Report on
the International Conference on the Sikh Diaspora,
April 21-22, 2001, University of California, Santa
Barbara
Prepared by Shinder S Thandi, Visiting Professor in
Global Studies, UCSB
The Sikh community, now numbering around 20 million,
is scattered across the globe. Whilst the majority
of Sikhs still reside in the Punjab there has an outward
migration to most areas of the world over the past
500 years. Sikh settlements outside Punjab started
in the sixteenth century and accelerated during the
second half of the nineteenth century after the annexation
of Punjab in 1849 and increased army recruitment of
the Sikhs to the British Indian army. By the closing
decades of the nineteenth century Sikhs had started
migrating in significant numbers to as far away places
as Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and to the southeast
Asian countries of Singapore and Malaysia. By the
beginning of this century, they had started arriving
on the Pacific coast of North America until the Immigration
laws and the Komagatu maru affair curtailed their
further migration. There was also a sizable movement
of Sikhs to east Africa, recruited to help develop
the railway and road infrastructure. Later, as immigration
laws were relaxed and as demand for labour increased
during the post-war boom periods, Sikhs began to settle
in large numbers in Europe and North America.
Despite this presence of
Sikhs communities in foreign lands for well over a
century, no serious attempt has been made to trace
their evolution and development outside Punjab and
India. Further, there is little documented knowledge
about their struggles and achievements and the challenges
they faced in transmitting their heritage, tradition
and group consciousness to the younger generations
in environments that were usually very hostile. It
was because of these apparent gaps in the historiography
of overseas based Sikhs that scholars associated with
the Sikh Studies program at the University of California,
Santa Barbara (UCSB), decided to dedicate their second
international conference on Sikh Studies to the theme
of the Sikh Diaspora.
Professor Gurinder
Singh Mann
The conference was organized
by Professor Gurinder Singh Mann who holds the Kundan
Kaur Kapany Chair in Sikh Studies at UCSB. Professor
Mann has been the driving force behind raising the
profile of Sikh Studies in North America over the
past ten years and has been instrumental in nurturing
a critical mass of young scholars who, he hopes, will
carry the beacon forward for the benefit of future
generations. The funding for the conference was provided
by the proceeds from the Kudan Kaur Kapany Chair in
Sikh Studies and the program in Global and International
Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Professor Mark
Juergensmeyer
The two-day conference
theme was divided into two distinct themes. The first
day focussed on the histories of the Sikh diaspora
whereas the second looked at the cultural representations
in the Sikh diaspora. Professor Mark Juergensmeyer,
Director of the Global and International Studies programme
at UCSB, an early pioneer in the promotion of Sikh
Studies in North America and proactive in the establishment
of the Chair at Santa Barbara, opened the conference,
welcomed the delegates and shared a personal narrative
of the events that first eroused his interest in Sikh/Punjab
studies when he was a young graduate student at Berkeley.
He recalled how he was presented with a totally unexpected
but a fortunate opportunity to examine and document
discarded records of the Ghadrite movement. This experience
was enough for him to pursue some of the issues further
especially as they related to the Indian nationalist
discourse and the religious and social movements in
the Punjab.
Professor Mann
Professor Mann, in his
introductory remarks in welcoming delegates, reminded
them to focus on a century of migration, the long
period of suffering and struggles, but more importantly,
on the achievements of the Sikh community. He emphasized
that it was time to move away from formulations that
led to perceptions of the diaspora Sikhs as victims
or marginalised exiles as the community had now matured
to a stage where the diasporic experience needed to
be celebrated. He gave a number of examples of countries
across the globe where Sikhs held very responsible
positions and were in playing an influential role
in decision-making in their adopted homes.
Professor J.S.
Grewel
The first morning session,
chaired by the distinguished scholar, Ainslee T Embree,
of Columbia University, started with a paper by the
eminent historian of Sikh history, Professor J. S.
Grewal, former Vice Chancellor of Guru Nanak Dev University,
Amritsar, Punjab. Professor Grewal made an original
attempt to explain the emergence of Sikhs communities
in the different parts of the Mughal Punjab and other
regions of India from about 1500 to 1850. The developmet
of these communities were closely associated with
the travels of the Gurus and their disciples. By careful
reading of the Janamsakhis and other rare documents
such as the Dabistan and early Hukumnamas, he explained
the spread of Sikhs, especially as traders, as far
away as Dacca to the east and to the NorthWest Frontier
to the west. By the close of the nineteenth century
Sikh communities had been established in large numbers
in Kolkata, Hydrabad, Sind and the Bombay Provinces.
Professor Indu
Banga
The second paper was presented
by Professor Indu Banga, an established historian
based at Punjab University, Chandigarh. Her paper
covered the crucial period 1850 to 1950 during which
we see large-scale movement of Sikhs outside the Punjab.
In a meticulously detailed paper she peroidized Sikh
migration into three main geographical locations:
the early South Pacific phase, the second North American
phase and the more recent post-war European and North
American phase. Although she emphasized the importance
of both the push and pull pressures generating both
internal and overseas migration, her focus was mainly
on the former. She explained how changing agrarian
fortunes, land rights legislation, British colonial
labour policy including army recruitment, were important
determinants. She also gave specific reasons why Sikh
overseas migration was particularly concentrated in
the doaba region of Punjab.
Professor Hew
McLeod
The morning session also
included case studies of pioneer Sikhs in Australia
and New Zealand and a profile of the contemporary
Sikh community in the North West Frontier Province
of Pakistan. Professor Hew McLeod, a highly respected
historian of the Sikh tradition, traced the evolution
of the Sikh communities in Australia and New Zealand
from the 1880s onwards until ,migration was restricted
through legislation in the early 1920s. His main focus
was on the New Zealand community, which he had researched
over a long period. He described the main forms of
their economic activities, especially their involvement
in agricultural and dairy farming and their early
attempts at institution building. Professor McLeod
paid particular attention to the existence of differential
relations of the Sikhs with the Pukihar (New Zealanders
of European decent) and indigenous Maori communities.
Gurdit Singh
Gurdit Singh, a young doctoral
scholar based in Sociology at UCSB, made a visual
presentation on the minority Sikh community in the
North West Frontier Province. Through his slides he
traced the evolution of the community, their geographical
concentration and socio-economic well-being. He particularly
emphasized the challenges facing the community in
maintaining and transmitting Sikh tradition within
a dominant Islamic culture.
Professor Shinder
S. Thandi
The afternoon session,
chaired by Professor John S. Hawley of Columbia University,
included four papers on Europe and North America where
an overwhelming majority of the Sikhs outside India
resides. Shinder S Thandi, founder Editor of the International
Journal of Punjab Studies and currently a Visiting
Professor in Global and International Studies at UCSB,
provided an overview of the settlement, struggles
and achievements of the Sikh community in Europe.
Focussing mainly on the Sikh experience in Britain
(where the community numbers around 400,000) he particularly
emphasized the protracted struggles of Sikhs during
the 1960s and 1970s to gain economic, cultural and
social space. By the 1990s however, the Sikhs community
had developed confidence and maturity, was becoming
more visible in the civic, political, social and economic
life of Britain and was now able to assert and celebrate
their cultural identity.
Professor Hugh
Johnston
Professor Hugh Johnston,
a well known historian of Sikh history from Simon
Fraser University, Canada, focussed on the pioneer
Canadian Sikhs, their struggles in building institutions
and overcoming hostile and racist sentiments, especially
harsh immigration controls in the earlier part of
this century. He recalled the Komagatu maru incident
and the important role this has played in the psychie
of Canadian Sikhs since then.
Professor Jane
Singh
Professor Jane Singh of
University of California, Berkeley, continued this
theme of struggle when she provided a lucid and detailed
account of the early Sikh pioneers in California,
USA, in the first two decades of this century. Professor
Singh, who has previously undertaken path-breaking
research on the Ghadrites, emphasized three main areas
for special consideration: the early settlement period
and material conditions of pioneer Sikhs; role of
US public policy and how this hampered activities
of minorities like the Sikhs; and the emergence of
a strong sense of ethnic consciousness.
Professor Constance
M. Elsberg
The fourth and final paper
of the afternoon session was presented by Profesor
Constance M. Elsberg, a sociologist from North Virginia
College, Virginia. Her focus was on non-Punjabi Sikhs
(gora Sikhs) in the West with a particular focus on
the 3HO movement. Professor Elsberg traced the history
of the Happy, Holy, Healthy organization (3HO) to
the new religious (counter-culture) movements that
began in the 1960s and 1970s on university campuses
across America. By the late 1960s Harbhajan Singh
Yogi had entered the stage and the movement began
to take on a distinct Sikh tradition orientation focussing
on aspects of tantric yoga. Although the community
of followers grew quickly, by the late 1990s it appeared
to be running out of steam both due to internal organizational
problems and difficulties in sustaining the movements
popularity with the offspring of the earlier members.
Dr. Bhagan
Singh
The second day of the conference
was devoted to examining the cultural representations
in the Sikh diaspora. The morning session, chaired
by Professor Thomas R. Metcalf of the University of
California, Berkeley, included five papers, which
focused on aspects of education, art and music in
the diaspora. The first paper was presented by Dr.
Bhajan Singh, an educational practitioner from Singapore.
In a hugely applauded multi-media presentation, Bhajan
Singh talked about meeting challenges of cultural
transmission among the Thai and Singapore Sikh youth.
He explained the philosophy behind their Sikh education
model, the careful selection and production of course
materials and their delivery. Their model had proved
to be a success with 2,000 children currently going
through the education programme in Singapore alone.
The model was now also successfully being delivered
in the two other countries with major Sikh settlement
in the region: Thailand and Malaysia.
Suzanne McMahon
The next speaker, Suzanne
McMahon, South Asian Librarian at the University of
California, Berkeley, provided details of her involvement
in developing archival material (including the infamous
Ghadar collection) which is now available to researchers
on the Sikh and South Asian diaspora both at Berkeley
and other University of California libraries. She
explained that a lot of financial resources had been
committed to collecting and preserving valuable records
of individuals, of family and of localized histories
of the earlier migrants. A large part of these resources
were now available in digital form. She also provided
details of the forthcoming exhibition she was helping
to organize on early pioneers entitled Echoes of Freedom.
Susan Stronge
The third paper was presented
by Susan Stronge, Curator of South Asian Art at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Susan Stronge
had been instrumental in organizing the hugely successful
exhibition on The Arts of the Sikh Kingdoms at the
V&A in 1999. She had also edited the accompanying
book to the exhibition which gave more detailed information
on the items in the exhibition, their significance
and their current condition and location. In her presentation,
she discussed the difficulties in gathering the material,
the selection and omission of artifacts to exhibit
and the cultural and educational programme which complimented
the exhibition.
Amrita &
Rabindra Kaur Singh
The fourth paper of the
morning session was delivered by the Sikh artist twins
Amrita and Rabindra Kaur Singh from the UK entitled
Twin Dialogue: Our Art. Born and educated in Merseyside
in northern England, the twins first became interested
in their own heritage after a visit to Punjab in 1980.
At University they decided to develop their own distinct
style, first imitating the Mughal miniature paintings
and then borrowing on styles depicted within the Sikh
tradition. They explained that a crucial factor in
their decision to concentrate on their own heritage
reflected very much a rebellion against the pressure
that white teachers had exerted on them to develop
a European style. Thus their approach was to directly
confront the euro-centricism inherent in the British
art curriculum. Through a slide show of some of their
paintings, they demonstrated the development of their
own unique style, which reflected their own personal
experiences of growing up in Britain as young British
Sikhs.
Gibb Schreffler
The final paper of the
morning was delivered by Gibb Schreffler, a doctoral
student working on Bhangra music in the Department
of Music at UCSB. In a paper entitled British Bhangra
Music in the 1980s, Schreffler traced the history
of early Bhangra groups like Alaap and Premi and the
changing musical forms and their deviation from traditional
Punjabi music. He argued, using pictures and sound
recordings, that the 1980s Bhangra music had a very
distinct Britishness about it and it was more geared
for disco dancing than drawing from the traditional
Punjab folk dance. The boy bands proliferated in the
1980s but later also began to fragment and then to
lose appeal towards the end of the decade. British
Bhangra had to be re-invented in the early 1990s.
Amarjit Chandan
The afternoon session was
chaired by Profesor Nirvikar Singh, from the Economics
department, University of California, Santa Cruz.
This final session included three papers on Punjabi
Literature in the diaspora. Amarjit Chandan from London,
author of several books of Punjabi poetry, read his
paper on the state of Punjabi literature in England.
He argues that Punjabi literature flourished upto
the 1980s but since then there has seen a slow decline.
This, he argued was related both to the declining
use of Punjabi language by new writers and because
of lower levels of literacy and proficiency in Punjabi
language amongst the second-generation migrants. He
finished his session with a recitation of several
of his poems in Punjabi that emotionally moved the
audience.
Sadhu Binning
Sadhu Binning, of the University
of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada presented the
second paper. In contrast to the pessimistic scenario
of the British case presented by Amarjit Chandan,
Binning described the Punjabi Canadian literary scene
as flourishing and vibrant. He disclosed that there
were now about 150 writers in Canada publishing literature
and poetry in Punjabi and this has resulted in an
output of around 125 books since the 1960s. However,
Binning painted a very grim picture of the status
of Punjabi literature both within the Sikh community
and mainstream literary circles. In the former, there
was a distinct lack of interest in reading this literature
and in the case of the latter, there was no acknowledgement
or recognition of this literature despite the fact
that most of the literature was very much focussed
on the Canadian social condition.
Ajmer Rode
Ajmer Rode, award-winning
author of eleven book of Punjabi poetry, was the final
speaker. He is also based in Vancouver, Canada. Rode
repeated many of the concerns of Binning especially
relating to the perceptions of inferior status of
Punjabi literature. He pointed out that it was indeed
a paradoxical situation where the universities in
Punjab had recognized their literature by including
their books in the Punjabi literature curriculum,
the Sikh and the mainstream community in Canada had
failed to recognize this literary contribution. By
popular request both the latter speakers also recited
some of their Punjabi poetry.
This conference was
a very rewarding and enriching experience. By focusing
on histories of the diaspora on the first day and
recalling the lived experiences of the diaspora in
the second, the conference organizers had provided
the audience with plenty of food for thought. The
conference not only highlighted the commonalties in
early migratory experiences but also provided interesting
insights into comparative experiences of Sikh diaspora
communities. Over the two days, the conference demonstrated
the strengths of the Sikh community to pull together
in conditions of adversity, to excel in conditions
where equal opportunities are guaranteed, to nurture
and transmit cultural heritage against overwhelming
pressures and to celebrate success with vigor and
candor which remains the envy of other Indian diaspora
communites. The organizers must be congratulated on
the success of the conference and urged to make such
conferences more frequent events.
