Sikh Ethics in a Time of Secular State Violence

Abstract

There is much to be learnt from Sikhs who resist a uniform image of themselves and their life in the diaspora. Sikh Ethics in a Time of Secular State Violence is a study of Sikhs in the diaspora and how across various contexts, in the US, UK, Canada, and India, Sikhs explore the Sikh text to conceptualize novel ways of understanding themselves and their world that resists the divide between secular and religious ways of life. The Sikh text, which is otherwise isolated to the realm of area and religious studies, becomes a critical source of philosophical and ethical reasoning in this dissertation, a movement that signals the need to place less emphasis on representing Sikhs within American culture, and more on the ethical basis of Sikh politics. In my research and interviews with Sikh actors, who bravely fought legislative battles over caste identity, assisted farmers in giving their most capitalized land “back to nature,” and supported migrants at the border and in detention centers, several important areas of intervention were illuminated. First, it became clear that Sikhi is more than a religious identity. It is a political and an ethical standpoint that speaks to the need to take seriously the ethical and philosophical basis of the lived experiences of Sikhs. Second, I argue that relational ethical values are central within the Sikh scripture, and have been a key source of spiritual and political insights for Sikh communities around the world to resist the epistemic violence of global secular modernity. Sikh communities across various contexts have not only challenged the limits of the category of “religion” and “religious identity” that are imposed on them through disciplines, such as American studies, Religious studies and Area studies, but have also resisted secular epistemological control over the construction of a palpable Sikh identity and Sikh relationship to the environment and more-than-human life. As this dissertation focuses on the lived experiences of Sikhs and the relational capacity of their work with other human and non-human communities, the social and ideological process of Sikh diasporization comes to the forefront. The work of Sikh actors at the border, in the courtrooms, and on the farm is built on the contribution to and relationship with various non-Sikh actors and communities. Whether they are members of the Border Angels at the US-Mexico border, or the Dalit communities at the courthouse supporting the self-understanding of Sikh actors, non-Sikh actors have been an integral part of the complex diasporic construction of Sikh consciousness and subjectivity. Therefore, the process to theorize these diasporic relationships borrow their knowledge basis from scholarly exchanges between Sikh and Indigenous studies, Sikh and Dalit studies, Sikh and Latinx studies. These exchanges help forge common ground amongst communities across time and space, and have made Sikh concepts relevant to not only to Sikhs but also to others whose lives and modes of relations have been made precarious by the violence of the state and state-ordered society. This process of Sikh diasporization effectively brings attention to how Sikh concepts and lived experiences come in contact with the wider world and its epistemological frameworks, and how collectively they aim to intervene in a common problematic that various communities experience in the form of global modernity and the powers of the hegemonic state.