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Images of gurdwaras below: courtesy, Gurumustuk Singh.

Books

The Sikh Pioneers of South America

Book Review by ROOPINDER SINGH

 

 

 

SIKHS IN LATIN AMERICA: TRAVELS AMONG THE SIKH DIASPORA, by Swarn Singh Kahlon. Manohar, India, 2011. Hardcover, English, pp 361, Rs. 1100. ISBN-10: 8173049386; ISBN-13: 978-8173049385.

 

Is it a scholarly work, or is it a travelogue?

It’s a bit of both, with historical, ethnographical and geographical strains thrown in for good measure. This is one book that cannot be slotted easily. But then, it is difficult to classify the author too.

He is a Punjabi who spent most of his working life in Bombay and Calcutta, studied in the U.S., and now makes Chandigarh his home. This is his first book, and he has been working on this subject for a long time.

Swarn Singh is fascinated with early Sikh immigration and he has reached out to an area which has not been the focus of any such study - Latin America. As the author says, "One is unable to fathom how and from where they got the information way back in the end of the 19th century about the existence of some of the countries they migrated to," yet off they went, in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

These immigrants were largely men and most often they married local women, thus their families spoke local languages, maybe some Punjabi for a generation of two, and little or no English.

It was during the British Raj that the Sikhs spread out all over the world, often as a part of the British Army, or police forces. Often they migrated to various British colonies. But this was not always the case.

I remember seeing a picture of a turbaned Sikh supervising building the Panama Canal, in an exhibition in New York. Apparently many spread out from there and for at least a section of them, all they could do was to walk along the railway track till they found food, shelter and eventually work. Many got employment on the railroad, and often set up small business when they had saved enough money to be able to do so.

The author travelled to these Latin American countries. He did a tour of Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil in 2005. A year later, he did another one in which he covered Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Panama and Ecuador. He met descendants of the original inhabitants in these countries and has examined the Sikh diaspora in each of these nations by giving each a chapter.

It is in reaching out to these primary sources that the author strikes his distinctive note. He has got oral accounts, documents, newspaper clippings, passports, etc. which have been appended with the book and which provide fascinating vignettes of pioneer’s lives.

We meet Dan Singh who went from Calcutta, the principal port in India then, to the place he knew as ‘Tina’. An unscrupulous captain took him and his compatriots to Fiji, but they sued him and eventually went to Argentina in 1911, where they faced an adventurous future and a tough life.

Then there is George Singh, who became the Chief Justice of Belize in 1998. His father, Bawa Singh Mann had migrated to what was then British Honduras just six decades earlier.

The gurdwara has always been the fulcrum around which the life of Sikhs, especially emigrants, revolves. Often, it becomes a religious centre, a cultural club and an education centre, all rolled into one. The story of how a gurdwara was set up in each nation varies from one group to the next, but the desire that it should flourish remains constant.

Early emigrants were overwhelmingly male and there were practically no Punjabi girls they could marry. Therefore, they married local girls, and although they clung to their Sikh identity, their children and grandchildren were gradually assimilated. However, they retain a keen interest in the culture of their ancestors, as we find from the author’s interviews.

Swarn Singh has written a remarkable book. There is no doubt that he treads a path seldom travelled and never with the kind of dedication and resources that he has invested in the book.

We can expect this volume to spark interest in this long-forgotten corner of the Sikh diaspora. It has much that future researchers will be able to use for their studies. Let's hope it won't be long before they do.

 

[Courtesy: Tribune. Edited for sikhchic.com]

April 22,  2012


 

Conversation about this article

1: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), April 22, 2012, 1:16 PM.

Thank you again, sikhchic.com, for so many surprising features about Sikh resilience and adaptation!

2: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), April 22, 2012, 3:28 PM.

An interesting tidbit of information relating to early Sikh immigrants in Latin America is that the then racist Canadian government in the early 20th century tried to persuade many of its Sikh settlers to migrate to Honduras. A few went ahead to check it out and were horrified with the fact that the country was in a worse state than India.

3: Spinder Singh Grewal (Surrey, British Columbia, Canada), April 23, 2012, 6:12 AM.

I am a Canadian doing business in South America since 1996. Especially Chile and Bolivia, and I do spend 40% of my time there. I met Sardar Swarn Singh at his home in Chandigarh in 2008. There are very few Punjabi Sikhs in Chile and Bolivia at this time. In the early 1990s, there were about 100 Sikhs living in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, but now only 10, including me.

4: Pritam Singh Grewal (Canada), April 25, 2012, 12:16 AM.

These interesting experiences of early Sikh pioneers remind me of a story from Guru Nanak's life where he "cursed" some good villagers, wishing they would be forced to leave their homes and scatter far and wide, while "blessing' the bad ones, wishing they'd always stay put where they are.

5: Gurinder Singh (Stockton, California, U.S.A.), April 25, 2012, 12:47 PM.

I stayed for sometime in Mexico in 1982 on a company assignment. I did not see any Sikh for three months. During the last stage of my tour, I visited the port city of Tampico for two days. I was told, to my surprise, by my hotel manager that there was a Sikh family living nearby, and they were his customers.

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