Feeding the cattle on the Temora common: The public atonement and death of the Punjabi hawker Gujjar Singh in 1902

Abstract

ABSTRACT Punjabi hawkers provided an essential service to rural communities and isolated farms in south-eastern Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Living a marginalised existence, they were perceived as unwelcome competition and often vilified, ethnically different, the cultural and spiritual requirements of many Punjabi were alien concepts to the host communities. Even more so were cases of religious penance, which in extreme cases could result in death by starvation. This paper describes the unique circumstances surrounding the death of Gujjar Singh at Temora in 1902 and projects them onto the spiritual and cultural background of the Punjabi community.