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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia

Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia

Judge, Rajbir Singh

Hardcover

Series: Religion, Culture, and Public Life, Book 53

General Political ScienceIndian & South Asian HistorySikhism

ISBN10: 0231214480
ISBN13: 9780231214483
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: Sep 10 2024
Pages: 288
Weight: 1.31
Height: 0.81 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Winner, 2025 Best First Book in the History of Religions, American Academy of Religion

Finalist, 2025 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Analytical-Descriptive Studies, American Academy of Religion

How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration? Rajbir Singh Judge offers new ways to understand loss and the limits of history by considering Maharaja Duleep Singh and his struggle during the 1880s to reestablish Sikh rule, the lost Khalsa Raj, in Punjab.

Sikh sovereignty in what is today northern India and northeastern Pakistan came to an end in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the British annexed the Sikh kingdom and, eventually, exiled its child maharaja, Duleep Singh, to England. In the 1880s, Singh embarked on an abortive attempt to restore the lost Sikh kingdom. Judge explores not only Singh's efforts but also the Sikh people's responses--the dreams, fantasies, and hopes that became attached to the Khalsa Raj. He shows how a community engaged military, political, and psychological loss through theological debate, literary production, bodily discipline, and ethical practice in order to contest colonial politics. This book argues that Sikhs in the final decades of the nineteenth century were not simply looking to recuperate the past but to remake it--and to dwell within loss instead of transcending it--and in so doing opened new possibilities.

Bringing together Sikh tradition, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial thought, Prophetic Maharaja provides bracing insights into concepts of sovereignty and the writing of history.

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