Religion, Violence, and the Performance of Sikh History

by Nijhawan, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780195679670
• ISBN10: 0195679679
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-11-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The dhadis (or songs sung by minstrels) have exercised considerable influence amongst rural Sikhs, relating martial traditions concerning Guru Hargobind, Guru Gobind Singh, and other Sikh heroes. This book is a historical and anthropological study of the dhadi tradition and how it has influenced notions of martyrdom and violence in the Sikh community. The author draws on a wide range of unexplored historical and ethnographical sources on the rhetorical culture in Punjab and argues thatreligion is an evolving area of social interaction, thus giving rise to narrative linkages between religious and political discourse. He establishes that vernacular traditions of oral narration encourage alternative forms of historical imagination. He analyses performative texts and ethnographicnarratives at critical junctures in colonial and postcolonial Punjab and demonstrates the different ways in which this genre has become related to agendas of religious and political identity formation in twentieth century Punjab. This volume will be useful reading for students and scholars of Sikh studies, sociologists, historians and general readers.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Introduction	1	(24)
PART ONE: FRAMING THE DHADI PAST
1. Cultural Geography and the Dhadi Past	25	(14)
2. Sikh Religious Aesthetics and the Gendered Dhadi Voice	39	(38)
PART TWO: FROM THE COLONIAL TO THE POSTCOLONIAL
3. A New Dhadi Subject in Colonial Punjab	77	(28)
4. The Event as Monument: Reading Saka Shahidganj	105	(21)
5. The Vicissitudes of Partition Memory: Literary Genres and the Dhadi Voice	126	(27)
PART THREE: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES: MARTYRDOM AND BEYOND
6. Realignments of Agency: Dhadi Rhetoric and the Martyr Image	153	(24)
7. Interpellated Subjects and Formation of the Dhadi Sabha	177	(26)
8. The Making of a Border Genre	203	(9)
APPENDICES
1. Saka Shahidganj by Sohan S. Seetal	212	(14)
2. Dhadi Performative Style	226	(6)
3. Instrumentation	232	(5)
4. Glossary of Punjabi Terms	237	(7)
Bibliography	244	(18)
Index	262