A CANADIAN SIKH WEDDING AS A CULTURAL PERFORMANCE by Kuldip Gill B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1977 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA February 1982 0 Kuldip Gill In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 Date March 4, 1982 nF_fi 0/7Q) FRONTISPIECE: THE SHADI ABSTRACT This thesis presents the first extended description of a Canadian Punjabi Sikh Wedding. The cultural events prior to, during and after a wedding, in one rural family in British Columbia, are pre• sented as scenes in a cultural performance. In doing this, an attempt has been made to use ideas from the approaches of Clifford Geertz and Milton Singer. Geertz's notion of 'thick description1 has directed my ethnographic data collection. Singer's idea of cultural performance has given these data a textual form as well as shown me the importance of noting the sequential occurrence of events or concrete social units during the performance of a Sikh wedding. I have explored and commented on Barbara Ward's concept of 'conscious models' in relation to the study of the Sikhs as an immigrant group in Canada. The significance of this ethnography is its description of one avowedly traditional Sikh wedding which included many rites or event sequences. This attempt at 'thick description' may enable others studying other Sikh weddings to note comparatively the impact of events and processes external to this ethnic group on the institution of Sikh marriage. As well, the internal tensions and pressures for change may be revealed by the way marriages are performed in the future. This thesis, thus, provides a base-line for the comparative study of other Sikh weddings. While the primary contribution of this thesis is to the body of ethnographic literature, it should also be useful to people and institutions interested in Ethnicity, Social Change, Women's Studies and those interested in immigrant groups. - iii - As the study of one Canadian Sikh wedding in one family, this thesis does not present any general conclusions or generalizations applica• ble to the whole of Canadian Punjabi Sikh culture. - iv - TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT iii. LIST OF FIGURES v. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vi. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT vii. INTRODUCTION 1 Footnotes 17 CHAPTER I: THE BETROTHAL (MUNGNA) 18 Footnotes 57 CHAPTER II: THE RITUALS (SAGAN) 63 Footnotes 119 CHAPTER III: THE SHADI (WEDDING) 123 Footnotes 157 CHAPTER IV: CONCLUSION 159 GLOSSARY AND TRANSLITERATION 168 BIBLIOGRAPHY 180 APPENDIX I CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS 183 APPENDIX II A PUNJABI WEDDING SONG (GEET) 185 - v - LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page I GENEALOGY OF DARSHAN'S CLOSE KINSMEN 2 II THE CAST OF PERFORMERS 4 III THE RELATIONSHIP OF KINSHIP TERMS TO SPACE 35 IV MAIAN - CAST OF CHARACTERS 66 V PALI - CAST OF CHARACTERS 73 VI THE GROCERY LIST FOR A CANADIAN SIKH WEDDING 76 VII FOOD PREPARATION AT THE TEMPLE - CAST OF CHARACTERS 79 VIII WESTERN WEDDING SHOWER - CAST OF CHARACTERS 93 IX SAGAN, GIDTHA AND WESTERN-TYPE WEDDING SHOWER - CAST OF CHARACTERS 97 . X GIDTHA - CAST OF CHARACTERS 107 XI NAI-THOI - CAST OF CHARACTERS 111 XII THE SHADI - CAST OF CHARACTERS 129 XIII THE WEDDING RECEPTION 144 - vi - LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Frontispiece - THE WEDDING PARTY (THE SHADI) II STIRRING THE LADDU 83 III WOMEN PREPARING FOOD IN THE TEMPLE KITCHEN 85 IV SECOND FLOOR PLAN OF SIKH TEMPLE 12li V REMOVING THE SEHRA FROM THE BRIDEGROOM 132 SEATED BEFORE THE GURU GRANTH SAHIB IN THE TEMPLE VI BRIDEGROOM PLAYING TRADITIONAL GAMES WITH HIS 146 SALIS AFTER THE WEDDING - vii - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have acquired debts to many people during the course of my graduate career and especially during the research and writing of this thesis. I wish to thank the following: Dr. Michael M. Ames, my advisor during my graduate school career, for directing, my interest to the study of North India during my undergraduate year and for his supervision, advice and support during my graduate school career. During the writing of this thesis Dr. Ames offered both valuable criticism and advice. Dr. Cyril Belshaw, a senior member of my graduate committee, for his support and encouragement during my time in graduate school. As I wrote this thesis, I benefited from the exchange with my colleagues in the Post-graduate research seminar directed by Dr. Belshaw. Dr. Helga Jacobson and Dr. Judy Pugh for their suggestions and criticism as I worked on and wrote this thesis. Dr. Martine Reid for her friendship and for the opportunities she has given me to learn about the Northwest Coast Peoples. Stuart Piddocke, my friend, former teacher, and colleague, to whom I am endebted for many years of discussions about anthropology and more recently, for his kindness in reading and offering criticism on this thesis. My colleagues, Anne-Marie Fenger, Pat Berringer, Pamela Peck (Ormston), and Jeanette Auger. I thank all of my friends, colleagues and teachers at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and at the Museum of Anthropology for making graduate school a remarkable educational experience. Jim Rimmer of Pie Tree Press for his kindness in producing the ink drawings for this thesis. I thank Sylvia Chan for typing this thesis. Especially, my brothers Kal, Stan and Jerry and their families for years of love, support and understanding as I studied. My family presented in this thesis, for allowing me to record these proceedings, for their help and understanding. The University of British Columbia, for two teaching assistant- ships, the Provincial Government Department of Labour for support through Y.E.P. grants #2608.01 and #1202-08-01 and the Museum of Anthropology for support through museum assistantships. Finally, I wish to thank Jim Mcintosh, who is familiar to most of the above as a friend, for his support, encouragement and companionship, prior to and during my university studies. I wish to acknowledge that any mistakes in this thesis are my own. - viii - ...ethnography is thick description. What the ethnographer is in fact faced with - except when (as, of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection - is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render. And this is true at the most down-to-earth, jungle field work levels of his activity: interviewing informants, observing rituals, eliciting kin terms, tracing property lines, censusing households...writing his journal. Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of "construct a reading of") a manuscript. -Geertz, 1973:9. - 1 - INTRODUCTION This thesis is the first extended description of a Canadian Punjabi Sikh wedding ritual.''" It presents the drama of events before, during, and after the wedding of a Canada raised Sikh woman to an India born Sikh man. The events recorded here are those which struck me as the most significant and vital; events that tell the joy of a family, which reveal the emotions of a young woman during transformation from the single to the married state and which reveal the struggles, both collective and individual, of a family and its members adapting to a new 2 land, while maintaining the values and attitudes of its own culture. The wedding referred to above and described in the following pages, is that of my cousin-brother's (FBS) eldest daughter (FeBySeD), Darshan. I am her 'aunt' (FFBD) . Figure I-;, shows the genealogy of our family (lineage A), and that of Darshan's mother (lineage B). Many of the women depicted in Figure I have primary roles in the events that follow. They are the mother, the grandmother (MM), and the aunts (MBW's) of the bride-to-be. Together, or singly, they officiate in the rituals and attend the bride during the wedding celebration. My approach has been influenced by Milton Singer's idea of "cultural performance". Singer suggests how a performance can be treated as an operational unit which Is both concrete and observable in the study of Indian culture. Each cultural performance has a "limited time span, ...an organized program of activity, a set of performers, an audience, and a place and occasion of performance" (Singer, 1972:65-80). Lineage A Lineage B Lineage C A,0 OA A = 0 A=0 Masi-j i ' • x 1 6 A=° A=° A=° 6 A A A Kuldip Ar.j. uri Gurdial O 1 [EGO Sur j it Dave Darshan Harj it FIGURE I GENEALOGY OF DARSHAN'S CLOSE KINSMEN (This chart is generationally correct. It does not include all members of each family). - 3 - The performance described in this thesis occurs mainly in two centers, the home of the bride and at a Sikh Temple. In the first, the rites are conducted by women, while in the second, a priest is the ritual functionary. The set of performers are presented in Figure II, with a brief description of their relationship to the bride and their role in the wedding.