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082			_223 _a294.609 OBE
100			_aOberoi, Harjot.
245		4	_aThe Construction of religious boundaries : culture, identity, and diversity in the Sikh tradition _c/Harjot Oberoi
260			_aNew Delhi _b: Oxford University Press _c, 1994
300			_axxii, 494 p.
520			_aIn this major reinterpretation of religion and society in India, Oberoi challenges earlier accounts of Sikhism, Hinduism, and Islam as historically given categories encompassing well-demarcated units of religious identity. Through an examination of Sikh historical materials, he shows that early Sikhism recognized multiple identities based in local, regional, religious, and secular loyalties. As a result, religious identities were highly blurred and competing definitions of Sikhism were possible. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, however, the Singh Sabha, a powerful new Sikh movement, began to view the multiplicity in Sikh identity with suspicion and hostility. Aided by cultural forces unleashed by the British Raj, the Singh Sabha sought to recast Sikh tradition and purge it of diversity, bringing about the highly codified culture of modern Sikhism. A study of the process by which a pluralistic religious world view is replaced by a monolithic one, this book questions basic assumptions about the efficacy of fundamentalist claims and the construction of all social and religious identities.
650			_aSikhism | History.Sikhism | Social aspects.Sikhism | Relations.
942			_cRBK
999			_c68979 _d68979