now “coming home”.17 This century-old relationship with Britain has over the last three decades become a storied one with events such as the invasive actions of the Indian Armed Forces at Harmandir Sahib in 1984 affecting localized responses.18 Nearly 60 per cent of Britain’s Sikhs still reside in the English Midlands and Greater London. In the London Borough of Hounslow, where my study was based, they comprise nearly 9 per cent of the local population and these 22,000 odd Sikhs make up over 5 per cent of the British Sikh population (Office of National Statistics, 2012). The “outward-in” perception of Sikhs is one of financial success obtained through diligent self-employment and studied professional careers – for instance, a relatively large proportion of Sikhs are homeowners. In the areas they reside in, they are also known for living vibrant lifestyles. This is partly due to mainstream bhangra music, colourful traditional attire, the public celebration of events such as Vaisakhi, popularized food and the highly visible architecture of gurdwaras. Many non-Sikh discussants thought that the community was moving away from the social periphery of localized society to now adopt more mainstream lifestyles in language, employment sectors, personal relationships, gender equalization and residential areas. One British figure that may be representative of the newer generations’ identity politics is the Deputy Lord Mayor of Plymouth County Council, Mr Chaz Singh, who pointedly tries to combine English national identity with Sikh heritage in public office (Plymouth City Council, n.d.).19 With regards to political mobilization, the Sikh community in Britain is also represented by an All Party Group in Parliament and in March 2013 there was a historic Commons debate held entitled “British Sikh Community” where their identity was recorded thus: “I believe that British Sikhs were very visible and favoured members of the British armed forces during World War I and World War II (Fisher, Lahiri and Thandi, 2007, p. 159). Ishaq and Hussain also confirm that Indian Sikhs were over-represented in comparison to Indian Muslims and Hindus (Ishaq and Hussain, 2002, pp. 722–39). 18 London was the venue for a Khalistan rally in 1984 (Bance, Anand and Paul, 2008, p. 54), and a remembrance “Freedom” march in June 2014. 19 Singh’s elected position is noteworthy as the 2011 national census recorded only 89 Sikhs out of the 265,000 residents of this historic English city. 17

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Figure 11.1 Mr Chaz Singh, political official figure

Note: Chaz Singh is a political official figure within the city and council of Plymouth in the South West of England. As a member of the mainstream Labour party, his work includes acting as a committee member for Ambitious Plymouth, a city planning group, and a Trustee for Plymouth Centre for Faiths and Cultural Diversity. He is also active in highlighting his position of being a Sikh in England using emblematic images such as the above via Internet media. My research found his office notable for being a Drake ward councillor elected from among a very small minority of residents who are Sikh. Source: Photograph © Peter Mcmullin.

Sikhs have a strong sense of their identity, both as Sikhs and as British citizens” (House of Commons, 2013). In early 2015 the Sikh manifesto was launched in advance of the nation’s general election. British Citizenry: Challenges to National Identity by Sikhs Sikhs have since World War II been key protagonists in national and local debates on identity, especially with regards to wearing symbols of faith. Following these challenges, many made in courts of law, decisions in their favour have set precedents in the nation’s social and political dialogue on identity politics – even

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as recently as 2008.20 The criminalization of the discrimination against those who wear turbans and religious bracelets as well as those who carry religious knives has labelled Sikhs as instigators of both multiculturalism and cultural relativism. Recently these experiences have been used by the Sikh community in France to win UN backing against a 2004 law that currently bans turbans in governmental spaces. As many contemporary citizenship debates centre on constitutional rights legalized by the state (see for instance Marshall, 1950), it is reasonable to propose that British citizenship and identity itself has been altered by Sikhs. Furthermore, if it is accepted that Britain’s laws have been amended to allow its once-migrant citizens to express their religious identity, then a citizenship based on the changing needs of its citizenry can be conceptualized.21 The Sikh community’s deep historical relationship with Britain both politically and socially could indicate, as I found in my research, that they may be a good gauge of a fast-changing national identification in Britain. Contextualizing Sikh Youth Notions of “Britishness” In July 2005, London was the target of terrorist attacks that left 52 people dead and over 200 injured. Subsequent research has raised the question of the marginalization of parts of British society on matters of national belonging and identity (Hussain and Bagguley, 2005). The country’s youth is one group reportedly unsure of the idea of “Britishness”, especially when compared to their predecessors. Research indicates that there is a “mismatch between British and youth themes” that may lead to the “abandonment or shaping” of extant “British themes” in local socialization circles – especially where “religion or ethnicity” is a factor (Ipsos MORI, 2007). Having come across this often in my field research, this would indicate to me that Britain’s Sikh youth also correspond to another observation, where BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) groups need to “assimilate their religious and ethnic identities” with national aspects such as a Scottish identity (Ipsos MORI, 2007, p. 133).22 So, for instance, I found that Sikh youth still retain Sikhism as their heritage but require “Britishness” to acculturate effectively. Sarika Watkins-Singh, a Sikh girl from Wales, won a court case to wear the kara to school (Gillan, 2008). 21 This is a central “pre-condition” of the “post-nationalist” framework of Koopmans and Stratham (1999). This discussion also builds on the ideas of Mattausch (2012) who suggests that citizenship for South Asians is no longer a “gatekeeper” to migration but helps define their postcolonial identity as residents. 22 Treating ethnicity as a separate element to nationality is not without debate as, for instance, a nationality such as Welsh could qualify as an ethnicity also – much like “Indian”. 20

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Figure 11.2 Raj Birk, special constable

Note: Raj Birk is a special constable in London’s Metropolitan Police force. Working as a volunteer, she has also become a public face of recruitment drives for the police force’s “Specials” with posters featuring her appearing at many gurdwaras I researched. For many male and female Sikh youth I encountered, she was often held up as a discussion figurehead with regards to the direction of gender equality in Sikh communitarian politics. Source: Photograph © London Metropolitan Police.

As examples of this, I noted the following instances of Sikh youth negotiating national themes with familial ethno-religious values, very much like their parents would have had to do, but in a new “mix” that accords with their non-Sikh peers, almost certainly unlike many of their parents. For instance, many reject class and elitism, a known national problem and buoyed by this, they feel confident in challenging communitarian boundaries such as gender

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bias – a known Sikh problem (fieldwork, August 2011, Hounslow).23 Thus by becoming proponents in national debates – for instance, in the predominance of “Englishness” in “Britishness” – they gain the direct personal benefit of social belonging by moving away from ethno-religious discussions that involve potentially divisive components such as race and religion. An example of this is the popular discussions that many youth took part in with others and me on the subject of sporting fan allegiances to British Home Nations teams such as England or Scotland as opposed to the “nation of family origin” teams such as Kenya or India. Sikhs in London: Intergenerational Differences and “Britishness” It is in comparing and contrasting Sikh generations that the community’s differing approaches towards British citizenship becomes clearer. Ballard wrote about a similar situation in his field research, suggesting that the socioreligious process of earlier settlers is one of “reconstruction” while that of their offspring, like my research group, is one of “reinvention” (Ballard, 2012, p. 13, both emphases are Ballard’s). As background to the residence status “security” of the different Sikh generations, it is worthwhile recalling that British lawmaking from 1948 to 1981 placed significant restrictions on early Sikh migrants obtaining British citizenship.24 This may partly explain some of the differences in the appreciation of British citizenship, as younger Sikhs are hereditary and “untested” holders of British citizenship and residence. In this regard the older Sikhs think of themselves as “good citizens” as they “prize” their hard-earned citizenship, but their children consider their behaviour more akin to “settlers”, in some cases even referring to them “freshies” – a colloquialism for “fresh off the boat”. Furthermore many youth did not consider holding a British passport indicative of being British or a citizen – pointing out as an example that many of their parents do not exercise their right to protest on mainstream issues such as British troops in Iraq or vote in European elections, both examples of actions they associate with liberal “British traditions”. This excerpt from the field notes demonstrates some of this difference:

Some discussants (both male and female) disliked the separation of men and women in the darbar sahib or prayer rooms and pointed to the fact that there are an unrepresentatively low number of female religious workers (gyanis) or committee members at the gurdwaras studied. 24 For further postcolonial immigration controls in Britain see Hansen (1999, p. 814) and Hall (2002, pp. 46–50). 23

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GSJ: What does the British passport mean to you? Jogi (male, aged 22): The passport allows us to travel really and we don’t need visas either to many places. In fact I don’t even know where my passport is right now. My Oyster card ( public transport pass) is probably more important to me. Mohinder (female, aged 60, mother to Jogi): What do you mean you don’t know where your passport is? I specifically put a safe in the house for us to all keep our passports in. Do you not know how hard we worked to become British? (Interview, September 2011, Bristol, GSJ denotes author)

The English language has also become an important “definer” of the “Britishness” of Sikh identity between the community’s generations. Many youth I came across employed English as their first (and in many cases, the only) language in which they could comfortably read, write and speak, while for many of their predecessors it was a mixture of mainly English, Punjabi, Hindi and in some cases Urdu.25 This appeared to create a difference in the older Sikhs’ ability to efficiently consume goods and services as well as appreciate their wider setting – for instance, leisure travel to Europe. In this context it was the youths’ turn to consider themselves as “good citizens”, simply because for them financial and social success in London society depended heavily on the advanced use, both professional and social, of the English language. By this measure, then, older Sikhs could not be fully “British” as they were either English-illiterate or were not wholly proficient in its varied use and application, especially in instances outside professional work settings, such as social networking. Investigating this further, I noticed that the interest and preference towards, for example, music, food and socialization circles further divided the generations and their British identity. This led me to the question: if proficiency in the English language equates to “Westernization” in Britain, could my field research support Aurora’s decades-old observation that those who have “advanced more towards Westernization have greater advantages over those who are less Westernized”? (Aurora, 1967, p. 16). Considering this data within one of the newer models of citizenship I introduced earlier – post-nationalism – gives an idea of one possible heading for Sikh identity. The older Sikhs can be viewed as “national” while the Sikh youth may better suit the “universality of personhood” that, for instance, Ruud Koopmans and Paul Stratham (1999) discuss. Due to the youths’ desire for social ascent, citizenship and identity is not bound to a political or geographic nation state but in adaptability and mobility – the latter two aspects are closely 25 The link between Sikh identity, Sikhism and the underpinning role of the languages amongst Sikhs is explored in Mandair, A. (2007).

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associated with globalization and are aspects that contrast with many older Sikhs who base their identity on, for instance countries of birth such as India, Britain or East Africa. The youth, by challenging the notion that success and belonging is dependent on being white, born in Britain or having to be of a certain gender, social class or caste, exhibit an identity that could be “beyond the nation”. The politics of their identity formation process correlates with writers such as Arash Abizadeh who, in researching minority communities, concludes that “social integration can bypass ethnicity and nationality” (Abizadeh, 2004, p. 231). It is a connection that raises the question, what effect has the pressing need for social integration had on these youths’ Sikh identity? Sikh Youth in London: Identity Changes, Acculturation and Citizenry Using the attacks on London in July 2005 both as a discussion topic and a point in time, many interviewees have since experienced changes regarding Sikh religious practice and culture.26 I noted, for instance, an increase in those who now wear and maintain certain visible symbols of Sikhism. For many males this includes wearing saffron or blue-coloured turbans and keeping unshorn beards. For females this involves abstaining from depilation, wearing traditional Punjabi attire in both private and public spaces and in some cases wearing dastars. Both genders also increasingly sport stylized forms of Sikhism’s religious symbols such as the khanda and the opening phrase of the mul mantar prayer on items such as flags, belt buckles and t-shirts. Also in wide circulation among many youth I interviewed was an idea symbolized by phrases such as sabat sorat, dastar sira or “unaltered face, turban adorned”, where passages from the Guru Granth Sahib were utilized to suggest that a hirsute, turbaned Sikh (mostly male) was a “holy” representation of a Sikh – one that ought to be strived for. However, more pragmatically I noted that some of these physical changes were also a conscious effort by some to avoid mistaken identity and possible harm.27 Another change I see in the youth is their critical examination of Sikh culture and religion, much of it through popular electronic media such as “Sikhi” Internet forums and information databases such as SikhiWiki. Through these, youth can now easily find information as varied as the burial practices of early Sikh settlers in Latin America or debate the relevance of the Guru Granth Sahib Fieldwork diary, June to August 2011, Hounslow, and general participant observation in locations such as Barcelona, California and Mombasa, 2011–12. I note here that the separation of Sikh religion and culture is research methodology, rather than a “lived” division within Sikh lives. 27 Glen Jordan and Satwinder Singh give an example of a case where mistaken identity in Southern Ireland has led to a diaspora Sikh being stabbed ( Jordan and Singh, 2011, p. 322). 26

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in relation to the Dasam Granth without reading primary source material. One result of this scrutiny is that many youth are increasingly attracted to the altruistic or humanitarian aspects of Sikh heritage such as the free local community food bank drives, but relate less and less to the “politicization” and “socialization” of Sikhism in a publicly organized format, such as the gurdwara. This is similar to the behaviour I observed in London’s wider community of increasingly secularizing youth and an aspect I also found in my discussions with the non-Sikhs I interviewed.28 By choosing “universally applicable” elements of Sikhism such as langar and fitting them into their non-religious social lives, these Sikh youth convert self-chosen elements of the Sikh religion into qualities of a “good citizen”, one who in a traditional sense is responsible for society’s character. This “filtering and transference” of Sikh identity via critical questioning and cross-cultural comparison is also a trend Jasjit Singh highlights in his work.29 Could these changes be examples of Sikh identity influencing British citizenry? I also came across areas traditionally thought of as Sikh identity factors that were in decline for many Sikh youth. One much-discussed example is caste and its association with a specific gurdwara, in families maintaining it as occupational inheritance, and in marriage prohibition outside the jath (see Sato, 2012).30 For many youth I interviewed, caste was considered an inherited “trend” (or ravaz as some called it) of Sikh identity but not British Sikh identity. They associated it with India not Britain and in many cases avoided talking about it due to the social stigma attached to its practice. It is noteworthy that most of these youth are British-born and, as Kathleen D. Hall states, may have been raised with a “territorial and urbane distinction” – unlike their parents (Hall, 2002, p. 158). Based on this, a further development in identity formation can be proposed. If this eschewing of caste is proof that Sikh youth identity could be heading toward being “beyond the community” or extra-qaumic, then in reducing the role of ancestral culture such as caste these youth may in the near future approach a point where they could one day be appraised in post-cultural terms.31 It should be noted here that while there is an inferred investigatory distinction between secular and non-secular elements, I, like other researchers in this field, did not find stand-alone groups of Sikhs belonging exclusively to either category. This is also found in Gap Min’s work on American-Korean Protestant youth where religion, culture and heritage frequently overlap between Abrahamic notions of religion and secularism (Gap Min, 2005). 29 Jasjit Singh has also noticed the rise of interrogative faith. His field research records respondents’ comments such as “now I think that for my generation there is a tendency to question everything” (Singh, 2010, p. 215). 30 This subject’s popularity could also be linked to the recently tabled enactment of caste discrimination as a crime into British law. 31 Post-cultural is used here to mean the examination of a society or community without its historical inherited value system, predictive behaviour models and practices such as, I suggest, caste (see, for example, Lyotard, 1984). 28

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Reaching this point would surely represent a significant breakaway from their Indic heritage but is one that remains theoretical at present. Both the lack of divisive class systems such as caste and a homogenized local rather than ethnofamilial “cultural bond” characterize London’s non-Sikh youth, the same group that I found Sikh youth were seeking acculturation with. This newer phase in Sikh identity, where there is increasing interest in the idea of a “secular Sikh”, may also explain the rising appeal of apolitical or “spiritual” Sikh traditions – for instance, the humanistic writings associated with Guru Nanak.32 Having already highlighted the decline in the use of the Punjabi language, other changes I observed include a sharp reduction in youth living with their extended family before marriage and a rise in personal relationships outside of Sikh and South Asian communities. These changes are particularly visible when these youth are viewed in relation to newly arrived Sikh migrants, where these later migrants mark them out as “citizens” due to their wider successes in newer (to Sikhs) professional pursuits. Even though they are older than my focus group, individuals such as the England cricketer “Monty” Panesar, the media personality Hardeep Kohli or the musician Luke Sital Singh are all referenced as part of this new “Sikh Britishness”.33 In this manner, this generation has already seen significant challenges to current community lifestyles and authority such as gurdwaras and employment, making them and their offspring capable of a pivotal turn for Sikh identity in Britain. As part explanation and calling again on Ballard’s work, it could be as he suggests, that for these youth Britain is “home” while for their parents and newer migrants from India and more recently Afghanistan, “home” is not so clear-cut, which in turn greatly influences their socialization process away from family (Ballard, 2012, p. 13). In social terms this difference in “home” has the effect of moving Sikh youth closer to their non-Sikh peers’ “home”, as the adoption of these changes means that the areas they have in common with others, such as musical interests, begin to outweigh those of difference – for example, caste. If success in being accepted as citizenry defines Sikh these youths’ desire to acculturate then it is reasonable to suggest that this is their, and perhaps the community’s, identity “frontier” abroad. 32 These youth find appeal in phrases such as this one linked to the first Guru: “To view all men as brothers without concern for caste or race, bestowing love on all and performing service without expectation of reward” (see McLeod, 1989, p. 2). 33 These individuals pursue relatively uncommon careers within this work’s context, corresponding with my finding that some youth expressed concerns that despite being a long-settled community, in some areas such as pop music, art and culture Sikhs had in the past been much less prominently successful when compared to similar communities, such as London’s Jewish community, and hence the artists mentioned were inspirational career models. One youth used the example of the singer Amy Winehouse (fieldwork, August, 2011, East London).

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Figure 11.3 Luke Sital-Singh, British-born singer and songwriter

Note: Luke Sital-Singh is a British-born singer and songwriter whose debut album, The Fire Inside, was released in 2014 on Parlophone to critical and financial acclaim during a tour in the same year. Having already supported established acts such as The Rolling Stones in London’s Hyde Park in 2013, he has gathered a loyal fan base for his live performances. Having only released his first EP, Fail For You, in 2012, the quick success of Sital-Singh’s career may characterize a new growth in the number of Sikh youth comfortably considering and pursuing professions in Britain’s mainstream creative and arts industries. Source: Photograph © Paul Guimaraes, Parlophone Records, Warner Music Ltd.

Sikh Youth and Authority: The Changing Communitarianism of Gurdwaras As part of the increase of non-Sikh influences on their lives and keeping in mind that I observed religion playing a declining role in identity formation, Sikh youth are also re-evaluating the role of gurdwaras. My field research suggests that many Sikh temples have struggled to adjust to the contemporary needs of youth identity politics in London. Despite this, I also found that many Sikh youth still consider the gurdwara to be the best option for a community institution that could offer “pastoral” support during identity formation. To make that point, I encountered many Sikh discussants who believed that Sikhism’s miri-piri concept contained within it secular as well as religious responsibility in the form of a practical or “temporal” supporting role for the temple. Given the temple’s predominant spatial, cultural and social hub in most Sikh communities, this they

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believed was a key responsibility and a good “fit” for the temple. However, the gurdwaras I observed had remained in the main non-secular and were unable to perform as prodigious a role in identity formation for the youth as they had done for older Sikhs, especially post-war. The temples did provide valued communitybased facilities such as eye-clinic workshops for the elderly but secular youth needs, such as sex education, were not offered.34 I also found that certain “transmitters/carriers” of Sikh identity such as community elders, committee members and religious teachers did not always understand or concur on the temple’s role in London Sikh youth identity formation. For instance, some youth looked for answers to epistemic questions of theodicy but felt that gurdwaras and those teaching Sikhism at these institutions could not comprehend the importance of these questions; many also did not have the scriptural or theological knowledge to offer a Sikhi-based discussion. This resulted in the role of the gurdwara for many Sikh youth being personalized and reduced, rather than general and unchallenged. This is a development which may be a change for the communitarian boundaries of Sikhs but brings them in line with many non-Sikh peers who rarely cite religion as an identity marker and thus rely much less on religious institutions such as temples in their lives. A century-old Weberian construct appears to be gaining ground here: The more the world of the modern element that exists in human life, the more the world follows its own immanent laws, the less accessible it is to any imaginable relationship with a religious ethic of brotherliness. (Weber quoted in Gerth and Mills, 1998, p. 331)

London’s Sikh Youth: Summing up Qaumic to Extra-qaumic The history of Sikhs in Britain shows that their identity has never been an easy one to form, express and transmit, so the effect of their youth adding a nationalist dimension is unclear. However, if that dimension is itself under scrutiny, Sikh youth could in theory contribute in defining British identity by engaging with the body politic. And so it is feasible that while the community can be thought of as having remained relatively unchanged in some ways, its current youth generation’s rapid move toward mainstream culture could significantly affect its future identity both as Britons and Sikhs. In London’s urbanized setting I found that these Sikh youth, more so than their parents and due to their broader socialization, face a “wider set of social and economic relations within the places they reside” (Vertovec, 2007, p. 1049). 34 See also Laura Hirvi’s work for an examination of the role of the gurdwara in identity transmission among Sikhs in Finland (Hirvi, 2010).

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This finding was important, as I was then able to develop Ballard’s idea of a community with a qaumic or “ethnic-based mobilization” aspect into an extra-qaumic dimension, or an aspect that is wider and beyond the ethnic Sikh community. Having plotted out this change in the youth, I then realized that the increase in Steven Vertovec’s “relations” with non-Sikh/Punjabi “identity forces” and the decrease in Ballard’s dimensions of Sikhism interrupts the intergenerational transfer of identity and distances the youth from Sikh authority and tradition – for instance, in the form of the gurdwaras and family. These Sikh youth are more comfortable in a wider society that relies on individualised choices rather than ethno-religious or familial ties as links – or the Durkheimian move from “mechanical” to “organic”. This development has become especially important for a successful lifestyle, the attainment of which is made easier through social mobility, a process in which personal efficacy skills are honed more and more through social interaction with non-Sikhs in music, attire, media technology, sports and studies – and all of which form important parts of London’s youth culture. They see the success of their lives as dependent on “modern” society rather than on their “traditional” community, a move that perhaps ties their extra-qaumic behaviour to the concept of Gesselschaft as opposed to Gemeinschaft or qaumic. In a simplistic way, Sikh youth identify with four “embodied” groups that “personalize” their everyday experience of identity formation: Sikh and non-Sikh peers, their predecessors both in Britain and elsewhere, and the future lives of their offspring (see Figure 11.4). Using these reference points, I observed that Sikh youth lifestyles reflect a reduction in the import of their predecessors’ influences, as well as Sikh peers, and an increase in the “here and now”. As a result, their lifestyles and influences appear to be moving away from the centre of the figure towards the right. Some evidence of this move, I suggest, includes the reduction in use and understanding of the Punjabi language, freer engagement in pop-culture, the use of the gurdwara for cultural/social reasons or spiritual praying, the rise of gender equality politics, and more marriages with non-Sikhs. While this situation may demonstrate the reduced relevance of Ballard’s model (in my application of it) in contrast with Vertovec’s, it still does not fully capture the youths’ drive for “national social belonging”. It is this need that gives rise to mainstream political mobilization among youth and may better correlate with politically minded concepts such as Avtar Brah’s work. So to further understand this newer, extra-qaumic phase of Sikh identity development, I applied Avtar Brah’s ideas on “contesting identities” to the process of “difference, diversity, differentiation” faced by these Sikh youth (Brah, 2003, pp. 95–127). My analysis concluded, like Brah, that these youth could no longer be considered simply diaspora. Brah set out to re-examine the idea of diaspora using contemporary fieldwork and concluded that the very etymology

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Figure 11.4 Sikh youth identity “embodiment” of the word itself may make it less useful for newer, British-born members of migrant communities – mainly as their identity process involves more the politics of their surrounding environment rather than those of their familial heritage (Brah, 2003, p. 183). The term diaspora may still describe correctly parts of their community like their settler generations but not their British-born, jus soli youth. So for the Sikh youth in my research, their interaction with society centred less on “difference” and more on “differentiation” where being Sikh did “differentiate” but did not lead to a “difference” in peer group perception and thus did not stop social mobility, acculturation and belonging. By framing Sikh youth as part of Britain’s and not just the Sikh community’s “configurations of power” in identity politics, the youths’ quick adoption of the body politic makes their intention clear; they are interested in adjusting the “relationality” between themselves and the “regime of power” (Brah, 2003, p. 188). How? Simply put, by behaving like citizenry and engaging in mainstream activity, such as the

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Vaisakhi celebrations in Trafalgar Square, London or the Westminster protests of the Kesri Lehar movement.35 One particular research incident is worth detailing to understand the relevance of Brah’s ideas to London’s Sikh youth. In early August 2011, during the summer riots in London, hundreds of Sikhs gathered outside the gurdwaras in West London’s Southall and Hounslow carrying hockey sticks and kirpans to deter the rumoured looting occurring in London at the same time (The Guardian, 2012). In the interviews that took place immediately afterwards, the comments I received were quite divided on the religio-political aspect of physically defending the temples but not on the intention of defending local communities where Sikhs reside in significant numbers. Many older Sikhs viewed these actions in much the same way as similar actions that had taken place in communities such as Eltham in South London and Enfield in North London. For them the “social” intent was not in conflict with the religious setting, with one interviewee suggesting that the miri-piri concept facilitated their taking up arms for defence. However, most Sikh youth and non-Sikh interviewees in the locale were concerned by the religious politicization of these actions as the mobilizations in South and North London had been cross-societal and secular. They further pointed out that none of the actions of the other communities had taken place at religious locations. Below are notes from one interview: GSJ: What are your thoughts on Sikhs gathering at the gurdwaras in Hounslow and Southall to act as deterrents to the rioting and looting seen this week in parts of London? Nirankar (male, 16): It is really a mixed reaction for me; on the one hand it gives me deep pride to know that of all those minorities represented in London, only us Sikhs have shown up. On the other hand I am not sure whether I want to be viewed as people defined by this reaction to an alleged threat. GSJ: Do you see any difference between those community members gathering in Eltham and Enfield with the Sikhs in Hounslow and Southall? Nirankar: Significant, really big. Not sure what to make of it still though. The obvious difference is that the other actions were based on a communal or territorial This is a UK-based Sikh movement started in 2012 to campaign for the abolishment of the death sentence in India via a 100,000 strong petition particularly with reference to the Indian prisoner Balwant Singh Rajaona. The movement’s organizers, mostly through social media and widespread gurdwara support, staged a vigil outside the Houses of Parliament and affected a Parliamentary debate in early 2013. Since then, however, Kesri Lehar’s presence has dramatically reduced but the organization still maintains an office in Hounslow, West London. 35

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sense of protection, whereas these seem to be religious based. (Interview, August 2011, Southall and Hounslow)

At the end of this field research my summary became clearer. This incident represented a new identity development for London’s Sikhs, one signalled by the critical examination of “transmitted” identity and where the use of an inherited value system, in this case religion, currently utilized to assert and protect the community’s identity, is challenged by its youth due to their concern that it is communitarian rather than societal and will set them apart from citizenry. Sikh Youth as Britons In conclusion, then, given their large numbers in youth demographics both within and outside their own community and their social mobility, London’s Sikh youth will affect British identity among Sikhs. This is because they are less likely to use Sikhism and Sikh culture as primary identification markers and because of their increased acculturation and interaction with non-Sikh and non-Punjabi elements of society. While this distances them from previous Sikh generations, it remains highly attractive as it draws them closer to their wider peer group, an aspect that is important for successful lifestyles in Vertovec’s “super-diverse” London. The reduction in religiosity has diminished the authority of gurdwaras and challenged the influence of the family; the former may now be fulfilling a more socio-cultural or spiritual role. Heritage languages, culture and religion, and many other ancestral identity markers, increasingly vie with elements from mainstream socialization spheres such as professional and casual work settings, friends, personal relationships and national identity politics – all changes that are greatly assisted by these Sikh youths’ proficiency in adopting new technologies of communication and creating media output. The result is that Sikh youth are now increasingly closer to non-Sikhs and noticeably a significant rise in inter-race and inter-faith relationships, including marriages, can be observed. A simplistic summary of their identity politics could be that they are no longer “from one place and of another” (Floyia, 1998, p. 565). Perhaps this ought not to be an unexpected development. In a growth pattern similar to other recently arrived diaspora communities such as the West Indian or Polish migrants in London, the Sikh community also displays “structural weakness” which causes identity formation to fluctuate, as the community has “shifting internal and external boundaries” (Gayer, 2007). As a result, labels such as diaspora and settlers are much less applicable to these youth when compared to their predecessors. They are better described with more fixed and “experiential” points of belonging such as “British” or “Londoners”. It appear that

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they desire Jaspal’s (2012) “continuity”. This is also an aspect that anchors them among the general youth population, “protecting” them through politically charged nationalist debates on identity and immigration, thereby asserting their position as citizenry. In this way studies of Sikh youth identity in other nation states such as those in North America or Italy could also benefit from London’s example of the Sikh youth’s growing interest in non-community based local and national ideas of belonging. These ideas include political debates such as post-nationalism, social influences such as youth and pop culture, historical traits such as the regionalization of national identity, and the physical – such as urbanization – all of which look set to cause long-term effects. Given that the debate on religion and “British values” has recently moved into the centre of party politics, in, for example, the discussion on religious free schools, Sikh children could soon be negotiating their “traditional” and “modern” influences very publicly and perhaps even vulnerably. Having already constitutionally changed British identity before, Sikhs could, like many other minority groups, shape the future of whatever “Britishness” is in the twenty-first century. A time perhaps when the nation’s Sikh youth may not be thought of as “Sikhs in Britain” or “British Sikhs” but simply Britons? References Abizadeh, Arash (2004), “Liberal Nationalist Versus Postnational Social Integration: On the Nation’s Ethno-cultural Particularity and ‘Concreteness’”. Nations and Post-nationalism, 10 (3), 231–50. Anthias, Floyia (1998), “Evaluating ‘Diaspora’: Beyond Ethnicity?”. Sociology, 32 (3), 557–80. Aurora, Gurdip Singh (1967), The New Frontiersmen: A Sociological Study of Indian Immigrants in the United Kingdom. Bombay: Popular Prakashan. Baban, Feyzi (2006), “From Gastarbeiter to ‘Auslandische Mitburger: Postnational Citizenship and In-Between Identities in Berlin’”. Citizenship Studies, 10 (2), 185–201. Ballard, Roger (2000), “The Growth and Changing Character of the Sikh presence in Britain”, in H. Coward, J.R. Hinnells and R.B. Williams (eds), The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States. Albany: State University of New York Press, pp. 127–44. Ballard, Roger (2006), “Ethnic Diversity and the Delivery of Justice: The Challenge of Plurality”, in Prakash Shah (ed.), Migrations, Diasporas and Legal Systems in Europe. London: Cavendish, pp. 29–56. Ballard, Roger (2012), Processes of Religious Reconstruction among Britain’s South Asian Minorities: A Reflection on the Contemporary Dynamics of Reverse

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Colonisation. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University, 2012. Available at: http:// archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/2765/ (accessed December 2013). Bance, Peter, Gurpreet Anand, and Sukhbir Paul (2008), Khalsa Jatha British Isles 1908–2008. London: The Central Gurdwara. Beetham, David (1970), Transport and Turbans. London: Oxford University Press. Brah, Avtar (2003), Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Brubaker R. (1998), “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism”, in J. Hall (ed.), The State of the Nation: Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 272–306. Cohen, Robin (1996), “Diasporas and the Nation-State: From Victims to Challengers”. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944–), Ethnicity and International Relations, 72 (3), 507–20. Colley, Linda (1992), Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Condor, Susan G., Stephen Gibson and Jackie Abell (2006), “English Identity and Ethnic Diversity in the Context of UK Constitutional Change”. Ethnicities, 6 (2), 123–58. Delanty, Gerard (1999), “Self, Other and World: Discourses of Post-nationalism and Cosmopolitanism”. Cultural Values, 3 (3), 365–75. Durkheim, Emile (1997), The Division of Labor in Society. Trans. Lewis A. Coser. New York: Free Press. Everson, Michelle (2003), “Subjects or Citizens of Erewhon? Law and Non-Law in the Development of a British Citizenship”. Citizenship Studies, 7 (1), 57–84. Fisher, Michael H., Shompa Lahiri and Shinder Thandi (2007), A South-Asian History of Britain: Four Centuries of Peoples from the Indian Sub-Continent. Oxford: Greenwood. Gap Min, Pyong (2005), “Intergenerational Transmission of Religion and Culture: Korean Protestants in the U.S”. Sociology of Religion, 66 (3), 263–82. Gayer, Laurent (2007), “The Volatility of the ‘Other’: Identity Formation and Social Interaction in Diasporic Environments”. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (online), 1. Available at: http://samaj.revues.org/36 (accessed January 2013). Geschiere, P. (2009), Perils of Belonging – Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gerth, Hans H. and C. Wright Mills (eds and trans.) (1998), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gillan, Audrey (2008), “‘Proud to Be Welsh and a Sikh’. Schoolgirl Wins Court Battle to Wear Religious Bangle”, The Guardian, 30 July. Available at: http://

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www.theguardian.com/education/2008/jul/30/schools.religion (accessed 1 May 2012). Gilroy, Paul (1993), Small Acts: Thoughts on the Politics of Black Cultures. London: Serpent’s Tail. Hall, Kathleen D. (2002), Lives in Translations: Sikh Youth as British Citizens. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hansen, Randall (1999), “The Kenyan Asians, British Politics and the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts”. The Historical Journal, 42, 809–34. Hirvi, Laura (2010), “The Sikh gurdwara in Finland: Negotiating, Maintaining and Transmitting Immigrants’ Identities”. South Asian Diaspora, 2 (2), 219–32. House of Commons (2013), “British Sikh Community”, Hansard Debates for 13 March. Available at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm2012 13/cmhansrd/cm130313/halltext/130313h0001.htm (accessed December 2013). Hussain, Yasmin and Bagguley, Paul (2005), “Citizenship, Ethnicity and Identity: British Pakistanis after the 2001 ‘Riots’”. Sociology, 39 (3), pp. 407–25. Ipsos MORI (2007), “Young People and British Identity”. London, Camelot Foundation/Ipsos MORI website. Available at: http://www.ipsosmori.com/ Assets/Docs/Archive/Polls/young-people-and-british-identity-summary. pdf (accessed January 2013). Ishaq, Mohammed and Asifa Hussain (2002), “British Ethnic Minority Communities and the Armed Forces”. Personnel Review, 31 (6), 722–39. Jandu, G.S., (2011), Gurdwara, Sikh Youth and Identity Politics in London: A Case Study of the Hounslow Gurdwara and the Transmission of British Sikh Identity. London: Unpublished. Jaspal, R. (2012). “British Sikh Identity and the Struggle for Distinctiveness and Continuity”. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 23 (3), pp. 225–39. Jordan, Glenn and Satwinder Singh (2011), “The Sikh Diaspora in Ireland: A Short History”, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Kristina Myrvold (eds), Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identities and Representations. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 305–29. Karatani, Rieko (2003), Defining British Citizenship: Empire, Commonwealth and Modern Britain. London: Frank Cass. Kearney, Hugh (2000), “The Importance of Being British”. The Political Quarterly, 71 (1), 15–25. Kesri Lehar (2012), “Home”. Available at: http://www.kesrilehar.co.uk/ (accessed August 2013). Kibria, Nazli (2008), “The ‘New Islam’ and Bangladeshi Youth in Britain and the US”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31 (2), 243–66. Koopmans, Ruud and Paul Stratham (1999), “Challenging the Liberal NationState? Postnationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Collective Claims Making

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of Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Britain and Germany”. American Journal of Sociology, 105 (3), 652–96. Kudenko, I. and D.A. Phillips (2010), “Multicultural Narratives and the Construction of Identity: The British Jewish Experience”. Space and Polity, 14, 65–80. Lewis, Paul, Tim Newburn, Matthew Taylor, et al. (2011), “Reading the Riots: Investigating England’s Summer of Disorder”. The London School of Economics and Political Science and The Guardian, London, UK. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/46297/ (accessed November 2012). Life in the United Kingdom (2013), “The Official Practice Test”. The Stationery Office. Available at: http://www.officiallifeintheuk.co.uk/test/ (accessed June 2012). Lyotard, J. (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Theory & History of Literature). Translated by G. Bennington and B. Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mandair, Arvind (2007), “Interdictions: Language, Religion and the (dis)Orders of Indian Identity”. Social Identities, 13 (3), 337–61. Mandair, Navdeep (2007), “Re-enchanting Englishness: Multiculturalism and the Matter of Britain”. Social Identities, 13 (3), 283–306. Mandla (Sewa Singh) v Dowell Lee [1983] 2 WLR 620, [1983] ICR 385, [1982] UKHL 7, [1983] 2 AC 548, [1983] 1 All ER 106. Available at: http://www. bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1982/7.htm. Marshall, T.H. (1992 [1950]), “Citizenship and Social Class”, in T.H. Marshall and Tom Bottomore (eds), Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto Press, pp. 6–17 Mattausch, John (2012), Unsettled Citizens? British South Asians. Unpublished Paper presented at 2012 European Conference on South Asian Studies, Lisbon, Portugal. McLeod, W.H. (1989), Who is a Sikh? The Problem of Sikh Identity. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Office of National Statistics (2011), “Table DC2107EW – Religion by Sex by Age”, Nomis: Official Labour Market Statistics. Available at: http://www. nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/DC2107EW/view/2092957703?rows=c_ age&cols=c_relpuk11 (accessed 10 June 2013). Office of National Statistics (2012), “Religion in England and Wales 2011”. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census/key-sta tistics-for-local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/rpt-religion.html (accessed October 2013). Plymouth City Council (n.d.), “Councillor Chaz Singh”. Available at: http:// www.plymouth.gov.uk/modgov?modgovlink=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. plymouth.gov.uk%2FmgInternet%2FmgUserInfo.aspx%3FUID%3D1644 (accessed January 2013).

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Sato, K. (2012), “Divisions among Sikh Communities in Britain and the Role of Caste System: A Case Study of Four Gurdwaras in Multi-Ethnic Leicester”. Journal of Punjab Studies, 19 (1), 1–26. Singh, Jasjit (2010), “Head First: Young British Sikhs, Hair, and the Turban”. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25 (2), 203–20. Smith, W. Marian (1948), “Synthesis and Other Processes in Sikhism”. American Anthropologist, 50 (3.1), 457–62. Tonnies, F. (2001), Community and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vertovec, Steven (2001), “Transpost-nationalism and Identity”.  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 27 (4), 573–82. Vertovec, Steven (2007), “Super-diversity and Its Implications”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30 (6), 1024–54.

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Chapter 12

Reflexivity: Language, Power and Capital When Researching Sikhs Bikram Singh Brar

Traditionally, both social and educational research, through imitating the “natural” sciences, have tried to present the researcher and social research as “objective” (Walford, 1991). However, in recent years, there has been a greater acknowledgement that a search for objectivity within social research is undesirable and that “no human being can step outside of her or his humanity and view the world from no position at all” (Burr, 1995, p. 160). Such a constructionist approach, adopting a particular epistemology and ontology which emphasizes the multiplicity of possible readings from any interaction, a lack of objectivity and stressing the significance of specific contexts and language use, therefore invites the researcher to acknowledge that: we are part and parcel of the psychological processes we are studying and so [we need to] include ourselves in our analyses rather than view ourselves as neutral unbiased inquisitors. (Ahmed, 1996, p. 35)

If such notions are accepted, and accordingly drawn upon, researchers are expected to question their own assumptions, to locate themselves within the research and to acknowledge alternative interpretations of reality so that they may debate different points of view. Reflexivity, then, is a way of entering into dialogue in order to improve the research, allowing greater transparency into every facet of the research process, rather than being perceived as a tool to prevent criticism. Such reflexive concerns have been acknowledged and explored in other research on Sikhs including on positionality, the “insider/outsider” status of the researcher, claims to “authenticity” of the findings and how this influences the research (e.g. Bhopal, 2000; Nesbitt, 2009; Sagoo, 2009; Sidhu, 2013). In addition, other research has shed light on the difficulties researchers face when researching religion (Nagar and Geiger, 2007; Falcone, 2010); the researcher’s gender when exploring gender politics in Sikhism (Behl, 2010); and how gender allowed access to different levels of power in various social, cultural and religious contexts (Rana, 2012). However, there is little consensus on what should

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constitute reflexivity; explorations of the researcher’s own role vary from those academics who include a short section with a cursory reference to their own identity, to those researchers who produce longer narratives, emphasizing the importance of how their own characteristics have an impact upon every aspect of the research process. In this chapter, I critically discuss some of these forms and practices of reflexivity, how I have attempted to incorporate these practices, and give examples from my own research on the aspirations of young Sikh adults to illustrate them. Finally, I conclude with a suggestion for improving reflexive practices to introduce greater transparency to the research process. The Research Study Before I begin to explore some reflexive practices, it is useful to outline my research study. As part of my PhD, I investigated the occupational and educational aspirations of Sikh young adults through constructing a novel “syncretic” social constructionist approach which drew upon various strands from cultural theory and social constructionism, along with Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, field and capital (Bourdieu, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1991). I conducted semi-structured, qualitative interviews with a sample of 10 students (aged 15–16), their parents and their principal teachers from one school in the West London region (my former high school) to investigate the different discourses and resources they employed to construct both aspirations as well as identities. Although I did employ some analytical tools associated with discursive psychology for analysis, including “face” and “politeness” strategies (Brown and Levinson, 1987), I predominantly drew upon Bourdieu’s notion of habitus, capital and field and Stuart Hall and Avtar Brah’s theorizations of identity construction, which can be considered a “top-down” approach to analysis (Hall, 1990, 1992, 1997; Brah, 1996). Adopting these various theoretical perspectives of course had an impact upon how I practised reflexivity – particularly with regards to how I was able to locate myself within the research, bringing my own role to the fore and ensuring that there was greater transparency throughout the research process. Reflexivity and Language An increased focus on the language that individuals employ to construct the world is one reflexive approach that is drawn upon in academia, and here Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell’s theorizations are significant (Potter

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and Wetherell, 1987). Drawing upon Lawrence Wieder, they argue that talk is both multi-formulative and multi-consequential, and reflexivity for them signifies that talk is not only used to describe actions, it is “at the same time part of those things” (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, p. 182; Wieder, 1974). Descriptions of something constitute an event; they are about, as well as a part of, the event and reflexivity brings greater attention to this (Potter, 1996). I considered these ideas useful and, as I explore later, the language I used to ask questions was crucial to both self-constructions as well as how I constructed others; a process which could be both intentional and unintentional. For example, at times, I was constructed as “middle class” by some students because of the way I spoke and my use of the “wrong” form of slang – a linguistic form of cultural capital that I did not possess, which starkly highlighted how I was “positioned” against these students. Consequently, descriptions ceased to be seen as abstract and detached from the world, but instead refer to the activities of which they are an intrinsic part. Although a version of reflexivity which focuses on language is certainly useful since it is intrinsic to any constructions made, there is a danger in examining the “internal workings of a piece of text and ignor[ing] its wider political implications” (Burr, 1995, p. 181). Taking this into account for my research, and bearing in mind the “top-down” analysis I was employing, it was necessary to draw upon other notions of reflexivity which reflected this. Reflexivity and Power It is here where I found an exploration of the dynamics of power useful to emphasize how “both the researcher and researched are seen as collaborators in the construction of knowledge” (Tindall, 1994, p. 149). According to Robin Usher and Richard Edwards, the “con-text” and the “sub-text” of research are a method of understanding this (Usher and Edwards, 1994; Usher, 1997). Examining an epistemic reflexivity, the “sub-text” of research, they argue that it is a method through which we, as researchers, can explore our immersion within “epistemic communities”. Since epistemology is inherent within all research, it is “never ‘innocent’ because it always contains within itself a set of values – meaning that there is always a politics of research, an implication of research with power relations” (Usher and Edwards, 1994, p. 149). One of these implications, as Amina Mama points out, is that recognition of the researcher as “expert” in their subject gives their voice more “authenticity” than the researched (Mama, 1995), particularly since they are in control of the “whole process of research production” (Oliver, 1992, p. 102), and thus their interpretations and analysis carry greater weight. This was certainly evident in my study and important immediately from the onset of the study rather than

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solely when interpreting and analysing data – it was I who decided which criteria were “right” and “wrong” for participants in order to take part in this study. However, as I illustrate later, power was not delineated in a simple dichotomy in this study, with the researcher all-powerful and participants powerless. Instead, it fluctuated across a spectrum, with participants and myself both having varying levels of access to power at different points. Furthermore, the autobiography or “context” (Usher and Edwards, 1994; Usher, 1997) of the researchers is also important and this is conveyed through the intersections of gender, “race”, ethnicity, social class and caste which have an impact on every aspect of the research process, including how data is interpreted and analysed. Such notions link in with other aspects of my “syncretic” constructionist approach, including Bourdieu’s habitus and field and Hall and Brah’s theorizations of identity, where individuals’ identities, including their social class and gender, can have an impact within the social arenas, or fields, in which they interact and compete for resources. Although individuals can share a similar habitus, they can be positioned differently alongside other members in a similar field including the family and education; something that was apparent between young adults, their peers and their parents, who were positioned differently based upon their gender, age and peer group membership, which had a bearing upon how they constructed aspirations and identities, including for myself. Participants’ constructions of myself were intersected by social class, caste and gender and thus, the simple “matching” of researcher to participants was considered too simplistic since different identities did not function “in any unitary or essential way” (Phoenix, 1994, p. 49), but varied according to context, and were framed within particular relations of power. Furthermore, the idiosyncrasies of my study meant that caste was also important. As Paul A.S. Ghuman found when studying Bhatra (trader caste) Sikhs in Cardiff, who had very different migratory patterns compared with large-scale South Asian migration, he was considered an “outsider” because he was a member of the Jat (farmer) caste – an issue which was pertinent in this study (Ghuman, 1980). Sikhs, rather than being a homogeneous group, have many branches and offshoots, some delineated by caste and, hence, a consequence of this was that I could never be a complete “insider” with some members of my group. Subjectpositions based on caste were more prevalent with Sikh parents in this study as compared with their children. Parents were more likely to draw attention to my caste both during and after interviews, signalling how this was central to their habitus as compared with the younger generation. I draw on Bipasha Ahmed to suggest that we can never be a complete “insider” with those we research because, as researchers, we operate from an elevated position within society, one automatically inscribed with greater power. Furthermore, as Ahmed argues, there is no indication that “matching”

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the researcher and researched will produce more valid and meaningful data as different researchers will produce equally valid and interesting knowledge (Ahmed, 1996). However, despite an “insider” position increasing the likelihood of familiar issues to be overlooked, having such a role can help the researcher to understand certain connotations and nuances associated with language and culture and it was useful to have knowledge of both the school and the Sikhs in this study. Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic power was also incorporated into how I practised reflexivity, adding to the “syncretic” element of my approach. Symbolic power, for Bourdieu, is concerned with transforming different forms of capital into those which gain credence in society, requiring recognition from group members if it is to be accrued or lost. Drawing on Bourdieu was important to explore both the power relationship between participants and myself and the subject-positions adopted; different positions could allow the individual to gain or lose status and thereby symbolic capital. As I explore below, the symbolic power I possessed through being positioned as the “expert” in the field gave my position legitimacy throughout the research. However, rather than retaining symbolic power throughout the entire research process, I did acquire, accumulate and lose power, as the “recognition” I received from the group varied within different social and cultural contexts. Reflecting on My Role within this Research Study This section of the chapter explores how I practised reflexivity to incorporate the assumptions I brought to the research about my “own” Sikh group and the teachers at school. Such assumptions were important for how I interpreted data and how identities were constructed. I consider reflexivity should begin immediately at the onset of the study, when the research questions are conceived; it is the researcher who decides upon the rationale for the study, the methodology to be employed and the research design. Participants here have little, if any, input, thereby investing the researcher with far greater power. However, it was not quite so simple with my own study. My initial supervisors when I began the PhD were two “white” women (an act of me constructing an identity for my supervisors; “white”, just like other forms of categorizing people, is not a homogeneous category) from different theoretical backgrounds who advised me on every aspect of the research from the literature I read, to the research questions and the methodology behind the study. As such, my research study was intersected by “race”, ethnicity, social class, gender and “expertise” at the onset which combined in unique and different ways, each playing a significant role on the construction of the research. My latter supervisors were two “white” men who guided me through the final stages of my PhD. Consequently, this

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newer relationship was also delineated by such notions of “race”, ethnicity, social class and gender (and also expertise), with all of us positioned differently within the diaspora space, and having a bearing upon how the study is perceived, at least by myself, and thus shaped. Issues of power were also pertinent when trying to recruit the sample and I was rendered relatively powerless during several occasions. My initial intention was to conduct interviews with five male and five female Sikh pupils but only two girls agreed to participate after great difficulty. Such problems were envisaged before I began the research; gender was an explicit consideration along with notions of izzat, or family honour, and since I am male, I felt that some Sikh parents considered it inappropriate for me to interview their daughters alone. Here, I was positioned within a cultural framework which structured appropriate and inappropriate forms of behaviour for different genders. Several strategies were attempted to obtain the sample, such as meeting parents at the school’s Parents’ Evening, talking to them when they came to pick their children up, and calling parents at home to try to get them to participate. As Ann Phoenix argues, people can refuse to take part in the research, which is an act of the researched possessing power. Unlike Phoenix, however, I did not find that “it is rare for respondents to refuse to take part in a study when faced with a researcher” (Phoenix, 1994, p. 51). As the school had a high proportion of Sikh students, I envisaged that it would be easier for me to acquire a sample as I considered that the symbolic capital I possessed (or thought I possessed) from studying a PhD would make Sikh parents more likely to participate in the research. This was not to be the case as parents often were quite dismissive of the research. Rather than the PhD giving me greater symbolic capital, it was not considered “important” enough to bestow a higher status on me because it was a “soft” subject, highlighting how certain courses and careers provided the individual with greater symbolic capital than others for some Sikh parents. One possible explanation of this is my physical appearance. Sikhism, compared with other major religions, is inscribed by five physical symbols, including the visual kesh – long hair tied in a turban. As such, being a Sikh is often constructed in terms of a simple dichotomy – those who shave, seen as less “traditional” and more “Westernized”, and those who retain their hair, perceived as a more authentic type of Sikh. Here, I was positioned within religious and cultural frameworks – since I am a sehajdari, a clean-shaven Sikh, I was instantly distinguishable from more “authentic”-looking Sikhs with turbans, placing me within a conspicuous power relationship where my physical appearance put me at a disadvantage; the loss of symbolic power having “real” consequences within this particular context. The ideas of Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell, concerning the impact of “talk” upon constructions, were also significant for how I was constructed – how I spoke, the tone of my voice and the language I employed all had a bearing

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upon the identities participants constructed for me (Potter and Wetherell, 1987, Wetherell and Potter, 1988, 1992). Parents were more likely to be dismissive if I did not speak to them in Punjabi, essentialized as an “authentic” characteristic of being a Sikh, and constructed me as an “outsider”. Nonetheless, rather than resisting, I consciously embraced such a construction, reconstructing an identity for myself through using Punjabi so that I could be seen as a “bona fide” Punjabi Sikh in order to recruit a sample. This linguistic positioning was not only framed within cultural frames of reference, but also social class, varying according to whether I interacted with young adults, their parents or teachers. Here, having the linguistic resources to construct a greater “insider” position was a real advantage over non-Sikh researchers who may not have had such resources. Use of language was also relevant to the young adults and teachers. From talking to Sikh young adults to explain my research study, it was apparent that they were constructing a distinct middle-class identity for me through the language I used and how I enunciated and pronounced words. Although it was not something I had been aware of, it did have an impact upon my behaviour and I consciously began to alter the way I spoke, using the vernacular and colloquial with greater urgency in order to construct an “insider” identity since I hoped it would facilitate the recruitment of my sample. However, the use of the vernacular was not limited to gathering a sample. I was conscious that I was speaking in such a way in order to construct myself as “cool” to attempt to fit in with the youth subcultures of the students. For example, I found myself using words such as “bare” (meaning “a lot”), “jack” (meaning “nothing”) and “hench” (meaning “strong”) during the course of conversations with young adults. These attempts were ineffectual; young adults resisted my self-constructions by noting how I used the “wrong” type of language in the wrong context. Furthermore, I did not always understand the language that students used. When I did not understand what “rents” were, constructing it, in a very confused manner, as something concerning housing rent, I was verbally derided by students who told me it was a term for “parents”. This, instead, resulted in unflattering identities being constructed for me, positioning me as from a higher social class and, thus, locating me as a linguistic “outsider”. The young adults were empowered here, forcing me to alter my behaviour. Hence, such identities were complex, in a state of flux, constructed and reconstructed through language, resisted and embraced, and situated in a very particular context based around configurations of social class as well as youth subculture. Interestingly, some identities, located within past experiences, were difficult to resist. As I was a former pupil at the school, and had been taught by some teachers who I interviewed, I was accustomed to constructing myself in a very distinct power relationship located within the diaspora space – that of “pupil” and “teacher”. Although this ethnographic element enabled me to gain easier access to the school, including students’ school records and persuading teachers

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to take part in the study, I entered the setting with a degree of trepidation – my new role as an “expert” in the field was in direct contrast to my former role as a “student”. As a student, I had been positioned as weaker than teachers who had more power within the school setting, but now I possessed greater cultural capital (highlighting the change in my own habitus from when I was student) through being an “expert” on the topic; a form of power which gave me greater symbolic capital. This was evident when I took control to organize meetings with the Heads of Year concerning aspects of the research, including interview times with participants, rooms I could use for interviews and confidentiality issues. However, this issue was more complex than a simple shift in the dynamics of power, and varied according to the particular teacher. For example, with the “newer” Head of Year it was easier to position myself as an “expert” since he had not known me as a student whereas the “older” Head of Year had, and, consequently, with “older” teachers I was still likely to position myself as a “student”. This was apparent when I was planning interview schedules with the “older” Head of Year in her office. I felt uneasy about being positioned as the “expert” and the previous role of “student”, one which I had occupied for several years, was prevalent over my “newer” role in this familiar setting and, thus, it was harder to always consider myself as an expert. Rather than always being uncomfortable in my new role as “expert”, how I felt varied according to the context. I embraced my “middle-class” identity at various school events when trying to recruit participants, and being associated with teachers gave my role greater legitimacy when speaking to parents; another form of symbolic power which I exploited in order to acquire a sample. This was quite successful as parents were less likely to be dismissive (although some still were), but this often resulted in students equating me with the school and therefore constructing me in a negative light. Being a former student at the school was also important during interviews with teachers. Although I was now the expert, in control of the direction of the interview in order to obtain the information I sought, the power shifted during interviews between myself and some of the teachers. Once again my previous educational experiences came to the fore during interviews with “older” teachers, often as examples as to how things had changed. Consequently, my former student identity had a constant presence which made it difficult to embrace my new role. The location of interviews with teachers and pupils was also important. At times, they were conducted in the Head of Year’s office – a site that I, and current students, associated with “being in trouble” which made me feel uncomfortable and less in control of interviews with teachers despite being the “expert”. A complex interplay of power tied in with subject-positions and different contextual settings was at work here which shifted before, during and after interviews and, as such, my role at the school was dynamically constructed and reconstructed, and shifted between former and newer positions.

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The interview settings were also important when interviewing parents in their homes. Although I was made to feel welcome, I did feel very awkward at times, especially when I visited one young adult’s home to speak to her father with the prior knowledge that he had been physically abusing his child. My position here was complex as social class, gender and caste intersected and interwove throughout the process. Moreover, I was supposed to be more powerful as the “expert” on the topic yet I was also constructed as weaker – notions of power here were based around culturally located ideas of “respect for elders” (Dosanjh and Ghuman, 1997, 1998). However, the overarching theme was one of discomfort where I knew I had to be very careful with regards to what I said in case there were later repercussions for the student and, consequently, when the father questioned what his child wanted to do in the future, I chose to feign ignorance in order to protect the young adult. Such interviews were, at times, within earshot of their spouses which meant that parents could be guarded as to what they chose to reveal. Issues relating to gender were certainly important at the intra-family level, as well as between mothers and myself; it was not always considered appropriate to leave me, a male, alone with a female member of a Sikh family. I was also rendered relatively powerless during other points in the research process. At various moments, pupils were absent from school when interviews were scheduled, interview rooms had been double-booked, and, on occasions, teachers did not want pupils to miss certain lessons. During some interviews, it was difficult to encourage pupils, parents and teachers to talk so that I could gather sufficient data for analysis. Furthermore, there have been other issues which occurred during the course of the research which cannot be accounted for when planning research. Two recordings of interviews with teachers were stolen from my car and so the interviews had to be conducted again, which meant that these teachers had a greater idea of questions to be asked and how to respond accordingly. In addition, my house was burgled and a laptop, with recently compiled field notes, was stolen. These occurrences could not have been foreseen and I was left with a burgeoning sense of powerlessness. During interviews I had far greater power; I decided upon the structure of the interview, the areas that I considered worthy of exploration, the followup questions to ask, and when I was satisfied that the relevant areas had been covered. My subject-positioning during the course of the research was also complex and intricate; positions were constructed based on age, gender, “race”, ethnicity and caste. For example, during one interview with a mother, I was positioned as younger,1 as the “expert” in the field being discussed, as male and as of a higher caste than the mother in question. It is here that having an “insider” 1 Dosanjh and Ghuman have found the notion of “respect” to be very important for elders (Dosanjh and Ghuman, 1997, 1998).

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position to an extent, and accounting for the assumptions I was bringing to the research, helped with an understanding of the subject-positions constructed. Each subject-position was fluid, inscribed with different accesses to power, coming to the fore during certain parts of the interview and withdrawing during others. On occasions, more than one position was held simultaneously. Rather than these positions remaining fixed, they fluctuated according to the topic being discussed during interviews. Nevertheless, attempts were made to incorporate the researched into the study. I answered any questions asked by participants before, during and after the interviews, and asked them for further clarification later if I required any. For example, during one interview with a parent, I was asked several times if Information Technology was a good subject for their son to study. Incorporating participants further into the research was not easy. The young adults and teachers had GCSE examinations (at the age of 16) to contend with, and parents were largely unavailable after interviews due to pressures of their work. Often, more importantly, they did not want to continue to take part. Thus, attempts at further incorporating the participants into the research can, again, be a futile endeavour. Overall, a significant element of this research challenged me to reflect upon and examine my own identity; who we are, and how and why we respond in certain ways in certain contexts, is frequently something that we can take for granted. I did share many commonalties with the researched, but also many important differences which I had not previously contemplated. An “insider” status enabled me to take a particular standpoint, allowing me to understand certain nuances of culture and youth subculture, and how other important factors, such as gender and social class, had a role to play. Simultaneously, my “outsider” status, which was constructed for me by young adults and parents, created barriers and prevented me from recruiting the sample I had ideally desired. As such, subject-positions, constructed by myself and others, resisted and embraced, have had an intrinsic role to play on how I responded to, interpreted, and, ultimately, analysed the data. Suggestions for Reflexive Practices In this final section, I argue that some existing practices of reflexivity are lacking and wish to conclude by suggesting some improvements for conducting reflexive practice. Though I perceive reflexivity to be a crucial component of research, I consider the lack of consensus among academics on what should constitute reflexivity to be a problem. As can be seen from the discussion earlier, various reflexive practices are employed by different academics, focusing on various areas of their research. Such practices, although showing the multitude of reflexive forms, do not provide an arena for engaging in honest debate. Drawing on

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Rosalind Gill, I suggest that it is imperative for reflexivity to scrutinize each area of the research process, fully accounting for, and critically reflecting upon, the actions of the researcher, rather than simply being employed as a tool for prevention of criticisms and reinforcing the position of the researcher (Gill, 1995). In addition, academics have to be aware of the role that gender, “race”, ethnicity and social class can have on their interpretations and analysis of accounts, and how this can be related to power relations inherent within the research process. As such, I have tried to incorporate this into how I conducted reflexive practices within my own research. I demonstrated how power relations were fluid, shifting during narratives; how both positive and negative subjectpositions were constructed by myself, and for myself by participants; and how these had an impact upon my own behaviour and upon my interpretations and analysis of data. Until we have such an arena, with greater consensus among researchers, and greater transparency of the research process, it will be difficult to engage in honest, critical debate. Consequently, as Gill argues, “[i]n this endeavour they [we] have a lot to learn from feminist research” (Gill, 1995, p. 182). References Ahmed, Bipasha (1996), “Reflexivity, Cultural Membership and Power in the Research Situation: Tensions and Contradictions when Considering the Researcher’s Role”. The British Psychological Society Newsletter, 17, Spring, 35–40. Behl, Natasha (2010), “Sikh Politics, Gender, and Narrative Identity”, paper presented at Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, April 2010, San Francisco, CA. Bhopal, Kalwant (2000), “Gender, ‘Race’ and Power in the Research Process: South Asian Women in East London”, in C. Truman and B. Humphries (eds), Research and Inequality. London: UCL Press, pp. 67–79. Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre (1985), “The Genesis of the Concepts of ‘Habitus’ and ‘Field’”. Sociocriticism, 2 (2), 11–24. Bourdieu, Pierre (1989), “Social Space and Symbolic Power”. Sociological Theory, 7 (1), 14–25. Bourdieu, Pierre (1991), Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Polity Press. Brah, Avtar (1996), Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson (1987), Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Burr, Vivien (1995), An Introduction to Social Constructionism. London: Routledge. Dosanjh, J.S. and Paul A.S. Ghuman (1997), “Asian Parents and English Education – 20 Years on: A study of two generations”. Educational Studies, 23 (3), 459–71. Dosanjh, J.S. and Paul A.S. Ghuman (1998), “Child-rearing practices of Two Generations of Punjabis: Development of Personality and Independence”. Children and Society, 12 (1), 25–37. Falcone, Jessica Marie (2010), “‘I Spy …’: The (Im)Possibilities of Ethical Participant Observation with Antagonists, Religious Extremists, and Other Tough Nuts”. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology, 18 (1), 243–82. Ghuman, Paul A.S. (1980), “Bhattra Sikhs in Cardiff: Family and Kinship Organisation”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 8 (3), 308–16. Gill, Rosalind (1995), “Relativism, Reflexivity and Politics: Interrogating Discourse Analysis from A Feminist Perspective”, in S. Wilkinson and C. Kitzinger (eds), Feminism and Discourse: Psychological Perspectives. London: SAGE, pp. 165–86. Hall, Stuart (1990), “Cultural Identity and Diaspora”, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 222–37. Hall, Stuart (1992), “New Ethnicities”, in J. Donald and A. Rattansi (eds), Race, Culture and Difference. London: SAGE, pp. 252–9. Hall, Stuart (1997), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: SAGE. Mama, Amina (1995), “Beyond the Masks”: Race Gender and Subjectivity. London: Routledge. Nagar, Richa and Susan Geiger (2007), “Reflexivity and Positionality in Feminist Fieldwork Revisited”, in A. Tickell, E. Shepherd, J. Peck and T. Barnes (eds), Politics and Practice in Economic Geography. London: SAGE, pp. 267–78. Nesbitt, Eleanor (2009), “Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikhs and ‘Mixed-Faith’ Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues”. Journal of Religion in Europe, 2 (1), 37–57. Oliver, Mike (1992), “Changing the Social Relations of Research Production?”. Disability, Handicap and Society, 7 (2), 101–14. Phoenix, Ann (1994), “Practising Feminist Research: The Intersection of Gender and ‘Race’ in the Research Process”, in M. Maynard and J. Purvis (eds), Researching Women’s Lives from a Feminist Perspective. London: Taylor & Francis, pp. 49–71. Potter, Jonathan (1996), Representing Reality: Discourse, Rhetoric and Social Construction. London: SAGE. Potter, Jonathan and Margaret Wetherell (1987), Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. London: SAGE.

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Rana, Sheetal (2009), Addressing Domestic Violence in Immigrant Communities: Critical Issues for Culturally Competent Services. Harrisburg, PA: VAWnet, a project of the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence. Sagoo, Gopinder Kaur (2009), A Sikh-inspired vision for learning: The discursive production of an ethos by members of the GNNET education trust, M.Res thesis, University of Birmingham. Available at: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/389/1/ Sagoo09MRes_A1b.pdf. Sidhu, Jaspreet Singh (2013), “Canadian Youth Criminality and Identity Formation: A South Asian (Sikh) Perspective”. Master of Arts thesis, Electronic Theses and Dissertations, Paper 4743, University of Windsor. Tindall, Carol (1994), “Issues of Evaluation”, in P. Banister, E. Burman, I. Parker, M. Taylor and C. Tindall (eds), Qualitative Methods in Psychology: A Research Guide. Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp. 142–59. Usher, Robin (1997), Understanding Social Research: Perspectives on Methodology and Practice. London: Falmer Press. Usher, Robin and Richard Edwards (1994), Postmodernism and Education. London: Routledge. Walford, Geoffrey (ed.) (1991), Doing Educational Research. London: Routledge. Wetherell, Margaret and Jonathan Potter (1988) “Discourse Analysis and the Identification of Interpretative Repertoires”, in C. Antaki (ed.), Analysing Everyday Explanation: A casebook of methods. London: Sage, pp. 168–83. Wetherell, Margaret and Jonathan Potter (1992), Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Wieder, Lawrence (1974), “Telling the Code”, in R. Turner (ed.), Ethnomethdology. Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 144–72.

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Glossary amrit – “immortal”: sweetened water (nectar) that is used during the ceremony of khande di pahul. amrit chhakia – having been initiated with amrit. amritdhari – “the bearer of the nectar”: Sikhs who have undergone the ceremony of khande di pahul, and follow the Rahit in its entirety. Anand Karaj – the marriage ritual. Ardas – “petition”: the prayer at the closing of congregational worship. bahu – daughter-in-law. bana – attire, the dress of the Khalsa for males. bania – “trader”. bhangra – music and dance tradition from Punjab. Bhatra – a caste of peddlers; some of the first Sikh immigrants to England were from the Bhatra caste. bhog – ceremonial conclusion of a reading of the complete Guru Granth Sahib. biradri – “brotherhood”: extended clan network. bojh – “burden”. bolian – short formulaic calls and responses that punctuate traditional bhangra dancing. Chamars – a low-caste group, traditionally associated with leather work. charan pahul – “nectar of the foot”: a ritual for the initiation of women according to the Chaupa Singh Rahit-nama. Chaupa Singh Rahit-nama – one of the earliest codes of conduct. chunni – headscarf used by Sikh women to cover their hair when in the presence of senior family members (especially male) and when visiting gurdwaras; see also dupatta. Dalits – ex-untouchables, self-designation of people from castes which previously were considered untouchables. dar – “fear”. Dasam Granth – “the tenth book/the book of the tenth Guru”: a text containing the compositions created at Guru Gobind Singh’s court. dastar – turban (religious); see pagri. degh tegh fateh – victory ( fateh) to kettle (deg) and sword (tegh). dupatta – headscarf used by Sikh women to cover their hair when in the presence of senior family members (especially male) and when visiting gurdwaras; see also chunni.

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gatka – wooden sword used for training in fencing, usually referring to the Sikh martial art of sword dancing and battle technique. goshala – “dairy farm”. got – exogamous sub-division of a caste group, family, sub-caste, clan. granth – “book”: scripture. gurbani – utterances of the Guru. gurdwara – “Guru’s house”: Sikh place of worship. The key area of a gurdwara is a spacious room housing the Guru Granth Sahib, where people sit and listen to scriptural recitation and singing. gurmukhi – “the script of the Gurmukhs/Sikhs”: the script of the Guru Granth. gursikh – “guru’s Sikh”: a person who has taken amrit and abides thereafter by all of the five Ks. guru – “preceptor”: the mode of Vahiguru as teacher which in the past was revealed to Sikhs in the 10 human Gurus, and persists in the form of the Guru Granth Sahib. Guru Granth Sahib – “the respected Guru book”: Sikh scripture contains compositions of six Sikh Gurus, a group of bards from within the Sikh community, and selections from the writings of 15 saints with Hindu and Sufi backgrounds. gyani – “learned person”: a knowledgeable person who explains the Guru Granth Sahib. izzat – “prestige”: family honour. Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan – “Hail Soldier! Hail Farmer!” Japji Sahib – a composition of Guru Nanak which is recited by Sikhs every morning. This is the most commonly known Sikh prayer. Jat – landowning caste from a nomadic background, the Jats comprise the majority of the Sikhs. jatpana – Jat identity. jivanmukti – “liberated while alive”. jora – “topknot”. kachha/kacheera – “pair of shorts”: kachha, kesh, kangha, kirpan and kara constitute five items which Amritdhari Sikhs (men and women) are required to wear. kakkar – the five Ks; see panj kakke. kangha – “comb”; see kachha. kara – “steel bracelet”; see kachha. karah parshad – “blessed food”: made of flour, sugar and clarified butter, karah parshad is distributed after worship. katha – “story”: stands for exposition, narration, exegesis and oral discussion of sacred text. kathavacak – “speaker of katha”: a professional exegete who delivers a religious exposition in the presence of Guru Granth Sahib and a holy congregation.

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Kaur – “princess”: used as a name by female Sikhs, equivalent to Singh for men. kesh – “hair”; see kachha. keshdhari – “the bearer of hair”: the Sikhs who keep their hair uncut. Khalistan – “country of the Khalsa”: the proposed name for a Sikh state independent of India. Khalsa – Khalsa is the community of the Pure, a group of warrior-saints established by the tenth guru, Gobind Singh; it means “pure”: synonymous with Sikh, Gursikh, the term implies a pure status for the Sikh community and reiterates its belief in the authority of the Vahiguru, the revelatory content of the Guru Granth Sahib, and the creation of the Khalsa Raj. khanda – double-edged sword, and name for the Sikh insignia. See degh tegh fateh. khande di pahul – “the nectar made with the double-edged sword”: the ceremony instituted by Guru Gobind Singh at the time of the declaration of the Khalsa. Those who undergo this ceremony constitute an elect group called the Amritdharis. Khatri – a Punjabi merchant caste. kirpan – “dagger”; see kachha. kirtan – “praises”: devotional singing which is a significant part of Sikh piety. Kshatriya – warrior in the Hindu caste division. kudi/kuri – girl. langar – “community kitchen”: attached to every gurdwara, food is served to all regardless of age, creed, gender or social distinctions. Lohanas – caste that traditionally engaged in trade and transportation. majbori – “helplessness”. maryada – see Rahit Maryada. matha tek – bow to touch the ground to the Guru. miri-piri – temporal power and spiritual authority. misls – bands of Sikh fighting men and political authority aimed at defending Punjab from Afghan invaders from the middle of the eighteenth century. mithai – Indian sweets. mona – a person who cuts his/her hair. mul mantar/mulmantra – the root mantra, the first hymn which opens the Sikh scripture. Nagar Kirtan – “town praising”: processions arranged during religious celebrations such as Vaisakhi and Gurpurbs. nam simran – the act of remembering the divine name by repetition of the divine name. nitnem – “daily rule”: the daily discipline of reciting gurbani hymns, which Amritdhari Sikhs, in particular, follow. pagri – turban (cultural); see dastar. pagwala – person who wears a turban.

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panj kakke – the “five Ks”: the five items, whose names begin with the letter “k”, that an Amritdhari should wear. See kachha. path – “recitation”. patit – “fallen”: Sikhs without kesh. patka – a small piece of cloth measuring around 2 feet by 2 feet and tied around the head to cover the hair. pind – “village”. prakash – “the light”: morning ceremony in the gurdwara during which Guru Granth Sahib is installed on a royal throne and opened. Punjabiat – “Punjabiness”. pyar – “love”. qaum – “a people who stand together”: the Sikh usage of this term has connotations of both community and nation. Rahiras – a group of hymns from Guru Granth Sahib recited at sundown. Rahit Maryada – Sikh code of discipline, often referring to a specific text on Sikh beliefs and practices that was published by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) in 1950. raj karega khalsa – “the Khalsa will rule”. Ramgarhia – Sikhs with a background in carpentry. Rasam Pagri/Rasam Dastar – the turban tying ceremony. Ravidasias – “the followers of Ravidas”: people who consider Ravidas, a fifteenth-century saint and poet, as their religious leader. A set of Ravidas’s compositions appears in the Guru Granth, and some of the Ravidasias in the Punjab consider themselves as part of the Sikh society. roti – bread. sabat sorat, dastar sira – “unaltered face, turban adorned”. sahejdhari – “the bearers of slowness”: thought to be on the “slow” (sahej) or “easy” religious path, those who have not undergone the khande di pahul do not keep their hair uncut, do not use Singh/Kaur in their names, but affirm allegiance to the Guru Granth Sahib. sakhiyan – religious stories. salwar-kamez – pants and shirt, traditional dress. sangat – “congregation”: congregational worship constitutes the heart of Sikh devotion. sant – “saint”: a title for a Sikh holy person. sant-sipahi – “the saint warrior”. sarangi – a short-necked string instrument. seva – “service”: service to other people that should be selfless and voluntary. shahid – “martyr”. sharam – “modesty”.

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Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) – the autonomous Sikh organization that was formed in 1925 to provide a self-reliant system for management of all Sikh shrines and gurdwaras in the state of Punjab. Sikh – “disciple/learner”: follower of the Sikh teaching. simran – remembrance of the divine. Singh – “lion”: the title used by male Sikhs. suchan – “purity”. Sukhasan – “the comfortable posture”: night ceremony in the gurdwara during which Guru Granth Sahib assumes a closed position and leaves the throne for rest in the bedroom. Vahiguru – “Wonderful Sovereign”: the most commonly used epithet for God in the Sikh tradition. Vaisakhi – a spring festival during which the Sikhs celebrate new year and the formation of the Khalsa in 1699. vir – “man”, “brave man”, “hero”, “husband” or (in military contexts) “foot soldier”. zat – position fixed by birth, community or caste group.

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Index Abizadeh, Arash, 246 adolescence, 16, 17, 18, 157, 161, 162 Afghani Sikhs, 21, 81, 82 Afghanistan, 73, 74, 76, 80, 81, 85, 91, 233n6, 236n10, 239, 248 Africa, 22, 23, 54, 192 African Caribbean masculinities, 172 African Caribbean music producers, 174 African Identity, 210 agriculture, 54, 55, 209 Aguilar, Filomeno, 42 Ahluwalia, Amrik Singh, 128 Ahluwalia, Pal, 133 Ahmed, Bipasha, 264 Ahmed, Sara, 56 Akal Takht, 109 Akhand Kirtani Jatha (AKJ), 117, 130 alcohol, 24, 180, 216 alcoholic, 64, 65, 153 All-Party Parliamentary Group for British Sikhs, 236 amrit, 103, 105, 115, 133, 219, 275 amritdhari body, 116 hair practices, 105, 111 identity, 75, 76, 82, 218 Sikhs, 74, 105, 106n1, 113, 116, 117, 212, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 275 Amritsar, 22, 129, 134n2, 158 Anand Karaj, 110, 128 Anandpur, 24 Anna Karenina, 156 anti-Sikh riots, 108n3, 134n2, 158, 197 Apache Indian, 177 Arbeiderpartiet, 154, 158 Ardas, 158 Ardhanarishvar, 173

Arnett, Jeffrey, 16, 17, 18, 31 Arya Samaj, 169 assimilation, 156, 210 asylum seekers, 73 Aurora, Gurdip Singh, 231, 232, 245 Australia, 37, 183 autobiographies/autobiographical novels, 5, 6, 148–63 Axel, Brian, 116 Baba, 28n2, 198 Bai, Pammi, 175 Ballard, Roger, 42, 193, 231, 235–6, 244, 248, 251 bania (trader), 167, 170, 171, 275 Batra/s, 20, 23 Behl, Natasha, 141 Bengalis, 171 Berlin, 239 Bertolani, Barbara, 210, 211n2 “between two cultures”, 56, 192 Bhabha, Homi, 98, 100 Bhachu, Parminder, 134–5 Bhagat, Chetan, 183 Bhagat Singh, 173, 184 Bhai Randhir Singh, 130 Bhai Vir Singh, 132, 152 bhangra, 6–7, 18, 61, 99, 102, 113, 167–85, 212, 232, 240, 275 bhangrascape, 174, 175n5, 179, 181 Bhasaur, Teja Singh, 130 Bhatra, 20, 21, 23, 264 Bhindranwale, Sant Jarnail Singh, 108n3 biculturalism, 192, 196, 204 Bindrakhiya, Surjit, 176 Birk, Raj, 243 Birmingham, 21, 26, 27, 177, 191, 204, 236

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birth ceremonies, 236 birthday parties, 39 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne, 150 Blommaert, Jan, 194, 195, 196 body/bodies colonized, 167 control of women’s, 183 fetishized female, 176–8 bolis/bolian, 176, 178, 183 Bollywood, 26, 61, 77–8, 99, 111 Bourdieu, Pierre, 262, 264, 265 Bradford, 15, 21 Brah, Avtar, 45, 251, 253, 262, 264 Brahmin/s, 167, 169–71 Brard, Gurnam S.S., 180 Brenna, Loveleen Rihel, 151, 152, 154–6, 158–62 British National Party (BNP), 237 British Nationality Act 1981, 237 Britishness, of Sikhs, 237, 242–6, 248, 255 Britons, Sikhs as, 3, 231, 250, 254–5 Brown, Andrew 136 Butler, Octavia, 195, 196 Byrne, Julie 125 California, 38, 105, 130 Canada, 1, 108, 131, 183 Cardiff, 20, 21, 191, 264 caste, 3, 7, 8, 9, 15, 16, 19, 20–21, 27, 30, 31, 99, 104, 106, 127, 159, 167–74, 178, 212–14, 246–8, 264, 269 and gender, 220–23 and migration, 20–21, 22 conflicts, 61 indifferences towards, 220–23 rejection of, 221 resistance, 180–82 Catholic Church, 55n3 Chamars, 169, 181, 182, 214, 275 Chanda, Geetanjali Singh, 151n4, 152n5, 156 Chopra, Deepak, 150, 160, 162, 182 Chopra, Radhika, 182 Christian emerging adults, 17

heritage, 125 identity, 75 model of religion, 235 Christianity conversion to, 109 chunni/s, 98, 131, 275 Churchill, Winston, 224n11 citizenry, 231–55 citizenship, 4, 8, 43, 67, 109, 225n12, 232, 233, 233n3, 234, 237–8, 239, 242, 244, 245–6 class differences, 22, 159 middle, 104, 130, 136, 160, 172, 263, 267, 268 working, 197 code meshing, 7, 85, 195 code-switching, 7, 85, 193–5, 200 Cohen, Anthony, 210 Cohen, Robin, 235 collective belonging, 91 body, 56, 104 control, 223 dishonor, 128 identifications, 2, 41, 237 identity, 39, 45, 71, 132, 210, 215, 228 images, 212 imaginations, 209 investments, 52 memory, 225, 228 practices, 2, 82, 91, 162, 215, 224 space, 52, 54 Collett, Camilla, 150 “comfort zones”, 88 conflict between cultures, 2, 63, 66, 162 intergenerational, 219–21 intracommunity, 61 with family, 113, 161, 223 converts, to Sikhism, 105, 130 Coventry, 15, 21, 22, 240 cultural capital, 88, 263, 268 contact, 98, 231

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Index distance, 8, 231 mediators, 55, 225 relativism, 8, 234, 242 culture clash, 192, 193, 196 cyborg, 195, 196, 205 Dalai Lama, 160, 162 Dalits, 181, 182, 275 Damdami Taksal, 214, 216n7 dar (“fear”), 197, 198 Dasam Granth, 247, 275 death against oppression, 223 ceremonies, 236 of family members, 64, 161 sentence, 253n35 Delanty, Gerard, 232n2, 234n8, 235 Delhi, 74, 183, 197, 199 Delhi riots, 197 Desh Pardesh, 193 detention (of migrants), 115 dharmic, 235, 236 Dhavam Purnima 128, 138 Dhir, Roop Lal, 181 diaspora Bosnian, 42 constructs, 97 criticism of the term, 251–2 definitions, 36, 46 elements, 234 identities, 98 Indian, 156–7 new, 133 old, 133 perspectives, 2 Polish, 254 projects, 2, 157 Punjabi, 174, 181 Sikh, 25, 52, 89, 99, 100, 105, 109, 110, 114–18, 131, 133, 136, 151, 152, 233, 239n16 space, 173, 174, 177, 266, 267 studies, 162 West Indian, 254 youth, 98, 194

283

difference, 2, 5, 9, 30, 51, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 81, 99, 101, 109, 128, 134–7, 140, 154–5, 159, 178, 194, 201, 209, 210, 215, 220, 224, 227, 235, 244–6, 248, 251, 252, 270 direct migrants 22, 30 discrimination caste, 247n30 experiences of, 40, 44, 45 gender, 139 religious, 115, 242 sex, 138 diversity, religious and social among the Sikhs, 3, 19–27, 30, 31, 56, 233, 251 Douglas, Mary, 107, 109 Drammen, 156 Drury, Beatrice, 16 Dudrah, Rajinder, 178 Durkheim, Emile, 232, 251 Dusenbery, Verne, 130 East Africa, 191, 192, 236n10, 246 East African families, 23 migrants, 21–23 Eden, Emily, 240 Edwards, Richard, 263 emerging adulthood, 1, 16–18, 31 adults, 1, 2, 16, 17 emotions, 38, 56, 67 England, 8, 15, 22, 24, 28, 29, 136, 150n3, 155, 199, 204, 205, 236, 239, 241, 244 English Black American, 195 culture, 192 food, 197, 198, 204 identity, 193, 239, 240, 245 instruction in Sikhism, 25 language uses, 7, 22, 43, 72, 74, 75, 77, 79–80, 81, 84, 89, 90, 154, 191, 194, 197, 199–206, 245 passport to success, 72

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people, 198 Protestant, 237 Sikhs, 29 speaking countries, 1 TV, 193 English Defence League, 237 Englishness, 238, 244 epistemology, 261, 263 “ethicization”, 219 “ethnicization”, 209, 213, 215, 223 Europe, 37, 53, 54, 55, 60, 62, 72, 130, 149, 150, 152, 156, 239, 245 European community, 234 countries, 2, 73n1, 226 culture, 52, 54, 66 elections, 244 heritage, 125 identities, 4, 67 languages, 77 migrants, 239 national identity politics, 234 European Union, 53, 54 extra-qaumic, 231, 247, 250, 251 Facebook, 18, 66, 127, 133, 221 Falk, Nancy Auer, 125–6 family conflicts, 52, 56, 59, 60, 98, 109 customs, 115, 128, 131 honor, 23, 60, 61, 112, 128, 139, 222, 266 network, 52 roles, 52 social pressure from, 51 socialization, 18, 61, 83, 97, 98 values 138 Fangen, Katrine, 58 female empowerment, 159, 160, 170 Ferraris, Federica, 210, 223, 224 festivals Indian, 61 religious Sikh, 7, 213, 226 town, 212

Fidenza, 55 Finland, 4, 35–47 first generation, 25, 72–7, 83, 88, 163, 193, 209, 231 five Ks, 103–5, 215, 218, 219, 225, 226, 276; see also panj kakke food English, 197, 198, 204 Indian, 61 practices, 24 Punjabi, 197 foreignness, 61, 151 Forli, 224, 225, 227, 233n6 Forsander, Annika, 44 France, 239, 242 French cuts, 98 language, 77, 79, 191, 193 Freud, Sigmund, 97, 109 Friedman, Susan S., 132 Frisina, Annalisa, 209n1, 211n2, 215 Gallo, Ester, 212 Gandhi, Indira, 108n3, 134n2, 153, 158 Gandhi, Mahatma, 7, 160, 171, 173, 184, 209 Gap Min, Pyong, 235, 247n28 gatka, 212, 276 Gell, Simeran Man Singh, 109–10 gender bias, 243–4 differences, 63 equality, 159, 160, 223, 243, 251 inequality, 222 of researcher, 261 German language, 77, 79–80, 191, 193 Germany, 60, 239 Ghuman, Paul A.S., 264 giddha, 178 Gill, Harjant, 105–6 Gill, Romeo, 151–3, 156, 158, 159, 162 Gill, Rosalind, 271 Gill, Tejwant Singh, 152 Gillespie, Marie, 26 Gilroy, Paul, 233

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Index Glasgow, 20, 21, 236 Gobind Marg, 236 Golden Temple, 22, 24; see also Harimandir Sahib goshala, 60, 61, 276 Gothenburg, 73n1, 89 grandparents, 64 Great Britain, 8, 150, 157n8, 237 Greece, 53 Green Revolution, 171 Greenham, 196, 197, 198, 199 Grillo, Ralph, 52 gurbani, 82, 89, 90, 159, 276 Gurdaspur, 197 Gurduara Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji, Oslo (Norway), 157n8 gurdwara/s, 3, 18, 31, 37, 39, 55, 61, 112, 129, 130, 131, 158, 211, 219, 224, 226, 227, 235, 236, 240, 253, 276 affiliation, 4 associated with caste, 21, 247 attendance in, 21 authority of, 8, 248–51, 254 experiences of, 158–62 for language learning, 79–80, 87–91, 203 for religious nurture, 15, 157 for religious socialization, 247 home, 27 Jat, 21 management of, 225 Ramgarhia, 21 Gurdwara Sangat Sahib, Tullinge, Stockholm (Sweden), 73n1 Gurmat Naujovan Sabah (GNS), 157 gurmukhi, 71, 76, 78, 87, 89, 276 gursikh, 28, 105, 116, 117, 276 Guru Arjan, 103 Guru Gobind Singh, 28, 103, 104, 117, 128, 134, 172, 198 Guru Granth Sahib, 23, 27, 28, 65, 89, 117n6, 158, 161, 246, 276 Guru Nanak, 28, 117, 248 Guru Tegh Bahadur, 103 gyani, 31, 244n23, 276

285

Haikkola, Lotta, 45, 46 hair, 5, 23, 29, 30, 57, 58, 97–118, 128, 129, 130, 131, 135, 136, 178, 203, 218, 266; see also kesh Hall, David, 125 Hall, Kathleen D., 16, 22, 113, 193, 205, 247 Hall, Stuart, 71, 101, 262 Halloween, 237 Hallpike, C.R., 106 Hammarn, Nils, 58 Hammarén, Nils, 58 Hamsun, Knut, 150 Hans, Raj Hans, 181 Haraway, Donna, 195, 196, 205 Harimandir Sahib, 107n3, 134n2, 139, 158; see also Golden Temple Harjeet, 153, 158 Harris, Roxy, 194 Haryana, 169, 171 Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization (3HO), 111, 130–31 Hellsten, Meeri, 88 Helsinki, 36, 37, 38 heritage language, 71 Hershman, Paul, 107 heterogeneity of Sikh hair practices, 99, 100, 111 hijab, 135, 136, 137 Hindi language, 55, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 86n4, 90, 194, 200n7, 201, 245 Hindu antecedents, 99 ashramas, 104 beliefs, 75 caste division, 169, 181n11 colonization, 118 inspired New Age spirituality, 150, 160, 162 nationalism, 170, 184 practices, 106 Punjabi, 170 separation from, 130 -Sikh family, 150, 168 temples, 55

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trading, 167, 170 women, 135, 141 Hinduism, 106, 125 Hindus, 104, 106, 114, 173, 224 hindutva, 184 Hirvi, Laura, 105, 250n34 Hobsbawm, Eric J., 225 home as separate social field, 195 community, 98 context of change, 7, 65 context of learning, 4, 73, 77, 79–80, 82–6, 91, 191, 193, 195 cultural and religious practices in, 24, 26, 27, 28, 61, 66 feelings at home, 155, 156, 157, 161 language, 3, 72, 74, 86, 87 language education, 86–8 languages uses at, 76, 78, 81–6, 192, 193, 197–205 meanings of, 3, 4, 35–47, 57, 58, 101, 238, 248 -school relations, 88, 196, 205 homeland, 35, 36, 82 of Sikhs, 6, 42, 43, 45, 46, 64, 71, 88, 116 homelessness, 157 homeliness, 97, 98 homing desire, 4, 41, 46, 47 Hounslow, 236, 240, 253 Hugel, Baron, 240 Hutnyk, John, 178 hybridity, 5, 7, 97–124, 195, 204, 205, 206 Ibsen, Henrik, 150 identity/identities contesting, 251 crisis, 196 definition, 210, 225 formations, 2, 6, 16, 97, 141, 156, 162, 232, 233, 239, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 254 hybrid, 100, 205 “in-between”, 40 national, 134, 231, 232, 234, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241–2, 254, 255

negotiations of, 46 performances of, 193 politics, 134, 135, 136, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 238, 240, 241, 249, 252, 254 reconstruction of, 134 theorizations of, 262, 264 ideologies of British nationalism, 16 of consumption, 184 of family honor, 16 of gender, 167 of hedonism, 184 of language, 194 of race, 167 imperialism British, 167, 168, 171 cultural, 100 new, 225n12 “in-between” conflicts, 162 cultures, 5 feelings of being, 2 identities, 6, 154 interpretations, 155 world, 2, 6, 156 India, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 52, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73n1, 74, 76, 81, 83, 89, 99, 100, 105, 107, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 130, 131, 149, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 162, 168n1, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 183, 191, 192, 194, 199, 203, 204, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 233, 235, 239, 240, 244, 246, 247, 248, 253n35 Indianness, 61, 155, 157 “inner-life spirituality”, 161, 162n9 integration, 1, 4, 51–3, 60, 63, 72, 77, 83, 210, 211, 212, 223, 224, 226, 227, 246 policy (Swedish), 86 politics, 233n3 intergenerational conflicts, 219

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Index confrontation, 210 debate/dialogue, 7, 210, 211, 213, 220–23 differences, 1, 244–6 factors, 74 influcences, 56 transfer of identity, 251 “insider”, position and identity, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 270 Internet, 5, 6, 66, 80, 82, 84, 89, 98, 126, 141, 241, 246 Iraq, 244 Ireland, 237, 239n16, 246n27 Islam, 133, 135, 136, 210 Islamaphobia, 135 Islamic colonization, 118 Italian National Association of Partisans (ANPI), 224 Italy, 4, 7, 8, 51–67, 209–28, 233, 255 izzat (reputation/honor), 23, 24, 138, 139, 168, 266 Jalandhar, 181n12 James, Alan G., 15 Japji Sahib, 25, 30 Jat/s, 20, 21, 60, 61, 99, 100, 114, 139, 169, 172, 177, 180–83, 214, 264, 276 and nationalism, 7, 175n5 body, 7, 175, 184 brotherhood, 169 gurdwara, 21 identities, 168, 170 machismo, 174–6, 179 masculinity, 168, 169, 170, 172, 174, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184 space, 178, 179 women, 24, 179 Jat, Lalchand Yamla, 176 jathebandia, 117 jatpana (“jatness”), 169, 175n5, 176, 276 Jatti (female Jat), 179 Jay Z, 177 Jazzy B, 102, 177 Jeg er Prableen, 151, 152, 153–4, 158 jivanmukti, 161, 276

287

Jodhka, Surinder, 182 Johansson, Thomas, 58 Jones, Susan, 76 Jordan, Glenn, 113 July 7 (7/7, 2005), in UK, 242, 246 Kalra, Virinder, 102 kara, 104, 215, 225, 242n20, 276; see also panj kakke karva chaud, 236 katha, 25, 30 kathavacak, 89 Kaur, Balpreet, 115 Kaur, Hard, 179, 180 Kaur, Prableen, 151–4, 157–62 Kaur, Surinder, 179 Karijord, Rebekka, 154 Kenya, 235, 244 kesh, 5, 97–124, 129, 215, 266 keshdhari, 214, 216, 218, 219 Kesri Lehar movement, 253 Khalistan, 240n18 Khalistani militancy, 115 Khalsa and caste, 220 code, 30, 216 community, 114 discourse, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173 formation of, 103, 117, 277 groups, 19, 28 identity, 30, 105, 116, 127, 214, 215, 218, 219, 220, 227 initiation, 104, 127, 216 male, 6 representations of, 212 women, 127, 133 “khalsacentric”, 105 khanda, 246, 277 Khatri, 99, 169n3 Kibria, Nazli, 235 kin/kinship networks, 24, 52 Kinnvall, Catarina, 132 kirpan, 103, 213, 225, 253, 277 kirtan, 84, 180n10, 277 kismetic, 235, 236

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Knausgaard, Karl Ove, 150 Kohli, Hardeep, 248 Koopmans, Ruud, 245 Korkiasaari, Jouni, 37 Kristiansand, 156, 161 Kshatriya, 169, 277 Kudenko, Irina, 238 Kumar, Ravish, 181 langar, 158, 161, 224, 247, 277 language, 24–5 practices, 8, 83, 89, 193, 201 repertoires, 71, 79, 80, 194 uses, 4, 83–5, 91 Leach, Edmund R., 106–7 Leeds, 16, 21, 27, 205 Leicester, 21 Leonard, Karen, 216 Lier, 157n8, 160, 161 Lingis, Alphonso, 135 literature Punjabi, 152 Sikh, 151 lived religion, 125–6 Liverpool, 20, 21, 240 Lohanas, 169, 277 Lohri, 112 Lombardy, 55 London, 8, 20, 21, 136, 140, 231–55, 262 Ludhiana, 60, 64 Lucknow, 183 Maharaja Dalip Singh, 109 Maharaja Hira Singh of Nabha, 180n10 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, 160 Malmö, 73n1, 89 Mama, Amina, 263 Manak, Kuldeep, 175, 180 Mandair, Navdeep, 235 Mann, Gurdas, 180 Markose, Susan, 88 marriage, 59–60 arranged, 8, 112, 113, 177, 220, 221 delay of, 16, 17, 22 honor tied to, 59

love, 65 mixed, 60, 61, 63, 149, 251, 254 parents’ worries for, 59 rituals, 128 transnational, 24, 162, 222 women’s bodies and, 112 martial cry, 175 race, 7, 118n7, 167, 169, 171, 172 symbols, 7, 213 martyrs, Sikh, 28, 173, 227 maryada, 100, 104, 116, 129, 216n7, 277 masculinity African Caribbean, 172 bhangra, 167–85 black, 172, 173 counter-hegemonic, 182 hegemonic, 167–70, 172, 173, 174, 182, 185 hyper, 172–4 Indian, 167, 171 neo-capitalist national, 184 Punjabi, 167, 168–72, 174, 175, 181, 182, 184 Sikh, 138, 167–70, 172, 173, 175, 184 memorials, Sikh, 224n10, 224n11 Menin, Laura, 67 Midlands, 20, 27, 30, 191, 196, 197, 203, 240 migration histories, 30 Mirasi/s, 180 miri piri, 249, 253 “mirror game”, 7, 212 misls, 169, 277 Miss Puja, 179 mobile/smart phones, 202, 85n3 mobility, 35, 53, 245 social, 169, 181, 251, 252, 254 mona Sikhs, 29, 30, 105 monolingual environments, 86, 88 practices, 89, 200, 203, 205 Mooney, Nicola, 24, 139, 168, 174, 180 Moraga, Cherrie, 195, 196

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Index Mother Teresa, 209 mother tongue, 71–91 education, 86–91 mul mantar, 27, 246, 277 multiculturalism, 8, 100, 234, 242 multicultural diasporic contexts, 134 lifestyles, 1 nations, 1 policies, 212 societies, 126 multilingual, 4, 71–3, 75, 83, 84, 89 Mumbai, 43 music bhangra, 5, 61, 167–85, 212, 240 devotional, 84 pop, 199 Punjabi, 213, 248n33 rap, 174, 183 Muslims, 106, 135, 136, 209, 210, 224, 227 Myrvold, Kristina, 150n2 Nagar Kirtan, 210, 212, 213, 277 nationalism British, 16, 237 Hindu, 170, 184 Indian, 167, 171 Nawanshahr, 181 Nayar, Kamala E., 24, 25, 116n5 Nazis, 224 Nesbitt, Eleanor, 15, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 149, 150 Netherlands, 231n1 networks ethnic, 209 kinship, 24, 52 social, 82, 88, 221, 226 support, 8 transnational, 2, 222 New Age, 150, 160, 161, 162 New Zealand, 183 newspaper, 154 nitnem, 78, 277 non-violence, 171, 173, 209

289

North America, 2, 37, 89, 130, 152, 156, 233, 255 Norway, 6, 37, 90, 149–63 Norwegian language, 150 Norwegian literature, 150, 151, 152 Novellara, 211, 212, 226 Obama, president, 195 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 107, 109 online religious realms, 126 Operation Blue Star, 107n 2, 134n2, 140 Osho, 150, 160, 161 Oslo, 154, 156, 158, 159, 161 “otherness”, 2, 5, 56, 81, 102, 105, 135 Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies, 151 pagri, 104, 111, 277 Parma, 55 Pakistan, 42 Pakistanis, 54, 57, 134 Panch Khalsa Diwan, 130 Panesar, Monty, 248 panj kakke, 278 panj piare, 104 Panjabi MC, 177 pantheism, 152 panthic, 235, 236 parenting, 199 Pashto language, 77, 80 passport, 156, 232, 244, 245 path, 25, 61, 278 patit, 103, 105, 106, 278 patka, 98, 110, 111, 278 patriarchal culture, 138 expectations, 177 gender formations, 112, 169 ideologies, 177 structures 5, 168, 174, 178, 182, 184 patriarchy, 155, 170, 177 Perocco, Fabio, 210 Phillips, Deborah, 238 Phoenix, Ann, 266 pind, 24, 278

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Poland, 60 politics of recognition, 71 of research, 263 of resistance, 140 Pool of Life, The, 150 pop culture, 251, 255 Portugal, 53 post-nationalism, 234, 245, 255 Potter, Jonathan, 262, 266 power, 38, 39, 45, 46, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 116, 127, 138, 141, 153, 158, 170, 172, 173, 199, 222, 252, 261–71 prakash (opening ceremony of Guru Granth Sahib), 28, 278 Prem Sumarg, 127 Punjabi classes, 87–90 implications for religious transmission, 25, 30, 31 language, 2 quest for, 2 Punjabi identity distinguish between Sikh identity and, 2 moving away from, 6 Punjabiat/Punjabiness, 2, 155, 159, 171, 176, 278 Puri, Kailash, 150 Put Jattan de, 175 pyar, 64, 278 quam, 231, 278 quamic, 231, 235, 236, 247, 250, 251 Qureshi, Kaveri, 225n12 racism, 44, 45, 57, 62, 102, 174 Rahiras, 27, 30, 278 Rahit Maryada, 100, 104, 116, 129, 216n7, 278 Rajasthan, 74 Rajaona, Balwant Singh, 253 Raksha Bandan, 236 Ramgarhia/s, 21, 23, 169, 278

Rampton, Ben, 194, 195, 196 rape, 183 Rasam Pagri, 128, 278 Ravidas Jayanti, 181n12 Ravidasis/Ravidasias, 170, 214 reflexive attitudes towards religion/identity, 162 practices, 262, 270–71 reflexivity and language, 262–3 and power, 263–5 practiced, 265–70 Reggio Emilia, 55, 57, 59, 211, 212, 223, 224, 226 regularization, 54 religious experiences, 158–63, 217 freedom, 159 nurture, 15 socialization, 3, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 149 representations, of Sikhs, 2, 4, 5, 16, 71, 82, 224 ritual cultural, 236 display, 127 hair, 102–7 Hindu, 106 invocations, 173 life-cycle, 128 masculine, 128 objects, 7, 103, 213 rebellious, 141 rejection of, 159, 161 space, 130 status, 99 wedding, 128 ritualization, of Sikh identity, 6 ritualized communities, 103 Roberts, Keith A., 29 Rolling Stones, The, 249 roti, 61, 197, 198, 199, 278 Russia, 60 “sabat sorat, dastar sira”, 246

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Index sahejdhari, 105, 113, 115, 117, 278 Sai, Silvia, 212, 223 Saini, 214 sakhiyan, 29, 278 Sangat TV, 26, 27n1 sanskaric, 235 sant/sants (venerated spiritual master/s), 19, 24, 28, 31 sant-sipahi, 167, 169 Saudi Arabia, 197 Saxena, Mukul, 72 Schengen zone, 53 Scotland, 238, 239n16, 244 Scunthorpe, 21 second generation, 2, 5, 6, 8, 25, 43, 45, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 89, 98, 110, 149, 150, 155, 156, 157, 162, 163, 193, 195, 210 secular citizenship, 239 environment/culture, 161, 217 Sikhs, 75, 77, 115, 158, 160, 235, 247n28, 248, 250 secularization, 217 Seetal, Sohan Singh, 152 self-spirituality, 161 September 11 (9/11, 2001), in USA, 115, 135 seva (selfless service), 90, 139, 161, 278 Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, The, 160 sex education, 250 shahid, 29, 278 sharam, 138, 168, 278 Sharma, Ashwani, 178 Sharma, Sanjay, 178 Shimla, 155 Shinda, Sukhshinder, 113, 180 Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), 100, 104, 105, 106n1 Shri Guru Nanak Niwas Gurdwara Sahib, Lier (Norway), 157 Sikh camps, 18, 90 cultural, 6, 149 media, 27

291

proper, 31 Sikh Channel, 26, 27n1 Sikh Coalition, The, 129 Sikh Dharma, 111 Sikh Missionary College, 214, 216n7 Sikh TV, 26 Sikhi Sewa Society (Italy), 226, 227n13 Sikhism as a universal religion, 2, 7, 82, 212, 223 SikhiWiki, 246 Sikhness, 29, 30, 216 Sikhnet.com, 131 simran, 105 Singapore, 235 Singh, Bhai Vir, 132 Singh, Chaz, 240, 241 Singh, Ganda, 115 Singh, Gurdial, 152 Singh, Gurharpal, 15, 128 Singh, Honey, 183 Singh, Jasjit, 113, 116, 247 Singh, Kushwant, 114 Singh, Luke Sital, 248, 249 Singh, Malkit, 176, 177 Singh, Nanak, 152 Singh, Puran, 132 Singh rahit-nama, 127 Singh Sabha movement, 130, 152 Singh, Satwinder, 113 Slough, 21 Smith, W. Marian, 235 Smythe, Susan, 90 social capital, 22, 117 Social democratic party, 154, 158 Social democratic welfare system, 86 social exclusion, 45, 46, 56, 58, 172 socialization, 3, 17, 18, 21, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 57, 60, 66, 73, 82, 83, 149, 157, 231, 235, 242, 245, 247, 248, 250, 254 soldiers, Sikh, 29, 224, 225, 226, 233n6, 240 South Asia, 43, 201, 236n10, 264 South Asians, 16, 22, 23, 136, 156, 235, 242n21, 248

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Southall, 15, 21, 26, 72, 253, 254 Spain, 53, 239 Spanish language, 77, 79, 80 spirituality, 133, 150, 160, 161 stereotypes negative, 116n5 of turbaned Sikhs, 115 positive, 209 postcolonial, 6 religious, 209 Western, 5 Stockholm, 73n1, 89, 90 Stratham, Paul, 245 street culture, 182 Sufi, 106 Sukhasan (closing ceremony of Guru Granth Sahib), 139 Sunarh, Pammah, 181 Sundri, 132 “super-diverse”, 232n2, 254 Swahili, 192, 236 Sweden, 71–91, 150n2 Söderling, Ismo 37 Tajpuri, S.J., 181 Takhar, Opinderjit K., 23 Tamilians, 171 Tarkhan, 180, 214 Tat Khalsa, 130 Tatla, Darshan Singh, 15, 22, 128, 150 terrorism, 115, 173 terrorist attacks, 154, 242 terrorist, Sikh, 115 Thakkarwal, Rajni, 181 Thatcher, Margret, 238n13 third generation, 1, 2, 25, 72, 76, 174, 202, 232 third space, 5, 98–102, 109, 111, 113–18 Tolstoy, 156 Toohey, Kelleen, 90 Toronto, 131 Transcendental Meditation, 160 translations cultural, 195 of identity, 193

of Punjabi, 203 of religious scriptures, 28, 84, 89 of young Sikhs, 3 programs, 84 transnational activities, 82 bhangrascape, 175n5 childcare, 39 contacts, 77 contexts, 98 families, 238 kin relationships, 64 lifestyle, 40, 83 links/ties, 82, 172 marriages, 24, 222 media, 26, 171, 184 networks, 222 origins, 235 Tru Finn party, 42 turban, 106 as a symbol of Sikh identity, 6, 23–4, 125–41 Turban Day, 154 twice migrants, 22, 30, 75 Uganda, 74, 76 UK Border Agency, 237 UK Independence Party (UKIP), 237 unemployment, 53, 171, 172 Ung mann i nytt land, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 158 United Kingdom, 1, 7, 15–31, 37, 45, 89, 130, 134, 135, 136, 183, 237–9 United Sikhs, 128 Undset, Sigrid, 150 Urdu language, 74, 75, 77, 79, 80, 86n4, 90, 245 Usher, Robin, 263 Utøya massacre, 154 Vaisakhi, 7, 210, 212, 240, 253, 279 Vallely, Paul, 136 Vancouver, 25 var, bardic tradition of, 175 vegetarianism, 24

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/15/2019 9:19 PM via UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM AN: 1003093 ; Myrvold, Kristina, Jacobsen, Knut A..; Young Sikhs in a Global World : Negotiating Traditions, Identities and Authorities Account: uamster

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Index Vertovec, Steven, 232n2, 235, 251, 254 violence, 64, 109, 168, 183 against women, 183 in Punjab, 108n3, 109 in Punjabi culture, 169n3, 183 in Sikhism, 173, 175 in families, 153, 158 vir (“warrior”), 7, 168 Wales, 15, 238, 239 Walsall, 21 War, First of Independence, 167 weddings, 31, 236 West Midlands, 20, 191, 196, 197, 203 Western lifestyle, 222 Wetherell, Margaret, 262, 266 Wieder, Lawrence, 263 Winehouse, Amy, 248n33

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Wisconsin, 140, 233n6 Wolverhampton, 21 World Wars, Sikhs in, 224, 227, 238, 240, 241 Yaariyan, 180 Yamane, David A., 29 Yogi Bhajan, 130, 131n1 young Sikhs and suffering, 62, 153, 154, 155, 158 religious experiences of, 158–63 role of religion for, 150, 235 Young, Veshawn Ashanti, 195 youth cultures, 5, 174, 184, 185, 199, 205, 251 diasporic, 113, 194 YouTube, 127, 183

EBSCO Publishing : eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) - printed on 7/15/2019 9:19 PM via UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM AN: 1003093 ; Myrvold, Kristina, Jacobsen, Knut A..; Young Sikhs in a Global World : Negotiating Traditions, Identities and Authorities Account: uamster