ਭੂਿਮਕਾ Introduction The Forgotten Archive was built with three major goals in mind: present Punjabi history in a way that has not been done before in popular and academic accounts, provide a platform to share stories that currently documented history tends to forget, and engage with and complicate the formation of Sikh and Punjabi identity. The strategy to accomplish these goals was to build a framework through presenting evidence, interpreting it, complicating it, and then using that construct to build a story. The process of building these stories has taken many forms, in the following manuscript you will find letters, play dialogues, newspaper articles, and short songs. This project, in being based in a historical analysis of the lives of the common people, hopes to find and listen to the forgotten voices. Voices that have been lost over time, silenced through scholarship, and erased from the pages of history. My motivation to embark on this study as a first generation Punjabi/America, first son of an immigrant couple, and first to pursue a higher education in the US is largely based in three realities. These stories may be the stories of my own ancestors, and this work honors their memory and the decisions they made. This work can serve as a tool for those like myself who haven’t been able to ask questions and engage with issues related to identity, and story making. And, most importantly, I enjoy reading about these stories and thinking of new ways to share them others. The challenge of a project such as this is one centered on the idea of voices, and questioning what my role is in listening, writing and editing those voices. Narratives such as the ones included in this project can be problematic in two major ways. First, as fictional accounts they lack authenticity, regardless of the amount of research that has gone into creating them. Secondly, they rely very heavily on primary, and academic accounts that document events from a specific perspective, which can influence the nature of the archives. Many of these sources were archived, documented and provide the interpretations of elite literate men. Not the average Punjabi that this project is presenting. However, this is not to undercut the contributions of these scholars. Their work has been extremely influence in the field of Sikh and Punjab studies, but ultimately unsuccessful at embracing the messiness of the lived experiences of the common Punjabis. I wanted this project to engage with the messiness of Sikh families visiting Muslim shrines, men leaving for war and choosing to not come back home, the hypocrisy of ideologues who preach equality yet practice the caste system, and other equally complicated and nuanced experiences. In many ways, this manuscript may be thought of as a piece of historical fiction. In the forward to each document, I attempted to provide the historical context behind each piece. In those forwards the goal was to provide a surface level understanding of the source(s), and present a position on how that piece would be used in the construction of the forgotten archive. Each archive piece was able to engage with at minimum one unique primary source. These primary sources included census data, newspaper articles (written in both English and Gurmukhi), books, and tracts. To develop a more well-rounded understanding on the nature of these different sources, and the larger conversations in play behind these sources, three different perspectives were employed from three different scholars. The works of Harjot Oberoi with The Construction of Religious Boundaries1, Kahn Singh with Hum Hindu Nahi2, and Richard Fox with Lions of the Punjab3, were the keystone works used in developing a more well balanced perspective on the nature, context and potential uses of the different primary sources, and the archival piece that was later composed. Although each of these works did an adequate job presenting, arguing and 1Harjot Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition. (Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P, 1994) 2 Kahn Singh Nabha. Hum Hindu Nahi. (Amritsar Committee, 1973) 3Richard Fox, Lions of the Punjab: Culture in the Making. (Berkley: University of California Press, 1985) defending their own claims, in regard to this project they fell short in a few key departments. Most prominently, the motivation for this project began as an effort to engage with the common Punjabi voice, these three works were unsuccessful in representing the lived experience of common Punjabis within the framework of their books. Oberoi, in developing the Sanatan Sikh title though a useful tool in describing an intersection of Sikhism and Hindu Rituals, is inherently problematic in its attempt to bridge different Sikh identities, and in the process misleads and misrepresents the actual lived experiences of Sikhs. Kahn Singh approach in presenting a case by case example of how Sikhism and Hinduism differ, paints an ideal image of a Sikh that many self-identifying Sikhs do not embody. Fox’s heavy focus on the Jatt caste during the Third Sikh War is dangerous in how it fails to highlight any lasting influence other artisan or non-elite castes may have had. This manuscript hopes to engage with this issues by provided an intimate look at the lived experiences of many Punjabis. Oberoi relied on the idea of intertextuality when presenting his case for the Sanatan Sikh tradition. In the second half of the 19th century, various ideologues like Sardar Gulab Singh used the Vedas, Puranas, and Guru Granth Sahib in the same breath when discussing the Sikh tradition. “These texts began to coalesce and form a common pool of history, knowledge, mythology, metaphors and symbols for the Sanatan tradition.“4 Using scripture as a keystone in discussing the formation of the Sanatan tradition, is slightly problematic in how the common Sikh would likely not have been using these texts to build a new tradition. What is more likely is that individuals like Gulab Singh were simply tapping into already existing patterns of practice. Meaning that many self-identifying Sikhs come from a complex cultural background, were many families in addition to going to Gurdwara would also practice certain folk traditions. Traditions that when examined looked at from the perspective of a Amritdhari Sikh, would be reminiscent of certain Hindu practices and rituals. In his closing, Oberoi summarizes the contrasting word 4 Oberoi, 102. views between the Sanatan Tradition, and the Tat Khalsa Tradition. Contemporary literature views the former as as more pure, orderly, and singular. In contrast to the Sanatan tradition is seen as “ambiguous, contaminated, and plural”5. This ambiguous, contaminated, and plural nature comes from Oberoi’s division between Amritdhari and non-Amritdhari Sikhs. In creating this bifurcated system, he inadvertently groups together people who identify as Sikh, but may or may not take Amrit. Those groups include; Nanakpanthi, Nirmala, Udasi, Akali, Namdhari, Sahejdhari, etc. In using the term Sanatan Sikh to refer to these diverse groups of people, a term that was used many Hindus to define themselves, Oberoi in an effort to build a clean system of definitions, misleads and misrepresents the lived experiences of Sikhs in their daily lives. In an effort to further this engagement with the messy matter of titles, identification, and culture it is important to consider the impact of Kahn Singh’s work in the early Twentieth Century. Written well before Oberoi, Singh carefully picks his battles and contests the differences between Hindus and Sikhs on very specific topics. Ranging from the caste system to idol worship, Singh presents a compelling argument on the uniqueness of the Sikh religion. Hum Hindu Nahin attempted to move the religious debates that were happening throughout Punjab to a less contentious space. During the 1890’s leading into the 1900’s many public spaces were witness too increasingly uncivil debates, as members of different religious groups would come together to discuss various topics. However public forums on the topic of religion in Punjab tend to not be the most constructive form of dialogue, as debates can quickly turn to personal attacks. That being said, Singh’s use of phrases like “My Beloved Hindu Brother”, though may sound patronizing in some readings of the work, does well to attempt to quell the hostility that is emerging between Sikh and Hindu groups. Before Hum Hindu Nahin was printed as a complete volume, parts of it were printed in the local vernaculars and shared widely across Punjab. 5 Oberoi, 421. Singh’s work had arguably found its way into many Sikh homes, and in the process was starting to better inform the average Sikh about Sikhi. However, in stating what made Sikhs not Hindus, he was beginning to define what a Sikh looks like. This boundary building inherently left some self-identifying Sikhs on the fringes of this boundary, this may have not been his intension but it definitely influenced the cultural perceptions of Sikhs. The perceptions of Sikhs has been a constantly evolving phenomenon. In the time leading up to WWI the idea of the Sikh martial race was quite a prevalent one in the British Army. Historically, only Sikhs who were willing to accept the Singh identity and be initiated were allowed to enroll in the army6, and Fox dedicated a whole chapter to this phenomena. With representation of Sikhs in the army being largely those of the Singh identity, Fox was unclear how the turbans and beards of the Singhs were impacting the recognition of Sikhs on a larger scale. He highlights how British policy towards the Sikhs was slowly unraveling due to many of their contradictory strategies as the urban middle class developed a consciousness.