Beyond Punjab


Book Description

This book focuses on Sikh communities in east and northeast India. It studies settlements in Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, and Manipur to understand the Indian Sikhs through the lens of their dispersal to the plains and hills far from Punjab. Drawing on robust historical and ethnographic sources such as official documents, media accounts, memoirs, and reports produced by local Sikh institutions, the author studies the social composition of the immigrants and surveys the extent of their success in retaining their community identity and recreating their memories of home at their new locations. He uses a nuanced notion of the internal diaspora to look at the complex relationships between home, host, and community. As an important addition to the study of Sikhism, this book fills a significant gap and widens the frontiers of Sikh studies. It will be indispensable for students and researchers of sociology and social anthropology, history, migration and diaspora studies, religion, especially Sikh studies, cultural studies, as well as the Sikh diaspora worldwide.




Beyond The Lines: An Autobiography


Book Description

A veteran journalist and former member of Parliament, Kuldip Nayar is India’s most well known and widely syndicated journalist. He was born in Sialkot in 1923 and educated at Lahore University before migrating to Delhi with his family at he time of Partition. He began his career in the Urdu newspaper Anjam and after a spell in the USA worked as information officer of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Govind Ballabh Pant. He eventually became Resident Editor of the Statesman and managing editor of the Indian news agency UNI. He corresponded for the Times for twenty-five years and later served as Indian high commissioner to the UK during the V.P. Singh government. His stand for press freedom during the Emergency, when he was detained; his commitment to better relations between India and Pakistan, and his role as a human rights activist have won him respect and affection in both countries. Author of more than a dozen books, his weekly columns are read across South Asia.




Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris


Book Description

The seemingly intractable Kashmir dispute and the fate of Kashmiris throughout South Asia and beyond are the twin themes in Snedden's meticulously researched book.




Sikh Diaspora


Book Description

Sikh Diaspora: Theory, Agency, and Experience is a collection of essays offering new insights into the diverse experiences of Sikhs beyond the Punjab. Moving beyond migration history and global in their scope, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological approaches to engage with diaspora theory, agency, space, social relations, and aesthetics. Rich in substantive content, these essays offer critical reflections on the concept of diaspora, and insight into key features of Sikh experience including memory, citizenship, political engagement, architecture, multiculturalism, gender, literature, oral history, kirtan, economics, and marriage.




Colonial Institutions and Civil War


Book Description

What explains the peculiar spatial variation of Maoist insurgency in India? Mukherjee develops a novel typology of colonial indirect rule and land tenure in India, showing how they can lead to land inequality, weak state and Maoist insurgency. Using a multi-method research design that combines qualitative analysis of archival data on Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh states, Mukherjee demonstrates path dependence of land/ethnic inequality leading to Maoist insurgency. This is nested within a quantitative analysis of a district level dataset which uses an instrumental variable analysis to address potential selection bias in colonial choice of princely states. The author also analyses various Maoist documents, and interviews with key human rights activists, police officers, and bureaucrats, providing rich contextual understanding of the motivations of agents. Furthermore, he demonstrates the generalizability of his theory to cases of colonial frontier indirect rule causing ​ethnic secessionist insurgency in Burma, and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.




The Cherished Five in Sikh History


Book Description

On the 30th of March, 1699, the Sikh Guru Gobind Singh called together a special assembly at the Keshgarh Fort at Anandpur. Following the morning devotions, the Guru asked for a volunteer, saying, "The entire sangat is very dear to me; but is there a devoted Sikh who will give his head to me here and now? A need has arisen at this moment which calls for a head." One man arose and followed the Guru out of the room. When the Guru returned to the assembly with a bloodied sword, he asked for another volunteer. Another man followed. This was repeated three more times, until at last the Guru emerged with a clean sword and all five men alive and well. Those five volunteers would become the first disciples of the Khalsa, the martial community within the Sikh religion, and would come to be known as the Panj Piare, or the Cherished Five. Despite the centrality of this group to modern Sikhism, scholarship on the Panj Piare has remained sparse. Louis Fenech's new book examines the Khalsa and the role that the the Panj Piare have had in the development of the Sikh faith over the past three centuries.




Nation and Migration


Book Description

Peter van der Veer and the contributors to this volume explore the relationship between South Asian nationalism, migration, ethnicity, and the construction of religious identity. Although nationality and diaspora seem to represent opposite ideas and values, the authors argue that nationalism is strengthened, even produced, by migration.




Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets


Book Description

In an era of globalization and demographic transition international migration has become an important issue for European governments. The past decades have seen an increasing and diversifying flow of migrants from different parts of the world, including many from South, Southeast and East Asia. It has become apparent that in several European countries the demand for workers in certain sectors of the labour market is increasing and that Asia has become the source for these workers. This collection explores the phenomenon of Asian immigration in Europe, particularly focusing on the ways in which Asian immigrants gain access to local labour markets. The book includes studies of several countries including Germany, France and the United Kingdom - shedding light on the labour market positions of different ethnic groups within Europe. Asian Migrants and European Labour Markets will interest scholars in the field of labour economics, population and migration studies and international business.




Faithful Fighters


Book Description

During the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British Indian Army possessed an illusion of racial and religious inclusivity. The army recruited diverse soldiers, known as the "Martial Races," including British Christians, Hindustani Muslims, Punjabi Sikhs, Hindu Rajputs, Pathans from northwestern India, and "Gurkhas" from Nepal. As anti-colonial activism intensified, military officials incorporated some soldiers' religious traditions into the army to keep them disciplined and loyal. They facilitated acts such as the fast of Ramadan for Muslim soldiers and allowed religious swords among Sikhs to recruit men from communities where anti-colonial sentiment grew stronger. Consequently, Indian nationalists and anti-colonial activists charged the army with fomenting racial and religious divisions. In Faithful Fighters, Kate Imy explores how military culture created unintended dialogues between soldiers and civilians, including Hindu nationalists, Sikh revivalists, and pan-Islamic activists. By the 1920s and '30s, the army constructed military schools and academies to isolate soldiers from anti-colonial activism. While this carefully managed military segregation crumbled under the pressure of the Second World War, Imy argues that the army militarized racial and religious difference, creating lasting legacies for the violent partition and independence of India, and the endemic warfare and violence of the post-colonial world.




The Punjab Borderland


Book Description

The Punjab Borderland offers a fascinating insight into how the new international boundary between India and Pakistan was made, subverted, and transformed. Dispelling the established historiographical narratives of an increasingly militarised border that presents as the epitome of animosity and a classic example of inter-state tension, this book offers a corrective to these accounts by bringing out narratives of border crossings and social relations built on mutual benefit and trust. It conceptualises the making of the vast contraband as an analytical tool, not merely as borderland societies' modes for evading the state imposition of a partitioned geography on their local lifeworld, but as a catalyst for enabling social mobility and political empowerment for the population involved and a thriving market for consumption in the urban centres. It reveals a 'bottom-up' history of the Punjab border and the invention of the borderland society, narrating a story with local meanings and transnational dimensions.




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