People

Juggler:
The Making of a Sikh Scholar
Part V

SIKHCHIC.COM

What makes a scholar? And what goes into the making of a Sikh scholar?

This series on sikhchic.com explores these very questions by looking closely at the life of one particular Sikh scholar. The subject selected for the purpose of this examination is Arvind-Pal Singh Mandair.

The following is Part V in the series.

 

 

CHAPTER V  -  A JUGGLER'S LIFE

sikhchic.com:  How does your institution/department at the University of Michigan help you to meet your goals? And what is unique about your approach?

At the University of Michigan, the Sikh Studies chair that I occupy is in the department of Asian Languages and Cultures.

Since the last 12 years the department has shifted from the old style area studies which was basically a throw-back to the needs of cold-war America, to what we now call “Critical Asian Studies” which takes theoretical training as a key part of every student’s intellectual development, and strongly encourages inter-disciplinary thinking.

This has important practical implications for the way I teach and what I teach.

Obviously I teach some courses at undergraduate and graduate levels that focus solely on Sikhism (‘Warrior Saints’; ‘Sikh Philosophy’; ‘Sikhs and Modernity’, etc). But I also teach more mainstream courses such as “Violence and Religion in a Secular Age”, or “What is Religion?”, or “Ethics: Asian and Western”, in which I insert a tangible Sikh component and make Sikh issues part of mainstream discourse.

For example, the “Violence and Religion” course has a large component that looks at 1984 and the post-9/11 situation of Sikhs. The department’s openness to theory also filters into the training that my graduate students receive.

So while I have Ph.D. students who are researching janamskahis and 18th century literature, contemporary Sikh pracharaks, the Gurbani Kirtan renaissance, or Sikh Architecture, they are all additionally trained in how to think about the theoretical underpinnings of their empirical subject matter and how these can be contested if necessary.

And thirdly, I should mention our outreach program.

The department was very supportive of a summer workshop that I organized. It was called “Key Concepts in Gurmat” and was basically a carry-over of the summer seminars I conducted at Hofstra University.

Basically this workshop encouraged community participation and in the summer 2012 workshop the ratio of university students to community was roughly 50/50. The department helped to partner with The Sikh Foundation of Michigan in applying for an external grant which partly funded the summer workshop.

sikhchic.com:  Can you gauge success in your projects and ventures?

It depends what you mean by success.

At a personal level, I wanted to do the kind of work that would allow me to think and respond to the world I live in. I feel very fortunate to have achieved that. 

A second measure of success is how widely my ideas are received. My readership is much wider than Sikh studies, which comprises a relatively small audience. I’ve managed to cultivate audience in post-colonial studies, and at the intersections of disciplines such as politics and theory of religion, and through my work on translation I have managed to cultivate an audience in postcolonial literature.

A growing group in continental philosophy also reads my first work. So for me success is getting Sikh ideas out to a wider audience. 

Another measure of success is whether the position I occupy is giving something back to the community of donors. From what I understand, the Michigan Sikh community seem pleased with the work we are doing. More could be done but as each year goes by, we collectively make plans for furthering the outreach of the Sikh studies program.

A fourth measure of success is the growth of our graduate program.

It rose from  zero in 2006 when I first arrived, to 9 excellent graduate students (6 doctoral and 3 Masters students, and from next year our first post-doctoral student) all working on some aspect of Sikh studies and beyond. And I’m sure this will continue to grow.

sikhchic.com:  How does your family life fit into all of this? Do you discuss your work with your family, for example?

Not really. To be honest, I feel very sorry for family members who have had to share my journey.  The work of scholars is often a lonely one and family members end up having to share the ups, downs and in-betweens of a scholar’s progress towards a certain goal.

In my case there was the added difficulty of leaving one career and starting all over again.

My parents have always been very supportive of my development, but the real burden fell on my wife, especially in the early years of our marriage. But she has supported me through thick and thin and I don’t think I can ever repay her trust and understanding, especially when she had to give up her own career progression and had to start over in a different country.

My kids have also been part of that process – but we rarely talk about my work, except if there is a conference going on. At the dinner table, we talk more about current issues, sports, and what is currently bugging the kids at school …

sikhchic.com:  Tell me a bit, please, about your hobbies? What do you do in your spare time? … if and when you have any, I should add!

I used to play a lot of tennis, squash and soccer when I was younger. But knee injuries have curtailed much of that. These days I content myself with coaching some high school tennis, mainly in the summers.

I also love hiking – just can’t get enough of it! Basically, I love the outdoors.

I also love listening to music but these days it has to be while I’m driving and in my own space (I know, it sounds very narcissistic!). My musical tastes are somewhat bipolar. On the one hand I’ve been a fan of the heavier variety of rock bands (I still consider myself a bit of a headbanger!)  like AC/DC, Led Zepellin, Aerosmith, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, as well as the mellower, folksy artists like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Springsteen.

I also have a liking for certain Blues artists, especially West African (Mali) blues artists like Ali Farka Toure and Baba Salah.

On the other hand, I also love classical kirtan (too many favourites to mention) and Punjabi folk music. I remember my parents had a little transistor radio when we first came to the UK and we used to tune in to Punjabi radio stations and also the weekly South Asian TV show which was broadcast on Sunday mornings (Naya Zindagi Naya Jeevan – if I correctly recall). They played a lot of Punjabi music.

I especially liked the Pakistani Punjabi singers such as Masood Rana, Noor Jahan, Nazia Hassan … And I still like qawaali music. You might wonder how the different music cultures come together in my head. As far as I’m concerned they just speak to different aspects of my subjectivity. They don’t need to come together to be appreciated. I think all diasporic subjects are wired this way. I’m sure its not just me.

What else? ...  I also gorge myself on movies and documentaries (mostly Hollywood garbage). At the end of a day of teaching or writing, believe me, it helps to just blank out all the intellectual stuff.

Continued …

We welcome readers to post (in the COMMENTS section herein below) any questions they have of Dr Arvind-Pal Singh, or if they would like him to address any area or topic that interests them specifically.

To read Part I, please CLICK here.

To read Part II, please CLICK here.

To read Part III, please CLICK here.

To read Part IV, please CLICK here.

May 9, 2013  

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