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Paper short abstract

Sikhs’ travels to Rameshwaram, one of India’s most significant pilgrimage sites, generate place-making and place-based narratives that localize and root Sikh tradition on Tamil Soil, fostering a sense of regional belonging and women’s mobility.

Paper long abstract

Sikhs, followers of the monotheistic Indian religion whose founder, Guru Nanak, was born in the 15th century, are dispersed throughout the globe. In each place where they reside, Sikhs create complex diasporic relationships with other Sikhs, with non-Sikhs, with nature, their homeland of Punjab, and with the land on which they have migrated to. Chennai, the capital city of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, hosts a vibrant Sikh community that is part of the internal Indian diaspora. Most studies of the Sikh diaspora focus on communities in Western or Western settler colonial societies. By contrast, this paper examines a pilgrimage by Chennai-based Sikhs living as a minority community within India 1,500 miles south of their cultural and religious homeland.

Guru Nanak’s udasis or travels include his journey to Rameshwaram, one of India’s most significant pilgrimage spots. Stories of Nanak in Rameshwaram as well as current pilgrimages foster Chennai-based Sikhs sense of belonging on Tamil soil and within a broader Tamil and Hindu sacred landscape. By traveling to Rameshwaram, Chennai-based Punjabi Sikhs include themselves in Sikh geography and form themselves within a Sikh community narrative. This paper discusses how Tamil Nadu came to be considered sacred landscape for Sikhs and examines the terrain of Chennai-based Sikhs’ sacred and moral geographies, particularly those of women, as illustrated through the narratives and discourses they employ. Sikh women traveling to Rameshwaram re-enact sacred geography and simultaneously claim a domestic moral geography that provides them with legitimate means to leave the home.