Relocating The Sikh Subject

This article was downloaded by: [117.199.84.
125]
On: 10 December 2011, At: 22:25
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Sikh Formations
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsfo20
RELOCATING THE SIKH SUBJECT

a
Margaret Walton-Roberts
a
Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75
University Avenue W., Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3C5, Canada
Available online: 22 Aug 2011
To cite this article: Margaret Walton-Roberts (2011): RELOCATING THE SIKH SUBJECT, Sikh
Formations, 7:2, 195-210
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2011.593349
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-

conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation
that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any
instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary
sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,
demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or
indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Sikh Formations, Vol. 7, No. 2, August 2011, pp. 195–210
Margaret Walton-Roberts
RELOCATING THE SIKH SUBJECT

Sikh veterans and the Royal Canadian
Legion
In 1993 a number of Sikh Canadian veterans were barred from entering a Legion Hall in
Downloaded by [117.199.84.125] at 22:25 10 December 2011
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada because they refused to remove their turbans. Using a
postcolonial lens to explore this meeting and the historical factors leading to it, this
paper offers some important reflections on both the evolution of Canadian multiculturalism
and the nature and meaning of Sikh identity in a seemingly postcolonial context. The paper
suggests that the Sikh veterans involved in this event were effective at strategically construct-
ing a subject position that relocated them simultaneously at the centre of Empire and
Canada’s multicultural order.
Introduction: standing on the threshold
On 11 November 1993 Harbhajan Minhas, a retired Indian air force technician, and
three companions were denied entry to the Royal Canadian Legion Hall in Newton,
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. As they were poised on the threshold of the club,
branch secretary Frank Underwood read them a 1946 legion bylaw that required the
removal of all headgear. As orthodox Sikhs Minhas and his three companions were
wearing turbans, and unable to remove them or convince the branch secretary of
their religious significance, they had no option but to leave. Several other guests who
had been invited to the Remembrance Day ceremony joined them in protest (Western
Reports 1994a, 26). Following this incident, a number of reports circulated in the
local, national and community media debating issues of multiculturalism, racism, the
turban, tradition, and change (Canadian Press Newswire 1994b). Sikh and Jewish societies
in Canada joined forces to encourage the recognition of religious symbols as more than
mere accoutrement, and boycotts of poppy sales from Legions not allowing Sikhs into
their halls were launched, with limited success (Canadian Press Newswire 1994c).
This event is interesting for a number of reasons. In the decade predating this inci-
dent the government of Canada advanced a discourse of official multiculturalism in order
to promote ethnic and cultural difference as part of a collective Canadian identity.
Critically reflecting on the effect of this policy, Kogila Moodley (1983, 329) notes:
In a country with a vague identity, in a society rich in geography and short of history,
multiculturalism is propagated as the lowest common denominator on which all
ISSN 1744-8727 (print)/ISSN 1744-8735 (online)/11/020195-16
# 2011 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2011.593349
196 SIKH FORMATIONS
segments may agree. After all, the magic formula merely asks that ‘we accept
and try to understand the people next door, regardless of their skin color and
customs’.
Despite the positive official rhetoric, by the early 1990s significant political and popular
criticism of the policy was emerging (Abu-Laban and Stasiulis 1992). Numerous Cana-
dians began to greet instances of acceptance of cultural difference, such as the turban,
with emotions ranging from ambivalence to downright racist denunciation. Consider,
for example, the infamous ‘Kamell Dung’ calendar produced in Western Canada to
contest the decision to include the turban as official dress for the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police (RCMP).1 MacGregor (1997, 307) has examined such responses,
and suggests they can be seen as a reaction to the erosion of Eurocentric privilege for
white Canadian society as multiculturalism threatened a ‘realignment of the nation’s
symbolic order’. Therefore, within this historical context, the presence of turbaned
Sikhs in a Canadian Legion Hall in 1993 was interpreted as something foreign and cer-
tainly not of the ‘tradition’ of the legion.
In this paper I argue this view omits the common experiences of colonial contact
embedded in the collective histories of both Indian and Anglo-Canadian subjects.
Using ethnic and mainstream media reports, archival material from London’s Imperial
War Museum’s photographic collection, and other sources of secondary data, I explore
the relations formed between the British colonial military, and those Sikh males from its
main Indian recruiting ground, the Punjab, in order to reposition this moment in the
Newton Legion within the colonial circuit of production it is part of; it is therefore
‘an effort to “blast” the continuum by recalling a moment of difference from the past
and resituating it in the present to interrupt the chain of signification’ (Harootunian
1996, 68). These histories are woven together through a colonial trilogy; on the one
hand the intricate connections between the British military and Punjabi Sikhs in India,
and on the other the origins and continued attachment of the Royal Canadian Legion
to its British colonial past. In this paper therefore I examine this case in order to ‘inter-
rogate the past as the history of the present’ (Prakash 1992, 375), and to determine
what the history of that present says about Sikh identity, subject formation and
agency in Canada.
The postcolonial: discontinuities and continuities in

power relations
Postcolonial theory allows for the re-theorization of colonial power by highlighting the
agency of the colonized, in the process revealing the mutual transformations that
occurred within and between colonial societies. In this sense postcolonialism intersects
with the aims of subaltern studies in its attempts to excavate the voices of the oppressed
from history, but it also encourages an awareness of the ongoing legacy and operation of
the colonial, both discursively and materially. The term postcolonial, however, is not
unproblematic, since its attempts to de-center the ‘West’, as critics such as Stuart
Hall, and Dipesh Chakrabarty have raised, is virtually impossible; the very focus on
colonialism inevitability re-centers and re-essentializes the West, re-marginalizing the
Global South in the process (Hall 1996; Chakrabarty 1992). Postcolonial theory has
SIKH VETERANS AND THE ROYAL CANADIAN LEGION 197
also been critiqued for eliding issues of power through a preoccupation with time, as Ann
McClintock (1994, 294) has posited; ‘premature celebration of the pastness of coloni-
alism, runs the risk of obscuring the continuities and discontinuities of colonial and
imperial power’. Additionally some postcolonial literature overlooks geography; in
that attention to the particularity of different methods of colonial control has been
muted. For example, Said’s (1978) seminal text Orientalism has been used by many scho-
lars as a general critique of colonial discourses, and in the process the relevance of how
different localities and subjectivities invariably contextualized the powerful discourse of
Orientalism becomes muted.
I contribute to this debate with one example that contextualizes the postcolonial
context by revealing the contradictions of present and past colonialisms evidenced by
these Sikh veterans’ exclusion from the Legion; but before proceeding I must offer
some words of caution. This reading does not seek to reposition a subaltern, because his-
torically, in many cases, Sikhs can be seen as ‘counterinsurgents’, advocating their own
hegemonic subject position through multiple power relationships that place them along a
broad spectrum of subject-positions. Sikh soldiers, therefore, do not clearly represent
subalternity, since elements of Punjabi Sikh society have simultaneously inhabited
both oppositional and supportive roles to the hegemonic state; be it their support for
the British in the 1857 mutiny, versus their later oppositional role against the Raj
through the Ghadar movement (Pettigrew 1991). Throughout the twentieth century
many Sikhs were actively enlisting with colonial forces in both world wars. Though par-
tially compelled to enlist by increasingly constrained livelihood options available at
home, their inclusion within the military made Sikhs the beneficiaries of various
resources and social networks, and this was clearly evident in opportunities for
migration (Tatla 1995), and access to land (Ali 1988). In the post-independence
period many Sikhs were loyal to the military and security forces of the central Indian
government. Consider, for example, that while Sikhs in the Khalistan movement
were launching one of the most serious and violent secessionist threats the Indian
state had faced, the military officers in charge of Operation Blue Star were Sikhs (Hard-
grave 1985). The ‘Sikh’ then needs to be thought of less as an incantation of a singular
political, religious or regional identity, but more of inhabiting, following Spivak, a
subject-position; a location that re-centers the post/colonial subject while also indicating
the heterogeneity of contexts surrounding such positions (Spivak quoted in Prakash
1992, 372). Indeed the turban itself is an unstable signifier, and one that can cause con-
flict between Sikhs themselves (Walton-Roberts 1998). Such symbols, however, can be
read as a proxy for other processes of identity formation and conflict. In that regard, the
turban, as a signifier of identity and difference, is a highly politicized and contested
symbol that we would do well to explore and contextualize in more detail.
British colonialism and military discipline in India
Tracing the development of the British Army in India and overseas, one can find evidence
not only of Indian, particularly Sikh recruits, as far back as the early nineteenth century,
but of separate units that fought with the British as allies (Bakshi 1987). The importance
of the Punjab as a recruiting ground for the British military, and the over representation
of Sikhs in the British military is discussed by Fox (1985), and their activity during World
198 SIKH FORMATIONS
War I is detailed by Ellinwood (1976). Harjot Oberoi also examines how, after the
British annexation of Punjab in 1846, two Sikh regiments were raised. Enlistment in
these regiments grew as the economic rewards offered lured rural peasants whose
families were struggling to maintain land holdings (Oberoi 1994). After the 1857
Bengal uprisings, Sikh soldiers – whose lack of empathy for the Mughal dynasty was
greater than their dislike for their most recent British occupiers – stood by the
British forces. After this, Oberoi argues,
no further proof of Sikh valour or fidelity was required: the Raj was convinced that
the Sikhs ‘loved fighting for fighting’s sake’, and that they ought to be recruited to
the army without inhibition. Thus was Punjab turned into the army barracks of the
Raj, and Sikhs made the most formidable human resource within the imperial fight-
ing machine.
(Oberoi 1994, 361)
Robert Fox has also commented on the processes by which the Punjabi Sikh ‘Militia race’
was actively cultivated by the British Army in the proceeding years, and both Fox and
Oberoi focus on the particular contribution the military made to enforcing and thereby
defining a singular Sikh identity – that of the Singh clan – over the hybrid religious iden-
tities present in the region (Fox 1985). So influential was the British Military’s adherence
to a single Sikh identity, and their demands that any men claiming to be Sikhs be baptized
and accept the bodily symbols of Sikhism that Fox contends induction into the Indian army
and Sikhism was one and the same for many Punjabi recruits. Oberoi contends that Fox
overstates this case, and traces elements of contemporary Sikh religious boundaries to the
formation of a powerful Sikh movement in the Punjab that developed in the later part of
the nineteenth century in reaction to not a result of colonial forces (Oberoi 1994, 401). That
movement, Tat Khalsa, ‘reified the outward symbols of the faith by reconceiving of the
past’ (Oberoi 1994, 334). Part of this change was to strengthen Sikhism’s control over
the body through the symbolism of the five K’s. Oberoi contends that this, in combination
with the British military’s religious enforcement, singularly defined Sikhism through the
body’s outward appearance. In this regard a double process of identity inscription emer-
ging both against and within the colonial was reinforcing the Sikh identity as a highly
embodied one, one which the colonial military actively supported and codified through
military structures and practices (see Figures 1 and 2).
Disciplining the body
The type of military discipline Michel Foucault (1977) speaks of in relation to the dis-
ciplinary state was seen by many British military personnel to be ‘naturally’ possessed by
the Sikhs, who were disciplined by the rigors of religious observance and a long history
of frontier-border region inhabitance. This experience was considered by some in the
British military to have acted as training that: ‘hardened a remnant to tempered
steel’ (Smith quoted in Heathcote 1995, 84). As Fox argues, this image was constructed
and nurtured through filters of biological determinism and an orientalizing process, both
of which acted as foundations for the colonial authorities in their quest to control and
utilize their colonized population. Such discourse is evidenced in military books and
Figure 1 Types of Indian Troops. Image number Q. 15091K.

Source: Imperial War Museum Photographic Collection, London, England. Reproduced with permission.
journals of the time that were produced solely to advise officers on how to handle their
Sikh regiments:
The Sikh is a fighting man and his fine qualities are best shown in the army, which is
his natural profession. Hardy, brave, and of intelligence; too slow to understand
when he is beaten; obedient to discipline; attached to his officers; and careless of
caste prohibitions, he is unsurpassed as a soldier in the East. . ..The Sikh is always
the same, ever genial, good-tempered and uncomplaining; as steady under fire as
he is eager for a charge.
(R.W. Falcon, Handbook on Sikhs for Regimental Officers, quoted in Fox 1985, 144)
Fox illuminates the ordering and classification of soldiers that also occurred within
the Indian army, together with its material consequences:
The symbolic reinforcement of Singh identity and the syncretism of military and Sikh
ritual worked ‘downward’ to separate Singhs from Hindus and Muslims, but it also
worked ‘upward’ to separate them from Britishers. This symbolic boundary helped
legitimate the inequality in pay and conditions suffered by Indian troops in comparison
to British enlisted men of equivalent rank who were stationed in India. It also sup-
ported the reservation of all higher ranks in an Indian regiment for British officers.
(Fox 1985, 143)
200 SIKH FORMATIONS
Figure 2 1918 45th Sikhs carrying the ‘holy book’ to a religious service. Image number Q. 24792.
This system of classification resonates with the arguments of Foucault and the power of
the normalizing gaze to classify and order the subject.
For the marks that once indicated status, privilege and affiliation were increasingly
replaced – or at least supplemented – by a whole range of degrees of normality
indicating membership of a homogeneous social body but also playing a part in
classification, hierarchy and the distribution of rank. In a sense the power of normal-
ization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure
gaps, determine levels, to fix specialties and to render differences useful by fitting
them one to another.
(Foucault 1977, 184)
The Sikh soldier was thereby disciplined into both military and colonial power
relations; relations that helped constitute the identity of the ‘Sikh’ solider. At the
same time, as Oberoi suggests, even religious adherence that was oppositional to
colonial authority, produced, codified and embodied certain identities. The impact
of the colonial/military nexus of power on Sikh identity certainly illuminates con-
temporary debates about the embodiment of identity through the turban and
other Sikh symbols. It echoes Brian Axel’s (2001) reading of Sikh relations with
hegemonic powers through the theme of surrender; which is construed as both
threat and promise. Promise refers to the allure and benefits of joining the colonial
military, but this also signals the threat such unions might pose to the Sikh sense of
spiritual and territorial identity and belonging. The colonial military were able to
enforce a strict definition of Sikhism through government resource allocation made
on the basis of religious affiliation, which was oblivious to the diverse practices of the
Sikhs in the region:
Unmindful of the complex nature of Sikh tradition and the immense spectrum of
doctrines and practices among the Sikh public, philistine army commanders
enforced an extremely narrow, functional and mechanistic definition of the Sikh
faith. Only those who carried the five symbols were deemed genuine Sikhs.
(Oberoi 1994, 361)
If Punjabi Sikhs wanted to benefit from government jobs and resources, they had to
become ‘true’ Sikhs, and thus support the bodily symbols as required by the colonial
authorities. After 1850 the issue of enforcing Sikh identity took on more urgency as
the British became concerned by an apparent decline in the Sikh population, even
though they themselves had played a role in creating the very ‘Sikh’ identity they
measured. This myth exercised an enormous influence on sections of the colonial admin-
istration, particularly the British Army, which now projected itself as the savior and
guardian of the Sikh ‘martial race’ (Oberoi 1994, 212). It is difficult to say whether
certain members of the military administration were primarily motivated by a desire
to ‘save’ the Sikhs, or whether the prime motivation was to develop a formidable
army ‘on the cheap’, but by the outbreak of World War I, Sikhs accounted for close
to 40% of the colonial Indian army’s combat troops. This resulted in the proportion
of Sikh troops being over three times that of Sikhs in Punjab’s population, and 20
times their representation in the Indian population as a whole (Fox 1985, 143).
Until the end of the nineteenth century assignment opportunities for Indian soldiers
under British military command were mostly confined to the Indian sub-continent. On a
few occasions soldiers traveled across India to participate in colonial state events, such as
the 1877 Assemblage to recognize Queen Victoria as Empress of India (Cohn 1983). By
the turn of the century several Indian troops had the opportunity to travel overseas and
experience the spectacle of the Empire at its heart. Indians were traveling to Britain by
the late nineteenth century and writing travel guides for the Indian market (Burton
1996). Though these were probably members of the cultural elite, soldiers also traveled
around the Empire to fight on foreign fields and to be exhibited for various celebrations
(see Figure 3). Some of the first Sikhs to come to British Columbia, Canada came during
a trip from India to Britain for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. It was during these
exhibitionary forays into the heart of the Empire that Sikhs were introduced to the riches
of that Empire, an entity they were made to believe they were citizens of (Khan 1991;
Jagpal 1994).
The movement of Sikh soldiers is only one aspect of broader spatial networks that
were forming under the influence of a system that inserted Punjab into the colonial pol-
itical economy. Punjab was attractive to the British not only for its troops and its stra-
tegic location as a political buffer between British India and Afghanistan, but its
economic potential in the form of agricultural land for the production of wheat and
cotton (Fox 1985). The most productive agricultural areas were in the central
region, ruled by the Sikh Singhs, and consequentially the British focused their earliest
attentions on this region. British involvement in agricultural production in the area
led to a number of canals being constructed to improve yield. By the turn of the
century, colonial mismanagement had led to the usual catalogue of problems, including
202 SIKH FORMATIONS
Figure 3 Indian Army Contingent (Sikhs) passing along the Mall. Image number Q. 14954.
social and economic polarization between landowners who prospered, and those who
became severely indebted (Fox 1985). Such indebtedness became an overburdening
problem to families in the region and led to a number of tactics on the part of families
to address the situation. This involved searching out paid labour overseas for males,
including colonial postings as policemen in Hong Kong, Burma and South-East Asia.
Many journeyed to other British Colonies, including Canada, where they often found
work in the resource industries (Sampat-Mehta 1984). These men, initially sojourners,
sent remittances home to keep family land holdings intact or to extend them, and; ‘Over
time it became impossible to determine if petty commodity cultivation, military service,
or overseas wage labor was the primary employment; they formed an ensemble, each
part of which bolstered the other’ (Fox 1985, 44).
This mobility of Sikh Punjabis was clearly set in motion by the various networks
colonialism plunged the region into. As obvious as it appears, tracing these flows
exposes the intricate and enduring connections between immigration and colonial-
ism, and we need to remind ourselves that: ‘It is increasingly evident that emigration
policy is one of the strongest legacies of British rule in India’ (Ray 1993, 284).
This action of locating the causes of immigration is significant not only for compre-
hending and linking the affects of such movements on both receiving and sending
nations, but it stresses the endurance of these colonial networks and their involve-
ment in the production of diasporic identities in localities such as that of Surrey
BC in Canada.
Bringing the past into the space of the present
Dusting off these past episodes and hauling them into the space of the more recent
present, allows the moment of 11 November 1993, at Surrey Legion branch number
175, to be inserted into a very different continuum. The chain of signification can
now be seen to encompass Sikh migrants as central, rather than marginal actors in
the colonial production of territory, including that of Canada. Ironically, on that day,
it was the Legion branch itself that had invited immigrants from other parts of the
Empire who ‘fought in the service of the King’ to the Remembrance Day celebrations:
They got sick, tired and wounded just as did the Canadians and considered them-
selves fortunate if they survived to go home to their families.
(The Link 1993a)
The subsequent public parade was presented as a moment of pride and recognition for
the Sikh veterans who joined it, but this welcome was short-lived. Four Sikhs following
the procession were not admitted into the legion hall.
‘Two gentlemen at the entrance said I couldn’t go inside’, said Harbhajan Singh
Minhas, one of the Sikhs who served as an airplane technician with the Royal
Indian Air force during the Second World War. ‘I looked at him and he said I
couldn’t go inside with the headgear’.
(The Link 1993b)
Another of those denied entry was Veteran Col. Jauhal, and the local Indo-Canadian
newspaper The Link highlighted his war record – 38 years in the Army, including service
in North Africa during World War II under field Marshall Montgomery – juxtaposing
this to the humiliation he endured:
I was seventh in the marching line. At the front door of the building attendant offi-
cials stopped me and said I cannot go in because of my turban. I told them I had been
invited as a guest and they have to respect my religion.
(The Link 1993c, 4)
The denial of entry to Sikh veterans was certainly not supported by all of those attending
the Remembrance Day celebrations. The Link carried comments from Provincial and
Municipal politicians, and it appeared the men had widespread political support, as
one Surrey councilor put it: ‘it [the turban] was not an issue when they fought in
North Africa or Germany, it was not an issue when they were decorated by the
Queen for their bravery and heroism in the midst of all the battles and all the wars
they fought’ (The Link 1993d, 1).
The pursuant debate became complex, involving various issues of tradition, exclu-
sion, respect and racism. On the matter of tradition, Greg Hogan, spokesman for the
Legion’s Executive Council offered the following explanation: ‘It’s been characterized by
the media as being racist, but I don’t think that’s true. . .I think that for the most part
members view it as an attack on Canadian traditions’ (Western Reports 1994a, 26). Recog-
nizing the potential for serious public relations damage, the Legion’s National Executive
204 SIKH FORMATIONS
attempted to change the bylaw in favor of allowing turbaned Sikhs into the halls, but this
action met with fierce resistance from the many local branches around the country, who
argued they were not against turbans, but against having their autonomy stamped upon
by the National Executive (Western Reports 1994b, 36 – 7). This however was certainly not
the view of Jeanne Eddington, a resident of Surrey who was present at the legion:
These men were invited to participate in the ceremony yet were not welcome to
join in the festivities. I heard comments of ‘we didn’t invite you to participate –
the local papers did’. ‘When in Canada, obey our rules – not yours.’ ‘There is
no room – people are still lining up’, ‘You only came to make trouble.’. . .I
went into the lounge where there was ‘no room’. . .people were sitting at tables
with as many as eight chairs saved for their friends. Women were sitting around
tables wearing hats and berets – they were not refused entry. . .I did not sit with
the legion members – I left – ashamed of the humiliation these elderly former sol-
diers were subjected to.

(The Link 1993e, 4)
Issues of racism and discrimination became paramount, especially in the media. Yet even
as the Legion Executive attempted to adorn this dispute in the clothes of ‘tradition’,
simultaneously some of its own members were busy de-robing it for all to see:
One member went so far as to say that the Sikh members should be ‘shipped back’.
When the CTV reporter asked, ‘Where?’ He snapped back, ‘Wherever they came
from’.
(The Link 1993g, 2)
It is clear that issues of immigration inform the refusal of some members of the
Newton Legion to accept Sikh veterans. The legion member quoted above presents
immigration as a wholly voluntary and reversible flow, one that is only caused by the
desires of the migrant, and not the outcome of various forms of economic and political
intersections resulting from colonialism. Orthodox Sikh identity, once actively sup-
ported and constructed by the British in India, was resisted and denied once transplanted
into the (post)colonial space of Surrey, British Columbia. The particular exclusion that
Sikh veterans experienced on that day reveals the diverse nature of the colonial imagin-
ation, and how spatially localized reinterpretations of the ‘oriental other’ continue to be
produced and contested. Critically assessing those reinterpretations, I have suggested
that we insert this moment into a different continuum, one that exposes the contradic-
tory nature of colonial ‘traditions’, as well as offering in its place a subversive reading of
history that suggests other potential readings and outcomes.
Reinterpreting resistance
Exposing the contradictory nature of postcolonial relations is one approach to challen-

ging the present, but others – Sikh veterans included – have contested this exclusion by
remaining within the dominant discourse of colonialism and turning the Legion’s own
values onto itself. I want to consider some of the responses Sikh veterans themselves
proffered to this moment of humiliation and exclusion; how did they riposte? I would
argue that they used those same colonial power relations to displace the action of the
Newton Legion, and display how it offended its own ‘traditional’ associations with
the British monarchy and the honor of those who died in battle. Their resistance to
the moment of exclusion was not outside of the realm of the colonial; indeed Sikh veter-
ans actively and strategically placed themselves at its center to justify their right to be
included in multicultural Canada. Indeed reports of other Legions accepting turbaned
Sikh members were circulated to show the internal contradictions evident within the
organization. For example, The Link reported the story of one Sikh veteran who was
a welcome member at the Richmond Legion Hall, also in BC. His service record –
18 years of service to three British Lords in India – was presented as ample justification
of his right to be included within the space of the Legion.
The senior citizen had been in the defense service of British India for over 18 years
and was the bodyguard for three British Lords in India – The Viceroy of India Lord
Linlithglow (1936 – 1943), Field Marshall Lord Vevil and the last Viceroy of India,
Lord Mountbatten.
(The Link 1993h, 1)
Not only did veterans attempt to remind the public of their contributions to the British
Empire through service in both World War I and II, but they also appropriated the ulti-
mate icon of the Royal Canadian Legion, the Queen herself. In a letter to the editor in
the Indo-Canadian newspaper The Link, J. Sandhu of Surrey stated:
Orthodox Sikhs never remove their turbans in public, not even before the Queen. It
is the ultimate insult to ask them to do so. These Sikhs fought alongside the Queen’s
forces all over the world and thousands lost their lives. By their action the legion has
not only disgraced the brave Sikhs veterans but has brought shame on itself by its
behaviour on this Remembrance Day. What a way to show respect to the Queen
and the war dead by disgracing fellow Sikh veterans both alive and dead, and
that too on Remembrance Day.
(The Link 1993f, 4)
To support the assertion that even the Queen of England did not expect Sikhs to remove
their turbans, other letters appeared in newspapers with the formal seal of approval of
Buckingham Palace:
Surrey resident John Pippus received a letter from Buckingham palace after writing
about the issue to the Queen. In That letter, the Queen’s aide Robin Janvrin wrote,
‘I can confirm that many Sikhs have been invited to Buckingham Palace over the
years. They are not asked to remove their turbans’.
(The Link 1993d, 1)
One year after the Newton Legion incident, at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in
Victoria, Both Minhas and Jauhal met the Queen and Prince Philip at a public reception
and presented her with a Sikh medallion (Figure 4).2 This moment can be seen as a
206 SIKH FORMATIONS
Figure 4 Sikh war veterans at the Commonwealth Games, 1994.

Source: Published in the Vancouver Sun, 22 August 1994, P A3. Photography by J. Yanyshyn. Reprinted with permission.
critical retort to the previous denials and exclusions they had suffered at the hands of the
Newton Legion:
‘I feel honored and proud’, said Jauhal, who told the Queen of his efforts in the
Second World War. ‘Right now the insults I suffered in the past are forgotten,
I’m just so happy.’. . .’I wore my best turban’, joked Harbhajan Minhas, a 69-
year-old Royal Indian Air Force bomber who dropped medical supplies to Allied
troops in the Second World War. ‘She was very gracious and interested in my
war record’, Minhas said.
(Canadian Press Newswire 1994a)
What should we make then of this deliberate insertion of Sikhs into the continuities
of this (post)colonial relationship? Can we call this resistance? While much work on post-
colonial relations seeks to unearth and dismantle the power differentials colonialism sup-
ported, in this case strategically reinforcing colonial relations worked for these Sikh
veterans. So, rather than staging a ‘“a return of the repressed” to resist seductions of
nostalgic histories of colonialism’ (Gregory 2004, 9), this case demonstrates how nostal-
gic histories of colonialism are actively worked to the advantage of Sikh veterans. On one
level it justifies their subject-position (one that has seen particularly close relations to
colonial centers of power), and on another it evidences their statement of a right to
be accepted into the peculiar colonial residual of the Royal Canadian Legion. Rather
than the hybrid, diasporic identities offered as conceptual templates for a younger,
second or third generation of immigrants, these older men actively reconstructed
their identity along a strategically essentialized element of their past; one that saw
them in the service of the British Empire. Such a move could be read as a tactic or
tool of the oppressed, revealing how the, ‘Third World, far from being confined to
its assigned space, has penetrated the inner sanctum of the First World in the process
of being – “third worlded”’; but in this instance, rather than ‘affiliating with the sub-
ordinated others in the First World’ (Prakash 1992, 377), Sikhs have used the colonial
residual to disarm their oppressor (the Canadian Legion) from within, using their own
terms of Imperial reference. It presents a case where the surrender of the Sikh body to
hegemonic (colonial) forces offers a positive outcome in the postcolonial multicultural
space of Canada.
These individuals used symbolic British colonial attachments to challenge the
material colonial present in Canada. The impacts of this do not stay only with these
men though; I would argue that this event is significant for the potential it offers
other members of the Sikh-Canadian community more broadly. For example, images
of Minhas are included in collages evidencing Sikh strength and identity produced by
Sikh Net, a virtual ‘cybersangat’ acting as a ‘global virtual community for Sikhs and
all those interested in the Sikh way of life’.3
The struggle for minority groups to be accepted and included in all spaces of society,
material and symbolic, is ongoing, and memory and tradition have become important
sites of contest in that struggle. What the Legion represented for these Sikhs was
their memory, place, and life during the colonial and post colonial period. To be
denied access to those symbolic meanings represented a much greater denial than just
their past; but of their present in Canada as well. The incident presents a forceful dem-
onstration of the Sikh veteran’s subject position as central, not marginal, members of the
Canadian population.
Conclusion
Colonial power inscribed itself on the bodies of Punjabi Sikhs in various ways. Coloni-
alism inserted nineteenth-century Punjab into global commercial and military networks,
the power of which continues to operate to this day in organizing the social location of
subjects in the post-colonial. Reinterpreting the exclusion of these Sikh veterans from
the Newton Legion hall exposes the continuities and discontinuities of this power
through time and across space. The British in India were instrumental in enforcing the
very symbols of religious adherence that less than a century later would be the focus
of exclusion from the realm of military honor and remembrance in Surrey, British
Columbia. Unveiling the colonial past and present embedded in this moment at the
Newton Legion is not merely an exercise in vacuous cultural relativity; it highlights
the agency of these Sikh veterans, even if the tactic used to overturn exclusion is not
one postcolonial scholars might readily identify as one that de-centers the West.
Drawing out these contradictions reveals how power based on exclusion, and the
power to define, can be challenged and re-scripted even from within the enduring dis-
course of Empire.
A postcolonial approach therefore, when attuned to the continuities and discontinuities
of colonialism can provide critical insights into the operation and outcomes of the exer-
cise of power. These Sikh veterans demonstrated how their subject position could be
flexibly repositioned; they strategically located themselves in the service of Empire in
order to secure their place as honored postcolonial citizens of the multicultural state.
This process reveals the multiplicity of spatial and temporal relations, including ones
that work within colonial discourses of authority, that are re-combined in order to
achieve various forms of inclusion through subversion. This example illustrates the
importance of interrogating the formation of the Sikh subject position, and how the
208 SIKH FORMATIONS
flexible construction of elements of identity permits access to a range of valuable

resources. Rather than accepting the status of interlopers intent on upsetting the sym-
bolic order of national traditions in Canada, Sikh veterans, by referring to British colo-
nial heritage, succeeded in placing themselves, turban and all, firmly at the center of the
multicultural symbolic order.
Acknowledgements
This paper was originally produced as ‘(Post) Colonial constellations of history, identity
and space: Sikhs and the Royal Canadian Legion’, Vancouver Centre of Excellence for
Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis Working Paper series #99-
18, April 1999, and I would like to thank Derek Gregory, Geraldine Pratt and David Ley
for their helpful comments on this earlier draft of the paper. I would also like to thank
Ian Carter and staff ar London’s Imperial War Museum for their help in locating Sikh
military photographs.
Notes
1 The calendar was produced for 1990 and on the cover had a picture of a turbaned
RCMP officer called Sgt Kamell Dung and the title: ‘Is this Canadian, or does it
make you Sikh?’
2 Ten years later, in 2003, Captain Harjit Singh Sajjan would be part of the honor
guard for Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip during her golden jubilee visit to
BC (email from Sandeep Singh Brar).
3 See http://www.sikhnet.com/about-sikhnet for information about Sikh Net and
http://www.sikhnet.com/Sikhnet/art.nsf/Files/sokryg6874/$file/MilitarySikh.jpg
for the image.
References
Abu-Laban, Y., and D. Stasiulis. 1992. Ethnic pluralism under siege: popular and partisan
opposition to multiculturalism. Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques 18, no. 4:
365 – 86.
Ali, I. 1988. The Punjab under imperialism, 1885 –1947. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Axel, Brian Keith. 2001. The nation’s tortured body: violence, representation, and the formation of
a Sikh ‘Diaspora’. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bakshi, G.D. 1987. The Indian military revival: the saga of the Fateh Shibji. New Delhi: Lancer
International.
Burton, Antoinette. 1996. Making a spectacle of empire: Indian travelers in Fin-de-Siècle
London. History Workshop Journal 42: 126 – 46.
Canadian Press Newswire. 1994a. War veterans thrilled to meet Queen. Canadian Press
Newswire, August 20.
Canadian Press Newswire. 1994b. Turbans allowed in Legion after human rights complaint.
Canadian Press Newswire, October 11.
Canadian Press Newswire. 1994c. Poppy sales flourish. Canadian Press Newswire, November 7.
Chakrabarty, D. 1992. Postcoloniality and the artifice of history: who speaks for ‘Indian’
pasts? Representations 37: 1–26.
Cohn, Bernard. 1983. Representing authority in Victoria India. In The invention of tradition,
ed. E. Hobsbawn and T. Ranger, 165 –209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellinwood, D.C. Jr. 1976. An historical study of the Punjabi soldier in World War I. In
Punjab past and present: essays in honour of Dr. Ganda Singh, ed. H. Singh and N.
Gerald Barrier, 337 –62. Patiala: Punjabi University.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan.
New York: Random House.
Fox, Richard Gabriel. 1985. Lions of the Punjab: culture in the making. Los Angeles: University
of California Press.
Gregory, D. 2004. The colonial present. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hall, S. 1996. When was the post-colonial? Thinking at the limit. In The post-colonial ques-
tion: common skies divided horizons, ed. I. Chambers and L. Curti, 242 –60. London:
Routledge.
Hardgrave, Robert L. 1985. India in 1984: confrontation, assassination, and succession.
Asian Survey 25, no. 2: 131 –44.
Harootunian, H.D. 1996. The Benjamin effect: modernism, repetition, and the path to
different cultural imaginaries. In Walter Benjamin and the demands of history, ed. M.P.
Steinberg, 62 – 87. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Heathcote, T.A. 1995. The military in British India: the development in British Land Forces in
South Asia, 1600 – 1947. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Khan, S. 1991. Influences shaping relations between the East Indians and Anglo Canadians in
Canada: 1903 –1947. The Journal of Ethnic Studies 19, no. 1: 101 –16.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993a. Indo-Canadian veterans welcome on
Remembrance Day parade. The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 88:
November 3.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993b. Community angry over Legion’s racist
rules. The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 91: November 13.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993c. Interview with war veteran Colonel
Jauhal, The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 91: November 13.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993d. Apology from Surrey City Council.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 92: November 17.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993e. Letter from Jeanne Eddington, Surrey
BC. The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 92: November 17.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993f. Letter from Sandu, Surrey, BC, the ulti-
mate insult. The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 92: November 17.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993g. Newton Legion still defiant about
turban issue. The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper 21, no. 96: December 1.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Newspaper. 1993h. Sikh veteran finds honour and dignity.
The Link: Indo-Canadian Community Paper 21, no. 100: December 15.
MacGregor, Robert M. 1997. ‘Kamell Dung’: a challenge to Canada’s national icon. In
Usable pasts: traditions and group expressions in North America, ed. Tad Tuleja, 293–310.
Logan: Utah State University Press.
McClintock, Anne. 1994. The angel of progress: pitfalls of the term ‘post-colonialism’. In
Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory, ed. P. Williams and L. Chrisma, 291 – 304.
New York: Columbia University Press.
210 SIKH FORMATIONS
Moodley, Kogila. 1983. Canadian multiculturalism as ideology. Ethnic and Racial Studies 6,
no. 3: 320 – 31.
Oberoi, Harjot. 1994. The construction of religious boundaries: culture, identity, and diversity in
the Sikh tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pettigrew, Joyce. 1991. Betrayal and nation-building among the Sikhs. The Journal of Com-
monwealth & Comparative Politics 29, no. 1: 25 – 43.
Prakash, G. 1992. Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: Indian historio-
graphy is good to think. In Colonialism and culture, ed. N. Dirks, 353 – 88. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Ray, K.A. 1993. Roots of ambivalence: indenture, identity and the Indian ‘freedom
struggle’. In Ethnicity, identity, migration: the South Asian context, ed. M. Israel and
N. Wagle, 269 – 90. Toronto: University of Toronto.
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sampat-Mehta, R. 1984. First fifty years of South Asian immigration: a historical perspec-
tive. In South Asians in the Canadian mosaic, ed. R.N. Kanungo, 13 –31. Montreal:
Kala Bharati.
Singh, Jagpal Sarjeet. 1994. Becoming Canadians: pioneer Sikhs in their own words. Madeira Park,
BC: Harbour Publishing.
Tatla, D.S. 1995. Sikh free and military migration during the colonial period. In Cambridge
survey of world migration, ed. Robin Cohen, 69 – 76. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Walton-Roberts, Margaret. 1998. Three readings of the turban: Sikhs in Greater Vancouver.
Urban Geography 19, no. 4: 311 – 31.
Western Reports. 1994a. A different issue at the Legion. Western Reports 9, no. 3: February 14.
Western Reports. 1994b. A Legion of misrepresentations: the real issue in turban spat in local
autonomy, not racism. Western Reports 9, no. 21: June 20.
Margaret Walton-Roberts. Address: Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier

University, 75 University Avenue W., Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3C5. [e-mail:
mwaltonroberts@wlu.ca]

Relocating The Sikh Subject

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Relocating The Sikh Subject

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [117.199.84.

RELOCATING THE SIKH SUBJECT

Available online: 22 Aug 2011

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2011.593349

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-

RELOCATING THE SIKH SUBJECT

Introduction: standing on the threshold

The postcolonial: discontinuities and continuities in

British colonialism and military discipline in India

Disciplining the body

Figure 1 Types of Indian Troops. Image number Q. 15091K.

Bringing the past into the space of the present

diers were subjected to.

Exposing the contradictory nature of postcolonial relations is one approach to challen-

Figure 4 Sikh war veterans at the Commonwealth Games, 1994.

flexible construction of elements of identity permits access to a range of valuable

Margaret Walton-Roberts. Address: Department of Geography, Wilfrid Laurier

You might also like