Editorial Vol I Issue 01
Sukhwinder Singh, Amandeep Singh
Abstract
To understand the complexities of our landscape, let us take a closer look at the domain of Sikh studies. This domain has undergone many ebbs and tides of knowledge production in the past century, particularly after the Singh Sabha reform movement that was initiated with the historical encounter between the colonizer and colonized during last quarter of nineteenth and first quarter of twentieth century. Sikh subjectivity has since undergone a drastic shift towards a colonial understanding of religion and identity, leading to historicization of Sikh imagination and the rationalization of doctrinal understandings. While scholars of this age, particularly Bhai Vir Singh, focused on preserving the essence of Sikh spirit by employing what can be termed as 'transparent metaphysics', he also remained unbound by any form of ethnic, lingual, or historical identity constructions. However, his concentrated focus on the meta-historical relationship with Sikh Gurüs and Gurbäni has been recently interpreted as a covert call for metaphysical construction of religious identity. His works have been inappropriately criticized as an effort to canonize Sikh studies with a linguo-religious ideology - a theoretical claim that hardly finds any resonance in the native Sikh imagination... Download PDF
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