Predicament of Sikhism

This is in connection with Anuradha C Kumar’s review ‘Predicament of Sikhism’ of J S Grewal’s The Sikhs of the Punjab (May 13).

Your readers may be interested in knowing one aspect of modern Sikh history which almost all the historians of Sikhism have failed to grasp. It is the revitalising and rejuvenating effect which partition in 1947 had on Sikhs and their religion. While division of the country has generally been portrayed as a tragedy, for Sikhs it has in fact been, as the following facts will bear out, a blessing and a boon virtually bringing to an end for their ‘predicament’. One has to study the economic and political plight of the Sikhs in the decades before partition and their social-polity and demographic position during those days in order to understand the veracity of this statement.