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ABSTRACT
Being an Ethnic-Pahari-Sikh-Borderlander in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir is a phenomenon that adds to the discourse of ethnicity and nationalism. Partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 acted as a disruption in the socio-political history of the ethnic-community of Poonch generating difference and othering. This led to a newer set of challenges that re-imagines the concept of ethnicity altogether. Through an ethnographic account of the religiously assertive Sikh-identity in Poonch, this study asks the questions: Can the religious-reassertion of identities in a community render a concept as giant as ethnicity a myth? What happens to the historic origins of ethnic-bonds when identities begin to organise themselves exclusively on religious lines? Identities in Poonch exist at crossroads where being a religious Sikh challenge the idea of an ethno-geographic Sikh, both of them trying to co-exist under a bigger identity of being a borderlander.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to my Supervisor Prof. Surinder S. Jodhka for his comments on the draft. I am also thankful to the anonymous reviewers who reviewed my paper and the editorial team at Asian-Ethnicity. All this helped a great deal with multiple revisions of the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. One of the few Nonagenarian respondents who had witnessed the post-partition events that led to communal carnage in the fiefdom of Poonch, in the erstwhile Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir.
2. Poonch emerged as a borderland in the post-1947 scenario where a tragic set of events divided the erstwhile territory of Poonch that existed as a jagir/fiefdom/principality under the monarchy of the erstwhile princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into two halves. The infamous Pukhtoon-tribal-raid aimed at capturing the city of Srinagar, struck Poonch in late October, 1947, and unleashed targeted carnage and violence at the 4–5% non-Muslim minority of Poonch, that continued for months thereafter. With the UN-intervention, the first Indo-Pak war of 1947–48 that had been on for more than a year ended in declaration of ceasefire where both the states agreed to the cease-fire line that was laid across the points held as on 1 January 1949 by troops of both the nation-states respectively (Lamb, 1991). It was this cease-fire line formed at the culmination of the first Indo-Pak war that divided the fiefdom of Poonch into two parts, with one part lying on this side of the line with India and the other part with what came to be known as Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (Snedden, 2013).
3. The use of the word ‘displaced’ refers to the forced displacement of the non-Muslim minority of Poonch during 1947–48 carnage. It was an internal displacement as they moved from one territory of Poonch into another territory within the erstwhile fiefdom of Poonch in the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir.
4. The four wars of 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and 1999, between the two nation-states of India and Pakistan.
5. In order to understand the nature of violence that this borderland experiences on a daily-basis through cross-border cease-fire violations, one can read the following two articles narrating the life and survival as a borderlander in the contemporary times: https://livewire.thewire.in/personal/the-everyday-trauma-of-living-in-the-borderlands/https://livewire.thewire.in/personal/the-last-house-in-the-last-village/.
6. The reference is towards the marauders and raiders infamous as the tribal-rebellion of 1947 supported by the newly created Pakistan state that was the reason behind the instrument of accession that maharaja Hari-Singh signed with India (Lamb, 1991).
7. The One Time Settlement of the Displaced families under the Prime Minister Development Package where around 40,000 such displaced families have been financially remunerated recently. https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/31619-displaced-families-from-pojk-registered-after-1947-govt/1731604.
8. Lamb, Kashmir; and Snedden, Kashmir.
9. Interestingly the Sudans/Sudhans are claimed to be the descendants of the Sudhozai tribe, an ethno-geographic tribe with its descendants found across Poonch-Sudhnoti-Mirpur regions. During the course of time the members of this tribe while asserting their religious-group/clan identities began to take up the name ‘sudan’ differently. Hindus spell it as Sudan and try to trace their lineage separately and Muslim write Sud/han or Sudhozai and look at Hindus as ‘not’ true descendants of the tribe.
10. An organisation that regulates and maintains the gurudwaras/Sikh places of worship through an elected body. Each region/district has its own elected committee affiliated to the head organization of the respective states. One has to understand the difference between Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandak Committee and State Gurudwara Parbandak Committee. Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandak Committee was established as a result of Akali Movement which led to the Sikh Gurudwaras Act of 1925. State Gurudwaras Parbandak Committees were formed on the same design as the Shiromani body. While the latter regulates the Gurudwaras in three regions of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and the Union Territory of Chandigarh, the former which is a state body regulates Gurudwaras in other states respectively with each state electing its own SGPC.
11. The Hindus and the Sikhs claim a Brahmin upper-caste lineage in the area.
12. Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries.
13. Mayaram, Resisting Regimes; and Nandy, Time Warps.
14. Shiromani Dera Nangali Sahib Poonch was established by Bhai Mela Singh, fourth in line of succession of Bhai Pheru Singh. Pheru Singh (late in the seventeenth Century) was deputed by the tenth Guru, Guru Gobind Singh himself. Guru Gobind Singh presented a Khanda (double-edged sword) and a Bata(a bowl) and ordered him to preach Sikhism in the hilly areas of Jammu and Kashmir. Most of the historical information has been derived from two main set of interviews, one with the leader of the conservative Federation faction of Sikhs in Poonch, and other from three elderly Sikhs who are actively involved in SGPC and in the administrative works in and around Gurudwaras in Poonch.
For more information see https://www.dailyexcelsior.com/dera-nangali-sahib/and https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/shrine-of-nangali-sahib.
15. For a look at the ancestry and lineage of this throne see
https://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php/Gurdwara_Nangali_Sahib_(Poonch).
16. According to census 2011.
17. The All India Sikh Students Federation AISSF is a Sikh student group and a political organization affiliated to the Akali Dal, the famous political faction in Punjab, currently a member of National Democratic Alliance led by the BJP.
18. Poonchi is a dialect that is derived from pothowari which was a crude dialect spoken around spoken in the yester years. Pothowari, hindko, are some of the dialects that were spoken by the people in that region, in the fief and in the adjoining regions. Pothowari, the term could have been derived from the pothowar plateau, which is the geographical zone under which the fief of Poonch fell. The major city of Pothowar plateau was Pindi, or modern day’s Rawalpindi. It is an ancient language believed to have originated during the Buddhist reign in Kashmir, but the dialects vary regionally and take several names like Poonchi, Potowhari, Chabali, Rajourvi, Parimu, Hinko etc.
19. Mayaram, Resisting Regimes.
20. One can read Sikhs of the Khalsa: A history of the Khalsa Rahit by W.H.Mcled, 2003, for a deeper understanding of how ‘the khalsa’ is the only pure Sikh Identity.
21. Newman, “Conflict at the Interface,” 321–45.
22. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood.
23. Choudhary, Understanding the Gujjar Pahari faultline.
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Malvika Sharma
Malvika Sharma is a PhD Sociology Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has obtained her MPhil in Sociology from the same centre at JNU. Her Masters in Sociology is from School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her research interests are Sociology of Religion, Ethnicity and Nationalism, and Borderland-Studies.