The Sikh and Punjabi Studies program in the University of California - Santa Cruz ("USCS"), will present an international conference titled (Re-)Building Punjab: Political Economy, Society and Values on campus, come Friday and Saturday -- March 29-30, 2013.
Prominent scholars from Punjab, England, and the United States will come
together for six sessions, focusing on history, diaspora, politics,
economics, the environment, and culture.
UCSC faculty will chair each of the sessions.
“Punjab is ... also a state of mind,”
said Nirvikar Singh, UCSC’s Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair in Sikh and
Punjabi Studies.
“The larger geographic region of Punjab [now straddling the subcontinent, between India and Pakistan] was the birthplace of the Sikh
religion. The [bifurcated] states of Punjab, within that larger region, constitute the
homeland of the Sikhs. But within an economically resurgent India,
Punjab is in relative decline, apparently beset by societal and
environmental problems,” he added.
Prof Nirvikar Singh noted that the conference will explore the complex relations
between the Sikh community and its real and imagined homeland.
It will focus on the historical roots of Punjab’s contemporary society,
the state of its politics and political culture, possibilities for
economic improvement, the challenges of environmental degradation, the
role of diaspora philanthropy, and how Punjab’s situation is expressed
in and shaped by music and film as forms of cultural production.
“There is a closing lunch panel that features two very successful Sikh
American entrepreneurs who are also very knowledgeable about Punjab, as
well as a Sikh filmmaker who has made documentaries on the region,” said
Nirvikar Singh.
“The closing panel will seek to draw some lessons from the panelists’
own experiences, and the experiences of the other participants, as well
as the presentations and discussions in the conference,” he added.
The closing panel is titled “Punjab’s Future: What’s to be Done?”
Nirvikar Singh is co-organizing the conference with Inderjit N. Kaur, a research
associate in the UCSC Department of Music and an advisor to the UCSC
Sikh and Punjabi Studies program. Inderjit Kaur is a well-known researcher on
Sikh music, and is actively engaged with the Sikh community in education
about Sikh music performance and heritage.
UCSC’s Sikh and Punjabi Studies program was established in December of
2010. The following fall, UCSC launched the program’s first course, Introduction to the Sikhs, which was taught by Nirvikar Singh.
A new class providing Punjabi language instruction was offered last
summer at a Silicon Valley location accessible to UCSC students as well
as community members
The program held its inaugural conference at UCSC in November of 2011 titled Sikh and Punjabi Studies: Achievements and New Directions.
Nirvikar Singh said that the UCSC program hopes to offer a course in Punjabi
language in Silicon Valley again this summer, as well as future language
courses in 2014, and is discussing possible collaborations with a major
university in Punjab.