Journal of the American Academy of Religion Advance Access originally published online on July 28, 2009
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 2009 77(2):303-332; doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfp035
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The Guru's Weapons
Anne Murphy, Department of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia, 1871 West Mall, UBC Asian Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2
E-mail: anne.murphy{at}ubc.ca
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Abstract |
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This article presents the biography of a set of objects held to be powerful within Sikh traditions, with a focus on how these objects operate within a field determined by colonial and post-colonial formations of value and meaning, in relation to pre-colonial forms of the same. The article describes cultural production that articulates the sphere of the religious, highlighting how different frames of knowledge—pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial—interact in the articulation of this sphere. As such, I address an ongoing debate in the historiography of South Asia regarding the relative influence of colonialism in South Asia that has significant potential impact on our understanding of South Asian religions like the Sikh tradition.
Thank you to Susan Stronge of the Victoria and Albert Museum for help in the early stages of my research on this topic in 2002, for my PhD dissertation. Versions of this paper were presented at the following venues: for a panel on "Material Empire: Exchanging Objects and Shaping Imperial Identities" at the Victorian Materialities Conference, the annual meeting of The North American Victorian Studies Association and the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada, at the University of Victoria, October 10–13, 2007, and at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion in November 2006. Special thanks to Andrea Pinkney for organizing that panel. Sincere thanks to my colleagues at UBC for their careful readings: Joy Dixon, Katherine Hacker, and Adheesh Sathaye. Thanks also to the anonymous readers at the JAAR. All errors and omissions are mine.