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Introduction
Discrimination against women in employment, their sexual exploitation, their battering, their rapes and murders are reported in the news on a daily basis in the United States of America where I have lived since 1963. In our male dominated world of hegemonic patriarchal culture, there is widespread discrimination, persecution and exploitation of women not to exclude the religious communities including the Sikhs, who are beset with the pathology inherited from two cultures: Hindu and Muslim patriarchal cultures. A vast majority of Sikhs of today are descendents of so-called “Sultani-Hindus,”--Hindus who were moving away from their temples to the mosque, whose allegiance and devotion was shifting away from gods and goddesses to pirs and fakirs (Muslim holy men), during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In India
where I grew up, it hurts to read that modern medical sciences and its tools
are being used for the detriment of womankind¾female feticide through sex selection. If this heinous crime
of killing of female fetuses fails to shake the conscience of mankind, what
else would? Individuals and organizations exposing such evil practices and
fighting for justice for women deserve applause and our support. Violence
against woman and the unspeakable crime of female feticide through sex
selection should be denounced from every available platform to shake the
dormant conscience of mankind. The United Nations and other international human
rights organizations must hold countries and communities accountable that allow
this practice. Health care personnel performing such procedures and the family
members forcing helpless pregnant woman to abort the female fetus must face the
court of law for committing murder.
Sikhs are well aware of the gender bias, ill treatment of women and the practice of female feticide within their community, and many of them are speaking out against it.1, 2 This problem is headlined and editorialized in Sikh publications. More efforts are needed. This practice should be regularly denounced in Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship) and other Sikh gatherings. Moreover, in-depth research by anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists is needed to understand the reasons and circumstances that are responsible for gender bias in the Sikh community, as it is contrary to the teachings of the Sikh scripture: Aad Guru Granth Sahib (AGGS).
Recently, Dr. Jasbir Singh Mann3 pointed out to me Jakobsh’s study of historical construction of gender in the Sikh community.4 Jakobsh earned her Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Harjot Oberoi from the Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Waterloo in Canada. To my knowledge, this is the first academic work on gender bias in Sikhs, so I was eager to study it. However, after reading the first few chapters, my enthusiasm faded to disappointment, as her work sounds more and more like Harjot Oberoi’s The construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition.5 It seems she is using the study of gender as a ploy to spread false information about Nanakian philosophy (Gurmat) and the Sikhs. As a cursory note I may point out here that neither the external examiner of her thesis, Gloria Goodwin Raheja, nor the university examiners Margery Fee and Tineke Hellwig, nor Joy Dixon, Chair of the examining committee, nor Kenneth Bryant and Mandakranta Bose who read the thesis have expertise on Sikhism.
McLeod’s
“Western methodology of historical research” on Sikhism is simply a process
utilized to distort Sikhism under the cover of “academic research,” and I find
that Oberoi has ushered this process a step further to diffuse the “Sikh identity”
through a campaign of misinformation. Therefore, it is no surprise that
Jakobsh’s “gender research” on Sikhs under Oberoi is beyond the boundary of
academic norms, standards and ethics¾blatant malicious propaganda put together against Sikhism.
No one will
argue that a degree such as a Ph.D. requires high caliber original research.
But that’s not the case with Jakobsh. She has managed to utilize secondary or
tertiary sources of information--relying mainly on the writings of McLeod,
Oberoi, Christians (British colonists and missionaries), Hindus and spurious
literature like janam-sakhis, Dasam Granth and Rehatnamas to concoct her
thesis. She spent seven years (1993-2000) gleaning information from the
above-mentioned sources and manipulating it to fit into her scheme¾false propaganda against Sikhism and
Sikhs.
Jakobsh
approach to the study of gender in Sikh history is also problematical as there
is a pitfall here: The inherent shortcomings of a Eurocentric approach to the
study of non-Europeans have been well publicized and this may have had a direct
bearing on Jakobsh’s study. For example, black scholars in the United States
have pointed out and argued effectively that a Eurocentric scholar looks at
slavery and the history of black people from the perspective of a slave owner,
not of a slave, from the perspective of colonizers, not the victims of
colonization. Similarly, black women scholars have objected to a Eurocentric
approach to the study of black women because, though white and black women live
in the same country, their experiences are not the same. Then it should not be
unreasonable to ask how could Western paradigms like Joan Wallach Scott’s6
hypotheses of gender study be applied to Sikh women who are oceans apart
and separated by centuries in time?
Further there
is important background information that the reader should know in order to
understand the ideological base and mindset that produced Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity.4
Because W.H. McLeod and Harjot Oberoi exercised tremendous influence on Jakobsh
and her thesis, it is imperative for readers to read Appendixes A, B and C. A
cursory examination of the University of British Columbia will come in handy to
understand and unfold the mystery under discussion.
References
1. B. Singh.
“Female Feticide.” Abstracts of Sikh
Studies, 1996, April-June, pp. 125-26.
2. B. Singh.
“Female Feticide.” Abstracts of Sikh
Studies, 1996, July-September, pp. 119-20.
3. S. S.
Sodhi, and J. S. Mann. “Latest Exercise In Distortion: Doris R. Jakobsh’s
Eurocentric Research.” Abstracts of Sikh
Studies, 2004, July-September, pp. 41-49.
4. Doris R. Jakobsh. Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Asa Johal Fellowship in Asian Studies funded Jakobsh’s research. Asa Singh Johal also endowed Asa and Kashmir Johal Chair in India Research in the Department of Asian Studies at the University British Columbia.
5. Harjot
Oberoi. The Construction of Religious
Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the
Sikh Tradition. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994.
6. Doris R. Jakobsh. Relocating Gender In Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 2, 4, 19-20, 47, 127, and 239.
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