Sikh nationalism has been challenging the Indian state since India’s independence, most particularly in the 1950s and 1960s. The Sikh search for a territory of their own in a Punjabi Suba was finally conceded in 1966, when current Punjab was carved up, though as a highly truncated territory (nearly one-third of what it was before the Partition of India in 1947) with a weak majority of Sikhs, and the Hindus as a large minority. The second time when Sikh nationalism turned very violent and demanded an independent Khalistan outside of India was in the 1980s, which culminated in the Indian army attack (nick-named ‘Operation Blue Star’) on the Golden Temple, the most sacred place of the Sikhs, and the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh Body guards followed by the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, which killed a few thousand Sikhs – all in 1984. With the change of leadership at the Centre, subsequently, the ‘normalcy’ was restored in Punjab, and the movement for Sikh nationalists’ claims for territory (this time outside of India) apparently subsided since.
Gurharpal Singh, the first author, has spent his life understanding the phenomenon, starting from the days of his doctoral research on ‘Communist movements in the Punjab’ at the LSE in the late 1980s, and has written extensively on the subject. He is very rightly known as the international expert on the so-called Punjab problem. In this well-researched and densely crafted book, Singh and Shani have shown how a territory-hungry nationalism eventually settled down for a non-territorial diasporic existence with nationalism’s claims for a homeland being de-territorialized. With a comprehensive understanding of nationalism, theoretically speaking, the authors show that a ‘de-territorialized’ nationalism is possible in the long history of nationalism worldwide.
The book contains detailed data on the global profile of the Sikhs. Sikhs, though about 2 per of the population of India, are quite large in number. In the 2011 Census Reports of India, the Sikhs are counted as 16 million in Punjab and 20.4 million elsewhere in India. Beyond that, about 3 million Sikhs live in different countries in the West and elsewhere. So their number is significant, and many countries in the world have fewer than 16 million inhabitants. But then, the Sikhs have migrated to other parts of India for trade and commerce, and to other countries in search of better opportunities. Within this globalized world, what has been possible is a diasporic ethnic identity in which to define their subjectivity and live in territories that are not their own.
Theoretically grounded in an integrationist approach to nationalism combined with a critical theory and the theoretical insights from post-modernism and deconstruction, the authors have adequately covered the long passage of Sikh nationalism since the birth of the religion in the fifteenth century when it arose as a distinct religious identity. The eight chapters in the book detail the various aspects of the development of Sikh nationalism in complex interaction with British rule, Jinnah’s Pakistan claims, the post-independence struggle for regional autonomy within the Indian federation, and so on. Since diaspora has become a new centre for identity articulation and identity fulfilment propelled by globalization, chapter 8 offers a detailed empirically and theoretically based analysis. In this chapter, the authors review the implications of post-9/11 for Sikh nationalism and pointed out the importance of the ‘gradual decline of the problem of homeland by the politics of recognition that is creating new opportunities for reimaging the global Sikh community’ (7).
In the Conclusion, the authors have tried to explain the vexed question of religion in the construction of Sikh nationhood, arguing that religion remains inalienable from any definition of their identity, whether it is ethnic, minority, or nationalist. Beyond doubt, the de-territorialization of Sikh identity following the diasporic phenomenon creates problems of articulation of the territorial claim for a homeland, but the authors show that several UK, US, and Canada based Sikh organizations such as Sikh Federation, BKI, and WSO have not given up on the demand for an independent homeland. However, they have received little support from the Sikhs in Punjab. Finally, the authors seem to suggest that the Sikhs globally speaking now have to live in this post-sovereignty international order as a ‘nation without States’, a community with recognition in the public space of Western liberal democracies.
The book has an Appendix on the Anandpur Shahib Resolution dated from 16 to 17 October 1973 and the Economic Policy and Programme of the SAD (1973) which are useful for researchers. The Bibliography at the end of the book is very updated on Sikh studies, as well as on archival materials.
On the whole, this is an objective study of a complex and somewhat controversial subject, at least in India, where such ‘nationalisms’ are not officially recognized. Neither are any ethnic identity recognized as such, or their self-determination rights. And yet, in practice, India’s federation building since 1950, if not before, has entailed the recognition of various such ethno-nationalist identities, whether the Telegus, the Tamils, Marathis, or the Punjabis and Sikhs. After the creation of the Punjabi Suba in 1966, and the subsequent immersion of its main political agency the SAD in the electoral politics, the Sikh identity has been accommodated within the Indian Union. The SAD underwent many splits in the meanwhile, and the party seems to have been politically marginalized. Its defeat in the just concluded the State Assembly in Punjab in 2022 testifies to it. The jat-dominated Sikh nationalist seems to have given way to an alternative in ‘subaltern Sikhism’, if the term is permitted.
This is a different story, but the book has prepared readers of Sikh identity politics and nationalism with the adequate background materials and the up-to-date global debates. This book makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of the Sikhs and their changing searches for identity and homeland.