Cultivating Sikh culture and identity : art, music and philology / Bob van der Linden.

"Cultivating Sikh Identity and Culture explores the development of modern Sikh identities through the concept of the 'cultivation of culture'. It investigates diverse, but repeatedly overlapping, Sikh encounters in the fields of art, music and philology, and considers their role in the making of a continuous living tradition. The volume focuses particularly on the imperial encounter and intellectual interaction between colonizer and colonized. It emphasises the enduring importance of the modern rational approach of the Singh Sabha (Tat Khalsa) reformers in defining a normative Sikh tradition. In course, the author reflects on the importance of philological research and the complexity of modern knowledge production in relation to the formation of cultural identities. The chapters offer a critical historical overview of the changes in the performance and reception of Sikh sacred music in the context of the community's successive encounters with the Mughals, the British and globalization. They also provide new insights into the life and work of Max Arthur Macauliffe, author of the classic The Sikh Religion (1909), and a contextualized discussion of contemporary Sikh drawings by Emily de Klerk. Taking a global, interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of religion, South Asian Studies and history"-- Provided by publisher.