Religion, Identity and Nationhood: The Sikh Militant Movement

"The Sikh militant movement spanned one-and-a-half decades during which a considerable loss of life occurred in and outside Punjab. In terms of its spread, it almost became international in character largely due to the presence of diaspora Sikhs in most of the western world. This work is based on the analysis of the speeches and messages of the leaders of the militant movement. It has been argued, without essentializing the problematic, that the nature of discourse of the militant movement could be traced back to the construction of Sikhism in the second half of the nineteenth century. The ideology of the Singh Sabha movement and its attempt at the construction of singular religious identity provided the dynamics to the Sikh community. In the process, the religious tradition was invented, which emphasized the singular Sikh identity by paving the way for the fundamentalist discourse of separatism. The composite religious tradition in Sikhism was put at the margin of the community as a r