This book examines the long-term effects of violence on the everyday cultural and religious practices of a younger generation of Ahmadis and Sikhs in Frankfurt, Germany and Toronto, Canada. Comparative in scope and the first to discuss contemporary articulations of Sikh and Ahmadiyya identities within a single frame of reference, the book assembles a significant range of empirical data gathered over ten years of ethnographic fieldwork. In its focus on precarious sites of identity formation, the volume engages with cutting-edge theories in the fields of critical diaspora studies, migration and refugee studies, religion, secularism, and politics. It presents a novel approach to the reading of Ahmadi and Sikh subjectivities in the current climate of anti-immigrant movements and suspicion against religious others. Michael Nijhawan also offers new insights into what animates emerging movements of the youth and their attempts to reclaim forms of the spiritual and political.

In 2017, Amrit Singh experienced the deaths of his grandmother and uncle. Soon after, his mother was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Raised in a family that lacked open communication among each other, Amrit struggled to understand his place in the world as the lives and histories of the people closest to him were being lost to time. When the family comes together to care for his mother over the course of her treatment, Amrit begins a journey of unearthing and preserving the stories of his elders. He discovers the details of his father's years travelling undocumented and working at sea, the political and economic factors that sparked his family's relocation out of Punjab, the challenges they faced as new immigrants in Canada, and how key moments of his life still connect to his parents' migration. 'Keep Moving On' is a memoir that finds parallels between family members born in different eras and circumstances, and explores themes of mental health, intergenerational trauma, religion, death, and race through the lens of Amrit's upbringing as a first generation Sikh-Canadian. It is a story of discovery, hope, resilience, and the importance of making the most of the present.

This volume gathers scholars who focus on gender through a variety of disciplines and approaches to Sikh Studies. The intersections of religion and gender are here explored, based on an understanding that both are socially constructed. Far from being static, as so often presented in world religions textbooks, religious traditions are constantly in flux, responding to historical, cultural and social contexts. So too is ‘the’ Sikh tradition in terms of practices, ideologies, rituals, and notions of identity. We here conclude that ‘a’ Sikh tradition does not exist; instead, there are numerous forms thereof. In this volume, Sikhism is presented as a collection of ‘Sikh traditions’. Gender studies—in line with women’s liberation, masculine and feminist studies have long examined and have long deconstructed the patriarchy, but also move to identify other subordinate-dominant relations between individuals. Indeed, there are numerous forms of discrimination and power structures that simultaneously create a multiplicity of oppression. Intersectionality has become the basis of an increasingly systematized production of contemporary discourses on feminism and gender analysis, as is evidenced by the varied contributions in this volume.

The Sikh World is an outstanding guide to the Sikh faith and culture in all its geographical and historical diversity. Written by a distinguished team of international contributors, it contains substantial thematic articles on the dynamic living experiences of the global Sikh community. The volume is organised into ten distinct sections: History, Institutions, and Practices Global Communities Ethical Issues Activism Modern Literature and Exegesis Music, Visual Art, and Architecture Citizenship, Sovereignty, and the Nation State Diversity and its Challenges Media Education Within these sections, interdisciplinary themes such as intellectual history, sexuality, ecotheology, art, literature, philosophy, music, cinema, medicine, science and technology, politics, and global interactions are explored. Integrating textual evidence with Sikh practice, this volume provides an authoritative and accessible source of information on all topics of Sikhism. The Sikh World will be essential reading to students of Sikh studies, South Asian studies and religious studies. It will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as sociology, world philosophies, political science, anthropology, and ethics.

India Migration Report 2024: Indians in Canada is one of the first volumes to comprehensively examine and analyse the different facets of Indian migration to Canada. This volume: • Examines the comprehensive history of Indian migration to Canada, including the story of social, cultural, economic, and political integration, analysis of socio-economic characteristics, and evolving political scenarios surrounding student migration and diasporas. • Presents an overview of migration and post-migration experiences of Indian immigrant and Indo-Canadian women and the rising trend of high-skilled Indian female migration to Canada. • Discusses the influence of Canadian immigration policy and its effects on the changing immigration patterns of Indians to Canada. • Examines the challenges faced by Indian immigrants and Indo-Canadians due to deeply entrenched Eurocentric and Ethnocentric biases and the impact of COVID-19 on the community. • Explores the effect of adult children’s migration on the health and suffering from disability of elderly left behind in the migration process. The book also discusses leveraging migration for international development. The book will be of interest to scholars, students, researchers, or anyone interested in migration and diasporic studies, development studies, the politics of migration, immigration policy, social anthropology, economics, and sociology.

This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an essentially Western or Christian phenomenon, the chapters reveal processes of religious individualisation in a large variety of non-Western and pre-modern scenarios. Furthermore, the volume challenges prevalent views that regard religions primarily as collective phenomena and provides nuanced perspectives on the appropriation of religious agency, the pluralisation of religious options, dynamics of de-traditionalisation and privatisation, the development of elaborated notions of the self, the facilitation of religious deviance, and on the notion of dividuality.

Violence and the Sikhs interrogates conventional typologies of violence and non-violence in Sikhism by rethinking the dominant narrative of Sikhism as a deviation from the ostensibly original pacifist-religious intentions and practices of its founders. This Element highlights competing logics of violence drawn from primary sources of Sikh literature, thereby complicating our understanding of the relationship between spirituality and violence, connecting it to issues of sovereignty and the relationship between Sikhism and the State during the five centuries of its history. By cultivating a non-oppositional understanding of violence and spirituality, this Element provides an innovative method for interpreting events of 'religious violence'. In doing so it provides a novel perspective on familiar themes such as martyrdom, Martial Race theory, warfare and (post)colonial conflicts in the Sikh context.