Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Daughters and Sons of ’84: Dissenting Performances of Labor and Love

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Precarious Diasporas of Sikh and Ahmadiyya Generations

Part of the book series: Religion and Global Migrations ((RGM))

  • 264 Accesses

Abstract

The following chapter contributes to the study of cultural and youth citizenship. The specific debate on Sikh youth practices and artistic forms is set against the background of dominant public framings of Sikh youth in categories of terrorism and juvenile delinquency in Canada. A discussion of emerging Sikh youth movements and their 1984 commemorative events in Toronto form the core part of the chapter. Drawing on in-depth narrative interviews and poetic texts, Nijhawan portrays a next generation of young Sikhs who found in the 1984 idiom a powerful tool to come to terms with a difficult past and at the same time imagine a new future for youth activism informed by Sikh ethical principles.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ben-Ze’ev, Efrat, and Edna Lomsky-Feder. 2009. The Canonical Generation: Trapped Between Personal and National Memories. Sociology 43(6): 1047–1065.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bhogal, Balbinder. 2011. Monopolizing Violence Before and After 1984: Governmental Law and the People’s Passion. Sikh Formations 7(1): 57–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bucholtz, Mary. 2002. Youth and cultural practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 525–552.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buffam, Bonar. 2013. Public Demands: Law, Sanctuary, and the Eventual Deportation of Laibar Singh. Sikh Formations 9(1): 29–37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cho, Lily. 2011. Affective Citizenship. In Narratives of Citizenship: Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples Unsettle the Nation-State, ed. Fleischmann, Aloys N. M. and Nancy Van Styvendale, 107–128. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Reflections on the Anthropology of Law, Governance, and sovereignty. In Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling: On the Governance of Law, ed. Benda-Beckmann, Franz von; Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von and Julia Eckert, 31–60. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dhamoon, Rita Kaur. 2013. Exclusion and Regulated Inclusion: The Case of the Sikh Kirpan in Canada. Sikh Formations 9(1): 7–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erikson, Erik H. 1994. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: WW Norton & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Failler, Angela. 2009. Remembering the Air India Disaster: Memorial and Counter-Memorial 1. The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31(2–3): 150–176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. War-on-Terror Frames of Remembrance: The 1985 Air India Bombings After 9/11. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 27: 253–269.

    Google Scholar 

  • Furlong, Andy, Dan Woodman, and Johanna Wyn. 2011. Changing times, changing perspectives: Reconciling ‘transition’ and ‘cultural’ perspectives on youth and young adulthood. Journal of Sociology 47(4): 355–370.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghaffar-Kucher, Ameena. 2012. The Religification of Pakistani-American Youth. American Educational Research Journal 49(1): 30–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giroux, Henry A. 2013. Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future. Boulder, Colorado: Paradigm Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grewal, Inderpal. 2003. Transnational America: Race, Gender and Citizenship After 9/11. Social Identities 9(4): 535–561.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kalra, Virinder S. 2005. Locating the Sikh Pagh. Sikh Formations 1(1): 75–92.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalra, Virinder S., and Michael Nijhawan. 2007. Cultural, Linguistic and Political Translations: Dhadi ‘Urban’ Music. Sikh Formations 3(1): 67–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mandair, Arvind. 2011. Translations of Violence: Secularism and Religion-Making in the Discourses of Sikh Nationalism. In Secularism and Religion-Making, ed. Dressler, Markus and Arvind Mandair, 61–86. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nijhawan, Michael. 2014. 1984 and the Diasporic Politics of Aesthetics: Reconfigurations and New Constellations among Toronto’s Sikh Youth. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 17(2): 196–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nijhawan, Michael, and Kamal Arora. 2013. ‘Lullabies for Broken Children’: Diasporic Citizenship and the Dissenting Voices of Young Sikhs in Canada. Sikh Formations 9(3): 299–321.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parnes, Ohad, Vedder, Ulrike und Stefan Willer. 2008. Das Konzept der Generation. Eine Wissenschafts- und Kunstgeschichte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rai, Jasdev. 2011. Khalistan Is Dead! Long Live Khalistan! Sikh Formations 7(1): 1–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Razack, Sherene. 2008. Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Singh, Jaspal Naveel. 2013. How Many of Us Remember 1984?’ Narrating Masculinity and Militancy in the Khalistani Rap Bricolage. Sikh Formations 9(3): 339–360.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soni, Raji Singh, and Asha Varadharajan. 2012. Between Securocratic Historiography and the Diasporic Imaginary: Framing the Transnational Violence of Air India Flight 182. TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 27(1): 177–95.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sumartojo, Widyarini. 2012. “My Kind of Brown”: Indo-Canadian Youth Identity and Belonging in Greater Vancouver. PhD dissertation Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tatla, Darshan Singh. 1999. The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. London: University of College London Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thandi, Shinder. n.d. From Mobilizing for Khalistan to Promoting Human Rights: political discourses and advocacy among Sikhs in Britain and USA and implications for Indian Foreign and Diaspora Policy. Diaspora: A Journal for Transnational Studies (forthcoming)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tölölyan, Khachig. 2010. Beyond the Homeland: From Exilic Nationalism to Diasporic Transnationalism. In The Call of the Homeland: Diaspora Nationalisms, Past and Present, Vol. 9, ed. Gall, Allon, Athena S. Leoussi, and Anthony D. Smith, 27–46. London: University of College London Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitaker, Reginald, Gregory S. Kealey, and Andrew Parnaby. 2012. Secret Service: Political Policing in Canada: From the Fenians to Fortress America. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ziemer, Ulrike. 2010. Belonging and Longing: Armenian Youth and Diasporic Long-Distance Nationalism in Contemporary Russia. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10(2): 290–303.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Michael Nijhawan

Authors
  1. Michael Nijhawan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2016 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Nijhawan, M. (2016). Daughters and Sons of ’84: Dissenting Performances of Labor and Love. In: The Precarious Diasporas of Sikh and Ahmadiyya Generations. Religion and Global Migrations. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48854-1_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation