Sikh Formations

Religion, Culture, Theory

ISSN: 1744-8727 (Print) 1744-8735 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsfo20

Sikhism. A very short introduction

Tavleen Kaur

To cite this article: Tavleen Kaur (2018) Sikhism. A very short introduction, Sikh Formations, 14:1,
109-112, DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2018.1450168

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2018.1450168

Published online: 16 Mar 2018.

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SIKH FORMATIONS
2018, VOL. 14, NO. 1, 109–115

BOOK REVIEWS

Sikhism. A very short introduction, by Eleanor Nesbitt, Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 2016, 156 pp., $11.37 (paperback), ISBN 9780198745570

Eleanor Nesbitt’s Sikhism. A Very Short Introduction (2nd ed., 2016) is a concise work on the
historical development and contemporary practice of the Sikh tradition. The book’s eight
chapters cover a chronological terrain from Guru Nanak’s birth in 1469 to the present
moment, and a geographical terrain spanning present day India to the largest Sikh diasporas
in North America and Europe. In terms of content, Nesbitt provides brief overviews of Sikh
history from the Guru-period (1469–1708), Sikhs’ institutionalized physical identity, Sikhi’s
relationships with religious traditions contemporaneous to its beginnings (namely, Hinduism
and Islam), how Sikhs navigate socio-cultural formations of caste, and gender and sexuality,
and contemporary issues and concerns within the Sikh Panth. Those coming to this book
to learn about the basic elements of the Sikh tradition will certainly find what they are
seeking. They will leave, however, somewhat puzzled due to the book delving into esoteric
debates that are well beyond the scope of an introductory book. Though these debates are
important to consider, their placement In particular, the author’s scholarly alignment with
and opinions arising out of an older era of Sikh Studies is evident (especially in Chapters
Six and Eight) in how the book narrativizes Sikhi as a tradition of decadence. While the
book is praiseworthy for how much information it covers in the editorial confines of a
short, introductory work, it also presents a classic case of speaking for a tradition, not
through it.
While the book covers everything one would expect from a short, introductory guide
to a world religion, its author writes from already having arrived at problematic assump-
tions about what the lived experience of Sikhi is like, particularly in the diaspora. Those
looking for a quick read with basic quantitative data on contemporary Sikhism will find
what they seek from this book. At the same time, readers will leave with a presumptuous,
religionized understanding of a faith tradition that, as is evident from its textual and his-
torical traditions, resists being packaged as an -ism. This book is, of course, not the first
to fit the Sikh tradition into the language of a ‘world religion’. It does, however, further
concretize a particular reading of the Sikh tradition. This reading is shaped in the book
through scattering of hyperspecialized and nuanced issues from the academic realm of
Sikh Studies. Thus, even though the book is intended for a broad audience with little
or no background information on the Sikh tradition, the presentation of highly special-
ized topics within vignettes of general information places the book slightly outside the
realm of an introductory text.
The back-and-forth play of general information on the Sikh tradition, juxtaposed with
esoteric remarks (especially in Chapters Six and Eight) at specific streams and academic
works (and Panthic reactions to them) on Sikhi makes this book a case study for what it
itself critiques is the detriment of Sikh Studies (127). The book is at once of value for an
‘Introduction to Sikhi’ class and for an ‘Introduction to Sikh Studies’ Debates’ class. The
book is written and reads as a handbook on a modern, world religion. In this episteme,
however, there are two ineludible challenges: first, of how to write about a tradition whose
textual heritage and sociopolitical practices do not neatly map onto the rubric of a world
110 BOOK REVIEWS

religion, and, second, of how to critically read a book on such a tradition that does this
mapping nonetheless.
While being mindful of the inherent violence of translation, how does one, then, write about
or make sense of Gurbani’s seemingly contradictory descriptors of the Divine as being neither
here, nor there, yet everywhere (Guru Granth Sahib, 485), and of the Divine as formless and
manifest (Guru Granth Sahib, 290), and as transcendent and immanent (Guru Granth Sahib,
108)? How does one explain Guru Nanak’s ‘militarism’ and Guru Gobind Singh’s ‘pacifism?’
How does one explain the Sikh tradition’s codependent and coeval processes of the institutio-
nalization of scriptural (Guru Granth) and communal (Guru Panth) authority? What is an
effective way to explain its scriptural and historical traditions’ encouragement of context-adap-
tive community growth and development? Lastly, how does one capture the Gurus’ ulti khel
(lit. ‘upside down game’, Bhai Gurdas, Var 23) that calls for a complete re-envisioning of a
conventional worldview? Understanding Gurbani’s radical reimagining of violence is central
to understanding this ‘upside down way’, and therefore crucial to being able to write about it.
As it seems to for Nesbitt, modern Sikhi registers to many scholars as having a ‘break’, (56),
a particular point at which it transformed from ‘pacifist’ to ‘militarist’. In this view, the tra-
dition starts out and remains ‘pacifist’ up through the martyrdom of the fifth Guru. After
this time, so the argument goes, Sikhi becomes ‘militarist’, as evident by the sixth Guru’s
command to Sikhs of donning two swords, representing miri-piri (politico-spiritual). At a
very rudimentary level, this ‘transformation’ is interpreted as a decline from the tradition’s
origins. This is the reading of Sikhi that is found in Nesbitt’s book.
Scholars seem to arrive at this reading of Sikhi due to not fully grasping that Gurbani’s con-
ception of violence is fundamentally at odds with a normative understanding of violence. In
the realm of the latter, indeed the realm that conditions our contemporary political sensibilities
are conditioned, violence is reserved for the state to monopolize. In a normative understanding
of violence, there is little room for practicing self-sovereignty, let alone space for imagining it.
Also, in this normative understanding, the state’s own violence in the form of institutionalized
inequality and discrimination are not regarded as violence. What one finds in Gurbani and in
Sikh history, though, is a total reimagination of violence. The book does not quite capture this
reimagination, a severe consequence of which is the work’s presentation of modern Sikhi as a
degenerate form of its original concepts from Guru Nanak’s time.
Sikhi’s reimagination of violence is evident from Guru Nanak’s compositions and life
experiences. At the metaphysical level, ‘Guru Nanak’s violence’ is evident, for instance, in
his challenging of Babur’s tyranny, chronicled in Gurbani as ‘Babur Vani’ (briefly discussed
by Nesbitt on 18). In another sense, ‘Guru Nanak’s violence’ is evident in his ‘upside down’
message of living contently in the ebbs and flows of ‘poverty’ (mann niva (lit. lowered
mind)) and ‘wealth’ (mat uchi (lit. high conscience)). This kind of violence is also manifest
in the Gurus’ compositions that discuss the traumatic experience of love.
For instance, Guru Arjan writes about the violent pain of feeling love for the Divine as that
of being shot with an arrow (Guru Granth Sahib 861). This example, and many similar ones in
Gurbani, also exemplify the poetic violence of the term ban (as in Gurbani), as the word means
both arrow and speech. A material example representing Guru Nanak’s militarism comes from
Gurdwara Barchha (lit. spear) Sahib, in Assam. The barchha on display at this Gurdwara, its
namesake, is believed to belong to Guru Nanak. While skeptics will question the historical
accuracy of the story behind this Gurdwara, the lived experience of Sikhs paying reverence
to a weapon they believe belonged to Guru Nanak is a point of serious consideration for
those who conceptualize Guru Nanak as ‘pacifist’.
Capturing supposed ‘ironies’ and ‘paradoxes’ within the Sikh tradition in written form is no
easy task, especially in the editorial confines of a short, introductory book. The conventional
 SIKH FORMATIONS 111

and most widely used methods in the academy on writing about Sikhi only scratch the surface
of the tradition’s inherent complexities and seeming ironies and paradoxes. In this realm of
cursory Sikh Studies scholarship, the tradition is presented, as it is in this book as well, as
being either-or: either pacifist up through Guru Arjan or militarist thereafter (56–57, 61), as
a blend of Hinduism and Islam or distinct tradition of itself, either geographically, culturally,
and linguistically tethered to undivided Punjab or fluid enough to prosper in various global
conditions, either a ‘martial race’ of sword-loving people or as a warm, hospitable community
of ‘model minority’ citizenry.
Keeping in mind this either-or bifurcation that the Sikh tradition is typically presented with,
indeed as it in this book, the question then is not so much about designating what the tradition
is and is not, but of why it can’t be both. This indivisiblity is at the heart of the tradition’s texts
and practice, most commonly explained through its concepts of miri-piri (politico-spiritual)
sant sipahi (saint-soldier). It is important to note here that due to the confines and the violence
of translation, these concepts become hyphenated. These hyphenated translations present the
concepts as incongruous, paradoxical, discordant, and ironic. It is also important to note that
in their original gurmukhi form, miri piri and sant sipahi are not hyphenated in text or
meaning.
The points highlighted above may seem like theoretical explorations and thus unnecessary
points to make in a book review. However, these points are included in this book review
because they are in response to contents of the book. Due to it being an easy read and
having a concise format, the book offers great promise of becoming an indispensable resource
for students and nonstudents alike. It is precisely for this reason that it is important to critically
examine the book in this review. For instance, the author’s description of the Sikh tradition as
‘a younger offpsring’ (6) of the Hindu tradition will sit unwell for Sikhs and Hindus alike. The
author implies an uncritical, one-dimensional view of the Hindu tradition, especially via the
argument that this supposed direct connection between the Sikh and Hindu traditions
‘simply demonstrate[s] Hindus’ inclusive attitude to religious faiths’ (6). This argument
erases the extreme physical and symbolic violence by right wing Hindu spheres against
non-Hindu minorities in and outside of India.
Due to being a revised edition since the original publication from 2005, this second edi-
tion’s Further Reading section has been updated to include more recent works on the Sikh tra-
dition. The way that this section of the book has been expanded and reworked is telling not
only of the fact that field of Sikh Studies has expanded a significant amount in the last
decade, but also a hint toward the kinds of debates taking place in the field. For instance,
the 2005 edition has one section for reference on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
and after that, a separate one combining references on the twentieth-century and the diaspora.
In this edition, on the other hand, the references are separated as one for the eighteenth to the
twentieth centuries, and an entirely separate section on diaspora. The new edition also has two
categories not found in the previous edition, namely ‘Autobiography, biography, and fiction’,
and ‘Art’ (149–150). This important and welcomed reworking of the Further Reading section
in the 2016 edition, however, still misses much, especially in referencing crucial works that
have been published between 2005 and 2016 on Sikh philosophy and art. The most proble-
matic and significant oversight in the newer edition is its silence on the shootings at the
Oak Creek, Wisconsin gurdwara in 2012 by a white supremacist. Oak Creek has fundamen-
tally altered (self) representation of Sikhs and Sikhi in the North American diaspora and
has taken a central position for the Sikh community at large, and for scholars and students
of Sikh Studies.
Sikhism. A Very Short Introduction is both necessary and problematic. It is necessary, in
that courses like ‘Introduction to World Religions’ will likely rely on a work such as this
112 BOOK REVIEWS

one. It is problematic because it reproduces representations of Sikhi as a ‘broken’ tradition

whose contemporary form and practice is a break from its foundations. These representations
result from over a century of scholarship on Sikhi that speaks for the tradition, not through it.

Tavleen Kaur
University of California, Irvine, USA
tavleenk@uci.edu
© 2018 Tavleen Kaur
https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2018.1450168

The precarious diasporas of Sikh and Ahmadiyya generations: Violence, memory,

and agency (religion and global migrations), by Michael Nijhawan, 2016, New York,
Palgrave Macmillan, XIV + 289 pp., $100.00 (Hardcover), ISBN 978-1-137-49959-2

Precarity and precariousness have largely been theorized within the discourse of neoliberal
capitalism as it impacts individuals in nations of the Global North. Michael Nijhawan’s new
book The Precarious Diasporas of Sikh and Ahmadiyya Generations: Violence, Memory, And
Agency makes a path-breaking contribution to the growing literature on precarity and precar-
iousness defined in economic, political or existential terms by offering a novel way of thinking
about the origins of and responses to precarity through examining two precarious religious
subjectivities from the Global South. In doing so, it disengages precarity from its association
with the economic caused by the erosion of Fordist production, casualization of labour and
retrenchment of the state in the Global North and articulates it to the repeated failure of
the postcolonial state to address issues of communal violence and precarious religious min-
orities that has been the hallmark of South Asian states of India and Pakistan. Nijhawan
deftly weaves together the economic and socio-political precariousness of Sikh and Ahmadiyya
refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in Europe and North America with the precarious exist-
ence of religious or sectarian minorities in India and Pakistan, particularly after 1984, through
their shared experience and memories of violence.
Nijhawan extends Brian Keith Axel’s notion of ‘the diasporic imaginary’ through introdu-
cing the category of precariousness in addition to violence, temporality, affect and corporeality
in understanding diasporas and diasporicity. Building on Axel’s thesis about the Sikh diaspora
being defined by violence, Nijhawan takes the violence of 1984 as the genesis of Sikh precarity
within the Indian nation state following the resignification of the Sikh as terrorist. He connects
the multiple dimensions of precarity through tracing the economic precariousness of Sikh or
Ahmadiyya refugees, asylum seekers and illegal migrants to the political precariousness of
Sikhs or Ahmadiyyas in the Indian or Pakistani nation state respectively and to the material,
psychological and ontological precarity that becomes the hallmark of their existence. He
demonstrates that in contrast to the vulnerability and exposure of Sikh and Ahmadiyya popu-
lations to arbitrary state violence and to other forms of aggression from which the state is
unable to offer them protection in India or Pakistan, their migration to Europe and Canada
catapults them in other forms of precarious existence through the material and psychological
vulnerability resulting from neoliberal economic reforms in liberal capitalism.
In Chapter Two, Nijhawan examines the notion of the event in the imagining of migrant
subjects. Through focusing on Sikh and Ahmadiyya generations imagining themselves in