The result of an exhaustive analysis of the beliefs and attitudes among three generations of the Sikh community - and having conducted over 100 interviews - Nayar highlights differences and tensions with regards to the role of familial relations, child rearing, and religion.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Sikh Diaspora: Theory, Agency, and Experience is a collection of essays offering new insights into the diverse experiences of Sikhs beyond the Punjab. Moving beyond migration history and global in their scope, the essays in this volume draw from a range of methodological approaches to engage with diaspora theory, agency, space, social relations, and aesthetics. Rich in substantive content, these essays offer critical reflections on the concept of diaspora, and insight into key features of Sikh experience including memory, citizenship, political engagement, architecture, multiculturalism, gender, literature, oral history, kirtan, economics, and marriage.

The Sikh community is one of the largest groups of Indians abroad and many studies of these migrants have been conducted. The Sikh temples which are called gurdwaras are seen at all the places where Sikh migrants have settled. As other Indian migrants, Sikhs too have struggled to maintain their social and cultural customs in the societies they have moved to. Inspite of facing difficulties, Sikh migrants have created a synthesis of their own culture with the culture of their place of emigration. This hybridity in migrants’ culture brings us an understanding of the migrants as Diaspora who are in a in-between world among their place of origin and their present residence. This book focuses on the social and cultural practices of Sikh Diaspora in Japan which is not large when compared to other places. The gurdwaras located in different cities like Kobe and Tokyo, are described in this volume as not only religious places but also socializing spaces where the Sikh culture thrives. The two gurdwaras represent diverse social contexts of Sikh migrants in Japan showing myriad features. The volume shows how the Sikh Diaspora in Japan have struggled in their new world and created their own thriving culture through global and local networks. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

From Policemen to Revolutionaries uncovers the less-known story of Sikh emigrants in Shanghai in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yin Cao argues that the cross-border circulation of personnel and knowledge across the British colonial and the Sikh diasporic networks, facilitated the formation of the Sikh community in Shanghai, eventually making this Chinese city one of the overseas hubs of the Indian nationalist struggle. By adopting a translocal approach, this study elaborates on how the flow of Sikh emigrants, largely regarded as subalterns, initially strengthened but eventually unhinged British colonial rule in East and Southeast Asia.

The history of Sikhs in Britain provides important clues into the evolution of Britain as a multicultural society and the challenges it faces today. The authors examine the complex Anglo-Sikh relationship that led to the initial Sikh settlement and the processes of community-building around Sikh institutions such as gurdwaras. They explore the nature of British Sikh society as reflected in the performance of Sikhs in the labor markets, the changing characteristics of the Sikh family and issues of cultural transmission to the young. They provide an original and insightful account of a community transformed from the site of radical immigrant class politics to a leader of the Sikh diaspora in its search for a separate Sikh state.

This book brings together new approaches to the study of Sikh religion, culture and ethnicity being pursued in the diaspora by Sikh academics in western universities in Britain and North America. An important aspect of the volume is the diversity of topics that are engaged - including film and gender theory, theology, hermeneutics, deconstruction, semiotics and race theory - and brought to bear on the individual contributors' specialism within Sikh studies, thereby helping to explode previously static dichotomies such as insider vs. outsider or history vs. tradition. The volume should have strong appeal both to an academic market including students of politics, religious studies and South Asian studies, and to a more general English-speaking Sikh readership.