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Sikhs and Empire

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Sikhism

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Indian Religions ((EIR))

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Synonyms

Imperial power and Sikh tradition; Mughal/Sikh relations; Sikh sovereignty; Sikhs in the British Empire

Definition

Overview of the imperial contexts of Sikh tradition.

The Historical Development of Sikhism in Imperial Contexts

The Sikh tradition has taken shape within several major imperial formations. These imperial contexts do not only provide the broad historical background for the development of the tradition; they have directly shaped in significant ways its historical development. They also provide important conceptual and ideological underpinnings for the imagination of the community in relation to the state, and in relation to the realms of the political and the religious, organizational categories of the social world that developed in dynamic ways with reference to imperial state formation.

The historical influences of empire are multifold. Imperial forces impinge overtly, for example, on the development of the tradition with the killing of the fifth and ninth Gurus...

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Correspondence to Anne Murphy .

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Murphy, A. (2017). Sikhs and Empire. In: Mandair, AP.S. (eds) Sikhism. Encyclopedia of Indian Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-0846-1_491

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