Religion & The Specter Of The West By Arvind Pal Singh

[dalsingh101]

I'm liking the general vibe of this brother's ideas, though I do think he is bordering on the pacifist.

Other than that, his conceptualisation of Sikhi's encounter with the west sounds interesting and resonates with independent minded Sikhs and the idea of a new, updated Singh Sabha 2 sounds very interesting. Yes, it is very academic but could well provide some fresh ideas of how to move in the future:

Q The complete title of your book is a mouthful: Religion and The Specter of The West: Sikhism, India, Postcoloniality, and the Politics of Translation. I find it intriguing. It is obviously written for a scholarly audience. I would like you to describe to me its thesis, briefly and clearly, in as simple and small bites as possible. That is, the key issues that you raise or try to address in your book.

A The book grapples with many different issues and analyzes a wide variety of different phenomena, all at once. Let me try to list just a few of them.

At the simplest level, I would say that this book looks at the nature of the encounter between Sikhs and Western modernity.

This is not merely a topic of historical interest. The encounter is not just something that happened two centuries ago and then stopped happening. It continues to happen right now as Sikhs, South Asians – in fact all non-Western cultures – now live in liberal democracies, i.e., in nation states which first developed on the basis of the separation between Church and State in the West -- a concept which is also referred to as the separation between religion and the secular.

This separation is one of the main consequences of global modernity. This separation between religion and the secular basically divides the world that we live in, into two parts: the Public Sphere and the Private Sphere.

The Public sphere is the realm of politics and its legal guardian is the Nation State which alone holds sovereignty.

The Private sphere is the domain accorded to Religion, and any culture, once it gets defined as a ‘religion’, has to legally accept the sovereignty of the nation state.

Q And this applies to us as well … the 30 million Sikhs who live across the globe?

A All cultures have to submit to this distinction or separation whether their traditions allow it or not. By submitting to the separation of politics and religion, their cultural consciousness becomes inextricably linked to global consciousness of modernity – and this global consciousness is composed at this point in time by Western (essentially European-American) cultural, economic and linguistic forms.

This modern global consciousness is now so pervasive that it has effectively become a new global Empire which masquerades as a provider of freedom, but is in fact the strongest force of cultural domination that the world has ever seen.

No one is immune to this cultural domination.

Q But how does it manifest itself?

A It is everywhere: in the political-economic structures of the global consciousness, and inside our heads, in the sense that this global consciousness determines how we (Sikhs, for example) are able to make meaning of our own culture and heritage and concepts.

We can make meaning of our concepts only in relation to the world in which we live. But the world in which we now live may not be of our making. Nevertheless it constitutes our sense of reality. It even comes out of our mouths every time we answer questions such as, for example: “What is your religion?”.

You cannot just escape from it.

But you can contest it in order to make the Sikh life-world regain its sense of sovereignty, which every dominant nation state takes away or asks us to surrender. And it is this spirit of contestation, an entirely democratic contestation, that is the driving force behind my book, Religion and the Specter of the West.

Q You can’t escape it, you say. But you also seem to suggest that we can fight it. Is it then an exercise in futility?

A Well, some Sikhs might well say, “I’m doing very well, thank-you. I like this modern global system because it puts a lot of money in my pocket and gives me recognition as member of a ‘World-Religion’ ”.

My answer, in short, is that the system recognizes you only because it has nurtured you and taught you to give it recognition first. You have to recognize the system as your master first, you have to give up your sovereign aspect, only then does it give something back to you.

But what it gives back to you is a prison for your mind, a prison that makes us believe that we’re being given something good. In other words, the empire of modern global consciousness has its own belief system. Once you enter into this belief system, it deceives you into giving up your most precious treasure and exchanging it for something that the system returns to you as if it were the same as your treasure.

The name commonly given to this exchange process is translation, but the actual mechanism that drives this kind of translation is something called ‘dialectic’.

Q How does one pin-point this phenomenon?

A My book shows us, especially to Sikhs, how to recognize this belief system as a form of cultural domination, to recognize the workings of ‘dialectic’ which causes Sikhs to give up their sovereign treasure, a sovereign treasure bequeathed by the Sikh Gurus and enshrined in Guru Granth Sahib, for shiny new labels such as “World-Religion”, which may look enticing, but is still just a label – a label which allows the system to pigeon-hole Sikhi and Sikhs into a ‘religious’ compartment, depriving Sikh teachings of their force to act in the world.

Seen from this angle, the label ‘World-Religion’ positions Sikhs negatively, and NOT positively as most people believe. And the reason is that it removes Sikhs from access to the political, to self-governance, to the ability to define their own sovereignty. It is therefore a debilitating form of cultural and political segregation – a segregation no less insidious than racial segregation.

Indigenous Sikh terms and concepts do not recognize or contain this division between the spiritual and the political.

Q How do we grapple with it, then?

A My remedy is not to escape from this Westernized world that we now inhabit. Running away from it is not an option. Rather I advocate that we should learn how to encounter it differently.

To encounter it differently is to make different connections with the cultures we otherwise have to live in. So the contestation only goes so far. Now, this different mode of encounter is something that I derive from the teachings of the Sikh Gurus. It is a mode of encounter that allows Sikh concepts to breathe in a new soil, but only by first removing the weeds that are strangling it, and then making productive connections with the host culture.

In doing this you end up not only retrieving and exporting the truly positive aspects of your own culture, but using this positivity to change the overtly dominant aspects of the host culture.

The end result is a form of encounter, not between enemies but between friends.

So, from this basic phenomenon of encounter between Sikhs and the West many other questions begin to flow out. These questions touch on a number of interesting issues, in my view.

Q Let’s go over them, one by one. Slowly, please. Remember, you are taking me over unchartered territory, at least as far as I ’m concerned.

A Well, first of all, the central importance of reviving the idea of Sikh sovereignty and its inseparability from the contemporary lived experience of Sikhs and why we need to find different ways of presenting its core components (shabad-guru and Khalsa) to the outside world.

My concern with sovereignty is to rethink this notion beyond its current limitation to an ethnic group or a territory, so that it is able to unleash its potential to go beyond these narrow limitations and respond to today’s complex globalized world.

That takes me to the second area: examining the ideological relationship between religion and secularism and how this affects the Sikh life-world.

People wrongly believe that religion and the secular are opposed.

In Religion and the Specter of the West, I utilize an important strand of contemporary scholarship in the history of ideas which shows convincingly that the modern concept of religion is actually a construction of the secular. It was constructed at the same time that the nation-state came into being.

This has important implications for the strongly held belief that ‘religion’ is a cultural universal. It certainly is not. More importantly, the structures of secular ideology are intimately linked to Christian theology.

Q This is heavy stuff. I’ll need you to come back to these and explain them in a little more detail. Okay, the third issue?

A The book examines the historical role of translation as a site of colonial hegemony but equally as a site of anti-colonial resistance. I present especially critical readings of the writings of Ernest Trumpp, Max Arthur Macauliffe and W.H. McLeod and show how the Christian-Secular ideology in their interpretations of Sikh scripture permeated the language framework in which Sikhs attempted to articulate the nature of Sikhi and Sikh identity.

Four.

Because Sikh elites were affected by the ideology implicit within translation processes, I argue for the need to re-examine the Singh Sabha legacy with a view to reformulating a new Singh Sabha movement (we could call it Singh Sabha 2) which is more able to resist the flows of dominant global consciousness even as it learns to live with these flows.

The mark of a new Singh Sabha movement (Singh Sabha 2) would be one that is able to operationalize and export Sikh universals into the Anglophone language and consciousness; this would take Sikh concepts into different cultural contexts and thereby complete the Singh Sabha project, which I believe was stalled in the early 20th century as soon as the Sikhs allowed themselves to be segregated as a religious minority in India and elsewhere.

Q I see you have your fifth finger out. Five?

A Fifth -- The book also contests the politics of knowledge construction in the Western university and its connection with State and Media discourses. The ideological source of this connection between State, Media and Academia was G.W.F. Hegel.

Much of this book is essentially a battle against Hegel, who could also be seen as one of the chief architects of the modern global consciousness as a system of cultural domination.

The desired outcome of this battle is to enable discourses on Sikhs and Sikhi that is not totally objectified but enables Sikh subjectivity to emerge.

Finally, six and seven. I think I’m coming to the end of my list.

Six -- In line with my critique of the dominant Christian-Secular universals, I also contest Hindutva Indian secular universals as two sides of the same coin, showing the complicity between Hindu religious fundamentalism and the Indian secularism and its detrimental effects for minorities such as the Sikhs.

Q There’s one more ...

A Seventh: Last but not least, the book also provides a strong critique of the overtly secular forms of postcolonial theory and postmodernism.


Continued next week …
January 17, 2014

Edited January 20, 2014 by dalsingh101

[dalsingh101]

If you can handle the sophistication, this brother has some seriously perceptive ideas about Sikh politics and history, especially our relationship with the west:

PART IV

Q You mention this “nexus between State, Media and Academia” at key places in the book. What do you mean by this? Can you perhaps give some examples that demonstrate such a nexus?

A Actually let me start by referring you to something that is blowing up right now, and which shows that my analysis in Religion and the Specter of the West has turned out to be spot on.

I’m referring to the release of government papers which clearly show the complicity of the British state in the months leading up to Operation Blue Star in June 1984. The release of some of these papers, 30 years later (which according to British law is the length of time that secret government documents cannot be released to the public) reveals what many of us had suspected at that time – that people like the British prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had very clearly aided Indira Gandhi’s Congress government in framing the Sikhs as a rogue community in the international media, and had lent British state resources (primarily in the form of military intelligence) to help plan the Indian army’s attack on the holiest Sikh shrine.

When I first read the article by Phil Miller on the website Stop Deportations, it was somewhat cathartic. It was like a secret being released. A secret that many Sikhs carried for 30 years and were prevented from sharing with the general public because the contents of the secret were not deemed legitimate.

As Miller states, quoting a top secret UK file which was released from the National Archives after the New Year:

Thatcher sent the SAS to advise Indira Gandhi on Indian army plans “for the removal of dissident Sikhs from the Golden Temple” months before the disastrous raid on Amritsar …

When Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the army to storm the Golden Temple in Amritsar in June 1984, it was a decision that would lead to her assassination. The assault on the Sikh holy site to evict separatist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, involving tanks and helicopters, incurred heavy civilian casualties.

Outraged Sikhs in Britain responded with a huge demonstration in Hyde Park, and thousands more sought refuge in the UK as the violence in Delhi and the Punjab escalated, in what some call India’s Sikh genocide.

Now, what I argue in my book is that the collusion between the Indians and the British government extended to other aspects of the public sphere, especially the media. The British and Indian media at the time steadily built a picture of the Sikhs as a troublesome community of fanatics that posed a clear and present danger to the Indian state.

And this media imagery, which was prevalent many months before Operation Blue Star, was legitimized by well placed scholars and academics who basically took an uncritical stance towards the state.

That is what I mean by the nexus of State, Media and Academia.

It refers to a kind of hegemony exerted by the state which extends to the sphere of academic scholarship and media, with the danger that these two sectors can easily become functionaries of state policy even in supposedly stable liberal democracies.

In Religion and the Specter of the West, I showed that when this nexus works in this way, it repeats “past imperialisms”. That’s why it is so important to understand that colonial infrastructures did not simply become extinct after Independence, but continue to affect us today.

Colonialism is not something that happened a hundred years ago, but will continue to happen if we stop being vigilant about its often invisible workings.

Its also why I think that Sikhs need to scrutinize more carefully the nature of their agency and how that agency can so easily be co-opted by vastly more powerful forces such as the nation-state.

Q I’m not quite sure what you mean by the term ‘agency’ in this context. Can you please explain your usage of the term?

A By ‘agency’ I mean how Sikhs act, what motivates them to act in a particular way.

Q Some examples?

A A good example of this might be the somewhat over-enthusiastic involvement of younger Sikhs in the First World War Centenary celebrations by depicting Sikhs as loyal servants of the British state.

At one level, it is entirely right for Sikhs to be involved in such celebrations. After all, over 80,000 Sikhs died in the service of the British Empire.

But the Empire did nothing for Sikhs at the time of Indian independence. It simply fed them to the wolves, despite the Sikhs showing much loyalty right until the eleventh hour. Nor did the British state remember Sikh sacrifices in the months leading up to Operation Bluestar.

Again, Margaret Thatcher (who was truly nostalgic about the ‘good old days’ of the British Empire) cynically used the SAS against Sikhs in Punjab who were trying to give voice to very genuine grievances .

Q What course of action do you advocate then for Sikhs today? For Sikh-Britons, for example? Or Sikh-Indians, for that matter.

A My point is that Sikhs today should not become the toadies of any state.

What the book shows is how this can happen so easily, how Sikh agency can be co-opted by state forces, despite our very best efforts.

My argument in the book is that this co-option continues to happen long after colonialism is thought to be over. It happens through the mechanism of language – the very element that we share with the rest of the world.

To understand how language does this … well, you’ll have to read the book. In the book itself I don’t cite the example of Margaret Thatcher (although I allude to it). This is something that came up in the last few days and it just brought back a rush of memories. No, in the book I show how the effects of past imperialisms also operated in the post-9/11 scenario when Sikhs were (and still are) caught up in the American-led backlash against Muslims and non-white ‘others’ who were racially and religiously profiled by State, Media and Academic forces all acting together.

But again, you’ll have to read the book to see how that all works.

Q Can you then explain how the structure of the book vis-à-vis parts 1, 2 and 3 lend itself to an analysis of State, Media and Academia?

A Before I talk about the structure of the book in more detail, its worth noting that this could easily have been three different books of about 150 pages each (which is the size of a medium sized book) instead of one tome of more than 500 pages.

For example a theoretical volume that looked at the Comparative Imaginary of the West (Part 1 in the current book); a more historically and textually orientated second book that focused on archival material and exegesis, with a view to examining the phenomenon of ‘reform’ in the 19th century (and the continuity of ‘reform’ today as a metaphor for socio-political movement or the Panth) which is Part 2 in the current book; and a third book focusing on Sikh philosophy in a new vein (which I never got round to doing but which you can glimpse in the current book) which is part 3 in the current book.

Q So, why not three books then?

A In the end I decided that three separate books wouldn’t have served the purpose I had in mind, which was to find spatial and temporal continuities between past and present with a view to determining a alternative future.

Spatial continuities refers to the intimate connections between the structures of State, Media and Academia as they affect Sikhs in the current context.

Temporal continuities refers to continuities between Sikh past and present, but at the same time keep an eye on the future with the desire to break with worn out reactionary politics and instead release the creative potential inherent within the teaching of the Sikh Gurus.

What brings both kinds of continuities together (spatial and temporal) is the notion of ‘reform’. That’s why at the heart of this book is a critical analysis of the project of reform enacted by Singh Sabha elites as both response to, and entry into, the dominant symbolic order of European imperialism and the parallel emergence of political Hinduism in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Q Why is the concept of ‘reform’ so important here?

A Well, the project of ‘reform’ entailed much more than the idea of Sikh elites making organizational changes to Sikh society – that’s the conventional way of understanding it.

Rather, ‘reform’ is something that was imposed on indigenous peoples by the colonial machine. It is something that Sikh elites acceded to, something that they were forced to accept and eventually internalized into their modes of existence.

Unfortunately many Sikh scholars, even today, continue to equate the project of ‘reform’ with a lehar or movement that is intrinsic to Sikh Gurus’ teachings and the way of life they brought into being.

This is not true. You cannot simply equate ‘reform’ with the lehar of the Sikh Gurus. Yes, it might have borne a resemblance but it is not the same. The concept of ‘reform’ as it comes out of the Anglo-Euro-phone consciousness is derived form the historical reform of Catholic Christianity into its Protestant version.

Over a period of time, as Protestantism became more established, this concept of reform was credited with being the motivational force for the rise of the modern secular state. Western narratives for this suggest that Christianity had to undergo an internal ‘reform’ (an internal transformation) in order to give rise to the modern state, and therefore to modern liberal democracy.

So basically, they claim that only Christianity could give rise to secularism because it had managed to ‘reform’ itself. The problem is that by the 19th century European powers were exporting this notion of ‘reform’ to Asia and Africa via the imperial project.

Again, their narrative went something like this: “if you want to revive your nations then you have to emulate European society and politics, and to do that you have to ‘reform’ your religions which basically become degraded and fallen from their original states”.

So by accepting the narrative of ‘reform’ you accept that your culture is ‘fallen’ or that it lacks something which it must retrieve. Its this narrative that Sikh elites, like other indigenous elites in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, inadvertently imported into their political projects.

The narrative of ‘reform’ is already a narrative of ‘lack’. Basically they were importing an inferiority complex through the back door. The mechanism of this negative inferiority complex is something called ‘dialectic’ which I mentioned in my response to the first question you asked.

[dalsingh101]

http://sikhchic.com/books/let_us_talk_about_your_book_arvind_pal_singh_mandair_religion_the_specter_of_the_west_part_vii

[dalsingh101]

It's getting interesting!

Let Us Talk About Your Book:
Arvind Pal Singh Mandair - "Religion & The Specter of The West"
Part XI
Q & A with Author by SIKHCHIC.COM








Continued from last week ...

[Previous segments of this series can be found in the BOOKS Section of sikhchic.com]





Q This may be a good time to get to the Singh Sabha Movement itself. Can you please spell out for me, in as simple terms as possible, your stance on it?

A What I actually do in chapters 3 and 4 of “Religion & The Specter of The West” is to unravel the mechanisms by which Singh Sabha scholars make indigenous categories equivalent to Western categories and then use the power of Christian metaphysics to combat their Hindu opponents.

I undertake close readings of texts in English and Punjabi, and focus on the philosophical moves behind the translative process and the politics that underpins it. By doing this I allow the work of metaphysics to become visible to the reader, whereas previously they were hidden under the cover of ideology.

The technical term for this kind of reading which exposes the deceptions of metaphysics is ‘deconstruction’ which is just one of many different varieties of critical reasoning, critical thinking or critique.

Now it is important to note that neither ‘deconstruction’ nor ‘critique’ are actually as negative as they sound. In reality, both of these terms refer to modes of reasoning that destabilize structures (especially social structures) that give the illusion of permanence, of absolute fixity, but in fact are man-made. It applies only to positions, structures, entities that are entirely man-made but pretend to have a divine origin and therefore claim to be beyond study or reformulation.

Remember, from what I said earlier, that is how metaphysics works. It reduces the natural world into an illusion that we must escape from, and pretends to be the work of God. But all along it is the human ego that is the doing the real work.

The motivation comes from the human ego. Deconstruction exposes this deceitful mechanism and returns our attention to the world that we live in. And by doing this it exposes the inequalities that are created by dominating forces.

The term ‘critical’ as I use it signifies the mental activity of discerning the limits and limitations of a particular position or discourse.

Now, it may not be obvious to most people (especially when I use this kind of abstract language - deconstruction, critique, etc), but it is possible to think of Sikh tradition as already deploying similar modes of reasoning even in our Gurdwara discourses. The best kathakaars (oral exegetes) have long had a very keen sense for judging when Sikhs are falling back into static ritualisms or coming under the influence of powerful external forces that might be harmful to the basic precepts of Sikhi.

A good example might be the influence of false gurus or dera babas who pretend to have some kind of a divine status. It is not uncommon to find Sikh kathakaars using modes of critical discernment to show an unsuspecting public the truth of a situation.

In a way, that is pretty much what I am doing in my study of the Singh Sabha scholars and the discourse they created in the early 20th century. The only difference is that I apply tools of the Western academy to my work.

And the reason I use Western tools is that the discourse of the Singh Sabha itself developed through the encounter with European Orientalists and missionaries.

Q Was that, or is that, good or bad?

A Well, what the Singh Sabha scholars did was to create a new kind of discourse by borrowing from Western metaphysical frameworks (especially Protestant Christian theology).

What I am doing in chapter 3 especially is showing readers the LIMITS of this approach, that is, of the Singh Sabha scholars’ discourse.

That is how critique works. That is the function of critique: to show the limits of a particular discourse. Once you have shown these limits (which are also limitations, a horizon beyond which they cannot go) I then ask my readers to choose:

Do you want to retreat back into this position, which is limited because it is now outdated? It may have worked a century ago for the Singh Sabha, but it no longer works in the same way and with the same power as it once did. It no longer guarantees the same security.

Or do you wish to create a new position, a better position more conducive to the world we live in today?

This brings me to my own stance.

It should be obvious to anyone reading the book, and to anyone who is not driven by fanaticism or plain resentment, that I see myself as both a product and an inheritor of the Singh Sabha project. Like the early Singh Sabha scholars I totally accept the centrality of Guru Granth-Guru Panth or shabad-guru and the Khalsa.

Forgive me for saying this, but one would have to be plain stupid, or malicious, or perhaps both at once, not to see my positioning on this ... It is clear as day.

However, unlike the early Singh Sabha, I am also a product of the Sikh diaspora and, as such, a product of the West, intellectually and existentially. In fact, as I said earlier, no one is immune to the West, not even the humble Punjabi farmer who quietly tills the soil, or even the greatest Punjabi literati.

The only way you can avoid the West today is by retreating into some kind of Romanticism.

[dalsingh101]

Stimulating ideas, although I disagree with the implied assertion that people like McLeod weren't in their own 'modern orientalist' way attacking Sikh society. But I do get the point that we've got lumpen sections in our community that like to jump on a bandwagon as 'saviours' of the panth on some strange political plank. I noticed that many fuddoos who like to bang on about politics back home, or see 'beadbi' around every corner - like they are pained about the panth's problems - turned a complete blind eye towards the issue of the grooming and abuse of Sikh girls for decades. Same people will never address real issues like rampant casteism, alcoholism or drug use amongst our people with anything near the vehemence that they pounce on selected issues with.

I think one weak point in Mandair's thesis is that here it seems to play down the way the western academic world (and literature) is often used in devious ways to buttress and even facilitate a dominance (both physical and intellectual) of alternative people and societies.

PART XIII



Q I am intrigued by your idea of a “Singh Sabha 2”. If I understand you correctly, it allows the Panth to continue to inherit the sovereign resources of its heritage, but at the same time enables the Panth to develop a new skin, as it were, an updated ‘vehicle’ with which to engage the new world we are living in.

So, what’s stopping us … what stands in the way of adopting a new model (Singh Sabha 2)?

A It is a structural problem, a problem of the modernist ideology created by ‘Singh Sabha 1’. The modernist ideology was borrowed from Christian metaphysics and when it operates at the political level, it does so by creating the ‘friend-enemy’ distinction.

What I am saying is that the nature of modern Sikh politics has inherited something quite insidious from the Western monotheisms, and that is a religiously based ‘friend-enemy’ distinction. It is a product of metaphysics, pure and simple. The only way that Sikhs have been able to enter into politics in the 20th century, for example, is by creating the figure of an ‘enemy’.

This is actually a defense mechanism. So those who create the enemy are 'defenders' of the Panth.

Now at the structural level, this model worked very well for a few decades (just look at Akali politics and how it worked – the Muslim and the Hindu were used as the enemy when it suited Akalis to play this card, with Akalis as the defenders of the Panth, and the usual battle cry – “The Panth is in danger,” etc).

But after 1947, things began to go quite wrong, not surprisingly, because to continue to make this model of politics continue to work, you ultimately need your own nation-state, or you need to be able to define yourself as a secular entity. And the Sikhs, did they ever develop the skills to properly engage the ideology of secularism?

So the Congress was able to outsmart the Akalis at every turn, because they possessed both of these things. Ironically the only way the Akalis were able to escape Congress’ stranglehold on Sikh politics was by forming an alliance with their own worst enemy: the BJP!

Anyway, I don’t want to go too much off the point here. So let me bring it back to what I wanted to say, which is that the problem is a structural one that afflicted ‘Singh Sabha 1’ from the very beginning.

The logic of this system that takes on a purely defensive role is that when an actual enemy cannot be found, the system sees its own body as an enemy. What I am trying to say is that the ‘Singh Sabha 1’ model, at the same time that it inherited Christian metaphysics into the structural logic of its world-view, it also inherits the principle of “autoimmunity”, or what can be called an “autoimmune logic”.

Those readers out there who are health practitioners will know that the term autoimmunity has a destruction whereby the body’s immune system produces antibodies or lymphocytes that work against substances naturally present in the body.

Now there are strands of recent political philosophy which have adapted the preservation of some thing that in fact leads to that thing’s own destruction. So, to suggest that a system or model is autoimmune is to claim that it is threatened internally by its very own logic. This internal compromise or flaw is in fact a crucial component of all modern democratic systems. The modern nation-state is also afflicted by this autoimmune logic.

Now, it doesn’t take much intelligence to recognize that the ‘Singh Sabha 1’ model has worked in a similar way. This is very obvious when we look at the history of the Akali Dal and the SGPC. It all started out in a very heroic fashion at the time of the Gurdwara Reform Movement, but within three decades, had descended into vicious communal politics and the SGPC-Akali complex developed into the Panth’s official ‘religious-police’. It had clearly identifiable external enemies to attack and defend itself against.

But after the early 1990’s, they had run out of external enemies. But the structural autoimmune logic remained in place and it filtered down into the fringe groups and other much lower level organizations who, whenever it suits them, turn on the body of the Panth and begin destroying it from within.

These lower tier fringe organizations have done so mainly by attacking those Sikhs who try to give expression to a ‘Singh Sabha 2’ by demonstrating alternative ways to think about current issues, new insights.

Apart from these fringe organizations – which are very small in terms of their actual numerical representation - there are also a few incredibly egotistical and utterly hypocritical individuals who have tried to take on the persona of the Panth’s ‘religious police’ but are in fact nothing more than hoodlums -- or ’goondas’, to borrow from the subcontinent’s parlance -- masquerading as community leaders or pseudo-intellectuals.

These people attack the Sikh body in another way - by targeting those individuals who wish to think independently of the crowd, by orchestrating inquisitions and witch-hunts against them.



Q Why do you call them ‘goondas’? Aren’t they merely the garden-variety ‘fundamentalists’? Isn’t it enough to identify them as such, because it then immediately puts them outside the very pale of Sikhi?

A I think the term ‘fundamentalist’ is too respectful for these types.

The people we tend to normally call ‘fundamentalist’ can be of two different varieties: ‘religious fundamentalists’ and ‘secular fundamentalists’. They sound completely opposed but in fact both groups rely on the same autoimmune logic but put it into practice in slightly different ways.

I won’t go into the differences here. Suffice it to say that ‘fundamentalists’ tend to stick to a belief system, to certain fundamental principles which they will not compromise whatever the cost. Their ‘fundamentalism’ is a badge of honor that they won’t compromise.

No, ‘fundamentalist’ is not the right word for them.

The right word is goonda.

[Goonda is a term in subcontinental English for a hired thug. It is both a colloquial term and defined and used in laws, generally referred to as the "Goonda Acts" by the respective Courts and Parliaments - (Wikipedia).]

The reason for using this term is that they deal in lies and falsehoods. Some of these goondas may be from established professions -- or formerly from one, or retired -- and parade themselves as ‘defenders of Sikh dharam’ but in fact they are utter hypocrites who knowingly spread false information.

The sad thing is that while increasing numbers of ordinary Sikhs are beginning to realize that the current ‘Singh-Sabha-1’ model is outdated, many are simply confused by the lies and false propaganda being spread by these goonda types, because they are the ones who tend to shout the loudest, while the majority of decent Sikhs remain silent because they are too embarrassed even to face these goondas.

Most decent people simply walk away because if you try to register a disagreement with them, you are labeled an enemy of God or the Panth, or both.

In some ways, the silent majority has allowed these goondas to drag Sikh discourse into the depths of depravity. Except for sites like sikhchic.com (and a few others like sikhnet, Sikh Studies Forum and some of the more responsible Punjabi newspapers), the public discourse on some of the marginal Sikh sites has reached a very low level indeed where these goondas have been allowed to carry out mock inquisitions against soft targets … such as scholars, for example.

But let me hasten to add something else here.

Despite their show of bravado, the goondas are actually cowards motivated by a deep-seated anxiety. They are afraid because they have begun to realize that the romanticized world they knew is now becoming totally irrelevant – especially in Punjab! Because the world has changed, peoples’ attention has gone elsewhere. They have nothing positive to actually contribute to Sikh society, so they put all their efforts into stopping others who can contribute.

In this sense their actions smack of desperation and childishness at the same time. They simply want attention of the Sikh public, and they do it by putting on side-shows like the ‘anti-McLeod’ campaign.

In the 1990’s they couldn’t find real enemies, so they began a campaign against holders of Chairs in Sikh Studies. Their tactic was to spread fear and panic amongst ordinary Sikhs that the Panth was in some kind of danger from scholars of Sikh studies. Those, for example, who had had some kind of association with Professor W.H. McLeod.

The late Khushwant Singh (the journalist-scholar who wrote the popular two-volume “A History of the Sikhs“) made a very pertinent point at the time. He said that there should never have been an issue here at all. Hew McLeod was asking some quite legitimate questions about Sikh history, and it was the task of Sikh scholars to provide answers to his questions.

McLeod may have been wrong on certain issues (and I have dealt very firmly with some of these issues in my book, especially chapter 4). But the whole issue should have been handled at a very professional level.

Instead what his detractors did was to inflame passions of the Sikh masses by spreading lies, rumors and endless charges of blasphemy. It was utterly shameful and deeply embarrassing to the image of a diasporic Sikh community trying to establish its reputation in an already hostile environment after 1984.

To outsiders, it gave further credence to the stereotype that Sikhs were simply a hot-headed bunch of fanatics, totally incapable of handling, much less conducting, an intellectual debate via the accepted channels and protocols.


To be Continued Next Week …

April 14, 2014