Discussion on Book ‘Violence and Sikhs’

Chandigarh, July 5, 2022: A Discussion-cum-Symposium on the book entitled ‘Violence and The Sikhs’ by Arvind Pal S Mandair was organized by Shabad Vichar Manch with Naad Pargaas Foundation, Amritsar, in the Department of Guru Nanak Sikh Studies, Panjab University Chandigarh with the collaboration. Discussion was held in both offline and online mode and more than hundred delegates from the different countries joined in the symposium in online mode along with seventy offline participants. In his welcome and introductory address, Prof. Gurpal Singh Sandhu, Academic Incharge of the department said that Religion and violence is a topic of academic debate. Concept of violence in Sikhs has a long historical debate that is still going on. Dr. Sukhwinder Singh, in his research paper, urged that violence in Sikh religion is a special kind of phenomena that manifests through its action and a kind violence in defence, sovereign in nature and prevails ads per its manifestations available in the Gurbani.

Amarjit Grewal said that debate over religion and violence started with the treaty of Westphalia, in the form of secularism and religion. This time was parallel with Guru Tegh Bahadur who gave their life for the sake of others. Today we are doing violence to others in the terms of environment, Gender, Ethnic and Machine. Lakhveer, a research scholar said that current work of the author mainly stresses upon the process of de-historization and re-historization. Religion and Violence is fundamental which is transformed through rules of normative framework and mode of subjectification. Jaswinder Singh of PU Patiala said that Sikh studies are working in the framework continued from Malcolm to McLeod. He said that we need to build our own framework of research. Sandeep Sharma, made a point that violence mould us through many external forces and factors like Culture, time and space. Sovereign Violence functions in both anthropological and Cosmological levels. Prof Jagdish Singh said that Prof. Mandair tries to make a balance between secular violence and Sovereign violence through neutral observation. We need to revisit our methods and methodologies of our thoughts.

Guest of Honor was Dr. Deepinder Kaur, who said that religion and violence is a controversial topic in the field of academia. Dr. Mandair works very carefully and in a balanced manner. She linked the problem with contemporary time by giving various examples. She also differentiated between secular and religious violence.

In his presidential address Prof. Shinderpal Singh said that religion and violence is a topic of scholastic debate, we should take this very carefully. He said that work should be in the language of commons because we have to deal with commons.

Many scholars, guests and students from across the World scholarly participated in the discussion both offline and online. At the end of Talk, Dr. Gurpal Singh gave a vote of thanks.