Fall 2020 Abstract In 2012 the president of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee demanded that the novelistJK Rowling removes offensive text from her novel, The Casual Vacancy. This article focuses on theappropriateness of the Sikh-related content of two 21st-century novels –JK Rowling’s The CasualVacancy and Catriona Troth’s Ghost Town – against the backdrop of previous … Read more
Fall 2020 Abstract This paper aims to understand the political philosophy of Guru Nanak and its contemporaryrelevance. It traces that philosophy by readings of the Guru’s bani in Guru Granth Sahib that havea political focus. Having identified five salient political dimensions, these are theorized andpresented in the contemporary language of politics. The paper then contextualizes … Read more
Fall 2020 Abstract Until the late twentieth century, Sikhs continued to use multiple calendars, mostly the Bikramicalendar, for determining dates for important Sikh events. The Bikrami calendar is longer than thetropical year and has issues such as a shifting relationship with seasons. Pal Singh Purewal proposedthe Nanakshahi calendar in 1992. It was adopted by the … Read more
Fall 2020 Abstract The purpose of this work is to address the approach to mental health within Sikh theology found inthe Guru Granth Sahib and contrast it to the concurrent practices in societal India. Mental health isboth acknowledged and validated through the Guru Granth Sahib, but given the scientificdevelopment and clinical understanding of mental health … Read more
Fall 2020 Abstract As a largely migrant-descendant community in the United States, Sikhs at a national level havetaken on normative frameworks of model minority representation and respectability politics. Attimes, this has been posed as a practice in the name of the faith, framing involvement with stateinstitutions or partisan politics as representative of the framework of … Read more
Fall 2020 Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Activism: Challenging Hegemony byGiving “Voice” to the Victims of State Violence in Punjabby Navkiran Kaur Chima The Punjab Conflict Retold: Extraordinary Suffering and Everyday Resistanceby Shruti Devgan The Potency of Sikh Memory: Time Travel and Memory Construction in theWake of Disappearanceby Harleen Kaur Journeying through Mallika Kaur’s Faith, … Read more
Fall 2020 The field of Sikh and Punjab studies lost a senior member in political scientist PaulWallace, who passed away peacefully in his sleep on February 22 at his home inColumbia, Missouri. Professor Wallace had a distinguished career spanning overfive decades as an internationally-renowned expert on Indian politics, particularlySikh and Punjab politics, at the University … Read more