There have been Orientalist narratives inclined to portray Sikhi as a movement within the Hindu traditions. Social constructivist scholars have argued that Sikhi was a modernist construction that emerged as a result of the British colonisation of South Asia. Since the colonial period, scholars belonging to the Hindu reformist and revivalist movements have been asserting Sikhi to be a part of the Hindu Sanatana Dharma. Recently, after Narendra Modi-led Hindu right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party came into power, the Hindu agenda to deny the difference to the Sikhs gained new momentum. The Orientalists and the social constructivists have been providing theoretical grounds to the Hindu Sanatanists who unabashedly proclaim anyone who lives in India is a Hindu.
This course will begin with a deconstructive analysis of the Hindu idea of dharma, the Islamic idea of madhab, and the Western idea of religion. The course will attempt to develop an understanding of the core concepts of Sikhi with a close reading of primary Sikh sources.
Lecture 1
Socio-Political Conditions
- Power
- Violence
- Domestication
- Trauma
- Anxiety
- Role of Religion in Human Life
Lecture 2
Religion, Culture, and Politics in the 15th Century South Asia
- The Vedas
- Vedanta
- Tantra
- Yoga
- Bhagti Movement
- Islam
- Sufism
- The Islamic Rule
- Language and Literature
Lecture 3
Sikhi, Bhagti, and Nonduality
- Shankara
- Ramanuja
- Madhava
- Bhagat Ravidas
- Bhagat Kabir
- Bhagat Surdas
- Mira Bai
- Tulsidas
- The Sikh Ideas of Bhagti and Nonduality
Lecture 4
The Advent of Sikhi
- Creator and Creation
- The Guru
- Ardas and Religious Living
- Naam and Simran
- Seva, Langar, and Cultivation of the Sikh Subjectivity
- Shabad and Sovereignty
- Adi Granth
Lecture 5
Sikhi: Religious Living and Human Dignity
- Akaal: The Timeless in the Time
- Haumai: the dialectics of desire
- Hukam: spontaneity of desire
- Sangat: the community beyond race and caste
Lecture 6
Aesthetics, Institutions, and Politics
- Vismad, Anand, and Beauty
- Gurdwara
- Miri-Piri and Akal Takht
Lecture 7
Religion and Suffering
- Compassion in Sikh Living
- Pandemics, Human Suffering, and the Guru
- Power and Religious Freedom
Lecture 8
Khalsa
- Etymology and Context
- Singh and Kaur: Meaning and Significance
- Five Ks
- The Rahit
- Panth: a community or a nation?
- Sri Guru Granth Sahib
Lecture 9
Sikhi and Punjab
- The Question of Space
- Language, Culture, and the Lived religiosity
Lecture 10
The Sikh Diaspora
- Understanding Diasporicity
- Colonization and Migration
- The Colonial Army
- Sikh Migration
- Geography and Space
Lecture 11
The Sikh Praxis
- Nitnem
- Gurbani Path
- Kirtan
- Jaap and Simran
Lecture 12
Sikhi and the Lived Experience
- Language and Empire
- Linguistic Space as Cultural Space
- Making of the Imperial Subjects
- Exploring the Question of Revival
Lecture 13
The Panth
- Community
- Nation
- Poetry
- Anhad-naad
