A world reconstructed : religion, ritual and community among the Sikhs, 1850-1901

Abstract

The pluralistic paradigm of the Sikh faith for much of the nineteenth century allowed its adherents to belong to any one of the following traditions: U dasi, Nirmala, Suthresashi, Khalsa, Sangatsaihbie, Jitmalie, Bakhtatmlie, Mihansahie, Sahajdhari, Kuka and Sarvaria. Many of these Sikhs shaved their heads, freely smoked tobacco and hashish and were not particular about maintaing the five external symbols of the faith. In the absence of a centralized church and an attendant religious hierarchy, heterogeneity in religious beliefs, plurality of rituals, and diversity of life styles, were freely acknowledged. A pilgrimage to the Golden Temple could be supplemented with similar undertakings to the Ganges at Hardwar or the shrine of a Muslim saint. Attending seasonal festivals at Benares or Hardwar was in no way considered a transgression of prevailing Sikh doctrines, whatever teleological studies may like to assert today. Contemporary vehicles of knowledge - myths, texts, narratives, folklore and plays produced by non-Sikh authors - were accorded a firm place within the Sikh cosmology. Far from there being a 'single' Sikh identity, most Sikhs moved in and out of multiple identities, defining themselves at one moment as residents of this village, at another as members of that cult, at one moment as part of this lineage, at another as part of that caste, . and at yet another moment as belonging to a 'sect'. The boundaries between what could be seen as the centre of the Sikh tradition and its periphery were highly blurred and several competing definitions of what constituted a 'Sikh' were possible. By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, successive waves of Sikh reform movements like the Singh Sabha, its inheritor the Chief Khalsa Diwan, and the Akali combatants in the 1920s, had succeeded in purging the house of Sikhism of most of the older conventions and practices. In a Nietzschean vein they established a new vision of what it meant to be a Sikh: one who fully subscribed to the five K's; visited only what were exclusively Sikh shrines, considered Punjabi as the sacred language of the Sikhs, conducted his rites de passage according to the prescribed rituals, and abjured prohibited foods. A new cultural elite aggressively usurped the right to represent others within the comunity. Their ethnocentric logic subsumed other identities and dissolved alternate ideals like ascetisism, under a monolithic, codified and closed culture. It gained currency because its dominant characteristics represented an unchanging idiom in a period of flux and change. Henceforth, Sikhs would be required to conceive and speak through one language, that of the cultural elites. Those who deviated or refused to mould themselves according to the standards of this great tradition, were gradually displaced and consigned to the margins of the community. After considerable resistance, these marginalised groups fmally turned their backs on Sikhism and went their own way. The older Sanatanist paradigm of Sikhism was displaced for ever and replaced by what came to be known as the Tat Khalsa. In between the two cultures of the Sanatan Sikhs and the Tat Khalsa were the Kuka Sikhs. The image-breaking, cow-protecting and purity-obsessed Kukas exemplified many axioms of Sanatan Sikhism ( e.g. veneration of the cow), but simultaneously gave a foretaste of what was to follow ( e.g. rejection of idol worship). This thesis is a study of this transitional process: of how one paradigm or vision of the world was replaced by another. In studying this transition this work also raises fundamental issues in the analysis of culture and religion in South Asia: what influences self-perceptions, who defines them and how they gain ground. The theoretical concerns of this thesis are influenced by the intersection of anthropology and history.