{"title":"Legacies of the militancy era and understanding the new ‘normal’ in Punjab","authors":"Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Dona Suri","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1880790","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1880790","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"48 1","pages":"204 - 206"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73403250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Factionalism and fissures in the Akali Dal: An analytical periodization of internal political dynamics and historical trends","authors":"Satnam Singh Deol","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873652","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873652","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study answers the research question: can any systematic patterns of factionalism and fissures within the Akali Dal be discerned through its organisational history since 1920? I argue that the Akali Dal went through five distinct periods of internal factionalism, each with its own distinct intra-party and leadership dynamics. Furthermore, I argue that factions, fissures, and mergers within Akali Dal emerge due to the political competition between individual Akali leaders, their changing ideological positions due to this competition, and the prevailing political circumstances which dictate the parameters of their ideological flexibility within Sikh and Punjab politics.","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"29 1","pages":"57 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90251653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reconsidering Sikh architecture: The Sama̅dhi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore","authors":"Gurharpal Singh","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1886403","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1886403","url":null,"abstract":"The last decade has witnessed an increasing interest in Sikh heritage in Pakistan (Singh 2015, 2018; Khalid 2016; Pannu 2019) that has been fuelled largely by the diaspora’s curiosity about artefacts in west Punjab. This concern has been given further momentum by the policies of the governments in Pakistan that recently culminated in the opening of the Kartarpur Corridor and the efforts to promote pilgrimage tourism by pitching the country as the ‘homeland’ of the Sikhs (Singh 2019). Although the fraught relationship between India and Pakistan since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government under Narendra Modi has been in power has cast a dark shadow on the relationship between the two countries, the engagement of Sikhs with Pakistan is unlikely to diminish any time soon because it is a permanent part of collective Sikh religious and historical consciousness, a troubling legacy of Partition. Within Pakistan scholarship on Sikhs has remained deeply embedded in the ideological narrative of national liberation. At best there is recognition of a fraternal Punjabi minority that was misled by the Hindu Congress leadership to throw its lot in with India whereas a united Punjab in Pakistan offered a more realistic prospect of maintaining the integrity and cohesion of the community. At worst, the demonisation of the Sikhs with Partition violence become a trope of Islamisation of the state and society under President Zia-ul-Haq, reflected in Pakistan Studies, the compulsory teaching of state ideology to all pupils. Even established scholarship has generally failed to address the obvious paradox of the Pakistan movement: that its division of India logically implied the division of Punjab, and no amount of diplomacy from the Muslim League about religious minorities such as the Sikhs would endear them to Pakistan (Jalal 1985). More recently, efforts by Pakistani scholars to reinterpret the Partition violence (Ahmed 2012) remain largely unself-reflective of the fact that violence was at the heart of the Pakistan movement or the changes in the historiography of the subject (Singh 2016). How refreshing and surprising therefore to come across a work that transcends the pervasive influence of Pakistan’s national ideology. It is also rarer still for the effort to avoid current fashionable methodologies with hackneyed cliches about diversity, deconstruction and equalities that have become all too common in the historical scholarship on Punjab. Nadhra Shahbaz Khan’s The Samad̅hi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore: A Summation of Sikh Architectural and Decorative Practices (2018) is an exceptional example of painstaking scholarship by a dedicated art historian now based at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. What began as PhD thesis by a young","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"32 1","pages":"519 - 529"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90444379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The long shadow of Punjab’s militant past and contested ‘normalcy’","authors":"S. Devgan","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1880793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1880793","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"33 1","pages":"197 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85659021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ideological and caste-based challenges to Sikh political and religious institutions: The Shiromani Akali Dal and SGPC’s strategies of co-option and ‘management’ in a fragmented polity","authors":"Virginia Van Dyke","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873651","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873651","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines the structures and strategies whereby the Shiromani Akali Dal, along with other Sikh religio-political institutions including the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, gains support from social groups outside the realm of coalition politics – that is, the interaction of the SAD with its coalition partner, the BJP. Using the theory of consociationalism as a lens through which to view this process, I argue that the de facto consociational system limits the actions of political parties while creating a unique kind of relationship with those of differing ideologies and identities. Their support is gained and managed through intermediaries rather than formal incorporation.","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"140 1","pages":"122 - 140"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76589475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shiromani Akali Dal (1920–2020): Ideology, strategy, and support base","authors":"Ashutosh Kumar","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873654","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873654","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Shiromani Akali Dal, the oldest state party in India, emanated from an ethnic movement launched by the Sikh community in Punjab to take control of their gurdwaras. As an ‘ethnic’ party, it has claimed to be the sole political custodian of the minority Sikh community in India since colonial times. The party has often found itself trapped at the crossroads of region and religion. This explains why it transitioned from pursuing the politics of ‘representation’ in colonial Punjab to the pursuit of ‘a territorial homeland’ for the Sikhs after partition. The Congress’ attempt to deny the reorganisation of the state and subsequently its efforts to weaken the faction ridden Akali Dal, and also the party’s own inability to draw the bulk Sikh votes, compelled the party to pursue cultural and the region-specific autonomist politics which led to the rise of militancy. In the post-militancy era, the party made a comeback as an ‘electoral’ populist party in alliance with the BJP by undergoing a paradigmatic shift from contentious ethnic and anti-centre agenda to peace and development in the state politics based on the concept of Punjabiat. The same period, however, has also witnessed the rise of previously unseen dynastic party leadership .","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"48 1","pages":"34 - 56"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83587089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Post-militancy resurrection of the Akali Dal, and prospects of renewed Sikh identity politics in Punjab","authors":"Kuldip Singh","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873659","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Sikhs in Punjab turned against militants in early-1990s, after nature of violence changed from being politically oriented to largely indiscriminate. The Akali Dal guided by desire to remain politically relevant in post-militancy era, wove ideological and electoral strategy around moderate idioms, stressing consociationalism and economic development. Tracing party’s transition to moderation and dominance in post-militancy Sikh politics, I demonstrate that template of moderation began in 1994 when party defied Amritsar Declaration, not in 1996 with often-cited Moga Declaration. The moderate paradigm still remains intact, while recent electoral setbacks may persuade party to return to some refashioned identity politics.","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"87 1","pages":"76 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81129135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Punjab’s ecological crisis: The Akali Dal, SGPC, and competing democratic and authoritarian approaches to development","authors":"Murray Leaf","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873657","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873657","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT When the 'green revolution' began in Punjab in 1964, Punjab sprang to the front rank of Indian agricultural production. But since about 2000, it has been increasingly clear that the technology is leading to an encompassing ecological disaster. The reason for the change lies in the organizational framework. Born in a spirit of flexible egalitarian democracy, it is now dominated by rigid central authoritarianism that forces farmers to grow one crop rotation for one buyer: wheat and rice for the Food Corporation of India. The SGPC and Akali Dal have had an important role in this transformation. This describes it.","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"41 1","pages":"166 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83285703","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Akali Dal’s Dilemma in relegating an ethnic agenda to moderate politics: An empirical analysis of the dera controversy and sacrilege issue","authors":"Sukhjit Singh","doi":"10.1080/17448727.2021.1873655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2021.1873655","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article argues that the moderation of Akali politics brings electoral gains for the party so long as it is in congruence with Sikh ethnic agenda. However, any drive for moderation of ideology beyond marked boundaries, relegating Sikh issues to the backburner has backfired for the party socially and politically. This was demonstrated during the assembly elections (2017) when the party tried to appease Dera Sirsa for electoral considerations, even compromising with Sikh traditions. As a result, the party suffered heavy electoral losses due to Sikh anguish over its soft attitude towards the Dera controversy and desecration of Guru Granth Sahib.","PeriodicalId":44201,"journal":{"name":"Sikh Formations-Religion Culture Theory","volume":"31 1","pages":"98 - 121"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89767110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}