Sikholars 2013 ReCap
Guest blogged: Mewa Singh
From February 16-17, 2013, researchers from throughout the world, focusing on Sikh-related topics, came together at Stanford University for the 4th annual Sikholars Conference, hosted by the Jakara Movement. From Europe to Pakistan, from India to Canada, and throughout the United States, young scholars came together for a weekend of discussion and engagement in a unique forum that connects the academy to the community. Here, I provide here a bit of a recap and encouragement for those that missed this year to make sure you don’t miss Sikholars 2014.
The conference commenced with an opening address by Professor Thomas Blom Hansen. The director of Stanford University’s Center for South Asia welcomed the audience and shared his excitement for a new partnership between the Jakara Movement and the Center for South Asia in years to come in hosting the Sikholars Conference.  Next followed a lecture by Professor Linda Hess, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Bhagat Kabir Ji.
17 Responses to “Sikholars 2013 ReCap”
Scholar Camp 2013. Scolar Camp 2012. Scholar Camp 2011. Scholar Camp 2010. Scholar Camp 2009. Scholar Camp 2008. Scholar Camp 2007. Scholar Camp 2006.
So……apart from the fact that pseudo scholars get to meet each other and pat each other on the back…and make themselves feel important….what on earth has any of these annual 'scholars meets' achieved for the rest of us Sikhs ?
Who the hell are you 'Sikh Scholars' anyway ? I'm a cockney Sikh and I'm doing a Phd and I've never heard of this scholars conferance. I've got family in Punjab with degrees, masters and now doing their doctorate and they've never heard of this 'scholars' conference.
So just who are these so-called 'scholars' ? Well, reading the literature, many of them are from Canadian Universities. And so what the hell is a 'Canadian University' and what is it's worth ? According to the latest league tables they hardly make it into the top 100. Added to that is the fact that most people around the world don't even know of Canada's existence as anything worth mentioning let alone think about. So what are we left with ? We're left with local Americans going to local American uni's belonging to local American uni debating societies….thinking they speak for the global sikh community. Thats why none of us have ever heard of anything of any value come out of this annual jamboree. Its time it was scrapped. If not scrapped its time the conferance stopped advertising itself as a 'global' event.
Hello Blighty,
Thank you for your message, I appreciate the time you took to write. I'm one of the people who helped organize Sikholars this year. Its a trite thing to point out right off the bat, but the name of the event is "Sikholars" a portmanteau of Sikhs and scholars.
I don't know what you mean by "meet each other and pat each other on the back." The goal of the conference is of course to encourage interdisciplinary networking, but more importantly to present the research to the community. In that vein, over 160 community members came out in person, and more than that number streamed the event online. As you probably know, that level of community participation is huge for an academic conference.
I am unsure why you are calling the participants "pseudo scholars." Most of them are in doctoral programs like yourself, and those who aren't nontheless have highly developed research, like Prabhneet Kaur of UCLA whose paper undertook a medical anthropology of Sikh spiritual healing based on field research in Chandigarh.
I am not sure if someone is sockpuppeting your account, but you said that you've never heard of this conference even though you lobbed similar criticisms last year: http://thelangarhall.com/activism/another-sikhola…
I don't know why you're making such harsh and irresponsible criticisms of the speakers based on the countries that they come from. Our two graduate students from Canada are from the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia, the latter especially having a worldwide reputation in Asian Studies, the department from which our participant hails. I hope you reread your comments about Canada and rethink your approach to how you live in the world. Most people in the world don't know about Sikhs or Punjab, so should we throw the baby out with the bathwater?
I wish you would have taken the time to listen to the livestream to hear what these scholars actually said rather than projecting your assumption that they try to speak for the global Sikh community. Indeed we had scholars from India and one from Pakistan delivering quite groundbreaking work making this a global conversation.
Out of curiosity, which university do you go to and which department are you in? I will ensure that next year your department will receive the call for papers. I encourage you to join the Sikhs in Europe research network (http://www.sikhs-in-europe.org/) which annually forwards our announcement. They will also make sure you don't miss other important programming in Sikh and Punjab Studies. Finally, you should be aware of the H-Net listservs (http://www.h-net.org/~asia/) which are perhaps the most important listservs that you can subscribe to as a doctoral student. They also carry our announcements. If you have any other questions or need help networking in your academic career feel free to email me at singha @ stanford . edu
Thanks for the reply APS. Unfortunately, what with me being a very busy scholar an' all, I don't have the time to read everything you wrote. I'm sure, however, it was all good.
If I can make one suggestion though, it would be this : If such events are to be termed 'global' events, they should perhaps be held in locations where global participants can attend. For example, the USA is, in many ways, a sort of despotic 3rd world country when it comes to welcoming people from around the world for a visit. I know I can never be allowed an American visa….I also know of many other British Sikh 'scholars' that have never been allowed an American visitors visa, and the European news media has, over the years, been full of articles about how so many famous and celebrated European individuals are denied entry into the USA, including many of our top politicians. You can imagine then, what chance a member of the 150,000 strong Italian Sikh community have with their temporary papers…….Or what chance 'scholars' from Punjab have. The event is then, in all intents and purposes, a local event. If I organise a tea and somasa party with 13 local London guests and 1 each from Swaziland and Mongolia, it doesn't turn it into an international event. It is still, in essence, a local tea and samosa get-together.
Blightly, I'm disappointed that you're not writing in good faith. I don't know why you insist on lying to try to prove a point. We had a scholar get a visa to come here from *Pakistan* (not the easiest place to get a visa to the US) and Delhi. We've had scholars in the past come from Punjab, and the UK without any issues at all. This year was about 40% international participation — hardly a "local event." If you want to have a an actual conversation, please, feel free to email me at singha @ stanford . edu Good luck finding that lucrative law job you dream of.
In case you get email updates from your comments, there is a Sikholars London Conference. Sikholars.org
I think someones application to Sikholars got rejected…!
There's something very wrong in dissecting Gurbani and compositions of sants/bhagats as though it were just regular mankardt literature; a Gursikh told me anyone who is disrespectful of Gurbani ends up with leprosy, whether here or some other hellish realm.
-it's like trying to reduce feelings of love/prem to chemicals in the body but worse.
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