This panel explores the dynamic interplay between empire and sacred worlding within Sikh practice. By examining historical and contemporary contexts, we aim to uncover how Sikh communities have navigated and resisted imperial forces while simultaneously cultivating sacred spaces and identities. Through interdisciplinary approaches, panelists will discuss the ways in which Sikh practices challenge hegemonic structures and foster resilience, spirituality, and community cohesion. This dialogue will provide insights into the transformative potential of sacred worlding in confronting and reimagining empire.
This paper presents the first critical edition of Guru Gobind Singh's Ẓafarnāma (1705), a powerful critique of Mughal imperial authority that articulates the Sikh doctrine of Double Sovereignty (mīrī-pīrī). Based on my forthcoming monograph, The Zafarnama of Guru Gobind Singh: A Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary with a preface by Wheeler Thackston, this work examines thirty-eight manuscripts to correct pervasive textual distortions in modern printed editions. Nearly a third of all verses in current editions contain serious defects including broken meters and missing rhyme patterns. By returning to near-contemporaneous Gurmukhī manuscripts, this research recovers the Guru's bold assertion of sovereignty and transforms apparent praise for Emperor Aurangzeb into a coherent critique of imperial authority. The phonetic nature of Gurmukhī script additionally preserves historical Mughal Persian pronunciation. This critical edition establishes new foundations for understanding how religious authority confronts imperial power through extensive manuscript documentation, grammatical analysis, and historical contextualization.
Studies of Sikh diasporic religious politics and identity are often framed by territorial assumptions centred on Punjab. This paper examines how everyday spiritual values, aesthetics, and practices shape contested articulations of sacred space across the UK, South Asia, and East Africa. Advancing the concept of sacred worlding as a political ontology, it explores how religious practice, politics, and history intertwine within poetic, craft, and musical expressions of Sikh heritage.
Our findings reveal that diasporic support for creative heritage takes contested material and embodied forms, shaped by intersections of caste, gender, and generation. These tensions reflect and produce divergent territorialised and deterritorialised concepts of Sikh sacred space. We argue that sacred worlding offers a framework for understanding the plural, symbolic, and sensory production of religious projects. It deepens empirical analysis of creative religious expressions, contextualises diasporic settlement journeys, and reframes the geographies of diasporic religious politics across interconnected scales and sites.