A sense of place: Sikh identity in Great Britain and Hong Kong
Although evidence points to Sikhs being present on the day that Hong Kong became a British territory, Sikhs in Hong Kong remain a relatively unexamined group. Based on data gathered as part of a wider study of processes of religious transmission among young British Sikhs and on fieldwork carried out among the Sikh community in Hong Kong, this article follows Dusenbery's (2008) studies of Sikhs around the world to focus on a) how Sikhs understand their place in their social world and b) how they respond to being a minority in every country in which they are resident. Examining the literature on Hong Kong Sikhs in relation to their status and position within wider Hong Kong society, I compare the contexts, issues and challenges faced by Sikhs in Hong Kong with those in Great Britain. The article demonstrates that although many Sikhs have links to the Punjab, local context and local imaginings impact on religious identity and citizenship.
MUSIC OF THE SIKH DIASPORA: DEVOTIONAL SOUNDS, MUSICAL MEMORY AND CULTURAL IDENTITY
This paper explores the role of devotional music in the construction of Sikh identity in diasporic contexts. In particular, it examines a heterodox Sikh community in the UK and an orthodox Sikh community in Hong Kong from a comparative perspective, showing how music helps to clarify continuities and discontinuities in Sikhism worldwide. I provide ethnographic accounts of musical performances in different locales within gurdwara-s. Following a summary of current conventions in Sikh music performance and pedagogy, two ethnographic accounts are provided. The first is a musical ethnography of the Namdhari Gurdwara in Leicester where Hindustani classical music is performed alongside traditional ritual genres. The second site is a similar ethnographic study of the Khalsa Diwan Gurdwara in Hong Kong where the issues of diasporic identity and musical memory are foregrounded.
Ritual Action or Political Reaction? The Invention of Hindu Nationalist Processions in India during the 1980s
That nation-states are ’imagined political communities’ has been endlessly repeated since Benedict Anderson’s book was published.3 3 At least since the eighteenth century, cultural meanings and social practices have been fostering the historical construction of national identities within geographical boundaries given political definition through sovereignty. Religion, in as much as it is considered as ritual