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New Approaches to Asian History
Sikh Nationalism
This important volume provides a clear, concise and comprehensive guide to the history of Sikh nationalism from the late nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on A. D. Smith's ethno-symbolic approach, Gurharpal Singh and Giorgio Shani use a new integrated methodology to understanding the historical and sociological development of modern Sikh nationalism. By emphasising the importance of studying Sikh nationalism from the perspective of the nation-building projects of India and Pakistan, the recent literature on religious nationalism and the need to integrate the study of the diaspora with the Sikhs in South Asia, they provide a fresh approach to a complex subject. Singh and Shani evaluate the current condition of Sikh nationalism in a globalised world and consider the lessons the Sikh case offers for the comparative study of ethnicity, nations and nationalism.
250 pages, Hardcover
Published November 25, 2021
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February 23, 2026
I took my time with this book (for me, that means reading it over about a week) because it was filled with valuable information, and the density of research was coupled with a density of language, too. I would highly recommend reading it though, if you're looking for more information about the development of Sikh identity expressed as Sikh Nationalism in particular.
I grew up in Brampton, where the population is over 50% South Asian. A substantial number of that percentage is the Sikh diaspora. I had no access to books like this that would have helped me understand unique community needs, or much about Sikhism aside from the basics about the kirpan, turban, and that Gurdwaras are a place of religious gathering, worship, and prayer. I also lacked the insights and intellectual maturity I have now, but it remained an important topic for me to understand because of my hometown. This was even more true after reading Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition, which details the violence that characterized the 1947 Partition, and the 1984 Sikh Genocide. I remember Sikh politicians like Jagmeet Singh (and his brother Gurratan Singh's activism, who I sat with on the City's Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, where I was the 2SLGBTQ+ representative), and City Council members (former Councillor Gurpreet Dhillon, and Harkirat Singh) talking about the genocide but I never fully understood or read about it. My hope to learn more wasn't from a place of intellectual imperialism either, where someone takes in information in the hopes of knowing it for themselves to accumulate social capital without turning it into compassionate action or empathy. I genuinely want to learn about the places that I call, and called home more.
I am not Sikh, nor do I have any immediate biological family who are, but I know that with how substantial the diaspora is and was in my hometown, I owe a lot to the Sikh community there who helped it grow to the veritable metropolis it is quickly becoming that I benefitted from, especially in the last few years of working/living there. It was (and still is) a great place to live because of the Sikh diaspora (among others) who call it home. It's not just that Sikh people are there and diversity of experience is good. It is good for that reason, but it is specifically because of the way Sikh religious values and principles put into action in civic engagement and community development make it a place worth staying. The more I read and learn, the more I can say that with confidence.
Singh's book explores the history of how Sikh nationalism developed as an identity, directly connected to the nationalisms of other religions surrounding it. Readers are offered insights into the sense of urgency of place as an expression of this nationalism, particularly in light of the genocide and the ongoing violence as part of Hindutva politics. One chart in particular details that based on available statistics on murdered and missing Sikhs during a short period in history, the number towers towards 3 million+. Nationalisms are very nuanced, and Singh covers a lot of ground, going to great lengths to explain Sikh identity even as it is interconnected with the histories and nationalisms of the religious communities around it. I remember seeing posters, signs, and more, around Brampton regarding a Khalistan independence movement but didn't know what it meant. It was encouraging people to vote regarding a referendum in India regarding Khalistan. It was a salient reminder of the power of the diaspora in Brampton, as contributing to, if not developing Sikh nationalism in tandem with geopolitical events in India. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a history about Sikh identity that speaks more to geopolitical movements, this is an excellent place to start. It won't tell you a great deal about the religious and spiritual identity of the Sikh community, but that's where the nationalism comes into play. If you're looking to understand Sikh spiritual identity I would suggest reading books by the Gurus (Nanak, Angad, Amar, Ram, Arjan, Hargobind, Har Rai, Har Krishnan, Tegh Bahadur, and Gobind Singh who installed the Guru Granth Sahib as the final cumulative guru in written form) or the poetry and mystic writings of Kabir (important to both Muslim and Hindu communties as well).
The book is not written in the most accessible format because it is an academic text. The language is accessible in the sense that it is from academia and for academia but remains navigable for those who read such texts without being in university. There were some parts that were a little dry, but it isn't written as, nor does it promise to be an enrapturing narrative of Sikh nationalism. It is here to tell us the facts, and it accomplishes this task very effectively.
There were many parts of the book that I wanted to quote directly for my own notes, and to better understand Hinduism where I have found religious and spiritual Truth. For example, I found it so fascinating that the more conservative swings to the right in Hinduism and Sikhism were driven by moral panics incited by Christian missionaries in India. Meaning that not only was colonialism (both Portuguese and British) to blame for the slaughter of Partition, the Christianity that came with it was equally the cause of the turn to extremes in the faiths of Hinduism and Sikhism. Meaning that historically speaking, Christianity was the actual cause and source of the violence that India is now criticized for, and that has produced so many experiences in the diaspora of wanting to flee violence, only to be met in the same countries that benefitted from such violent historical intervention, to stoke the fires of racism on their continents that make life challenging even as people from Pakistan and India flee violence. It is pretty wild when you think about it critically. This passage from the book bears repeating and hopefully encourages those wanting to read the book, to do so:
Quite literally, Christianity's violences created exclusionary and conservative Hindu and Sikh practices to protect it, then used those exclusions and the conflict it created as the basis of a perceived moral superiority. It is religious gaslighting, but history has otherwise termed it colonialism. It is not so much for atonement purposes that I share that above quote. It is moreso that having been involved in evangelical Christianity after growing up Roman Catholic, the one thing that neither of those religious sects did was admit that they didn't have a monopoly on the truth of humanity. I had to educate myself and endeavour to learn that Christianity was not synonymous with the correct way of doing or being anything, but that it could be used (as it was on many occasions that I was a young audience for) to label, dehumanize, demean, and admonish those who didn't adhere to its core tenets, as with Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. This morphs into racism when you have a community that was predominantly Christian which changed when the Indian diaspora arrived in droves (as I was privy to many people in Brampton lamenting about different it was from the 80s). Religious difference becomes racism very easily on the basis of a belief in a superior way of doing things, which turns into "white flight" and more. Reading books like Singh's volume go a long way to healing. Not just healing my perspective from the religion I was born into, but the experiences of those who were impacted by the racisms born of religious difference broadly speaking. The only way we can have an iota of compassion for one another and empathize across differences is to embrace reading books like this one, reading to empathize and understand.
I just want to say here as an aside, that not all Christians embody the above paragraphs. Many are welcoming, and many do not act as though they are greater than the sum of the sins of those around them, or with violence inherent in their use of scriptures. This is where my perspective as a reader absorbs the material slightly differently, and how it also lent a sense of healing. It wasn't until I began to practice and follow tenets of Hinduism that I was able to even come close to viewing Christianity openly and compassionately after the experiences I had in the religion. Reading books like Singh's are fairly dry, yes, but they are also a resource to say that history is rife with conflict. Religions have often defined their boundaries on the basis of what they are not, using the beliefs of those around them to state what they are about. I've become more introspective about these things because of how much of the world has opened up after reading Hindu scriptures and finding meaning in its religious practices. It would be irresponsible for me to write anything less than kind or compassionate of Christians in a review talking about conflict in a country where Sikhs and Christians are persecuted, as with Hindus and Muslims, too. Singh's book highlights the need for recognition of Sikh identity because it is distinct among popular religions. As with each of the major world religions, it also plants the seeds of a really wonderful way of living in the world.
The author doesn't directly speak to this in the book, but I found it an interesting thing to add to my perspective of the book. It is an emergent, though significant subgenre of wellbeing and leadership, but military biographies and histories of David Goggins, Tim Grover, General McRaven, Ed Mylett, Andrew Huberman, Brent Gleeson, and the perenially popular Art of War (though why Chanakya's Arthashastra does not get the same level of love in North America, I have no idea because it is basically the same kind of powerful treatise), have made popular, the warrior-like way of being that has long-characterized Sikh life. The above mentioned authors who are/were or have worked with Navy Seals focus on centering the mind, taking care of the body, and focusing one's life via forms of asceticism that foster an incomparable self-discipline. Sikh beliefs and distinctions of identity are rooted in very similar threads which Singh doesn't speak to directly, but that become clearer in the histories and collective mobilizations of the religion. Disciplining one's body through routines like morning and evening prayers, sharpening one's focus by reading Sikh scriptures and doing mantras, anchoring your physical identity in something like the 5 Ks of Sikhism (kesh, kachera, kangha, kara, and kirpan), as well as eating well and taking care of one's body through rigorous fitness are in a manner of speaking, the O.G.'s of contemporary military discipline ethos. Humorously I thought several times that what has become an Instagrammable influencer routine is pretty standard for Sikh folks, though again, it isn't always applied so rigidly. There is also the Khalsa, which is the initiative step into Sikh religious and community life that mimics the initiation of BUD/S or other entry rituals. And before you go thinking that yoga is the de facto fitness for the Sikh community (or any Indian person, really), do read about Fauja Singh, who, at 100 years old ran a full 42.195km Toronto Harbourfront Marathon. Sikhism is far from being a monolith. Sikh communities do however, make the world better by being in them because of the distinctions that characterize their religious identity. Singh's book outlines the struggles through India's history that detail the emergence of a distinct religious group consistently seeking a national space that respects the nuances of what a religious life means for them in a local, provincial/state-wide, and federal governance sense.
My review is no doubt a departure from the typical reviews that are very depersonalized and brief 2 sentence like/dislike basics. I spent 25+ years living and working in Brampton, and though I am white, I am very familiar with the Sikh diaspora, having grown up in a city where white folks were (thankfully) a true racial minority. I found Singh's book to be an incredible contribution to the literatures on Sikh identity which are markedly lacking. I hope that more books like this will become widely available, or that publishing houses like Penguin India will bring general history books or even general spirituality books to North America (or at the very least diasporic hotspots) to ensure that these important histories reverberate everywhere, rather than just echoing through the halls of academia. If you have access to this book though, I would absolutely recommend it!
I grew up in Brampton, where the population is over 50% South Asian. A substantial number of that percentage is the Sikh diaspora. I had no access to books like this that would have helped me understand unique community needs, or much about Sikhism aside from the basics about the kirpan, turban, and that Gurdwaras are a place of religious gathering, worship, and prayer. I also lacked the insights and intellectual maturity I have now, but it remained an important topic for me to understand because of my hometown. This was even more true after reading Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition, which details the violence that characterized the 1947 Partition, and the 1984 Sikh Genocide. I remember Sikh politicians like Jagmeet Singh (and his brother Gurratan Singh's activism, who I sat with on the City's Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee, where I was the 2SLGBTQ+ representative), and City Council members (former Councillor Gurpreet Dhillon, and Harkirat Singh) talking about the genocide but I never fully understood or read about it. My hope to learn more wasn't from a place of intellectual imperialism either, where someone takes in information in the hopes of knowing it for themselves to accumulate social capital without turning it into compassionate action or empathy. I genuinely want to learn about the places that I call, and called home more.
I am not Sikh, nor do I have any immediate biological family who are, but I know that with how substantial the diaspora is and was in my hometown, I owe a lot to the Sikh community there who helped it grow to the veritable metropolis it is quickly becoming that I benefitted from, especially in the last few years of working/living there. It was (and still is) a great place to live because of the Sikh diaspora (among others) who call it home. It's not just that Sikh people are there and diversity of experience is good. It is good for that reason, but it is specifically because of the way Sikh religious values and principles put into action in civic engagement and community development make it a place worth staying. The more I read and learn, the more I can say that with confidence.
Singh's book explores the history of how Sikh nationalism developed as an identity, directly connected to the nationalisms of other religions surrounding it. Readers are offered insights into the sense of urgency of place as an expression of this nationalism, particularly in light of the genocide and the ongoing violence as part of Hindutva politics. One chart in particular details that based on available statistics on murdered and missing Sikhs during a short period in history, the number towers towards 3 million+. Nationalisms are very nuanced, and Singh covers a lot of ground, going to great lengths to explain Sikh identity even as it is interconnected with the histories and nationalisms of the religious communities around it. I remember seeing posters, signs, and more, around Brampton regarding a Khalistan independence movement but didn't know what it meant. It was encouraging people to vote regarding a referendum in India regarding Khalistan. It was a salient reminder of the power of the diaspora in Brampton, as contributing to, if not developing Sikh nationalism in tandem with geopolitical events in India. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a history about Sikh identity that speaks more to geopolitical movements, this is an excellent place to start. It won't tell you a great deal about the religious and spiritual identity of the Sikh community, but that's where the nationalism comes into play. If you're looking to understand Sikh spiritual identity I would suggest reading books by the Gurus (Nanak, Angad, Amar, Ram, Arjan, Hargobind, Har Rai, Har Krishnan, Tegh Bahadur, and Gobind Singh who installed the Guru Granth Sahib as the final cumulative guru in written form) or the poetry and mystic writings of Kabir (important to both Muslim and Hindu communties as well).
The book is not written in the most accessible format because it is an academic text. The language is accessible in the sense that it is from academia and for academia but remains navigable for those who read such texts without being in university. There were some parts that were a little dry, but it isn't written as, nor does it promise to be an enrapturing narrative of Sikh nationalism. It is here to tell us the facts, and it accomplishes this task very effectively.
There were many parts of the book that I wanted to quote directly for my own notes, and to better understand Hinduism where I have found religious and spiritual Truth. For example, I found it so fascinating that the more conservative swings to the right in Hinduism and Sikhism were driven by moral panics incited by Christian missionaries in India. Meaning that not only was colonialism (both Portuguese and British) to blame for the slaughter of Partition, the Christianity that came with it was equally the cause of the turn to extremes in the faiths of Hinduism and Sikhism. Meaning that historically speaking, Christianity was the actual cause and source of the violence that India is now criticized for, and that has produced so many experiences in the diaspora of wanting to flee violence, only to be met in the same countries that benefitted from such violent historical intervention, to stoke the fires of racism on their continents that make life challenging even as people from Pakistan and India flee violence. It is pretty wild when you think about it critically. This passage from the book bears repeating and hopefully encourages those wanting to read the book, to do so:
"The colonial state created the mechanisms by which collective ethno-religious or communal identities could be imagined, institutionalised and goverened. The use, for example, of the decennial census replaced previously 'fuzzy' communities with 'bounded' and 'enumerated' ones. In the Punjab, almost immediately after the first province-wide census (1871), and in response to the moral panic created by the proselytising activities of the Christian missionaries, the first Singh Sabha was founded in Amritsar (1873) to protect Sikhism. This was followed soon by the formation of the Arya Samaj (1878) Hindu revivalist movement, which preached reformed Hinduism. More broadly, the competition for official employment and resources from the 1870s onwards led to the growth of organised religious formations that became the main agents of defining political identities" (p.21).
Quite literally, Christianity's violences created exclusionary and conservative Hindu and Sikh practices to protect it, then used those exclusions and the conflict it created as the basis of a perceived moral superiority. It is religious gaslighting, but history has otherwise termed it colonialism. It is not so much for atonement purposes that I share that above quote. It is moreso that having been involved in evangelical Christianity after growing up Roman Catholic, the one thing that neither of those religious sects did was admit that they didn't have a monopoly on the truth of humanity. I had to educate myself and endeavour to learn that Christianity was not synonymous with the correct way of doing or being anything, but that it could be used (as it was on many occasions that I was a young audience for) to label, dehumanize, demean, and admonish those who didn't adhere to its core tenets, as with Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. This morphs into racism when you have a community that was predominantly Christian which changed when the Indian diaspora arrived in droves (as I was privy to many people in Brampton lamenting about different it was from the 80s). Religious difference becomes racism very easily on the basis of a belief in a superior way of doing things, which turns into "white flight" and more. Reading books like Singh's volume go a long way to healing. Not just healing my perspective from the religion I was born into, but the experiences of those who were impacted by the racisms born of religious difference broadly speaking. The only way we can have an iota of compassion for one another and empathize across differences is to embrace reading books like this one, reading to empathize and understand.
I just want to say here as an aside, that not all Christians embody the above paragraphs. Many are welcoming, and many do not act as though they are greater than the sum of the sins of those around them, or with violence inherent in their use of scriptures. This is where my perspective as a reader absorbs the material slightly differently, and how it also lent a sense of healing. It wasn't until I began to practice and follow tenets of Hinduism that I was able to even come close to viewing Christianity openly and compassionately after the experiences I had in the religion. Reading books like Singh's are fairly dry, yes, but they are also a resource to say that history is rife with conflict. Religions have often defined their boundaries on the basis of what they are not, using the beliefs of those around them to state what they are about. I've become more introspective about these things because of how much of the world has opened up after reading Hindu scriptures and finding meaning in its religious practices. It would be irresponsible for me to write anything less than kind or compassionate of Christians in a review talking about conflict in a country where Sikhs and Christians are persecuted, as with Hindus and Muslims, too. Singh's book highlights the need for recognition of Sikh identity because it is distinct among popular religions. As with each of the major world religions, it also plants the seeds of a really wonderful way of living in the world.
The author doesn't directly speak to this in the book, but I found it an interesting thing to add to my perspective of the book. It is an emergent, though significant subgenre of wellbeing and leadership, but military biographies and histories of David Goggins, Tim Grover, General McRaven, Ed Mylett, Andrew Huberman, Brent Gleeson, and the perenially popular Art of War (though why Chanakya's Arthashastra does not get the same level of love in North America, I have no idea because it is basically the same kind of powerful treatise), have made popular, the warrior-like way of being that has long-characterized Sikh life. The above mentioned authors who are/were or have worked with Navy Seals focus on centering the mind, taking care of the body, and focusing one's life via forms of asceticism that foster an incomparable self-discipline. Sikh beliefs and distinctions of identity are rooted in very similar threads which Singh doesn't speak to directly, but that become clearer in the histories and collective mobilizations of the religion. Disciplining one's body through routines like morning and evening prayers, sharpening one's focus by reading Sikh scriptures and doing mantras, anchoring your physical identity in something like the 5 Ks of Sikhism (kesh, kachera, kangha, kara, and kirpan), as well as eating well and taking care of one's body through rigorous fitness are in a manner of speaking, the O.G.'s of contemporary military discipline ethos. Humorously I thought several times that what has become an Instagrammable influencer routine is pretty standard for Sikh folks, though again, it isn't always applied so rigidly. There is also the Khalsa, which is the initiative step into Sikh religious and community life that mimics the initiation of BUD/S or other entry rituals. And before you go thinking that yoga is the de facto fitness for the Sikh community (or any Indian person, really), do read about Fauja Singh, who, at 100 years old ran a full 42.195km Toronto Harbourfront Marathon. Sikhism is far from being a monolith. Sikh communities do however, make the world better by being in them because of the distinctions that characterize their religious identity. Singh's book outlines the struggles through India's history that detail the emergence of a distinct religious group consistently seeking a national space that respects the nuances of what a religious life means for them in a local, provincial/state-wide, and federal governance sense.
My review is no doubt a departure from the typical reviews that are very depersonalized and brief 2 sentence like/dislike basics. I spent 25+ years living and working in Brampton, and though I am white, I am very familiar with the Sikh diaspora, having grown up in a city where white folks were (thankfully) a true racial minority. I found Singh's book to be an incredible contribution to the literatures on Sikh identity which are markedly lacking. I hope that more books like this will become widely available, or that publishing houses like Penguin India will bring general history books or even general spirituality books to North America (or at the very least diasporic hotspots) to ensure that these important histories reverberate everywhere, rather than just echoing through the halls of academia. If you have access to this book though, I would absolutely recommend it!
July 2, 2024
a very informative book but written so inaccessibly 😖
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews