Customer Reviews

The Nation's Tortured Body: Violence, Representation, and the Formation of a Sikh “Diaspora”

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In this brilliantly conceived study the author tried to parse through Sikh history, memory and identity especially in relation to space and homeland. The view is towards examining the Sikh diaspora and its connection and use of pictures and imagined identitites to create the need for 'Khalistan' and the representation of Sikhs, from the last Sikh rulers to the tortured bodies fo Sikhs who were victims of the Indian police during the troubles in Punjab leading up to Operation Blue Star and desecration of the Golden Temple.

This is a very interesting and original book and that is why it deserves not only to be read but to be praised. However it lacks many things that although not pertinent to the subject could have been finally brought out here. THere does not exist one book in all the world in English that deals witht he millions of refugees caused by Pakistani ethnic cleansing in 1948, not one book on their fate and what that means to the Sikh nation, which was torn in half and had all its people cleansed and depopulated from Pakistan.

This is an understudied phenomenon, and becuase the Sikhs are not considered 'white' by the western-european world they get no attention the way the Palestinians do. However this book could have delved deeper into this important issue.

Seth J. Frantzman

Good try by a Western writer but not as good as Dr. Joyce Pettigrew who has given a in-dept analysis of the causes and the problem of the Sikh nation's struggle for Independence.