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Lived Religion, Representation, and Sikh Identity

Author:Eleanor Nesbitt
Series:Sanctum Studies in Indian Intellectual, Cultural, and Historical Traditions
Binding:Paperback
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About the Book
Sikhism is often presented as a coherent world religion, defined by the teachings of the Gurus, the authority of the Guru Granth Sahib, the gurdwara, the Khalsa, and shared practices such as seva. Yet lived Sikh experience is marked by striking diversity across caste, gender, generation, geography, religious grouping, and the differing circumstances of India and the global diaspora.

Lived Religion, Representation, and Sikh Identity asks what happens when this lived diversity exceeds the categories through which a religious tradition is taught, represented, regulated, and inherited. Drawing on Eleanor Nesbitt’s decades of ethnographic research among Sikh families in Britain, together with historical and contemporary scholarship, the book moves from religious socialisation and belonging to Sikh groupings and spiritual lineages, questions of authority and definition, visible markers of commitment, and Sikhism’s place as a world religion.

Rather than treating religious categories as either false abstractions or transparent descriptions, Nesbitt shows the necessary work they perform. Families need them to transmit tradition, schools to teach it, institutions to define belonging, and communities to articulate what is authentic or exemplary. Yet every act of definition also selects, simplifies, and excludes. The result is a nuanced account of Sikh identity as a continuing negotiation between coherence and plurality, inheritance and change, normative representation and lived experience.
About the Author
Eva Wilden

Eva Wilden is Professor of Classical Tamil and Manuscript Studies at the University of Hamburg and Director of Tamilex, the long-term project devoted to a historical dictionary of Classical Tamil. A leading specialist in Caṅkam literature, textual criticism, and manuscript transmission, she heads the Caṅkam Project and has produced major critical editions and annotated translations of Classical Tamil texts, including the Naṟṟiṇai, Kuṟuntokai, and Akanāṉūṟu. Her books include Manuscript, Print and Memory: Relics of the Caṅkam in Tamilnadu and A Grammar of Old Tamil for Students. She led the ERC Advanced Grant project NETamil and received the Kural Peetam, the Presidential Award for Classical Tamil, in 2015.
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