Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (review)

Analyzing a broad array of historical writings and nontextual genres, Ballantyne argues that the meanings of being Sikh have emerged through interactions of Sikhs with the British Empire in India and simultaneously through their emigration across the globe. Especially since the British annexation of their Punjabi homeland in 1849, contending and shifting historical narratives created by both Sikhs and British colonial officials have shaped and defined various Sikh identities. The British Empire deployed Sikh soldiers, police, and laborers in other parts of Asia and Africa, where many established new homes. After the 1947 partition of west and east Punjab into Pakistan and India, respectively, many more Sikhs settled abroad, mainly in Britain and North America. These new communities have used innovative historical narratives, as well as musical and other art forms, in shifting ways to express their reconstituted identities for both themselves and their host societies. Ballantyne insightfully "reads" these diverse representations to explain convincingly the changing dynamics of these various contending assertions of Sikh identity during the past 150 years.

In a valuable survey, Ballantyne characterizes five dominant approaches to Sikh historiography. Scholars and reformers have often used a range of "internalist" approaches to envision and reshape the Sikh tradition in its own terms. A "Khalsacentric" approach rejects both allegedly Western scholarly disciplines and also dialogue with other religious traditions, drawing much support from Sikh communities in North America. In contrast, "regional approaches" consider the Punjab as the context in which Sikhism developed over time via contact with other groups and movements there. Postcolonial and other scholars have adopted "externalist" approaches that stress colonial discourses about the colonized Sikhs and the construction of masculine Sikhs as a premier "martial race." Finally, "diasporic approaches" (including Brian Axel, The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh 'Diaspora' [Durham, N.C., 2001]) contend that the transnational Sikh community has created powerful representations of martyrdom as constituting the Sikh past. Ballantyne reflects thoughtfully on each of these approaches and advances his own argument for the "recognition of the cultural exchanges and hybridized social patterns borne out of the inequalities of colonialism and the upheavals of migration" (33).

Demonstrating the analytic power of his own methodology, Ballantyne draws upon many kinds of sources through three case studies. First, he reconsiders the larger history of the Sikhs in both the Punjab and the British Empire, showing the simultaneous consequences of imperialism and mobility. Next, he deconstructs the crucial example of the memories and images about deposed Maharaja Dalip Singh (1838–1893) found among Sikh and other British people in Britain. He ends with a fascinating history of the performance and meaning of bhangra music and dance over the past fifty years.

Combining mastery over the range of scholarly and activist writing about Sikh history and culture with creative incorporation of nontextual sources, Ballantyne shows the power of his interdisciplinary approach. He models how the understanding of identity gradually emerges as part of the "webs of empire" not only for Sikhs but for other communities as well (30). Scholars of immigration and diaspora, of Sikh communities in India and abroad, and of the ways in which written and artistic sources can collaborate to elucidate social and cultural history will all find this book significant.