Exorcizing the Spectres of Colonialism in Contemporary Sikhism and Postcolonial Thought

Using the case study of Sikhism, Arvind-pal Singh Mandair claims that ‘a certain repetition of the colonial event seems to haunt the very manner in which different portions of humanity have attempted, or indeed have been permitted to engage with what has come to be called “the political” ’ (RSW: 1). Taking his cue from Derrida’s insight into the untranslatability of the Judaeo-Christian concept of religio, Mandair convincingly shows how the spectre of colonialism, and the ‘ontotheological matrix’ upon which it—and western conceptions of liberal, secular modernity—are founded, continues to ‘haunt’ subjectivity in South Asia and the Diaspora today. Whereas others have focused on the ‘nation’ as the main trope through which ‘Sikh’ identity has been constructed and articulated (Axel 2001; Shani 2007), Mandair examines the concept of ‘religion’, which he argues may have been alien to the cultural traditions of South Asia but exists as if it had been an indigenous concept all along (RSW:434)