Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations [Paperback]

This book provides a critical investigation into Sikh and Muslim conflict in the postcolonial setting. Being Sikh in a diasporic context creates challenges that require complex negotiations between other ethnic minorities as well as the national majority. Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations maps in theoretically informed and empirically rich detail the trope of Sikh-Muslim antagonism as it circulates throughout the diaspora. While focusing on contemporary manifestations of Sikh-Muslim hostility, the book also draws upon historical examples of such conflict to explore the way in which the past has been mobilized to tell a story about the future of Sikhs. This book uses critical race theory to understand the performance of postcolonial subjectivity in the heart of the metropolis.Katy P. Sian is a lecturer in sociology at The University of Manchester. Previously she was a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Leeds where she also completed her PhD. She takes a key interest in debates surrounding racism and ethnicity studies, sociology, Sikh studies, Islamophobia, postcolonialism, Diaspora and South Asian identity.

This book may be located within diaspora studies and the study of intercultural and interethnic relations, and more broadly, within the discourse on narrative performance where identity is viewed as intrinsically linked to storytelling. Using postcolonial theorists such as Said, Foucault, and Barthes, Sian attempts to interrogate existing narrative/s of Sikhness that are rooted in tales of Sikhs and their battle against the Muslim enemy. It is a battle centered on the notion of brave, courageous and heroic Sikhs who emerge victorious in the face of oppression&and tyranny [by] the Muslim antagonist (2). Stories, she rightly argues, shape identity. . . .Sians narrative questions the present discourse and masterfully weaves her own story. . . .[S]killfully expressed. lãÔ