Sikhs In Britain

The history of Sikhs in Britain provides important clues into the evolution of Britain as a multicultural society and the challenges it faces today. The authors examine the complex Anglo-Sikh relationship that led to the initial Sikh settlement and the processes of community-building around Sikh institutions such as gurdwaras. They explore the nature of British Sikh society as reflected in the performance of Sikhs in the labor markets, the changing characteristics of the Sikh family and issues of cultural transmission to the young. They provide an original and insightful account of a community transformed from the site of radical immigrant class politics to a leader of the Sikh diaspora in its search for a separate Sikh state.

Helweg's study of the Sikh community in Gravesend provides a historical profile of this group--their cultural values, life-styles in India, the factors that led to emigration, and their experience in Britain. Entirely updated to include events through 1985, the second edition brings to light the recent transformation of British Sikhs from "immigrant" to "minority" status.

This study by a Sikh woman who came to England after growing up and going to university in the Punjab illustrates the changes in the values of Sikh women in England over the years and between the migrants and British born Sikhs. Her research subjects, all based in Leeds, come from varied backgrounds and together make up a picture of Sikh women that is transferable to England and the UK. The book is arranged as follows Chapter 1 The backgrounds of the Sikh women Chapter 2 Religious values Chapter 3 Women in Sikhism and Sikh society Chapter 4 The social life of Sikh women Chapter 5 Cultural values Chapter 6, entitled Listen to Me provides excerpts from the women's stories about their own lives, and the conclusion confirms that Sikh women have adapted well to life on a different continent and have a strong sense of identity. Foreword by Professor Kim Knott

A book which covers the relationship between the British and the Sikhs in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Defence of Europe by Sikh Soldiers in the World Wars is a fascinating history of the much-forgotten Sikh contribution to the two World Wars. Containing much new research and modern ideas, the book explores how an alliance with Britain enabled Sikhism to spread across the globe and Sikhs to step forward as global partners.

In Lives in Translation, Kathleen Hall investigates the cultural politics of immigration and citizenship, education and identity-formation among Sikh youth whose parents migrated to England from India and East Africa. Legally British, these young people encounter race as a barrier to becoming truly "English." Hall breaks with conventional ethnographies about immigrant groups by placing this paradox of modern citizenship at the center of her study, considering Sikh immigration within a broader analysis of the making of a multiracial postcolonial British nation. The postwar British public sphere has been a contested terrain on which the politics of cultural pluralism and of social incorporation have configured the possibilities and the limitations of citizenship and national belonging. Hall's rich ethnographic account directs attention to the shifting fields of power and cultural politics in the public sphere, where collective identities, social statuses, and cultural subjectivities are produced in law and policy, education and the media, as well as in families, peer groups, ethnic networks, and religious organizations. Hall uses a blend of interviews, fieldwork, and archival research to challenge the assimilationist narrative of the traditional immigration myth, demonstrating how migrant people come to know themselves and others through contradictory experiences of social conflict and solidarity across different social fields within the public sphere. Lives in Translation chronicles the stories of Sikh youth, the cultural dilemmas they face, the situated identities they perform, and the life choices they make as they navigate their own journeys to citizenship.

This volume is a portrayal of the social history of the Sikhs in Britain and their contribution to British society. It captures their successes through the stories of individuals, from early Sikh immigrants and labourers brought over on colonial ships by wealthy nabobs to travelling salesmen at the turn of the century.