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The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh "Diaspora"
In The Nation’s Tortured Body Brian Keith Axel explores the formation of the Sikh diaspora and, in so doing, offers a powerful inquiry into conditions of peoplehood, colonialism, and postcoloniality. Demonstrating a new direction for historical anthropology, he focuses on the position of violence between 1849 and 1998 in the emergence of a transnational fight for Khalistan (an independent Sikh state). Axel argues that, rather than the homeland creating the diaspora, it has been the diaspora, or histories of displacement, that have created particular kinds of places—homelands.
Based on ethnographic and archival research conducted by Axel at several sites in India, England, and the United States, the text delineates a theoretical trajectory for thinking about the proliferation of diaspora studies and area studies in America and England. After discussing this trajectory in relation to the colonial and postcolonial movement of Sikhs, Axel analyzes the production and circulation of images of Sikhs around the world, beginning with visual representations of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh ruler of Punjab, who died in 1893. He argues that imagery of particular male Sikh bodies has situated—at different times and in different ways—points of mediation between various populations of Sikhs around the world. Most crucially, he describes the torture of Sikhs by Indian police between 1983 and the present and discusses the images of tortured Sikh bodies that have been circulating on the Internet since 1996. Finally, he returns to questions of the homeland, reflecting on what the issues discussed in The Nation's Tortured Body might mean for the ongoing fight for Khalistan.
Specialists in anthropology, history, cultural studies, diaspora studies, and Sikh studies will find much of interest in this important work.
Based on ethnographic and archival research conducted by Axel at several sites in India, England, and the United States, the text delineates a theoretical trajectory for thinking about the proliferation of diaspora studies and area studies in America and England. After discussing this trajectory in relation to the colonial and postcolonial movement of Sikhs, Axel analyzes the production and circulation of images of Sikhs around the world, beginning with visual representations of Maharaja Duleep Singh, the last Sikh ruler of Punjab, who died in 1893. He argues that imagery of particular male Sikh bodies has situated—at different times and in different ways—points of mediation between various populations of Sikhs around the world. Most crucially, he describes the torture of Sikhs by Indian police between 1983 and the present and discusses the images of tortured Sikh bodies that have been circulating on the Internet since 1996. Finally, he returns to questions of the homeland, reflecting on what the issues discussed in The Nation's Tortured Body might mean for the ongoing fight for Khalistan.
Specialists in anthropology, history, cultural studies, diaspora studies, and Sikh studies will find much of interest in this important work.
312 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 22, 2022
If you're a hobbyist keen to learn more on diaspora of the Sikhs, I'd say sit this one out.
It's great but it's definitely meant as a research piece - it gets really technical and academic.
I glazed through a few chapters. But even then, it's quite an illuminating read into the history of the Sikh movement and how diaspora develops and changes over time - especially how it connects to the Khalistani movement.
It's great but it's definitely meant as a research piece - it gets really technical and academic.
I glazed through a few chapters. But even then, it's quite an illuminating read into the history of the Sikh movement and how diaspora develops and changes over time - especially how it connects to the Khalistani movement.
March 25, 2008
This book was sloppily edited and random in its choices of sources, jumping from portraits to pubs to websites in a way that leads me to suspect that the author found the sources to fit the argument rather than an argument to explain the sources. This combined with some glaring historical inaccuracies and a complete absence of Sikh voices from this 'historical anthropology' of the Sikh diaspora make me doubt the credibility of the study.
The book gets two stars however for its discussion of the male Sikh body as the marker of community identity (and thus the target for violence against the community). While there have been several academic studies about the ways in which the gendered body becomes the barer of communal/ethnic identity, in all other scholarly works I have read the focus has been on the female body in this role. And indeed a cursory look around the world demonstrates that nine times out of ten the men in a given community will don jeans and business suits while the women wear 'traditional' garb. This is especially true in the South Asian context which is the only non-Western context I can speak about with any degree of knowledge. But it is also true of Islamic society, which to most of the world is represented by veiled women. My class was able to come up with a few other global examples of male bodies serving as the icon of the community (the Masaai, Hasidic Jews) but this phenomenon has been undertheorized leading to the idea that the female body as the boundary of community is universal, or at leas that if a gendered body will be the icon of identity, it will a female body. This book, however poorly researched, at least opens the door into the possibility of exploring the ways that gendered bodies, both masculine and feminine, serve as markers of community.
The book gets two stars however for its discussion of the male Sikh body as the marker of community identity (and thus the target for violence against the community). While there have been several academic studies about the ways in which the gendered body becomes the barer of communal/ethnic identity, in all other scholarly works I have read the focus has been on the female body in this role. And indeed a cursory look around the world demonstrates that nine times out of ten the men in a given community will don jeans and business suits while the women wear 'traditional' garb. This is especially true in the South Asian context which is the only non-Western context I can speak about with any degree of knowledge. But it is also true of Islamic society, which to most of the world is represented by veiled women. My class was able to come up with a few other global examples of male bodies serving as the icon of the community (the Masaai, Hasidic Jews) but this phenomenon has been undertheorized leading to the idea that the female body as the boundary of community is universal, or at leas that if a gendered body will be the icon of identity, it will a female body. This book, however poorly researched, at least opens the door into the possibility of exploring the ways that gendered bodies, both masculine and feminine, serve as markers of community.
August 17, 2011
Good, but not great. Heavy on theory but light on ethnographic content, most of the chapters were good, but some were very weak (particularly the Glassy Junction chapter, which was honestly painful). I wasn't at all surprised to read in the conclusion that the book was based on fieldwork undertaken for a completely different project, as it had the feel of someone going back through their fieldnotes, attempting to make a lot out of a little. Still, it was very sophisticated, and theoretically rigorous.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews