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REVIEWS
THE OTHER SIKHS – A VIEW FROM EASTERN INDIA
103
THE OTHER SIKHS
– A VIEW FROM EASTERN INDIA –
A REVIEW BY JASWANT SINGH *
Author : Himadri Banerjee
Publisher : Manohar Publishers & Distributors 4753/23, Ansari Road, Daryaganj,
New Delhi
Pages : 279; Price : Rs 550/-
Himadri Banerjee is Guru Nanak Professor of Indian History,
Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His in-depth and intense interest in Sikhs
and Punjab is evident from his earlier book, Agrarian Society of the Punjab
and the other volume, The Khalsa and the Punjab Studies in Sikh History
edited by him. The present book is the first of the two volumes. The
Other Sikhs – A View From Eastern India. Very few non-historian Sikh
scholars in and outside the Punjab are aware of such a work from the
Eastern India. In fact there are three books woven into this volume.
To catalogue all the authors, poets, essayists and lecturers will be an
uphill task, so that only an overall view is being attempted.
After a comprehensive introduction about religious intolerance,
the raproachement between the two communities as ‘healing touch’,
the agony of the Operation Blue Star, Singh Sabha Reformers
establishing Sikh identity including Anand Karaj as Sikh marriage,
Gurdwara reforms, formation of the Akali Dal, the author takes up
his main theme of Assamese, Oriya and Bengali Sikh studies in their
regional languages. He emphasises that the Brahmos in Bengal and
Orissa were the earliest to be interested in Sikhism. During the last 3
decades of the twentieth century, emergence of separate Sikh identity
as in Ham Hindu Nahi by Bhai Kahn Singh, added a further dimension
* Maj Gen (Dr), AVSM, # 1801, Sector 33-D, Chandigarh