I Get Peace
Gender and Religious Life in a Delhi Gurdwara
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3365249 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kavita Arora (0000-0001-5761-5194, University of the Fraser Valley, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 135 |
| Publication date | 2020-03-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel11030135 |
| OpenAlex | W3011877822 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 28 |
In October and November of 1984, after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, approximately 3500 Sikh men were killed in Delhi, India. Many of the survivors-Sikh widows and their kin-were relocated thereafter to the "Widow Colony", also known as Tilak Vihar, within the boundary of Tilak Nagar in West Delhi, as a means of rehabilitation and compensation. Within this colony lies the Shaheedganj Gurdwara, frequented by widows and their families. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I explore the intersections between violence, widowhood, and gendered religious practice in this place of worship. Memories of violence and experiences of widowhood inform and intersect with embodied religious practices in this place. I argue that the gurdwara is primarily a female place; although male-administered, it is a place that, through women's practices, becomes a gendered counterpublic, allowing women a place to socialize and heal in an area where there is little public space for women to gather. The gurdwara has been re-appropriated away from formal religious practice by these widows, functioning as a place that enables the subversive exchange of local knowledges and viewpoints and a repository of shared experiences that reifies and reclaims gendered loss
Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Ethnography · Hinduism · Indigenous · Political science · Sociology · Viewpoints · Worship · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Purity and Danger
Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture?
Outline of a Theory of Practice
Landscapes of Devils
Life and Words
The Sikh gurdwara in Finland
Sites of ‘Sedition’, Sites of Liberation
(EN)Gendered Sikhism
Marriage and Migration through the Life Course
Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture
Masks and faces
Culture, ethnicity and class among Punjabi Sikh women in 1990s Britain
Rethinking the Public Sphere
Affective Economies
Creating Gurdwaras, Narrating Histories
Ritual, Risk, and Danger
Making God real and making God good
Between Belief and Unbelief Lies the Performance Ofsalāt
"The origins of the Sikh "look
Healing Through States of Consciousness
Body/Meaning/Healing
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |