Disciplining the Martial Sikh: Physical Education, Youth Organisations, and Military at Khalsa College

Abstract

Disciplining the Martial Sikh looks at the embodiment of knowledge in the fields of physical education, sports, and military and its negotiation through the complex relationship between subjectivity; gender; and religious, ethnic, and racial identity. It analyses imperial discourses of race that were used to distinguish a ‘martial’ Sikhism from (possibly ‘effeminate’) Hindu, Muslim, or Christian identities. It elaborates on the role bodily culture and military service took at Khalsa College, Amritsar, in the form of ‘manly games’ (football, hockey, cricket), the Boy Scouts movement, or modern scientific physical education. The chapter thus traces the re-formulation of martial and modern Sikh identity in the interplay between local, regional, imperial, and global flows and webs of knowledge.