Introduction
On the 522nd birthday of Guru Nanak in 1990, Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, was presented with an honorary turban and kirpan (religious sword or dagger) in ‘a carefully choreographed piece of political theatre. . .carefully massaged into congruence with Singaporean National Values.’Footnote 1 As stated by luminaries like Lee Kuan Yew on such occasions, Sikhs lay claim to a long and illustrious history in Southeast Asia, where they utilized colonial economic and political opportunities to great effect, as many did under the ethnic corporatism of the People's Action Party in post-colonial Singapore. Whilst the sight of the be-turbaned ‘Singh’ in Singapore has become increasingly rare, given inter-generational socio-cultural change, many Sikhs have chosen, and still choose, to make the island their home. This paper will examine the rich history of such Sikhs who formed a tiny minority of the South Asian population of Singapore. It will analyse colonial economic roles and socio-cultural formation, whilst links of Singaporean Sikhs to Punjab and their place within the post-colonial Singaporean state will preoccupy the latter portion of the paper. It shall thus attempt to give a brief holistic picture of over a century of Sikh presence in this small, but historically significant, island.
Despite the importance of the Sikhs in colonial Malaya and the Straits Settlements, traditionally falsely understood as merely related to the maintenance of order, there is a marked scholarly lacuna on the ‘community’. The weight of scrutiny has in fact been borne by Sikh students at universities in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Many have orthodox ‘Tat Khalsa’ agendas to assertFootnote 2, whilst others have produced balanced and highly informative theses, particularly those of R. S. Malhi and Amarjit Kaur.Footnote 3 A small number of community histories produced by local Sikhs, notably M. S. Lopo, Saran Singh and Mehervan Singh, have also delivered terrific anecdotal evidence, despite tendencies to historical myopia—common characteristics of many ‘heritage histories’, which celebrate the past (often towards emancipatory, redemptive ends) rather than soberly examine historical developments.Footnote 4 Some Malaysian Sikh scholars such as K. S. Sandhu and M. S. Sidhu have penned brief articles,Footnote 5 and the field is lucky to have the excellent work of V. A. Dusenbery on Sikhs in post-colonial Southeast Asia and his comparisons with diasporic developments in North America.Footnote 6 Despite such contributions, however, there remains a paltry corpus of work on North Indians in the region,Footnote 7 not least as the nature of South Asian migration to the Malayan ‘plantocracy’ has naturally dictated a historiographical bias towards studies of South Indians, particularly Tamils.Footnote 8 This paper therefore attempts to further fill a salient scholarly gap and hopefully induce further probing of neglected aspects of South Asian diaspora in Southeast Asia.
It is hoped that this work can also speak to scholars of South Asia, the South Asian diaspora and Indian Ocean more broadly. To complement the work of Thomas Metcalf, the themes elucidated below (for example related to Sikh martiality or Indian moneylending in Southeast Asia) support the notion of India as a (if not the) seminal nodal point, or perhaps more accurately nodal cluster, in the British Empire and Indian Ocean world.Footnote 9 As Tony Ballantyne cogently suggests, experiences of sojourners added considerable cultural capital to political, economic and social negotiations in India to impact multiplicitous ‘webs of Empire’.
The key elements of these Punjabi ‘webs of Empire’ were the migrant networks. They were actually shaped by Punjabi kinship structures and underpinned by Punjabi religious institutions and religious networks, and were at a fundamental level a crucial response to the economic and cultural pressures of colonialism.Footnote 10
In Sikh contexts, therefore, places such as Singapore, Nairobi, and Vancouver came to supplement Amritsar or Patiala as ‘nodes’ within these ‘webs’. Cultural traffic was dependent both on events in Punjab and developments overseas, justifying Ballantyne's claim that ‘Diaspora’ and ‘Empire’ were fundamentally simultaneous and interdependent.Footnote 11 The ease of mobility of non-European traders, policemen, and labourers across the Indian Ocean has provided ample fodder for cultured histories of cosmopolitanism, as written by Sugata Bose and Engseng Ho.Footnote 12 It is hoped this paper can tessellate well with these broader historiographical endeavours.
This piece is therefore concerned with placing the development of Sikh communities in Singapore not just in national terms, but also in transnational contexts. Nationalist historiographies in Singapore, like many in the region, have been somewhat naturally resistant to transnational methodologies in their analytical schema. Such emphasis was often seemingly incongruent with hegemonic ‘nation-building’ rhetoric—asserted though paramount ideas of ‘community self-help’ and images of interdependent ethnic ‘strands’ within the Singaporean societal ‘rope’. Even many of the Sikh community histories noted above are permeated by this nation-building ethos, although Indian discourses (principally related to spirituality) also run though such narratives. Yet, scrutiny of local issues within transnational nexuses opens up new insights, as sections of this paper demonstrate. In the context of this topic, as Ballantyne insists, cognizance of the formation of religious boundaries in late nineteenth century North India, and the political economy of Punjab, the ‘homeland’ of the Sikhs, is of paramount importance.Footnote 13
Changing conceptualizations of Sikh civic virtue overseas made implicit (and often explicit) reference to Punjab, even if local developments soon created situations radically altered from social life in India and other areas of ‘diaspora’. This was manifested locally in apposite aloofness in Singapore and Malaysia to the rise of Sikh militancy in the 1980s, post-colonial issues with which relatively few scholars of Indian diaspora in Southeast Asia have been concerned. In analysing discursive transfer throughout the British Empire and post-colonial world therefore, a more nuanced picture of continuity and change in various localities is attainable. It is with one such transnational, pan-imperial notion—‘martial race’—that this paper begins.
Sikh economic roles in colonial Singapore
The provenance of Sikhs in Singapore is well documented. The first wave of movement occurred in the wake of the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849) when ‘dangerous’ political figures were transported from Punjab to the Straits Settlements.Footnote 14 More importantly, and as reflected historiographically, early Sikh sojourning occurred thanks to the ‘martial race’ biases of colonial officials steeped in the heritage of the Indian Army.Footnote 15 In 1879 the first band of military Sikhs disembarked in Singapore after successful experiments with such personnel in Hong Kong and Perak. The Malay States Guides (MSG), the elite contingent of the region, was dominated by Jat SikhsFootnote 16 —a cherished Indian ‘martial race’.Footnote 17 Although based in Taiping on the Malay peninsular, the MSG was also responsible for the security of Singapore, as became manifest during the 1915 Singapore Mutiny.Footnote 18 Such physically imposing ‘martial’ troops were perceived to be vital in quelling dissent as Britain dragged Malaya closer under its control in the late nineteenth century.Footnote 19 The Straits Settlement Police Contingent (SSPC) also recruited heavily from Punjab. Chanan Singh Sidhu, a SSPC clerk, recalls writing to the Deputy Commissioner of every Punjabi district in an attempt to raise the profile of SSPC Sikh recruitment.Footnote 20 Sikh policemen on furlough in Punjab were also often encouraged to tempt kin to regional security forces.Footnote 21 Such patronage prompted speculative journeys of many Sikhs from India to Southeast Asia in search of security work. In direct repetition of ‘martial race’ discourses in India, perceptions of impressive Sikh physical bearing—to instil fear amongst Malays and particularly the Chinese—were crucial to recruitment in Singapore.Footnote 22 During the interwar period, Sikh bands such as the Sikh Contingent Riot Squad subdued dissent, for example at Chinese football matches on Robinson Road,Footnote 23 or undertook ‘static’ duties of guarding important government installations.Footnote 24
During such early movement Sikh preoccupation was not with Southeast Asia as a ‘home’; rather, local jobs provided the opportunity for cash accumulation to elevate izzat in natal villages in India.Footnote 25 This fixation was exemplified in early governmental initiatives to ensure advantageous remittance transfer for local Sikh police.Footnote 26 The movement of information and personnel was also marked, utilizing imperial rail and shipping networks from Punjab to Calcutta and onto Rangoon, Penang or Singapore.Footnote 27 From September 1918, the Pardesi Khalsa, only the second Gurmukhi language paper outside Punjab, carried Punjabi socio-religious and political news to Kuala Lumpur and onto Singapore.Footnote 28 This economic and cultural capital served to maintain more tenacious links to Punjab than was the case in some other areas of migration, not least given the relatively close physical proximity of Malaya to India.
‘Drum-and-bugle’ histories of martial Sikhs have, however, eclipsed other arenas of overseas activity. Jats who did not reach stringent recruitment standards often became jagas (watchmen).Footnote 29 Many of these early jagas claimed a certain continuity to ancestral martial professions. Yet, given the sedentary nature of their employment, in contrast with the necessary physicality of Punjabi agriculturalists and sepoy-policemen, this martiality was described as ‘debased’, if acknowledged at all, by local Sikh policemen.Footnote 30 Many Sikh watchmen in Southeast Asia, however, soon entered into a profession with no claim to historical continuity. Moneylending was by no means an occupation in which proud Punjabi Jat Sikhs engaged. Sikh participation in such endeavours thus became notably morally loaded, especially when lenders began to amass wealth beyond the grasp of Sikhs engaged in more ‘traditional’ professions, such as tradition was defined over time. In Northern and Western India the niche was dominated by Hindu banias, lambasted, like lenders across the Empire, for parasitical behaviour.Footnote 31 The outstanding work of M. L. Darling on rural Punjabi debt even paid testament to such British moralism on indebtedness, informed by metropolitan images of the debtors’ prison as exemplified in Dickens’ Little Dorrit.Footnote 32 The 1900 Punjab Alienation of Land Act was indeed specifically created to prohibit gazetted ‘non-agricultural tribes’ from acquiring land, which primarily meant thwarting lenders from obtaining land by default.Footnote 33 Its aim was to minimize discord amongst loyalist Punjabi Jat agriculturalists who formed a high proportion of the Indian Army. Such discourses were replicated and manifested throughout the Empire.
Chanan Singh Bal estimated that 90 per cent of Singapore's Sikhs before World War II worked as watchmen, of whom about 80 per cent were moneylenders.Footnote 34 The police, doctrinally forbidden from lending, lambasted jaga ‘usurers’. While arguments rhetorically revolved around deviation from traditional systems of virtue, it is likely that a different rationale also applied. Sikh livelihoods in martial and clerical service depended on British perceptions of unimpeachable loyalty. It was thought that moneylenders ‘could tell lies at any time’Footnote 35 and jeopardized the accumulated trust on which Sikhs relied for their privileged position in the local economy. This moral position on Sikh civic virtue changed over time away from Punjab. By the 1930s, as more Sikhs arrived in the unsuccessful search for police work they ‘trickled down’ into jaga lifestyles, in which lending was the quickest route to wealth and elevated izzat. Lending therefore became gradually acceptable. Sikh and colonial debates evolved from the moral viability of the profession itself to its ‘abuse’.Footnote 36
It was the Chettiars, however, who were the prime lenders of Southeast Asia.Footnote 37 They engaged in larger, more formalized ventures much to the chagrin of colonial officials.Footnote 38 Anecdotal evidence complements gleanings from the archives. Common jokes, for instance, played on Chettiar obesity—that they would eat voraciously until they could consume no more, despite lack of hunger.Footnote 39 This alluded to their financial success, represented, as so often in societies where food supply was uncertain, in the idiom of the belly. Perceived greed was exacerbated by the sedentary nature of Chettiar and jaga Sikh employment, relative to the physical labour of others. There were also striking discursive parallels with the Jews of Europe, whose avarice was supposedly apparent in Sikh moneylending ‘Shylocks’.Footnote 40 The perceived exploitation by lenders in Malay society was at times expressed in socio-sexual terms. Sikh jagas generally lived without women before the 1930s–1940s largely because most could not afford to bring wives from India and ‘out-marriage’ was cultural anathema. Consequently, some unfairly acquired a reputation for sodomy and even pederasty.Footnote 41
Writing on Sikhs in Southeast Asia has, moreover, tended to neglect an even wider range of dynamic economic activities. Some early Sikh sojourners, like a few North Indians from UP, ran small labour-intensive dairy and carting enterprises in Bukit Timah and Anson Roads in Singapore. Seva Singh's father lived in ‘Bullock Street’ from 1892, so-called because of the many resident ‘bullock families’.Footnote 42 Gradually these Indians were ejected from the urban centre as demographic growth and sanitation concerns prohibited the presence of cattle in town.Footnote 43 As in post-Partition Delhi and colonial Calcutta, numerous Sikhs (especially jagas) also moved with the technological times, running taxis for Europeans around the exclusive Raffles and Adelphi hotels.Footnote 44 There was, furthermore, a fairly sizeable Sikh business community, which remains in Singapore today. Pioneered by the famous trading house Gian Singh & Co., these entrepreneurs catered largely for European luxury needs, although they faced stiff competition in mobile and astute Sindhis.Footnote 45 Whilst Sikh shops tended to carry a wide range of high-price goods, there was some observable specialization. For example, while Aroras concentrated on textiles by and large, some Khatris focused on the sporting goods niche in shops on High Street, Newbridge Road and Colman Street.Footnote 46 Several of these Khatri business families hailed from Sialkot, possibly the most famous sporting goods town in India. The nature of this Sikh business, and Sikh society generally, was to be conspicuously altered by Partition. Numerous mercantile west Punjabis, who had little desire to settle in India when the riches of Southeast Asia had been related by already resident Punjabis, migrated to Singapore around Partition.Footnote 47 Finally, Singaporean Sikh informants have not been shy to boast about generational social mobility into ‘white collar’ professions, a result of parental emphasis (especially amongst jagas) on English education, the best tool of accumulation in the new socio-economic context. Despite Jat origins, loss of opportunities in more ‘traditional’ jobs demanded the acquisition of new skills whose boons eclipsed lamentation at the loss of ancestral expertise. As will be seen, it is this professional class which came to dominate Sikh community developments in post-colonial Singapore.
In response to such growing wealth, increasing numbers of Sikhs weakened their emotional ties with India, although until the 1940s there was profound attachment to ‘home’—a characteristic which continued in spiritual, if not socio-political, senses from the 1950s. Like most early South Asian migrant communities, neophyte Sikh migration was almost exclusively male in nature. Bringing families to alien cultural environments was undertaken only if residence was long or permanent.Footnote 48 In 1921 the male Sikh population of Singapore was 881, whilst females numbered only 141.Footnote 49 By 1931 the 2,387 males were joined by only 601 females.Footnote 50 By the late 1940s, however, more Sikhs were evidently committing to Singapore. It is true that many of Singapore's Sikhs chose repatriation to independent India in 1947, yet it soon became clear that the relative penury of Punjab simply did not provide the standards of living to which they were accustomed, although some informants hinted that returnees were not embraced by brethren who were envious of their wealth.Footnote 51 Many families chose to return to Singapore permanently.Footnote 52 Despite such discontent, however, the relatively close physical links of Southeast Asia to India, and similar Jat dominance of Sikh communities in the two regions, assured cultural and economic links to Punjab of greater longevity than was apparent in other areas of ‘diaspora’—East Africa especially. There, colonial economic needs facilitated the passage of RamgarhiaFootnote 53 artisans who found themselves in a supposedly inferior position to Jats in Punjab's ‘caste hierarchy’, yet more successful in local economic contexts. Many therefore chose to make Africa a permanent home at an earlier stage, although, of course, they maintained spiritual links to Punjab.Footnote 54
Colonial inter-ethnic relations and the Sikhs in Singapore
This underemphasized economic diversity of Sikh experience had repercussions within the ethos of ethnic pluralism in colonial Malaya. It is to these factors that the paper will briefly turn in an attempt once again to acknowledge a greater complexity of South Asian communities than has often been posited. In order to minimize complicity, particularly with Chinese criminals, Sikh police were kept deliberately aloof from local populations in Singapore. Permission was required for even a few hours leave outside the barracks. Informal surveillance was maintained through the obligatory leave uniform, which encouraged distance from local populations who felt uncomfortable close to such conspicuous symbols of colonial order.Footnote 55 Relations between Sikh police and Chinese were distant, even tense at times, as demonstrated during the 1912 ‘Tauchung’ riots in Kuala Lumpur. Tales of haughty Sikh police bullies appeared in Singapore and throughout East Asia.Footnote 56 Such tales were doubtless accurate at times, although became apocryphal cliché over time. Chinese mothers frightened recalcitrant children with the threat that bad behaviour would result in a visit from the Bengali Kwai.Footnote 57 Indeed, Sino-Sikh relations in Singapore reached a short-lived nadir in the immediate wake of the Occupation and a Chinese ‘uprising’ around Chinatown and Boat Quay. Numerous Sikhs, especially jagas who worked in the locality, were killed in revenge for apparent Sikh collaboration with the murderous Japanese.Footnote 58 Chinese relations with Sikh merchants were somewhat better, if not convivial. During 1937, for example, some Sikh textile traders boycotted Japanese products to demonstrate goodwill towards local Chinese customers in the light of the Sino-Japanese War. Social aloofness was naturally exacerbated by linguistic differences. Not many Sikhs picked up much Hokkien or Cantonese,Footnote 59 whilst few Chinese spoke Indian languages or much English.
Social relations with Malays were again distant, especially considering religious difference. Malays dealt with Sikh lenders principally, which tended to preclude social cordiality. With the exception of the Indian National Army/Indian Independence Leagues period, particularly under the talismanic Subhas Chandra Bose, Sikh association with other South Asians did not display the oft-lauded national solidarity of early post-colonial Indian histioriography, despite the presence of the Malayan Indian Congress. Indeed, Punjabis were culturally and linguistically far removed from the Tamil majority. The colonial period in fact witnessed various Indian groups directly competing for imperial patronage, as reflected in the copious official correspondence that dominates extant archival deposits in Southeast Asia. A minor exception to this lack of conviviality concerned the Sindhis, who also patronized Sikh temples (gurdwaras).Footnote 60 The highest rate of Sikh exogamy, although slender, was with Hindu SindhisFootnote 61, although involved Khatris or Aroras rather than Jats who more assiduously propagated rhetoric of religious and ‘ethnic’ purity.
Historically, British anecdotes were constantly peppered with exclamations of Sikh fidelity. Such impressions were smashed by Sikh collaboration with the Japanese in the Indian National Army. A certain false imperial paranoia about the Sikh-dominated nature of such collaboration developed. This was exacerbated by exaggerated reports of the brutality of Sikh guards towards European Prisoners of War in Changi.Footnote 62 The result of this ‘betrayal’, which ignored the survivalist imperative of collaboration,Footnote 63 was the loss of the Sikh niche in the Straits Settlement Police Contingent,Footnote 64 much as World War I had called into question the constancy of the Malay States Guides, which was disbanded in 1919. The British, as mentioned, also had negative impressions of jaga-lenders, a product of moral imperial discourses on ‘native’ debt. Yet, despite such concerns, most Sikhs utilized colonial opportunities to great effect. Many were quite familiar with colonial legal bureaucracy, the English language and dealing with white officials, based on Indian experience and the nature of their participation in the local economy. They were therefore able to utilize courts with greater frequency than other ethnic groups and even developed a reputation of litigiousness, a product of their very proximity to colonial rule. This familiarity with the idioms of official liaison across the Empire also facilitated the establishment of a plethora of Sikh associations in Malaya, organizations to which administrators were forced to acquiesce legally, even if they lamented the degree of fission in such a seemingly small and homogenous ‘community’.
The emergence of the Sikh public sphere in Singapore
To analyse Sikh cultural formation in ‘diaspora’ it is prudent to observe the proliferation and development of socio-religious associations. Participation in such bodies serviced the emotional and religious needs of individuals and the corporate group, however it was defined. Furthermore, they have left the weightiest documentary legacies. Sikh associational formation in Southeast Asia demonstrated characteristics far removed from India. This was fundamentally related to the composition of the Sikh population. In Punjab, Jats, the primary soldier-agriculturalists of the region, dominated the Sikh Panth (community of believers). In 1881, they formed around 66 per cent of the ‘Khalsa’ population.Footnote 65 The martial origins of Southeast Asia's Sikhs assured an even greater Jat proportion. In Punjab, assertions of difference were frequently founded on ‘caste’, particularly given Jat dominance of the Army and land, but large, local non-Jat populations. In larger Malayan towns, in contrast, ‘regionalism’ became a divisive factor in the early associations and local Gurmukhi Press that were patronized almost exclusively by Jats.Footnote 66
For colonial recruitment purposes, and in the pre-colonial ‘Islamic invasion’ period, the Punjab was divided into two zones by the Sutlej River. Trans-Sutlej Punjab was known as the ‘Majha’, whilst cis-Sutlej districts formed the ‘Malwa’ domain.Footnote 67 A third sector was also identified—the (Jullundur) Doaba. Majhail and Malwai Jats each acquired positive military stereotypes, which secured work in India and abroad. Such divisions, somewhat apparent in Punjab, assumed greater significance in the Jat-dominated urban communities of Southeast Asia. Arguments were posited that such rifts were reified by British recruitment and barracking policies in Malaya,Footnote 68 although such fission soon developed its own momentum.
Associational development in Singapore came somewhat later than in the Malayan States, due to the tighter control placed on this premier regional entrepôt. As such, the first non-temple Sikh institution in Singapore was not a religious diwan, rather the 1915 Government Sikh Advisory Board (SAB). In 1917 the British insisted that, under the 1905 Muhammedhan and Hindu Endowments Ordinance (MHEO), the Central Sikh Temple (CST), Queen Street, be placed under SAB jurisdiction. It was not until 1937, after copious remonstrance, that the CST re-obtained its own independent trustees, who were divided equally amongst Malwais, Majhails and Doabis as decreed in the Queen St. Gurdwara Ordinance.Footnote 69 Another pan-Sikh organization was established in 1918, the Siri Guru Singh Sabha (SGSS), registered not under the MHEO, but the Registrar of Societies and hence somewhat less directly in the imperial gaze. By 1924 nascent rivalries, triggered by financial scandal, erupted when disgruntled Malwais broke away from the Mahjail dominated SGSS and CST to form the Khalsa Dharmak Diwan. Not to be left behind in the bid for autonomy, the Doabi's Pardesi Khalsa Dharmak Diwan was founded in 1927. ‘The fact that these three religious organizations were originally located so close to each other, within a one mile radius of Dhoby Ghaut and Selegie Roads, clearly indicates that these regional-based organizations were not set up to serve the needs of a homogeneous Sikh community’.Footnote 70 The plethora of associated gurdwaras was thus not a matter of residential convenience.Footnote 71 The recreational and cultural Singapore Khalsa Association, founded in 1930, was not spared regional discord either.Footnote 72 Even the Singapore Sikh Partinidh Sabha, specifically established in 1947 to combat regionalism, could not break the deadlock.Footnote 73 Such fissures moved far beyond the amorphous regional divisions of Punjabi society and represented a unique characteristic of Southeast Asian Sikh society.
Further division centred on caste, a more familiar comparison with India, although again schism was exacerbated within new urban contexts. Retrospective testimonies stress the inherent Sikh aversion to caste prejudice. There were movements in Punjab against untouchablity,Footnote 74 but segregation did continue in many villages.Footnote 75 Mehervan Singh, an outspoken informant on Singaporean Sikh matters, contradicted the tone of most community assertions in maintaining that caste division did continue in Singapore to an extent, especially as Mazbhi SikhsFootnote 76 were segregated in some gurdwaras. Only in 1931 did the Pardesi Khalsa Dharmak Diwan enforce the eradication of restrictions, allowing Mazbhis to prepare langar (food served in gurdwara). Under coercion, and even pressure from the Akalis in Amritsar, other Sabhas followed suit.Footnote 77 The roots of division in new diasporic contexts had, however, been formed. In 1931, a group of Mazbhis withdrew from the CST and established the first caste-based Sikh institution in Singapore, the Khalsa Jiwan Sudhar Sabha. The aforementioned influx of Khatri and Arora ‘business’ Sikhs from west Punjab and Bangkok after 1947 added to the surfeit of associations. They baulked at Jat leadership and factionalism; indeed, as in Punjab, many did not desire socialization with Jats at all.Footnote 78 Such animosity was marked by a series of insidious mutual stereotypes. In 1951, Arora and Khatri Sikhs formed the Siri Guru Nanak Satsang Sabha.Footnote 79 They arranged tours of high-quality ragis (spiritual musicians), the cheap distribution of religious music and became some of the most philanthropic local Sikhs, both within their communities and Singapore as a whole.Footnote 80 It has therefore been argued that division among Sikh diasporic communities was not as dysfunctional as has been assumed in that competition stimulated institutional achievement.Footnote 81 Other local Sikhs do not concur.Footnote 82
A smaller number of Singapore's Sikhs showed allegiance to various ‘sects’ such as the Namdharis. In the 1970s a few wealthy Aroras joined the Nildharis or ‘Bluebelts’. They were shunned over their ‘heretical’ belief in a living Guru, rather than the Guru Granth Sahib (holy scripture) as the ultimate authority on Sikh religious life. The Bluebelts publicly followed the charismatic Baba Harnam Singh, who visited Singapore several times. Their social exclusivity, deviation from Khalsa Sikhism and mystical worship upset some local Sikhs.Footnote 83 The Nildharis refused to associate with those outside the clique, preferring intra-group socialization with Bluebelts in Malaysia and Thailand instead of more localized Sikh communities. Their sangat (congregation) was nonetheless tiny. Most Jats tended to regard this ‘cult’ with ridicule rather than in anger, believing it to be another method for Aroras to advertise themselves for material gain, and Harnam as a charlatan who patronized only the rich.Footnote 84
Another body provided a more orthodox intellectual link to Punjab. In 1939 Bhag Singh founded the Sikh Missionary Society Malaya (SMSM).Footnote 85 The SMSM employed renowned scholars such as Ganda Singh and Teja Singh of Khalsa College (Amritsar), academics who had written extensively for the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). The SMSM focused on producing didactic booklets extolling the virtues of the Gurus and Khalsa Sikhism. Nine such primers had been published by 1948. Later tracts mused on contemporary political affairs and highlighted the utility of Sikh ‘tradition’ in the modern world.Footnote 86 Between 1946 and 1965 over 100,000 booklets were published in Gurmukhi, English, and even Tamil and Mandarin.Footnote 87 From 1947 the society even provided the premises and funds for the Khalsa English School.Footnote 88 Punjabi lessons and gurbani (rentals of Guru Granth Sahib) competitions were organized and a library of English and Punjabi books established. Books on Sikhism were also presented to the University of Singapore and National Library. The SMSM, soon suffered from familiar regional conflict, notably after the death of the talismanic Bhag Singh in 1960—it soon crumbled.Footnote 89 The SMSM did, nevertheless, instil a sense of pride in Punjabi education and Khalsa Sikhism with the aim of recapturing the religiosity of Sikh youths, many of whom had ‘strayed’ in their new cultural space. It was a bid continued with zest from the early 1980s.
Community unification and the bid for youth
The effects of the ‘reformist’ intellectual landscape of late nineteenth century North India, and the victory of the ‘Tat Khalsa’ on the crystallization of Sikh identity have been well scrutinized.Footnote 90Pahul (baptism) and observance of Khalsa Sikhism, particularly the kesh signifier, were obligatory on enlistment into the SSPC just as in the Indian Army. Increasingly, however, the loss of the panj kakar Footnote 91 and schism from ‘tradition’, such as it was statically defined, worried Singapore's Sikhs, like communities around the globe. Although the erosion of Khalsa identity commenced during the colonial period, in independent Singapore this became perceived as the most profound problem for the Sikh ‘community’ by far. Threats to precious Sikh separateness and the seduction of youth by ‘western’ individualistic intellectual paradigms warranted unprecedented action. Thus, from the early 1980s, and in contrast to historical division, a profound coming together of the Sikh community occurred. Unity placed Sikhs in a superior bargaining position within the ideology of post-colonial Singapore, a discursive ethos that Sikhs utilized to great effect.
The first major organization to become proactive in soldering youth to religious heritage was the Sikh Sewaks Singapore, founded in 1978. Its primary method was running samelans, which began in 1982.Footnote 92 Many younger English-educated religious leaders, born in Singapore, believed that gurdwaras were the preserve of older generations, whose Punjabi roots perpetuated the factionalism that could not address the grave problems of modern identity. The Sewaks championed a renaissance in Khalsa observance and strict obedience to Rehat Maryada.Footnote 93 Early samelans even utilized transnational religious networks, inviting ‘3HO’ preachers from North America, including many gora (western) converts.Footnote 94 Under this influence some youngsters began to ape the garb and manners of 3HO adherents, which resulted in tension. The ‘holier than thou’ attitude of the zealous Sewaks (for example on the uses of the CST langar hall) upset some. Consequently, in 1985, the Sewaks was asked to leave its CST base. Despite such acrimony the Sewaks genuinely attempted to inspire religious revivalism within Singapore's Sikh community, an endeavour which was universally welcomed, even if some of its results were contested. They also brought public attention to the Sikhs. The Sewaks was, for instance, the first organization to publicly advertise the Baisakhi festival—through a full-page advertisement in the Straits Times.Footnote 95
Debate on religious adherence continued. In early 1981 the Government passed the Central Sikh Gurdwara Board Act to regulate Sikh activities. In August 1981 the Sikh Advisory Board (SAB) met to discuss the nomination of 50 individuals for inclusion on the official CST Board. The resultant machinations reflected a diversity of opinion on religious observance. The SAB Chairman remarked that Sikhs who tied turbans and sported beards were eligible for service, although even this deference to keshdhari identity provoked a backlash; particularly from the Khatri and Arora dominated Sri Guru Nanak Satsang Sabha (SGNNS), who complained that this allowed those who ‘trimmed’ beards to represent the Sikhs. Generally, it seems that acceptable levels of departure from Khalsa identity tolerated within various gurdwaras were arbitrated by individual and changing management committees of these temples. The CST was tolerant of mona (shaven) Sikhs, even providing headscarves for entry into the Darbar Sahib. In the 1980s–1990s the SGNNS was somewhat more unmoving. Patits (apostates) were not permitted for election to the management committee, prohibited from preaching and not recommended for SGNNS representation on the SAB. Marriage to Hindus in their temple was forbidden.Footnote 96 Such difference related largely to the specificities of temple attendance. A strict Khalsa identity distinguished Sikhs from Sindhi traders who also patronized the SGNNS Gurdwara Katung. Moreover, in the competitive atmosphere of Singaporean Sikh society, in which the Khatri/Arora minority was aloof from Jats, even into the 1990s, strict obedience to religious ‘orthodoxy’ could become a barometer of worth. One might mutate Srinivas’ concept of ‘Sanskritization’ in terming this competitive religious observance ‘Guruization’—an attempt to assert superiority through relative adherence to the dictates of Guru Gobind Singh. The small size of Arora and Khatri communities, and late arrival as family units, also eased the ability to insulate youngsters from nefarious external influence and bind them within the community panopticon. Jat socio-religious control also greatly relied on family pressure, which had broken down to a greater extent, given more long-standing local participation and hence inter-generational independence.Footnote 97
By 1987 the CST Board gained its independence from the Ministry of Community Development, having agreed to involve itself only in religious matters, rather than political agitation—Singaporean or Indian in genesis.Footnote 98Gurdwaras had, however, lost their pre-eminent position as determiners of local Sikh identity. The ‘loss’ of youth demanded solidarity, which the multiplicity of temples could not address. There was instead a resurrection in the importance of the SAB, which became viewed as an umbrella organization for all Sikh-state negotiation.Footnote 99 It provided both a conduit of dialogue between Sikh leaders and the state, as well as an institutionalized device for Government supervision. The SAB was obliged to acknowledge regional and caste differences, and therefore claimed universal representation, although the autonomously registered CST and Silat Road Temple disagreed with this interpretation, despite occasionally utilizing the SAB to promote their own interests. The SAB scored some successes, and key to these victories was the appearance of unity in diversity which marked the rhetoric of the Singaporean state. In 1984 the SAB successfully lobbied for Sikh Studies to be included in secondary school religious studies programmes and worked with the Ministry of Education on syllabuses and textbooks. This accomplishment was not accompanied by practical triumph, as few Sikh teenagers took the subject, perhaps reflecting their new priorities.Footnote 100 The SAB was seminal in assuring Punjabi was included as a ‘second language’ in schools and in securing access to government statistics (for example, numbers of exogamous marriages, drug users, and divorces) with a view to addressing these community ‘problems’. The Government committed itself to these Sikh, and ‘national’, goals of improvement.Footnote 101
SAB effectiveness was buttressed in 1987 when a body of professionals under the leadership of Bhajan SinghFootnote 102 allied themselves to the Board. They highlighted paramount ‘community’ issues of youth delinquency, the base cause of which was identified as departure from cultural origins. As in Malaysia, and other regions of diaspora, ignorance of Punjabi was deemed to be the crux of the matter in creating cultural anomie.Footnote 103 English-educated youths failed to understand gianis (learned, spiritual leader) and kirtanis (singer, usually in groups, of devotional songs) in temples and therefore became alienated from religious life. For many, Punjabi was a spoken language in the household. As in other regions of diaspora, few Singapore-born Sikhs were conversant with Gurmukhi, which prohibited reading the Guru Granth Sahib. These issues were aggravated by the socio-economic conditions of Singapore. Few youngsters desired to become religious leaders, given the relatively low remuneratory returns and lack of social kudos in a non-Punjabi environment.Footnote 104Gianis had to be imported from India. Most were Punjabi monoglots who lacked the ability to communicate with much of the sangat, whose knowledge of gurbani resultantly suffered. There was also a high turnover of these teachers, a complaint of many Sikhs in Southeast Asia today.Footnote 105 Restrictive immigration policies exacerbated the predicament. Indian gianis were rarely permitted to bring families to Singapore on work permits, which discouraged the migration of the most talented. Accordingly, some Sikhs called for English-medium sermons and even translations of the Guru Granth Sahib to attract the youth to temples.Footnote 106 Such ideas were met with scepticism by many.
A culmination of these ‘self-help’ efforts occurred towards the end of the decade. In March 1989 all Singaporean Sikh Institutions cooperated to organize a seminar to study the cultural alienation of Sikh youth. By December 1989 the 15-member Singapore Sikh Resource Panel was created to mobilize professional support for action. Consequently, in 1990, the National Punjabi Programme and Singapore Sikh Education Foundation (SSEF) were established.Footnote 107 The obsession with language as a form of ‘cultural ballast’ was reflected in these measures. The SSEF funded the largest non-Tamil Indian education programme in Singapore in the early 1990s, and even attempted to replace textbooks produced in Punjab with books that reflected Singaporean conditions. Moreover, a ‘Council of Elders’ was inaugurated in 1992, supplemented by a large ‘International Conference-cum-Exhibition on Punjabi Heritage’, which attracted Punjabi and western academics, plus local Sikh leaders and scholars.Footnote 108 All such measures were designed to audit and disaggregate cultural schism, and hence solder Sikh youth to their ‘roots’ through education.Footnote 109
The relative success of Sikh endeavours from the 1980s sprung from their parity with nationalist discourses of ‘self-help’ and ‘Asian values’.Footnote 110 Sikhs played within the rules of the local discursive space in asserting the paramount importance of ancestral ‘Asian values’ to combat the apparent dangers of ‘westernization’. Exaggerated problems of drug abuse, prostitution and crime were attributed to the loss of ‘tradition’, which corresponded to ‘national’ concerns about the demise of ‘heritage’. These points of recognition were translated into Sikh ‘model minority’ status.Footnote 111 That the new generation of leaders was uninterested in ‘foreign’ politico-religious movements (particularly for Khalistan) further ingratiated upon them a state which enforced local loyalty and ethnic harmony. It might be argued that Sikh leaders tactically used this discursive similitude as a tool of acquisition. The sheer volume of varied written and oral assertions of commitment to goals echoing governmental rhetoric might contradict this conclusion. The Sikhs had flourished in colonial and post-colonial Singapore and had no reason not to place their allegiance with Lee Kuan Yew and the People's Action Party (PAP).
Sikhs and the Singaporean state
In Malaysia, protectionist or ‘equalizing’ policies of bumiputera (ethnic Malay) favouritism seemed to somewhat alienate Chinese and Indians from state association, despite the existence of the Barisan Nasional (multi-ethnic ruling ‘National Front’ coalition). In August 1983, the Malaysian Consultative Council of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism was established by non-Muslim representatives on the National Unity Board. It seemed, however, to be quite impotent, even cosmetic, in the public space. Activities were limited to press releases and seminars on the menace of ‘Islamicization’ of non-Muslims, rather than pro-active state negotiation.Footnote 112 Certainly the Sikh minority remained remote from the council and hence lacked state access. Although Sikhs thrived in the ethnic mosaic of ‘corporatist’ Singapore, in which the Government was crucial in defining ethnic identity (and its boons), adopting reductionist categories in an attempt to foster unity.Footnote 113 In contrast to the ‘melting pot’ analogies of the west (in which distinctive identities were lost), in reifying ethnicity within a Singaporean context, the state hoped to eliminate appeals to ‘homelands’. Under such definitions Sikhs in fact became undifferentiated within the Tamil-majority Indian ‘race’. The state was of course aware of its taxonomic inaccuracy, but rather than altering racial schema wholesale, it incorporated ‘religious’ and ‘cultural’ communities within the Indian block. The state's social institutional architecture thus ‘domesticated’ difference and legitimated a sense of separate, but interdependent, racial ‘strands’ within the Singaporean ‘rope’.Footnote 114 Even intra-Sikh difference was incorporated into the petty bureaucracy. The Government-sponsored SAB and autonomous CST Board required representation from all ‘caste’, ‘regional’ and other Sikh institutions.
English became the dominant public language (given its international and local utility as a lingua franca), whilst under the ‘two-language’ policy, racial ‘mother tongues’ provided a tool to combat the ‘westernization’ that might result from English-medium education. This was problematic for North Indians who were ‘forced’ to utilize the language of the Indian majority—Tamil—despite the fact that it was an irrelevance to their lives. After SAB and other Sikh lobbying, the Government acquiesced to Punjabi as a second language in schools and for ‘Sikh’ to be used on ‘race’ sections of national identity cards. Arguments posited by Sikh leaders were once again tactically ‘Singaporean’. Without Punjabi, Sikh youth would be estranged from ‘Asian’ heritage and hence ‘westernized’. Recalcitrance would be the logical result. Such rhetorical parity with the state thus proved more effective in resistance to ‘Tamilization’ than open contention.
The election of Davinder Singh as MP (Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency) for PAP under the Group Representation Constituencies symbolically demonstrated the state's willingness to co-opt Sikhs into the political sphere.Footnote 115 Several Cabinet Ministers, including Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, were sycophantically entertained in an effort to exhibit the allied interests of Sikhs and the nation, and to provide publicity for Sikhism. Politicians therefore praised the ‘disproportionate’ Sikh role in nation-building and educational advancement.Footnote 116 Indeed, Lee Kuan Yew himself expressed his own views on Sikh ‘cultural ballast’ and its congruence with Singaporean identity.
I had a friend who was a Sikh. He threw his past away: he shaved his beard: he threw away his turban: he had a haircut. No harm at all. But something happened to him and in next to no time he was doing foolish things. He lost his anchorage. You know, it gets very difficult for a ship without an anchor in a harbour when it gets stormy.Footnote 117
Political zeitgeist dictated that distinct minority status was the best means of maximal net advantage, yet most Sikhs also exploited ‘Singaporean’ identity as a wider cultural tradition of its own. In short, Sikhs, like all groups, had multiple and shifting situational identities, dependent on the recipient audience to which the self-identification was asserted. Almost all Singaporean Sikhs lacked a ‘myth of return’. Links to India became increasingly nebulous (based largely on holy sites), notwithstanding the presence of some kin in Punjab. Despite calls for distinctiveness, however, some willingness to be regarded as ‘Indian’ was also expressed, particularly by younger Sikhs. A 1994 survey revealed that 66 per cent of Sikhs under 50 years’ old would define themselves as ‘Indian’.Footnote 118 The inception, in August 1991, of the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) to address educational and socio-economic issues included Sikh participants. This complicated the negotiating framework of the SAB, who dealt with SINDA as well as directly with the state. Sikh distinctiveness was, nonetheless, maintained in state negotiation through SINDA. At times these relationships were paradoxical and contested, but the lack of Sikh resistance to SINDA again demonstrated a commitment to work within national institutions of self-help. Such allegiance partially stymied the efforts of activists to garner local support for Sikh secessionism in India in the 1980s.
Punjabi political movements in Singapore
Most Sikhs became proud of their Singaporean citizenship, especially during secession from Malaysia and Indonesian Konfrontasi.Footnote 119 Identity is, of course, context-bound and during episodes of specific flux in Punjab some Singaporean Sikhs did become more markedly focused on Indian affairs, even if few actually returned to India to aid particular causes. Throughout the aftermath of Partition, numerous Sikh ‘Relief Funds’ sprang up all over Malaya to aid impoverished brethren who had been forced to migrate.Footnote 120 During Punjabi Suba machinations in India, limited agitation occurred in Southeast Asia. This was crystallized by the visit of Master Tara Singh, who raised considerable funds. On 12 June 1960, a convention was held at the Main Doaba Sikh Temple in Kuala Lumpur on Sikh demands in India. An ‘underground’ Sikh newspaper, Samaj, was published in Singapore, which carried articles in Hindi, Urdu, Gurmukhi and English, sympathetic to the quest for a Punjabi-speaking state.Footnote 121
Such protestations paled into insignificance compared with outbursts of fury following the events of 1984 in Amritsar and Delhi. The global scope of protest, especially in the western world, to the storming of the Golden Temple and its aftermath has been well covered.Footnote 122 Fears of Hindu ‘ethnocracy’ in India, the rise of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, ‘Operation Bluestar’ in June 1984, and the aftermath of the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards created notable global Sikh solidarity. Such factors, aided by new communicative technologies, raised the bar of expectation for ‘Khalistan’ (a sovereign Sikh homeland), the genesis of which was Indian, but the agitation for which was highly diasporic (especially in North America and Britain).
The elevation of global ‘ethnic’ consciousness in the 1980s has been one of the most remarkable processes in Sikh history since 1947, exemplified in the resurgence of shahid (martyr) images, initially forged in the late sixteenth-century.Footnote 123 Space precludes a detailed discussion of Sikh ethnicity but, in short, one should echo the conclusions of McLeod and Oberoi, who argued (with different reference points) that the crystallization of modern Sikh identity occurred not under Guru Nanak, but rather from a later shared heritage.Footnote 124 Mughal ‘oppression’ from the period of Guru Arjan forged a sense of militant unity that culminated with Guru Gobind Singh and, to a lesser extent in hagiographical Sikh historiography, Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Nineteenth century religious redefinition under ‘Tat Khalsa’ influence, incorporation into the colonial Punjabi economy and heavy Sikh recruitment into the Indian Army were then crucial in buttressing this sense of Sikh separateness, although based on indigenous discourses within a colonial milieu, rather than primarily due to colonial agency.Footnote 125 One might therefore posit a ‘cultural’ definition of Sikhs, notably based on a shared history of resistance rather than on explicitly ‘ethnic’ foundations within Punjabi society. What did develop nevertheless were essentialist impressions within the ‘community’ and from outside. These stereotypes, chiefly related to ‘hypermasculinity’, anchored social representations relative to outsiders. Ethnocentrism was an inevitable consequence.Footnote 126 At no point was this more apparent than in 1984, when numerous heterogeneous strands of Indian and diasporic Sikh communities came together to form a grander imagined community.
A number of zealous young Singaporean Sikhs responded to global anger, although some older Sikhs also voiced more restrained grievances. One elder cited a ‘systematic hatred’ of Sikhs by ‘fanatical Hindu politicians’, particularly Bhajan Lal, Chief Minister of Haryana.Footnote 127 Others questioned casualty figures quoted in the Singaporean Press as second-hand lies from conspiratorial Hindu-dominated Indian papers.Footnote 128 There was feeling that Indira Gandhi was deliberately trying to polarize Punjab, disturbing the natural communal harmony many believed to be the status quo.Footnote 129 Stories of Sikh drug and weapons smuggling were slanderous lies for many.Footnote 130 Mehervan Singh vocalized a global Sikh sentiment in asking ‘How many Udham Singh's were created by the Bluestar and the genocide massacres in India?’Footnote 131
In Singapore a certain ‘re-traditionalization’ occurred in the wake of events in Amritsar and anti-Sikh violence in Delhi. This should not be considered as synonymous with the efforts of Singaporean Sikh leaders described above, who were aloof from Khalistani politics, but local Sikh sentiments of oppression in India did feed off the assertions of distinctiveness of Bhajan Singh's group. One local response was the impetus for Baisakhi to come to prominence over Diwali, which had been celebrated by Sikhs and Hindus together.Footnote 132Diwali celebrations were explicitly banned in Gurdwara Sembawang for instance. Retrospective claims state that this rejection of Diwali was temporary—a ‘mourning period’ for the catastrophe of 1984, like the response to the death of a relative.Footnote 133 It was in fact, like the decrease in local Sikh participation in Thaipusam after 1984, a symbolic means to place distance between Hindus and indignant Sikhs.
The Singaporean Government was explicit that religious matters, particularly foreign agitation, should not enter into local politics to avoid replication of the ethnic violence of 1964 (and 1969 in Malaysia). There were, nevertheless, incidents defying these decrees. Some Sikhs gathered at the Khalsa Dharmak Sabha (KDS) in 1984 and marched in protest to the Indian High Commission. Informants claim that many young mona (shaven) Sikhs participated alongside keshdhari brethren.Footnote 134 A group of irate Hindus later wrote to the Minister for Community Development in protest after an Akhand Path was performed at the KDS in March 1989 to commemorate the assassins of Indira Gandhi.Footnote 135 Harjit Singh Sidhu-Brar even recalls a garlanded picture of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale hanging in the KDS langar hall.Footnote 136 As the event was performed ‘in the name of the whole 15,000 strong Sikh Community of Singapore’, Dula Singh, CST President, was officially questioned but claimed it was the action of only a few.Footnote 137 Four resultant cases of assault on Sikh persons and properties by Hindus were reported. The White Paper on ‘Maintenance of Religious Harmony’ (Cmd. 21 of 1989) was resultantly passed.
Exceptionally, activity took on more direct qualities.
A small local Sikh group has been providing funds and logistics support to militant Sikh separatist groups in India and the UK, which are fighting for an independent Khalistan state. . .It usually raises funds discreetly through personal approaches, but on several occasions made emotional appeals to congregations at Sikh temples for donations.Footnote 138
Such agitation was rare and principally the preserve of younger males. Older Singaporean Sikhs generally abhorred such militancy.Footnote 139 Certainly those who emerged as community leaders shunned Khalistani politics in favour of working within boundaries set by the state. The local politics of recognition indeed socialized Singaporean Sikhs more effectively than almost anywhere in the diaspora. In Canada, as Dusenbery has shown for example, even before the Khalistan movement gained momentum, the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab had lobbied against Sikh participation in the National Organization of Canadians of Indian Origin on a platform of Sikh separateness from other Canadian-Indians. This distance from Canada's state-sanctioned channels of minority association and multiculturalism soon fuelled local sympathy for Khalistan within such bodies as the World Sikh Organization and International Sikh Youth Federation.Footnote 140 By contrast, Sikhs in Singapore gathered requisite reward with governmental limits and, as such, Indian and North American Khalistan agitators found it difficult to illicit profound support there.
Conclusions: re-orientating histories of the Sikh diaspora
This paper has propagated the notion of a highly dynamic minority ‘community’ in Singapore, which, by and large, thrived in the specific conditions of possibility in an adopted home. Sikhs naturally drew on the norms of Punjabi society, often more stringently in times of flux; but unique changes occurred within new local contexts. The basis of Sikh society in urban Singapore quickly expanded beyond ‘martial’ foundations. As described, this altered the social stratification as defined in rural Punjab. Specific divisions of ‘region’ and ‘caste’ that emerged are still extant today, but have dissipated to some extent among younger generations. Attitudes to Sikhs were varied within wider society. There were paradoxical British colonial attitudes. Sikh police-sepoys were viewed as some of the most loyal imperial subjects, certainly until the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, altered diasporic circumstances, and the resultant proliferation of Sikh moneylenders and petitioners to the state, exacerbated global impressions of the strong-willed, litigious Sikh, a potent function of cherished colonial perceptions of Sikh hypermasculinity. Colonial policies encouraging inter-ethnic aloofness in plural society also retarded local engagement in good measure, although many Sikh sojourners before the 1940s were themselves unwilling to make the cultural leap to entwine their lives with local Chinese and Malays. Some Sikhs in Kelantan on the Malay peninsular did take Siamese ‘wives’, but this was exceptional.Footnote 141 This social distance led to false impressions of Sikhs, which many have been pre-occupied with correcting ever since.Footnote 142
Sikh connections between Singapore and other arenas of diaspora were naturally less apparent than their connections to India within Ballantyne's ‘webs of Empire’. There was limited Sikh labour movement from Southeast Asia to North America,Footnote 143 as infamously exemplified by the Komagata Maru debacle, which would charge the political atmosphere on which Ghadrite agitators fed during the Great War and beyond.Footnote 144 Travelling charismatic leaders, sants (person of great holiness and virtue) and kirtani groups also provided informal transoceanic information conduits between areas of migration. The renowned Sikh educationalist, Takhat Singh, for example, travelled to Malaya in the 1930s to collect money for his Kanya Maha Vidyala in Ferozepore. His cause was taken up personally by the Maharaja of Nabha, who placed advertisements in the Malayan press encouraging donations. Takhat met numerous local Sikhs, but could not raise the desired funds.Footnote 145 He soon moved onto Kenya, bringing news of Malayan Sikhs to East African Sikh communities with few links to Southeast Asia. His school produced a monthly newspaper, Punjab Behn, which described his travels and the various overseas Sikh communities he encountered.Footnote 146 Scholarly engagement with such transnational networks is vital to understanding the development of Southeast Asian Sikh communities. Such work is, however, in its infancy and must be probed further within Asian and African contexts in light of the concentration on Europe and North America in Sikh diaspora studies. It is to be hoped such scholarship can build on the cosmopolitan oceanic groundwork already laid by Bose.Footnote 147
After the failure of the Federation in 1965, Singapore and Malaysia's Sikh populations experienced quite different political trajectories. In contrast to Malaysia, the Singaporean government effectively ‘domesticated’ difference and, through patronizing claims to distinctiveness, minimized dissent. Sikhs were ‘socialized into the corporatist political culture of Singapore’ through a ‘state-authorized version of Punjabi-Sikh history’.Footnote 148 The willingness of Sikh leadership to associate with ideologies of nation-building led to political success. This Sikh ability to tactically play on discursive hegemony (through expressions of loyalty) for maximum social, political and economic success reflected continuities with methods of acquisition under the British in Southeast Asia (and India). During episodes of strife many Sikhs did look back to Punjab more emotively, yet success within the framework of post-colonial Singapore provided more negative attitudes to Sikh separatism than in parts of the western world where Sikhs have, on occasion, felt marginalized.
Cooperation with state institutions also proved to be key in achieving the paramount goals of instilling cultural ‘tradition’ in errant Sikh youth. Nevertheless, against the grain of the ‘Singapore Story’, and to the chagrin of older generations, many Sikh youths asserted a right to enjoy the trappings of individualism rather than profess to communal ‘Asian values’. The effects of the internet, travel and tertiary education overseas somewhat undermined the paternalism with which the government hoped to develop the island; an authoritarianism for which Singapore's leaders were often derided abroad. On the other hand, some cultural forms have attracted Sikh youth to their Punjabi heritage. The hybridization of bhangra and hip-hop, most successfully manifested in Jay Z's 2003 re-mix of Panjabi MC's Mundian To Bach Ke, became popular around the world, Singapore included.Footnote 149 It is such cultural dynamism that has presented the most remarkable challenges, but also opportunities, to Sikhs around the world.
