Sikh Ethnicity and Punjab

Abstract

Writing in 1986, against the backdrop of Operation Blue Star, Oberoi argued that there was a serious need to interrogate the whole nature of Sikh ethnicity and its association with Punjab. The assumed naturalness of this identification so represented in Sikh ‘metacommentaries’, Oberoi insisted, was in fact a relatively recent development in which the territorialization of Sikh ethnicity from Punjab to ‘Khalistan’ reflected the conscious unfolding of historical actions and the stories Sikhs told about themselves.¹ Nor was it safe to speak confidentially about a clear Sikh identity. Even by the end of the Guru period, Oberoi insisted, ‘The category, Sikh, was still flexible, problematic, and substantially empty.’ For the modern Sikh identity to emerge, on the other hand, a ‘long historical period was needed before it was saturated with signs, icons, and narratives made fairly rigid by the early decades of the twentieth century’.²