Keywords
praxis
Miri-Piri
Black liberation
implicated subjects
How to Cite
Abstract
As a largely migrant-descendant community in the United States, Sikhs at a national level have taken on normative frameworks of model minority representation and respectability politics. At times, this has been posed as a practice in the name of the faith, framing involvement with state institutions or partisan politics as representative of the framework of Miri-Piri. Meanwhile, Sikhs as a community have yet to reconcile their experiences as targets of U.S. racism with the U.S.’s nationalist project based in white supremacist, colonial, and anti-Black structural violence. As such, this essay offers a critical intervention based in a Gurmat praxis of liberation politics for engaging with the Movement for Black Lives. We invite Sikhs to shift their investments of social and political capital by discussing Sikhs’ migrant incorporation within a structural history of U.S. racism and colonialism. Through reframing Sikh racialization and providing a brief discussion of tangible, alternative ways to invest efforts in the Movement for Black Lives, this essay invites Sikhs to reinvest in Gurmat and Miri-Piri as frameworks to guide a Sikh activism that is committed to a form of embodied justice against state repression and exploitation.
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