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PAPER
ABSTRACTS
Remembering and Forgetting:
Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Sikh Experience
Workshop Conference at Hofstra University |
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Click
here to read an article by Gerald Barrier about this conference.
(as featured on www.sikhe.com) |
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Keynote
Address:
Edith Wyschogrod |
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historian as one who depicts the past can also be seen
as the custodian of a moral legacy who is challenged to
speak for the dead who cannot speak for themselves. How
is the historian to navigate between the need to tell
the truth and the responsibility to speak for those who
have been deprived of voice? The voiceless others will
be viewed not only as the subjects of history but as ethical
placeholders in historical narratives. |
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Edith
Wyschogrod |
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“America
is My Khalistan!”:
Reflections by Sikh Youth on Violence and
Memory Post 1984 and Post 9/11
Rita Verma
University of Wisconsin-Madison |
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As
witnesses to the 1984 riots in India and as immigrants in
a post 9/11 America, Sikh immigrant youth from India face
unique challenges as they make America their home during emergent
and changing social and political climates. Findings from
a year-long ethnographic study on youth of Sikh origin reveal
struggles that youth face as they negotiate multiple contradictory
identities in schools and their communities. This study is
important as it explores issues of identity-making and remaking
for Sikh immigrant youth and their families as they engage
in the politics of remembrance in regard to 1984 and become
retraumatized in the face of racist nativism in the United
States in a post 9/11 hostile political and social climate.
How these communities cope and further assert their religious
and cultural ties and affiliations are explored. |
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oppression that was experienced led Sikh youth to negotiate
their identities and disengage from educational pursuits
according to the findings of the study. Adorning a turban
and beard are symbols of faith, identity, strength and
pride for Sikh males. Sikh males bear the burden of cultural
reproduction, preservation and representation. |
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Rita
Verma |
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As agents of cultural reproduction and vitality for Sikh ethnonationalism,
Sikh males faced limitations in their educational access as
they came to realize they were perceived as the “suspect”
and “dangerous Other” due to their physical appearance
in America. Young males with turbans were victimized by racist
backlash and physical assault, and were faced with dilemmas
of whether or not to abandon these cultural and religious symbols.
Cutting their hair, whether voluntary or for survival purposes,
can be considered an act of sacrilege. In order to survive,
some Sikh males chose to abandon their turbans in order to “fit
in.” Being stripped of their own identity and facing disapproval
from the community led to further disengagement from school.
Headscarves have been banned for Muslims in France as well,
and this legislation forces youth to compromise their own identities.
This dangerous globalizing trend of “involuntary forced
assimilation” burdens youth as they are forced to abandon
cultural forms and symbols that are essential to their cultural
identity, survival and reproduction. The survival of deterritorialized
immigrant communities and the challenges they face as they seek
to maintain their religious and cultural identities are increasingly
difficult. This area demands great exploration and consideration.
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Silence
of the Graveyard:
Brian K. Axel
Swarthmore College |
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topic of my talk is state terror in India, and particularly
in Punjab where, over the past 20 years at least 100,000
people have been killed or disappeared. I do not presume
to be able to offer a complete portrayal of this terribly
troubling situation. The story I tell is more than a bit
frayed at the edges – but by speaking about it now
I hope, at least, to communicate some of the distinctive
features of this situation, and to give you some indication
of a world of unfinished analysis beyond the parameters
of this particular presentation. |
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Brian
K. Axel and Inderpal Grewal |
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Gendering
Refugees:
Sikh Women as National/Transnational Subjects
Inderpal Grewal
University of California, Irvine
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In
this paper, I discuss how the crisis of a growing population
of non-citizens, as refugees, was managed in the late 20th century
through the discourse of human rights. Such discourses maintained
the nation-state system and sustained national identities and
colonial projects, such as the concept of the humanitarianism
of the West and its support of political freedoms, thus bringing
together geopolitics with biopolitics in the making of modern
subjects at the end of the century. |
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While
human rights advocates argued that the refugee asylum
system of the late 20th century did not safeguard the
human rights of refugees and that the nation-state tried
to evade their responsibilities in providing safety and
security (Amnesty
International Annual Report,
1997), they also retained human rights as an effective
tool for addressing the refugee crisis.
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Inderpal
Grewal and Pal Ahluwalia |
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In such arguments, we can see that human rights instruments
served as mechanisms for management of this population; on the
one hand, these instruments were used to select a few refugees
out of populations of tens of millions as appropriate for admission
into the countries of the West, and on the other, they justified
expansion of criteria under which refugees could be defined.
Such strategies were visible most clearly in the 1990s in the
debates regarding asylum on the basis of gender oppression.
Yet what was clear was that the mechanisms for refugee asylum
in the West worked through the production of knowledge generated
not simply by the state, but by a number of non-state transnational
organizations and institutions. |
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After
Ghallughara’
Trauma, Memory and Sikh Predicament Since 1984
Darshan S. Tatla
Department of Theology, University of Birmingham |
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| As
the Indian army invaded the sacred precinct of the Golden
Temple in June 1984, Sikhs were shattered by the trauma
and reacted with guilt, shame, anger, remorse and mourning.
Although the Sikh community had woven around itself myths,
memories and commemorations as great survivors from past
genocides, the 1984 tragedy brought the burden of such
historic and imagined memories as contemporary reality,
offering bitter choices for a large section of the community.
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Darshan
S. Tatla |
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The paper assesses the impact of the trauma, spaces for its
mourning, voluntary and enforced silences while charting the
reaction of individuals inspired by community’s shared
memories. Faced by the Indian state’s insistence on
a different and competing set of hegemonic discourse of the
event, the paper tries to locate the social construction of
this tragedy as a reflection of the community’s social,
economic and political power in contemporary India.
While
a variety of discourses can locate a community’s reconciliation,
restructuring, and commemoration of collective memories, the
paper concludes that, after 1984, with severely restricted
agencies of representation and reproduction of Sikhs’
traumatic grief, such explanations offer no relief or understanding
of the unspeakable psychological pain suffered by individuals
through broken ideals, shattered memories and the reconstructed
Akal Takhat. Moreover, with no prospect of an ‘honourable’
way of forgetting the ‘burdensome’ heritage in
the contemporary reality of Indian polity, a coherent narrative
of the community’s past is no longer available to its
members.
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Partition,
1984, Nationalism and the Symbol of ‘the Sikh’
Navtej K. Purewal and Virinder S. Kalra,
University of Manchester |
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The
competing nationalisms of India and Pakistan since their inceptions
in 1947 have required a concerted and contrived effort to both
conjure up and erase memories about such events as the partition
and 1984, in order to reify their constructed nationalist agendas.
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paper will look at the ways in which memories about the
violence of the partition and 1984 have been played with
by the state which, at different points in time, have
required the remembrance, erasure or even selective manipulation
of memories of certain aspects of these experiences. The
paper will specifically focus upon the manner in which
the symbol of ‘the Sikh’ has been used by
both Indian and Pakistani nationalisms at different times
in different ways. |
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Virinder
S. Kalra |
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In carrying the burden of national symbolism, Sikhs themselves
are left without recourse to define or construct their own narratives
of history, which, it could be argued, is necessary for engaging
in any acts of remembering. |
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The
Strange Death of Sikh Ethnonationalism:
Re-Assessing Operation Blue Star (1984) and Its Aftermath
Gurharpal Singh
University of Birmingham |
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notes raise some key points about the place of memory
and forgetting in Sikh ethnonationalism. They do so by
re-assessing my earlier volume on the ‘Punjab problem’,
Ethnic Conflict in India: A Case-Study of Punjab.
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Gurharpal
Singh |
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The general
argument is that memory and forgetting with reference to traumatic
and critical events are central components of Sikh ethnonationalism,
its self-definition and its ability to negotiate the future.
Recognizing this fact with reference to 1984 will help us to
understand why it is likely to become the Sikhs’ chosen
trauma and enable us to provide a more contextual and meaningful
reading of the phenomenon than is available hitherto. |
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Trauma
and Memory within Sikh Diaspora: Internet Dialogue
Jerry Barrier
University of Missouri |
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Trauma
and memory have been essential elements of Sikh life. One of
the world’s youngest religions, Sikh understanding has
required a balancing of learned or oral traditions with an increasingly
rich collection of historical documents. Sikhs have attempted
to resolve conflicts over doctrine, practice and identity, and
at least save time building central institutions within a comparatively
short period. The creation of lasting institutions and resolving
conflicts over ideology and practice has been a condensed and
intense process when compared to the slower evolution of other
religious faiths. Since the 1600s, persistent attacks and instability
have created an environment of crisis. The collapse of the kingdom
of Ranjit Singh and the Sikh role as a minority community within
a century of colonial role forced Sikhs to re-evaluate their
self-understandings and to balance religious commitments with
political strategy judged necessary for political survival.
In times of immediate peril, prevalent culture and politics
have conditioned how Sikhs interpreted their past and dealt
with immediate challenges. |
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| This
paper presents an overview of some dynamics affecting
Sikh perception of the past and especially traumatic experiences.
Although the focus primarily is on developments within
the diaspora, the first section discusses the role of
Sikh intellectuals and politics in the pre-1947 period.
Those experiences created much of the literature and helped
set the parameters of discussion that influence Sikhs
today. |
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Jerry
Barrier |
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| Attention
then is paid on how modern communication, and especially the
Internet, has affected priorities and discourse. No single discussion
group can be considered representative of Sikh public opinion,
but for the purposes of evaluating ongoing issues and how the
past is presented, the group Sikh-Diaspora serves as a case
study of reactions to 9/11, the events surrounding 1984, and
the Partition in 1947. Concluding remarks suggest broad implications
for current and future approaches to Sikh history, especially
events such as those related to 1984. |
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Punjab
in Modern Hindi Cinema:
Trauma and Memory in Maachis and Hawein
Harleen Singh
Brandeis University |
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In
this paper, I look at two noteworthy cinematic representations
of events in Punjab in the last two decades. The film "Maachis"
is a portrayal of Punjabi youth and their responses to the insurgency
and the ensuing political, military, and legal atrocities that
were widespread in Punjab. Hawein, on the other hand, is a filmic
depiction of the Anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and its effect on the
Punjab psyche. My focus, in this presentation, is not to arrive
at a historical certainty or to somehow “rectify”
and thereby “clarify” the events of the Punjab insurgency
or the riots of 1984. I wish, however, to demonstrate how these
scarce cinematic representations measure up against the widespread
dissemination in the media of terrorism in Punjab, and how the
1984 riots in India’s capital, New Delhi, continue to
be a marginalized event of National History. |
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easy availability of the Punjabi Sikh man, bearded and
turbaned, in Hindi cinema as a visual marker of buffoonery
is only marginally offset by his heroic representation
as a military man, constantly and unhesitatingly ready
to sacrifice his life for the nation. In
either case, heroic or visual gag, the symbolism of these
representations continue to objectify the Punjabi Sikh
man in a colonial mindset which may comprehend him only
in terms of his labor for the nation, or his simple-minded
humor.
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Harleen
Singh |
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The Punjabi Sikh woman, even in this limited comparison, tends
to remain quite obscure — unless one may count the numerous
quasi Punjabi matriarchs of recent films in their role as
nasty mother-in-laws or understanding grandmothers.
Nevertheless,
though these two films are important in this severely limited
subsection of films on Punjab, a critical reading of these
films throws up many conflicted junctures of representation,
political commentary, historical envisioning, and gendered
narratives. Both films tend not to engage with the larger
political questions and remain sequestered in microcosmic
renditions of the events, which, though necessary, continue
to represent Punjab, the insurgency or the riots, as isolated
events of a larger national history rather than defining moments
of lack which point to the very instability of the nation.
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Partition,
Memory and Trauma:
Voices of Punjabi Refugee Migrants in Lahore and Amritsar
Ian Talbot
Coventry University |
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This
paper explores the trauma of the 1947 Partition of the Punjab
through a comparative study of firsthand accounts of refugee
migrants in the cities of Lahore and Amritsar. The interviews
are contextualized by a documentary examination of the mounting
violence in the ‘twin cities’ from 3 March 1947
onwards. The methodological issues surrounding the use of oral
sources are also discussed. The paper is historiographically
located in the new ‘history from beneath’ of the
Partition. |
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| The
easy availability of the Punjabi Sikh man, bearded and
turbaned, in Hindi cinema as a visual marker of buffoonery
is only marginally offset by his heroic representation
as a military man, constantly and unhesitatingly ready
to sacrifice his life for the nation. The
similarity of the experiences of refugees from India and
Pakistan emerges strongly from the study. |
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Ian
Talbot and Paul Brass |
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It also highlights the length of time it took for many refugees
to recover both from the material losses and psychological trauma
of the uprooting from their ancestral localities. This points
to the need to understand Partition as a process rather than
an event confined to August 1947. |
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The
Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47:
Means, Methods, and Purposes
Paul Brass
University of Washington |
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To
relate the paper to the conference theme, I will focus my presentation
on the differences between what is known about the role of Sikh
political leaders and armed gangs during the Partition massacres
and what Sikh organizations had to say about these massacres
after the Partition. In other words, how perpetrators portrayed
themselves as victims, a reinterpretation of the memory and
trauma of Partition obviously not confined only to Sikhs, but
was part of the general process of post-Partition blame displacement. |
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