Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Sikh Gender and Exploring • Doris R. Jakobsh Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Edited by Doris R. Jakobsh Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Editor Doris R. Jakobsh MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin Editor Doris R. Jakobsh Department of Religious Studies, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West Waterloo Canada Editorial Office MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special issues/ gender sikhism). For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below: LastName, A.A.; LastName, B.B.; LastName, C.C. Article Title. Journal Name Year, Volume Number, Page Range. ISBN 978-3-0365-1190-0 (Hbk) ISBN 978-3-0365-1191-7 (PDF) Cover image courtesy of Doris R. Jakobsh. © 2021 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. The book as a whole is distributed by MDPI under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. Contents About the Editor .............................................. vii Preface to ”Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions” .......................... ix Doris R. Jakobsh Introduction to the Special Issue: Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Reprinted from: Religions 2021, 12, 161, doi:10.3390/rel12030161 ................... 1 Kamal Arora “I Get Peace:” Gender and Religious Life in a Delhi Gurdwara Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 135, doi:10.3390/rel11030135 ................... 7 Barbara Bertolani Women and Sikhism in Theory and Practice: Normative Discourses, Seva Performances, and Agency in the Case Study of Some Young Sikh Women in Northern Italy Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 91, doi:10.3390/rel11020091 .................... 25 Sandra Santos-Fraile The Sikh Gender Construction and Use of Agency in Spain: Negotiations and Identity (Re)Constructions in the Diaspora Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 179, doi:10.3390/rel11040179 ................... 47 Nachatter Singh Garha Masculinity in the Sikh Community in Italy and Spain: Expectations and Challenges Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 76, doi:10.3390/rel11020076 .................... 69 Christine Moliner Vulnerable Masculinities? Gender Identity Construction among Young Undocumented Sikh Migrants in Paris Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 680, doi:10.3390/rel11120680 ................... 87 Manjit Pabla The Legacies of Bindy Johal: The Contemporary Folk Devil or Sympathetic Hero Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 228, doi:10.3390/rel11050228 ...................101 Robin Rinehart Presence and Absence: Constructions of Gender in Dasam Granth Exegesis Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 639, doi:10.3390/rel10110639 ...................117 Satwinder Kaur Bains Interrogating Gender in Sikh Tradition and Practice Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 34, doi:10.3390/rel11010034 ....................133 Eleanor Nesbitt ‘Woman Seems to Be Given Her Proper Place’: Western Women’s Encounter with Sikh Women 1809–2012 Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 534, doi:10.3390/rel10090534 ...................147 Nicola Mooney ‘In Our Whole Society, There Is No Equality’: Sikh Householding and the Intersection of Gender and Caste Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 95, doi:10.3390/rel11020095 ....................161 v Jaspal Kaur Singh Negotiating Ambivalent Gender Spaces for Collective and Individual Empowerment: Sikh Women’s Life Writing in the Diaspora Reprinted from: Religions 2019, 10, 598, doi:10.3390/rel10110598 ...................183 Anjali Gera Roy Gendering Dance Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 202, doi:10.3390/rel11040202 ...................199 Zabeen Khamisa Disruptive Garb: Gender Production and Millennial Sikh Fashion Enterprises in Canada Reprinted from: Religions 2020, 11, 160, doi:10.3390/rel11040160 ...................217 vi About the Editor Doris R. Jakobsh is Professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She has degrees from the University of Waterloo, Harvard University and the University of British Columbia. Professor Jakobsh is the author of Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity, OUP (2003, 2005) and Sikhism, University of Hawaii Press (2011). She is the editor of Sikhism and Women. History, Texts and Experience, OUP (2010) and World Religions - Canadian Perspectives: Eastern/Western Traditions, Nelson (2012, 2013). With Opinderjit Kaur Takhar, Jakobsh is currently editing a book project entitled Global Sikhs: Issues, Challenges and Responses from the twenty-first Century Community. Professor Jakobsh has authored numerous journal articles and chapters and was a founding member of the Steering Committee Member of the Sikh Consultation of the American Academy of Religion. vii Preface to ”Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions” As with all books, this volume is the culmination of many months of writing, editing, resubmission and finally, publishing. I am grateful to the many fine scholars who contributed to the Special Issue and to those who take the time and considerable energy to review. This selection of chapters is of a very high quality, given the careful attention given to each chapter by the many reviewers scattered across the globe. Many thanks to the various editors with whom I worked so closely on the journal Religions. This volume focusing specifically on gender and Sikh traditions is the first of its kind in Sikh Studies and is thus setting a standard for many more works to come. Every scholar knows that we stand on the shoulders of those who earlier explored the arenas of study that we are here examining; this is certainly the case with the subject matter at hand. My sincere wish is that these chapters contribute to an ever-deepening chorus of scholarship on gender and Sikh traditions. Lastly, I need to express my gratitude to those who inhabit the field of Sikh Studies in the academy. I have found a welcoming and caring home community among you. As always, my deepest love to my rock and inspiration, Paul Roorda. Kaira and Jesse Jakobsh, you have always, and will always, give me hope. Doris R. Jakobsh Editor ix religions Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Exploring Gender and Sikh Traditions Doris R. Jakobsh Department of Religious Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada; [email protected] Gender analysis has not received a great deal of attention within Sikh Studies (Jakobsh 2003). On the other hand, a small number of scholars have spent years, sometimes decades, exploring issues under the rubric of “women and/in Sikhism”. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh’s (1993, 2005) ground-breaking work immediately comes to mind in terms of flinging open wide the doors to feminist approaches in Sikh Studies. Sikhism and Women. History, Text, Experience (Jakobsh 2010) was an important milestone in bringing together varied voices to address the paucity of scholarship in this area. The primary task at that point in time was locating scholars who were sufficiently engaged in the study of women and Sikhism to contribute to the project. Over the past decade, research on women and the feminine within Sikh Studies has grown. As an important part of these developments, scholarly inquiry has increasingly come to recognize that the category “woman” is problem- atic. “Woman” is not unitary, differences clearly exist in terms of inequalities (Brah 1991). Moreover, as many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, Sikh feminisms are also emerging. This is evident in the deepening and increasing rigorous of theoretical and methodological approaches in scholarship. Paradigm shifts are coming to the fore, as in, for example, feminist-inspired Sikh activism. However, similar to transitions within academia at large that have seen the need to Citation: Jakobsh, Doris R. 2021. replace Women’s Studies departments with Gender Studies, it has seemed appropriate, Introduction to the Special Issue: even necessary, to move from a somewhat singular ‘women’s focus’ to one of gender Exploring Gender and Sikh vis-à-vis the study of Sikhism. The transition from women’s studies to gender studies also Traditions. Religions 12: 161. reflects changes in the ways in which issues of gender and sexuality have been woven into https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12030161 interdisciplinary studies. Gender studies invite a broader, more inclusive range of identities beyond the traditional binary of ‘male’ and ‘female’. In other words, an understanding Received: 18 February 2021 of gender as socially constructed invites analysis of a spectrum of gender identities. This Accepted: 23 February 2021 Special Issue includes an examination of masculinity and male bodies, for they too are built Published: 2 March 2021 and constructed on social systems, cultural and religious beliefs, and myths. Gender studies, in line with women’s, masculine and feminist studies, generally Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral begin with a deconstruction