Rajbir Singh Judge - Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia
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. This talk 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 in military, political, and psychological loss through theological debate, literary production, bodily discipline, and ethical practice in order to contest colonial politics. It 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.
Speakers
Rajbir Singh Judge is an Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach, and, during the 24-25 academic year, a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His first book, Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia was published by Columbia University Press in September 2024. His previous publications have appeared in numerous journals including Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Modern Asian Studies, Theory & Event, positions: asia critique, Cultural Critique, History & Theory, and the Journal of the History of Sexuality, among others.
Harini Kumar is a sociocultural anthropologist with research interests in lived religion, Islam and Muslim societies, gender, ethics, material culture, and migration. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2022, and is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music and Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. Her first book manuscript, titledFormations of Tamil Islam: Religion, Mobility, and Placemaking in Asia, is an ethnographic study of Muslim belonging in Tamil-speaking south India. Her new research project on transoceanic Muslim mobilities explores the connections between South India, Southeast Asia, and the Americas through the enduring legacy of a 16th century Sufi saint.
Prior to joining Yale, Dr. Kumar held a two-year postdoctoral position at Princeton University. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and by several programs at the University of Chicago and Princeton University.
- Humanity