Chapter 10

 

British Victorian Sexual Ethos versus Sikh Sexual Ethos

 

 

 

After describing Sikhs as “sexually depraved,” Jakobsh finds similarity between Sikh and British sexual ethos:

 

“Significantly, construction of gender in Britain played a central role in policies developed by the British in India. Deeply ingrained assumptions of gender in India, especially the hypermasculine ethos that undergirded the institution of Khalsa, corresponded well with the prevailing Victorian sexual ethos. As we shall see, these constructions furthered both British and Sikh causes admirably.”¹

 

This is purely a false way of stating some facts. The presence of thousands of Anglo-Indians in India is a testimony to British “Victorian sexual ethos.” The keeping of an Indian bibi or mistress, was common occurrence with most British until late 1700s.² On the other hand Khalsa/Sikh “sexual ethos” are rooted in Nanakian philosophy (Gurmat).

 

Qazi Nur Mohammed who participated in Ahmad Shah Abdali’s expedition to India observed that Sikhs respect the chastity of women as part of their faith and adultery does not exist among them.³ The rescue of hundreds of Hindu and Muslim women from the clutches of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali and restoring them to their families, speaks itself for the “sexual ethos” of the Khalsa whom Jakobsh has described as “sexually depraved.”⁴

 

Further Nanakian philosophy lays utmost importance on sexual morality of man/woman:

 

They are not wife and husband, who perform merely worldly duties together, but when the two are spiritually one, are wife and husband.

AGGS, M 3, p. 788.

 

Renounce slander and coveting other’s wife and wealth.

AGGS, M 5, p. 379.

 

A manmukh (degenerate man) wastes his life devouring others wealth and in sexual indulgence with other women.

AGGS, M 9, p. 633.

 

A mere garb won’t bring salvation to the one who leaves his wife and then covets another’s. Such a person faces much suffering.

AGGS, M 5, p. 1348.

 

Here, Guru Arjan criticises a person who gives up household life to become a yogi. Furthermore,

 

A gurmukh/Sikh (God-centred being) remains faithful to his wife and respects other women as daughter and sister.

Bhai Gurdas, Varan Bhai Gurdas, 6, p. 53.

 

A gurmukh/Sikh considers other women as good and respects them as his mother, daughter and sister.

Bhai Gurdas, Varan Bahi Gurdas, 29, p. 233.

  

Jakobsh goes on to fabricate another lie:

 

“British attitudes towards female jurisdiction were  closely aligned with the already prevalent ethos of  hypermasculinity reigning supreme among the Sikhs, as well as the Sikh apprehensions towards female rule.”⁵

 

This statement contradicts her earlier statement on the previous page that Sikhs had able female ruler like Rani Sahib Kaur:

 

The British were well aware of the record of successful female rule in Punjab. Upon the death of a husband or son during misl (confederacy) period of earlier Sikh rule, women had often taken over the leadership. George Thomas had written appreciably of Bibi Sahib Kaur, a ‘woman of masculine and intrepid spirit’, who bravely defended the capital city of Patiala during his expedition of 1798. He was sufficiently impressed by Sahib Kaur to assert that she was ‘a better man than her brother’, Raja Sahib Singh, who had fled the city during the siege (cited in Gupta 1980). Rani Askour and Rani Rajinder Kaur were other noteworthy Sikh women rulers and, according to Lepel Griffin, ‘it would appear that the Phulkian chiefs excluded by direct enactment all women from any share of power, from the suspicion that they were able to use it more wisely than themselves’ (Griffin, Introduction, in Poole 1892: viii).⁶

 

Besides, if “hypermasculinity was reigning supreme among the Sikhs and they had apprehensions towards female rule” then why did they accept women as leaders and rulers?

 

The Phulkian chiefs excluded by direct enactment all women from any power not due to “their hypermasculinity,” but because they had lost their “manliness” under the British boots as vassals. The Phulkian chiefs were neither Sikh nor men; they were cowards and debauchers. The evil genius behind the enactment of a law for “excluding women from power” was the British imperialists¾the “apex of human civilization.” They knew very well that the conquest of Punjab (Sarkar-i-Khalsa) cost them more men and material than the conquest of the rest of India. They also knew that the Khalsa lost due to the treachery of their leaders, and not due to lack of valour. They did not want to face the Khalsa forces led by the likes of Rani Sahib Kaur or Rani Jindan as is evident from the letter Lord Dalhousie wrote on January 31, 1849 to Brigadier Mountain in response to a plea the Sikhs made for the release of Rani Jindan from Jail:

 

The pretences of the Sikhs of their anxiety to get back the Rani… are preposterous. And the more sincere they are, the stronger are the grounds for not acceding to them. She has the only manly understanding in the Punjab, and her restoration would furnish the only thing which is wanting to render the present movement truly formidable, namely an object and a head. Trust me this is no time for going back or giving back or winking an eyelid.⁷

 

Moreover, when Bhagwan Kaur, the widow of Dyal Singh Majithia contested his will on the ground that he was a Sikh not a Hindu, it was the British Privy Council that ruled against her. This is what Jakobsh herself wrote about this incidence:

 

A few short years earlier the highly publicized Majithia Will case, after years before the courts, had proved to be a massive blow to the efforts of reformers to distinguish Sikhs from Hindus. The philanthropist Dyal Singh Majithia of the Brahmo Samaj had willed the majority of his wealth to the Samaj. … His wife, Bhagwan Kaur, and his closest agnatic relative had challenged Dyal Singh’s last testament on the ground of Majithia’s Sikh background; as such, they believed, Hindu inheritance laws could not apply to his estate. Yet the Privy Council disagreed, thus ensuring that Hindu law continued to cover the sikhs.⁸

 

There is nothing in the Sikh masculinity or ethos against accepting women as leaders, which is amply demonstrated by Sikh-women rulers and leaders. Like McLeod’s “sant tradition” and Oberoi’s “Sanatan Sikhs,”⁹ Jakobsh has coined the term “hypermasculine Khalsa.” While McLeod and Oberoi fabricated their terms under external compulsions, Jakobsh’s construction of “hypermasculine Khalsa” seems to be the result of her doubts about her own sexuality. For example, she calls Sikh males as hypermasculine while she relishes the British description of Sikh women as of “masculine disposition, want of modesty, and of delicate feeling,”¹⁰ “woman of masculine and intrepid spirit,”¹¹ and “better man than her brother.”¹² Her own adrenal gland gets titillated when she thinks of “manly Jati” (Jat female).¹³ Professor Jakobsh may not like me saying bluntly that from her writings one can infer as if she herself is suffering from “missing testicle syndrome.”

 

 

References

 

1. Doris R. Jakobsh. Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 50.

2. Ibid., p. 72.

3. Sangat Singh. The Sikhs In History. New Delhi: Uncommon Books, 4th edition, 2001, pp. 106-107.

4. Ibid., p. 106.

5. Doris R. Jakobsh. Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 80.

6. Ibid., pp. 78-79.

7. Ganda Singh. Punjab Dian Varan (Punjabi). Amritsar, 1946, p. 231.

8. Doris R. Jakobsh. Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 189.

9. Ibid., p. 96.

10. Ibid., p. 77.

11. Ibid., p. 79.

12. Ibid., p.79.

13. Ibid., pp. 137-138.

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