RELG 301: Understanding Sikhi

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Sikhi originated in Punjab, South Asia during the second half of the 15th century. Guru Nanak Sahib, the founder of Sikhi, offered a worldview that included a new cosmology, philosophy and religious praxis. The Sikh worldview effectively questioned the previous Hindu and Semitic ideas of the divine and the temporal. The individuals who celebrated the new idea of the human emerged as a community, first known as sangat and then Khalsa. That community managed to survive through multiple cycles of genocide and displacement. This course is an attempt to understand Sikhi and the idea of community that evolved out of Sikhi.

There have been the Orientalist narratives inclined to portray Sikhi as a movement within the Hindu traditions. Social constructivist scholars have argued that Sikhi has been modernist construction emerged as a result of the British colonisation of the South Asia. Since the colonial period, the 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 in power, the Hindu agenda to deny the difference to the Sikhs gained a 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

 

spring 2025

Start Date: Thu 20 Mar 2025

Time: Thursdays 6 PM - 9 PM

Pacific Time

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Lecturer: Prabhsharandeep Singh

Prabhsharandeep Singh is a Sikh scholar whose research involves areas such Sikh Studies, Study of Religions, Religious Experience, Religion and Literature, Religion and Violence, Postcolonial Theory, Intellectual History, and Continental Philosophy. He has Masters in English (Punjabi University), Masters in Study of Religions (SOAS, University of London), DPhil cand. (University of Oxford). He writes poetry in Punjabi and English. He has recently published a collection of Punjabi poetry titled Des Nikala that has poems on the themes such as exile, memory, trauma, time, and language.

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