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ABSTRACT
The study argues that Odisha has long been a contested terrain between different Sikh traditions. The Otherization of Indian-Sikhs in Sikh Studies has marginalized their enduring and variegated agency in Odishan history. Immigrant Sikhs came from diverse territorial locations and wide-ranging professional expertise. Their growing presence, with numerous gurdwaras under an apex body, celebration of community festivals, Khalsa schools, and so on, gave them the opportunity to recreate home in Odisha. These representations made them not only a visible minority community in the host society, but transformed them into a diaspora. Some of these issues are critically examined in the essay.
Acknowledgements
Author indebted to Professor Michael Hawley, Ms Monideepa Chaudhury, Dr Nivedita Mohanty, Dr Krushna Chandra Bhuyan and Sri Prasanna Kumar Dash for their kind help in writing the essay.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The widespread and complicated fallout of Punjab crisis of the 1980s in India and on both sides of the Atlantic is widely viewed as an important factor in hastening its emergence on different campuses in the West. However, it had its modest beginning in the late 1970s.
2 Broadly speaking, here Punjabi-Sikhs represent those Sikhs who are overwhelmingly residents of Indian-Punjab, a section of whom have migrated to transnational locations. They prefer to wear five Ks, communicate in Punjabi, regard it their mother tongue, write in Gurmukhi script and respect Punjab as place of origin. However, it would be uncritical to describe them as a homogenous community for they do have some sharp differences in their ranks.
3 There are, however, differences of opinion regarding its date of composition.
4 The Sahiyatra festival holds in the month of Chaitra (mid-March to mid-April). It is associated with the local Ramnavmi festival when the Naga dance with arms used to take place in the streets of Puri and offered members of the Sathera group an opportunity of dialogue with cross sections of local population. It is widely believed that the celebration is associated with the military tradition of Lord Jagannath.
5 It generally represents those Sikhs who were Sehajdharis of Khatri caste, viewed them as disciples of the early Gurus and engaged them in trading practices. In Mogal Tamsa, these pilgrims are portrayed as Nanakpanthi fakirs who sing the glory of nirgun God. But in Cuttack’s Janjharimangala, sagun Ram of the Ramayana tradition is remembered.
6 In Puri, records preserved in the office of the Kaliyug Panda (priest primarily engaged in the reception of pilgrims coming from different parts of northern India, particularly Punjab) provide many interesting details about pilgrims from Punjab. Their individual names as well as those of their villages, towns, districts, years and months of visit, caste status, etc. are sometimes available in these records. Information placed under different heads are put together as per the panda’s own scheme and kept under the supervision of his family and office staff. I have with me copies of a handful of details of Punjab pilgrims’ records from the districts of Ludhiana, Jallandhar, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Muzaffargarh, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Sialkot, Lahore, Jhelum, Peshawar, Kohat and Hazara.
7 My visit to Nanak Baoli in 2004 gave me the impression.
8 As early as 1743, the Mangu Matha received a sizeable amount of lakheraj (revenue-free) land for supplying chhabhoga (six offerings of food) and ‘molasses required for the daily offerings of the deities in different festivals of the temple’. But the report of 1870 underlined that these regular services of the Managu Matha were falling into disuse.
9 In one of his short stories, Fakir Mohan Senapati caricatured the personalities of mohants. For a similar critical view on the contemporary matha system in Puri and elsewhere in Orissa, see Jatindra Mohan Singh’s Sketches of Orissa (Citation2006, 81).
10 Mughal rule of Odisha was essentially restricted to these areas and hence these were known the Mughalbandi districts.
11 An instrument of mobilization was the reconstructed history of armed resistance of medieval Sikhs against the Mughals under Guru Gobind Singh with its obvious Hindu tilt. Instead of Guru Nanak’s voice of protest for social reforms, the military leadership of the tenth Sikh Guru was destined to play a bigger role in it.
12 Some old files of these newspapers are preserved in the Utkal Sahitya Samaj Library, Cuttack. They provide some interesting coverage of the Akali struggle of the period.
13 Bitter memories of the Nanakana Sahib (Guru Nanak’s place of birth) massacre and the tragedy at Jaito (in Nabha) figured prominently in their columns. Reacting to numerous Akali sacrifices, these newspapers published emotional editorials frequently underlining oppressive actions of the British police over different Sikh jathas (group of protestors).
14 The government took adequate precaution to counter the different strategies of the Congress protestors of these years. The district magistrates and sub-divisional officers were instructed to take strong steps against those who would be propagating the cause of non-cooperation in the countryside. A meeting was held in Puri on 8 March 1921 with the district magistrate in the chair. It was attended by the mohants, landlords and moneylenders of the locality. They were instructed not to extend any help to non-cooperators. Gopabandhu’s Samaj provides many interesting details about the role of the provincial government (Rautray Citation2002).
15 See pages 5, 15–18 of the essay.
16 During these years, the provincial Congress witnessed a long period of bitter infighting between two Congress groups, one headed by Harekrushna Mahatab and the other by Nilkantha Das. The conflict continued uninterrupted when the first Congress ministry was holding office under the Government of India Act of 1935 in the early 1940s. (Nath Citation2003).
17 The provincial government talked to different Sikhs outside Odisha, but relied on the opinion of two of them. One was Sundar Singh Majithia (1872–1941) of Punjab, a member of the Viceroy’s Council (1909) and the other was Bawa Laddha Singh Bedi (1878–1939), a Punjabi-Sikh contractor of Kolkata, widely respected in the city for his business acumen. Both held moderate political views and were associated with the British-supported Sikh gurdwara politics in eastern India.
18 One of them was Chintamani Acharya, a leading lawyer of Cuttack Bar. The other two were respectively Brajasundar Das, editor of popular literary magazine Mukura and Gopalchandra Praharaj, editor of the Odia encyclopaedia Purnachandra Bhasakosha.
19 Dhir, Anil, ‘The Forgotten Gurdwara of Jeypore’, Sikhchic.com, 16 August Citation2014, accessed on July 20, 2016.
20 Written note of Gurmukh Singh, Garposh, 25 April 2013. One of his predecessors reached there with the first batch of settlers. In his note, this claim was endorsed by Jasbir Singh, Secretary, Shri Guru Singh Sabha, Garposh (30 April 2013).
21 Studies on the construction of railways in eastern and north-eastern parts of India underline how hereditary skill of Ramgharias of rural Punjab and the laying of railway lines had gone hand in hand since the late nineteenth century.
22 The year 1885 is incorrectly mentioned as the year of foundation of a gurdwara in Garpos (1885) in the Directory 2010 published by the Orissa Sikh Pratinidhi Board (hereafter OSPB). For a different view, see Anil Dhir’s view mentioned in note 19 of this essay.
23 Information of the paragraph is derived from a copy of photograph and an email of 16 January 2015 sent by Gurcharan Singh, a resident of Bhawanipatna town. His grandfather was one of the pioneer Ramgharias of the locality. According to Gurcharan Singh’s (a Ramgharia) testimony, Pala Singh was a Ramgharia.
24 There is no detailed study on the history of industrialization of Odisha’s Rourkela, Hirakund, Paradeep, Talcher, Rayagagra, Jajpur Road and Balimela regions in the post-Independence years. For a brief history, see Nayak (Citation1986).
25 In Sundargarh district, the number of Sikhs increased from 271 in 1951 to 4597 in 1971. It was an increase of nearly 170 per cent during two decades following Independence. There was further increase of 21.17 per cent in 1981. It had become the most important Sikh concentration in Odisha by the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Rourkela Steel Plant was another important centre of Sikh settlement. Besides, the district had other important locations of Sikh concentration in Kansbahal, Rajgangpur, Sundargarh and Birmitrapur. For it, see Senapati’s Sundargarh (Citation1975).
26 There was a little over 20 per cent increase in their number (from 4163 in 1941 to 5030 in 1961) in Odisha. Census of India, Orissa, Citation1961, Vol. XII, Part I-A (I), Chapters I to IX, General Report.
27 Based on my field survey conducted during March 2010.
28 The paragraph is based on my field work conducted during September 2009 and March 2011. Besides, a few old Sikh settlers of Barbil, Bhawnipatna, Bhubaneswar, Birmitrapur, Cuttack, Rourkela and Sambalpur send scattered information and emails about the history of each of these Sikh settlements.
29 It is discussed in detail in the next Section.
30 Information of the paragraph is gathered from different sources. I had not only the privilege of talking to two different presidents of the OSPB in June 2007, but met the mohanta of Mangu Matha in March 2010 in Puri.
31 During my field visit to Puri in March 2010, the mohanta of Mangu Matha (Baidyanath Das) had shown me two letters of the SGPC. These mentioned the Mangu Matha as a gurdwara of the Sikhs. These letters were never replied by the mohanta. I also found that both the mathas were controlled by the mohanta of Mangu Matha and its process had begun at the time of his predecessor.
32 It is based on information furnished in the Directory of 2010 (hereafter Directory) published by the OSPB.
33 In Barbil, I am told that their settlement site is widely known as Punjabi Para or Punjabi Colony. In Bhawnipatna, Sikhs mostly reside in Bahadur Bagicha while in Sambalpur, a significant number of Sikh contractors built their houses in a location which is nowadays called Contractors’ Colony. In Bhubaneswar, a part of Satya Nagar locality is similarly equated with the presence of Punjabi-Sikhs. Generally speaking, like other minority communities, the Sikhs prefer to reside close to one another. Experiences of 1984 reinforced the process of Sikh settlement. A Directory published in the late 1990s by the OSPB (Cuttack: Gurdwara Guru Nanak Datan Sahib, no date) also confirms the point.
34 One of its fundamental objectives was that its decisions would be ‘binding for all Sikhs residing in Orissa’. Directory, OSPB (Citation1998).
35 The OPSB had no detailed written constitution during his lifetime. I have a copy of the fresh constitution registered in 1998.
36 He made the OPSB almost the palm of his hands. His creation of six distinct zonal divisions of the Board was not guided by any definite criterion such as the size of local Sikh population or the number of gurdwaras located within each of its territorial jurisdictions. It would be evident from the blown-up importance of the Bhubaneswar zone he had been representing since its inception in 1967. There was only one gurdwara at the time of creation of a separate Bhubaneswar zone of the OSPB. On the other hand, three other zones, namely, Bhawnipatna, Sambalpur and Rourkela, had larger number of Sikh population and gurdwaras, but were placed on the same position with that of Bhubaneswar. It is based on my reviewing of two different Directories and other publications of the OPSB. It sent shock waves in the ranks of the community and generated very literary ripples which could be compared to what their counterparts had brought out from Jamshedpur and Kolkata.
37 Broadly speaking, this principle is more or less practised since the death of Santokh Singh in 1988.
38 I have crosschecked some of its information regarding the year of foundation of some gurdwaras. These are found to be not always correct.
39 It promised to bring out a fresh edition of the OPSB Directory in March 2014. It has not yet been published.
40 According to Sikh traditions, he was born in Puri and was one of the members of the five beloved Sikhs. He undertook long journey to be present in Anandpur on the occasion of the Khalsa’s birth in 1699. Himmat Singh was baptized by the Sikh Guru on that occasion.
41 In 1708, at the time of his death, the tenth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh laid down that with his death, there would henceforth be no more physical Gurus of the community. He vested Guruship in the sacred text – the Adi Granth. This is known in Sikh history as the transition from Guru Panth to Guru Granth. In 2008, a grand celebration was organized to mark the completion of its 300 years.
42 My field work in Puri in November 2009.