Sensing the bride: Sikh poetics, barahmah, and a seasonal journey with Vaisakhi nagar kirtan. (3rd July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kaur, Amardeep
• Is Part Of: Sikh formations. Volume 17:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 245
• Page End: 275
• Publication Date: 2021-07-03
• Subjects: nagar kirtan -- Vaisakhi -- barahmah -- pilgrimage -- cultural geography -- religious assemblages; Sikhism -- Periodicals; Sikhs -- Periodicals; 294.6
• DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2021.1949915
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1744-8727

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Nagar kirtan is a Sikh travelling court of poetry, prominent during the Punjabi harvest festival, Vaisakhi. Critics and celebrators alike overfocus on its visual optics, but there is an alternative bottom-up assemblage by which participants generate transformative power. This article decentres the politics of representation favoured by state apparatuses, politicians, and religious elites. I mobilize a decolonial feminist conceptualization with a walk from off the centerstage. Deploying the subaltern figure of the bride, I argue for an interpretation of nagar kirtan as embodied engagement with a poetics of a humanity. Fieldwork was carried out in Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Toronto.