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Simranjit Khalsa ABSTRACT Practicing Minority Religion: Interrogating the Role of Race, National Belonging, and Gender Among Sikhs in the US and England by Simranjit Khalsa Defying the expectations of scholarship predicting that religion will continue to decline, religion remains an influential force that shapes the lives of everyday people. Religious beliefs and communities provide people with cultural tools to understand the world around them, shape their views and beliefs about other aspects of the social world, and provide community members access to resources. We have little understanding, however, of how status as a religious minority shapes the lives of practitioners and their interactions with people outside of their faith tradition. I turn my attention to this subject by asking how having a minority religious identity is linked to race, national belonging, and constructions of gender. I examine these questions through the Sikh case in the US and England. Sikhs are a religious minority in every nation in which they are present, making them an excellent case to examine these questions. Further, in the US and England they are a particularly visible and distinctive religious minority, and both countries have distinct state relationships to religion, distinct relationships to India, and shared but unique experiences with radical terrorism claiming affiliation with Islam. I draw on 11 months of participant observation with two communities in two national contexts, analyzing data from 79 qualitative interviews to better understand the experience of practicing a minority religion. I find that boundary work is central to the experience of practicing Sikhism for my respondents, shaping their religious practice, the way they go about their lives, and their interactions with non- Sikhs. Further, I find that race, national belonging, and constructions of gender are tightly bound up with the way Sikhs understand their own identity, how they situate themselves in relation to other groups, and how they are perceived by non-Sikhs. Taken together, this research contributes necessary information to understand the experiences of practitioners of minority religions in contexts that are becoming increasingly religiously diverse. Acknowledgements I write this section with joy and relief at having come to the conclusion of such a long and fascinating intellectual journey, and I have many to thank for their support of this work. First and foremost, I would like to thank my respondents—everyone who shared their time, their homes, and their lives with me. This work would simply not have been possible without you. I am so grateful. No less important is the intellectual ground on which I built this work, and I am indebted to the members of my dissertation committee for their guidance in developing it. I would like to thank Dr. Jenifer Bratter, who’s wealth and depth of knowledge about the sociological literature on race, and insightful feedback on the framing of this work will help me turn take this project to it’s next steps. I would also like to thank Dr. Sergio Chavez for his consistent efforts to push this work forward in terms methodological excellence and engagement with sociological literatures. I would also like to thank Dr. Elias Bongmba. He has helped me think through connections between my work on Sikhs and other religious communities and his thoughtful comments help me build intellectual bridges with religious studies. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Elaine Howard Ecklund, chair of my dissertation committee. Without her unwavering support throughout my graduate career, I would not be the scholar I am today and I thankful for her support at every stage of this project. Her sage advice throughout my dissertation process, and her eye for detail, improved this work in untold ways. In addition to my academic mentors, I am indebted to several others for their support of this work. Douglas Van, my love, thank you for all of the late-night conversation about this project and all of the last minute copy-editing. Sharan Mehta, thank you for your many insights as I worked through this project. Dr. Di Di, thank you for leading the way for us sociologists of iv religion at Rice and for generously sharing your experience. I would also like to thank the Religion and Public Life Program in its entirety for their consistent feedback and patience throughout the many iterations of this project. I would also like to thank my support network outside of academia for believing in me even when I did not: Isis, Eavie, Douglas, Ruby, Tico, Guruamar, and many more, you are steadfast and wonderful. Last but certainly not least, thank you to those who contributed financial support to this project: the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, who awarded me with a grant in support of this project, and the Department of Sociology at Rice University, who provided me with a Dissertation Writing Fellowship. Contents Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................... iii Contents ......................................................................................................................... v List of Tables ................................................................................................................. vii Introduction: Practicing Minority Religion ..................................................................... 1 1.1. Shifting Focus to Religious Minorities .................................................................... 6 1.2. Migration and Belonging ....................................................................................... 6 1.3. Minority Religion at the Intersection ..................................................................... 8 1.4. Understanding Sikhism ....................................................................................... 10 1.5. The Cases ............................................................................................................ 12 1.6. Overview ............................................................................................................ 17 Seeing Race: Racialization, Religion, and Experiences of Othering ............................... 19 2.1. Setting the Stage ................................................................................................. 21 2.2. Conceptions of the Perceptions of Others ........................................................... 24 2.3. Representing Sikhism .......................................................................................... 29 2.4. Experiences of Othering: Racializing Religious Symbols ....................................... 33 2.4.1. The Settings of Othering ............................................................................... 35 2.4.2. Locating Race and Religion ........................................................................... 41 2.5. The Benefits of Othering: Sikh Dharma ............................................................... 42 2.6. Explaining Experiences of Othering ..................................................................... 44 Contested Belonging: Religion, Assimilation, and National Belonging ......................... 47 3.1. Sikhs as Foreign................................................................................................... 49 3.1.1. Sikh Dharma Members Become Foreign ....................................................... 54 3.1.1. Being Foreign in England .............................................................................. 55 3.2. When Religion Aligns with Patriotism.................................................................. 57 3.3. Creating Awareness and Claiming Belonging ....................................................... 62 vi 3.4. Creating Boundaries and Claiming Belonging ...................................................... 65 Gendered Boundaries Among Sikhs in the US and England.......................................... 74 4.1. Sikhism as Egalitarian .......................................................................................... 76 4.2. Sikh Gender Roles: Equal but Different ............................................................... 81 4.3. Separating Religion and Culture .......................................................................... 88 4.4. Gender and Othering .......................................................................................... 96 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 101 5.1. Racialization and Religion.................................................................................. 103 5.2. Marked as Foreign and Claiming Belonging ....................................................... 104 5.3. Boundary Work Through Constructions of Gender ............................................ 106 5.4. Broader Implications ......................................................................................... 107 Appendix A: Data and Methods ................................................................................. 111 Appendix B: Informed Consent and Interview Guides ................................................ 113 Notes .......................................................................................................................... 126 List of Tables Table A.1 – Overview of Data Collected .................................................................. 115 1 Chapter 1 Introduction: Practicing
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