Provocation 2: Sikh Diasporic Feminisms, or, a labor of undoing

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Notes

1 As, for instance, argued by Hew McLeod in Who is a Sikh?: the problem of Sikh identity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

2 For instance, subverting gendered roles and expectations, Guru Nanak refers to the Divine as feminine, Sahiba (Rag Asa, Guru Granth Sahib, 358). In multiple instances, Gurbani is written from the feminine perspective, thus creating a condition among all readers of those verses to also read from the feminine voice. The feminine perspective in these verses refers to the Divine as male, though not in a way that constructs a hierarchy between the two. In fact, the relationship is described as intimately co-dependent, not top-down (Sri Rag, Guru Granth Sahib, 93). There are also multiple verses that ascribe no gender to the Divine, referring to the Divine as tu (you). However, in the colonial era and following period, translators fall into the Judeo-Christian bind of imagining the Divine as male by default (Rag Asa, Guru Granth Sahib, 376).