A century of miri piri: securing Sikh belonging in Canada

ABSTRACT

In this paper we reflect on the Komagata Maru as a fundamental foreshadowing of a century of Sikh negotiation with the Canadian state to achieve inclusion and belonging. The commitment of Gurdit Singh, who charted the vessel, is emblematic of miri piri, the idea that the spiritual and political cannot be separated in the fight for justice. We use miri piri as a lens through which to examine a century of Sikh struggle in Canada since the Komagata Maru. We examine four cases of Sikh-led social activism that illustrate the spirit of miri piri – the integration of the spiritual and the political in the act of resistance against injustice. Our cases include the demand for refugee rights, recognition and inclusion of minority veterans, the protection of minority groups in the wake of 9/11, and the fight to protect religious expression in Quebec. We then address what we believe is missing in Sikh social activism in terms of fighting for gender and caste equality within Sikh communities themselves. We conclude with a reflection on the fact that Sikh spirituality has greatly enhanced the social fabric of Canada, but that the struggle for rights remains a daily one that Canadian Sikhs must address both within and outside their own communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Miri piri
• Sikhs
• Canada
• Komagata Maru
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Doris Jakobsh is Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Graduate Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She has authored Relocating Gender in Sikh History (OUP 2003, 2005) and Sikhism (University of Hawaii Press 2011) as well as edited Women in Sikhism (OUP 2010), World Religions – Canadian Perspectives, Eastern and Western traditions (Nelson 2012, 2013). Recent journal article contributions include Sikh Formations (2015), Religion & Gender (2015) and Diaspora (2014) as well as chapters in a wide variety of volumes.

Margaret Walton-Roberts is a professor in the Geography and Environmental studies department at Wilfrid Laurier University Ontario, and affiliated with the Balsillie School of International Affairs. Her research addresses Indian immigrant networks and settlement in Canada, and the impact of transnational networks in both source and destination locales. She has published a number of articles and book chapters highlighting the role of immigration and remittances in transnational community formation and maintenance including work on health philanthropy, remittance-led village projects in Punjab, explorations of the role of the state and community in the nature of transnational relations between Non Resident Indians and sending communities.

ORCID

Margaret Walton-Roberts http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6789-5350

Notes

1. We are grateful for the poignant remarks of our reviewer in this regard.

2. The debate about the degree of nationalist or regional orientation evident in Gurdit Singh’s actions, and how far he and the voyage of the Komagata Maru were part of a Ghadar or Indian nationalist inspired action is beyond the focus of this paper. While we recognize the significance of this debate, our focus is to insert Gurdit Singh’s actions in chartering the Komagata Maru into a longer temporal canvas about the rights demands Canadian Sikhs have made of the Canadian state and the form of resistance used to secure justice for their own and other communities.

3. We acknowledge the important suggestions from the external reviewer of this article.

4. The targeting of Sikhs has continued, as the horrific and deliberate mass shootings at the Wisconsin gurdwara in 2012 made clear. See especially Thobani (2012) and Mehta (2013).