Sensing the bride: Sikh poetics, barahmah, and a seasonal journey with Vaisakhi nagar kirtan

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nagar kirtan is a Sikh travelling court of poetry, prominent during the Punjabi harvest festival, Vaisakhi. Critics and celebrators alike overfocus on its visual optics, but there is an alternative bottom-up assemblage by which participants generate transformative power. This article decentres the politics of representation favoured by state apparatuses, politicians, and religious elites. I mobilize a decolonial feminist conceptualization with a walk from off the centerstage. Deploying the subaltern figure of the bride, I argue for an interpretation of nagar kirtan as embodied engagement with a poetics of a humanity. Fieldwork was carried out in Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Toronto.