Reflecting on a SAFAR
This post is a bit late, but every bit still important. Last week, the first “Sikh Feminist conference” – SAFAR – was held at the University of Toronto. The conference brought together academics, activists, and community members to reflect on the meanings and experiences of gender in a Sikh context. Opening with a keynote address by Nikky Guninder Kaur Singh, esteemed Professor at Colby College, the conference featured over 30 presentations. From the Param Marg Granth to questions of translation; from the Rahit Maryada to questions of film; from a historic opening for queer identities to questions on sex-selective abortion; from a discussion of women’s perceptions of body hair to even the questioning of questions, the conference can only be described as timely, pressing, and historic.
Some left in awe; some left troubled; some left challenged; some left with catharsis. All left inspired. To continue the momentum from the conference, the hosts of the conference, the Sikh Feminist Research Institute, is planning to convene a peer-reviewed online journal to publish quality articles related to gender.
Pictures from the conference can do far more justice than any thing I will write here. If you attended, share your thoughts and reflections. If you didn’t attend, you missed out!
We, here, at The Langar Hall will keep you informed about future developments.
11 Responses to “Reflecting on a SAFAR”
'Nikki'…'Guninder'….'Kaur'….'Singh' ? I suggest Nikki spend less time in academia dreamworld and more time sorting out a proper name identity. No offence but when a woman can't quite make up her mind whether she's a fella or a girl she's hardly the right person to lecture about Sikh feminism. No offence but when a woman wants to be known by a christian name she's hardly the right person to be lecturing Sikh women about Sikhi.
Also…..what kind of sikh would want to…on their profile….proudly put up a picture of their family with the man who was the President of India at the time the Golden Temple was attacked ? ….i.e the man who was privy to and part of the attack on the Sikhs of Punjab ?
Also……given all the war paint she's got plastered all over her face in her pictures……As a feminist, why is she trying so hard to conform to the male's ideals in a woman ?
Basically,its just an opportunity for a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals with letters after their names to sit with like minded people and talk a pile a crap…..instead of doing some real work. Nice job if you can get it.
Blighty Singh –
1) Waste your time criticizing someone who is more deserving of criticism.
2) Get a life.
^ It took al but 90 seconds of "my life" to write my thoughts Raj Singh. 60 seconds on the actual message and the other 30 seconds wasted on excessive usage of these things : …………..
There are 84600 seconds in a day. If you think taking a 90 second break in the 84600 second day is a waste of a life than all I can say is your life seems to be quite crap. Furthermore, taking time out to write on message board how you think the previous poster was wasting his life by writing on a message board displays signs of mental illness.
For you other normal people : Gone are the days when the 'urban eduacted classes' of Punjab could spend their time lecturing the rural background women on academic matters. Unfortunately for the likes of the female called 'Nikki Singh' the tables have turned. The Punjabi world is now full of jatt sikh women from families of farmers, who are highly eduacted and able to think for themselves without the likes if 'Nikki' giving them lectures about Sikhism. Those highly educated females from rural families are far more clever than 'Nikki' , know far more about Sikhi than 'Nikki' and are far more truer to Sikhi than 'Nikki'. Firstly, as Sikh women, they don't feel the need to give themselves Christian names. Secondly, they understand the basics of Sikhism enough to know that their name is 'Kaur'…not 'singh'. And thirdly, if they were gonna be the guest speaker on a conferance about Sikh woman and feminism they wouldn't cover their moo with war paint….just the way men like it. Idiotic conferance presented by upper class intellectuals from rich families for gullible fools.
Educated Jatt Sikh women from families of farmers like this one? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/24/nikki-ha…
Relax.
Judge the work first, then the person.
"The Punjabi world is now full of jatt sikh women… highly eduacted and able to think for themselves without the likes if 'Nikki' giving them lectures about Sikhism"
Some of your criticism of the Professor is justified. However, you still cling to the evils of caste, which is a greater evil than anything you claim about Nikki Singh.
Do you want to eradicate the fact that such a category as jat exists? It’s like describing someone as German, does that mean they believe in the evils of nationalism?
jat is a caste. Castes and caste discrimination is against Sikhi.
The category of jat is also a description of a community. My personal belief is the caste system in Punjab was an overlay.
Blighty, I understand your reservations, but take a moment to read even a small bit of her work. Or better yet, try and figure out who the other man in that picture is. Your family has his books on the shelf.
ha ha, blighty, mate, haven't heard from your spleen in a while, what happened, you forgot to take your medicine this morning? nikki is a pretty common panjabi nickname, actually, more legitimate than, um…"blighty"(?) wtf is that mate?
your astute analysis of nikki ji's nom de plume about shows the level of intellectual engagement you're capable of, which is to say, leave the thinking to the people with brains.
'Nikki' is a common Punjabi NICKNAME used in the home for a cute little girl. I know, because my mum's nickname was 'Nikki' when she was little. She got big though. She grew up. She doesn't have the word 'Nikki' on her work i.d card. Neither does she feel the need to put the name 'Nikki' in front of her Sikh name if headlining conferances or writing academic papers.
And then there's 'Blighty'. I am from a family of speakers of the doaba dialect of Punjabi. The letter 'w' does not exist, to much extent, in our dialect. What should be 'b' in the standardised classical majha dialect, becomes a 'b' in our dialect. So……'Walati' : A standard, old fashioned Sikh name. Still in use today but extremely popular as a first name among Sikhs a generation ago (incidentaly….a name still used widely among 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation British born Bhatra sikhs in port / dock areas such as Cardiff, Portsmouth and Southampton). The British, having mixed a hellava lot with Sikhs from the Punjab, via the army, had a tendancy to bring Punjabi usages of words back home with them rather than Hindi words etc. Thus….even to this day in factories al over Britain, the tea ladies are called 'cha wallahs' rather than the hindi chai. And moreover, the British constantly refer to a cup of tea as a 'cup of cha'. Same for 'blighty'. They mixed with sikh soldiers, who used to refer to them as 'balatis', and as such the English started to call Britain 'Blighty'. The word is used in comics, textbooks, newspapers, magazines and tv all the time. It seems everyone but you 'guest' has heard of it and used it. And yet you wanna lecture other people on 'intellectual engagement' capability ? Lol 🙂 This is indeed a strange upside down topsy turvy world we live in. Intellectual midgets with the knowledge limitations of 4 year olds feel the need to come on to message boards and talk about intellectual engagement capabilities. And the other muppets, who are not much brighter, give thumbs up to the nonsense. It does all give the impression that Bollywood does indeed have our community down to a tee when they portray our people as bufoons . They seem to know our people very well. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
btw….my grandfathers name is 'Walati Singh'. Try coming up to him and saying "Walati (?) wtf is that mate ?"