Conferences, Lectures, Workshops

Remembering and Forgetting:
Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Sikh Experience

An International Conference
organised by Sardarni Kuljeet Kaur Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies
Hofstra University, New York.
Saturday May 8th - Sunday May 9th, 2004

Speakers
Edith Wyschogrod (Rice University) Keynote
Paul Brass (University of Washington)
Ian Talbot (Coventry University)
Pal Ahluwalia (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
Brian Axel (Swarthmore College)
Gurharpal Singh (University of Birmingham)
Inderpal Grewal (University of California, Irvine)
Jerry Barrier (University of Missouri, Columbia)
Harleen Singh (Brandeis University)
Darshan Tatla (Birmingham University)
Navtej Purewal / Vrinder Kalra (University of Manchester)
Rita Verma (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Respondents
Girorgio Shani (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)
I.J. Singh (New York University)
Sunit Singh (University of Chaicago)
Navdeep Singh (University of London)

Exhibitors
Sandeep Singh Brar (Sikh Centennial Foundation, Canada).
South Asia Books

PROGRAM

Saturday 8th May, 2004

9:00-9:45
Registration and Coffee

9:45-10:00
Welcome & Introduction

10:00-12:30
Panel 1: The Traumas of Partition

Paul Brass, The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in Punjab (1946-47): Means, Methods & Purposes
Ian Talbot, Partition Memory & Trauma: Voices of Punjabi Refugees & Migrants in Amritsar and Lahore
Jerry Barrier, Trauma & Memory Within Sikh Diaspora: Internet Dialogue on Partition and 1984

Respondents: Giorgio Shani and Gurharpal Singh

12:30-1:30
Lunch
Joan and Donald E. Axinn Library, 10th Floor

1:35-4:00
Panel 2: Trauma, Subjectivity and the Nation

Brian Axel, Silence of the Graveyard
Inderpal Grewal, Gendering Refugees: Sikh Women as National/Trans-National Subject
Harleen Singh, Punjab in Modern Hindi Cinema: Trauma and Memory in Maachis and Hawaein
Pal Alhuwalia, Inventing Home: Re- Membering the Nation

Respondents: Sunit Singh and Navdeep Singh

4:15-5:30
Welcome From Hofstra University
President Stuart Rabinowitz

Key Note Address: Edith Wyschogrod

Proclamation: Assemblymen Thomas Dinapoli and Donna Ferrara

Remarks by Mr. T.J. Bindra

Tea Reception

Sunday 9th May, 2004

MORNING SESSION

9 :45-12:45
Panel 3: The Morning After: Reflections on 1984

Darshan Tatla, After Ghallughara: Trauma, Memory and Sikh Predicament Since 1984
Navtej Purewal & Vrinder Kalra, Partition, 1984, Nationalism & the Symbol of the Sikh
Gurharpal Singh, The Strange Death of Sikh Ethno-nationalism: Reassessing Operation Blue Star & its Aftermath
Rita Verma, “America is My Khalistan”:
Reflections by Sikh Youth on Violence and Memory Post-1984 and 9/11

Plenary Session led by I.J. Singh

AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00-4:00
Sikh Heritage Foundation Lectures

Paul Taylor, Sikh Heritage at the Smithsonian: Issues of Identity, Representation and Community Co-Curatorship in an Evolving Exhibition and Preservation Project
Gurpreet Maini, Treasures & Travails of the House of Bagrian
Mohan Singh, Coins of the Sikh Raj

PAPER ABSTRACTS
Remembering and Forgetting:
Memory and Trauma in Contemporary Sikh Experience

Workshop Conference at Hofstra University

Click here to read an article by Gerald Barrier about this conference.

Keynote Address:
Edith Wyschogrod

The 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.

"America is My Khalistan!":
Reflections by Sikh Youth on Violence and
Memory Post 1984 and Post 9/11
Rita Verma
University of Wisconsin-Madison

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.

The 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.

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.

Silence of the Graveyard:
Brian K. Axel
Swarthmore College

The 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.

Gendering Refugees:
Sikh Women as National/Transnational Subjects
Inderpal Grewal
University of California, Irvine

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.

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.

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.

After Ghallughara
Trauma, Memory and Sikh Predicament Since 1984
Darshan S. Tatla
Department of Theology, University of Birmingham

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.

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.

Partition, 1984, Nationalism and the Symbol of 'the Sikh'
Navtej K. Purewal and Virinder S. Kalra,
University of Manchester

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.

This 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.

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.

The Strange Death of Sikh Ethnonationalism:
Re-Assessing Operation Blue Star (1984) and Its Aftermath
Gurharpal Singh
University of Birmingham

These 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.

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.

Trauma and Memory within Sikh Diaspora: Internet Dialogue
Jerry Barrier
University of Missouri

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.

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.

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.

Punjab in Modern Hindi Cinema:
Trauma and Memory in Maachis and Hawein
Harleen Singh
Brandeis University

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.

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. 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.

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.

Partition, Memory and Trauma:
Voices of Punjabi Refugee Migrants in Lahore and Amritsar
Ian Talbot
Coventry University

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.

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.

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.

The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47: Means, Methods, and Purposes
Paul Brass
University of Washington

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.