Bindy Kaur

My Punjabi Sikh Wedding: An Authoethnography

Draft (Work-in-Progress) Article (Not for distribution/circulation)

My Punjabi Sikh Wedding, my Canadian Homeland: An Autoethnography Exploring the Dynamics of Race

H Bindy Kaur KangInterdisciplinary Studies Graduate Program, University of British ColumbiaVancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Acknowledgements: A critical thank you to my partner, daughter, and family who provide immense support for my acadmic pursuits: Jasbir Singh Dhillon, Dayven Kaur Dhillon, Surinder Kaur Kang, Bhupinder Singh Kang, Simran Singh Kang, Taran Singh Aujla, Naseeb Kaur Aujla, S. Jindy K. Kang-Aujla and Jinder Aujla (who also developed our wedding website: www.bindyandgarygetmarried.com). A special thank you to our wedding photographer: Nav Jagpal for providing photographic momentos, and Vi Sekhon, who supported the ‘getting ready’ process. I would like to extend my gratitude to my colleagues Robin Repta, Rebecca Haines-Saah and Gloria Puurveen for their feedback regarding this autoethnography. Finally, I am thankful for the mentorship and guidance provided by PhD supervisor: Sunera Thobani, for lighting many torches for me to follow, and support to light my own divas. 2012 Kang

Abstract

As a qualitative method, autoethnographies offer an opportunity for researchers to include their lived experiences as landscapes to examine complex human emotions, bodies and spirits. Post-colonial scholarship on hybrid/diasporic communities has challenged the notion of the cultural ‘other’ as unchanging and timeless. While recognition of complicated identities is apparent, the exotification of the cultural ‘other’ continues to perpetuate hegemonic ideals even in multi-cultural nation states. Using autoethnographic vignettes from my Punjabi Sikh wedding, geographically located in my Canadian homeland, I present my negotiation as a soon-to-be-Sikh-bride. Through the trajectory of wedding preparations, events and post-wedding discussions, I was surprised to find my wedding as a stage for new sites of racialization and gendered stereotyping. Key elements within the Sikh wedding ceremony prompted and revealed a myriad of stereotypes linked to the Sikh community within this urban, Canadian city. Identity markers for my partner and I, such as Indian attire, wearing a turban and having a beard, were significant discussion areas. This autoethnography addresses the dislocation of my dual identified-embodiment; my resistance to being a singular, ‘traditional’ identity; and the hyper-visibility of my race and gender as I became a bride intersecting my Punjabi culture, Sikh faith and Canadian homeland.

Key Words: culture, race/ethnicity, weddings, South Asian, Indian, Punjabi, Sikh, autoethnography, reflexivity, representation, embodied experiences

Kang, Bindy Kaur 1February 2012

http://www.bindyandgarygetmarried.com/


Introduction

Once my partner and I were engaged (November 2008), wedding preparations began immediately, including my wedding shopping trip to the Northern Indian state of Punjabi. For anyone who has been involved in a wedding, weddings can have a creative energy of their own that transpires against simplicity, such as this ‘right of passage’ – the wedding shopping trip. As both my partner and I share Indian (specifically Punjabi) ancestry and have been raised in the Sikh spiritual orientation, we opted to honour these aspects of our identities and celebrate our marriage union with the influence of the Punjabi culture and participate in the Sikh wedding ceremony: the Anand Karaj (ceremony of bliss). Although, both of us honour these parts of our identity, we also occupy a solid identity and patriotism to our Canadian homeland. As ‘hybrid’ identity holders, we have found comfortable ways to synthesize these various memberships into our individual ‘hybrid’ identities – finding an intersection between our Indian-ness, Punjabi-ness, Sikh-ness, Vancouver-ness and Canadian-ness as well as incorporating the various other aspects our identities (socio-economic status, gender, sexual orientation, educational privilege, ability, etc).

Being born and raised in Canada, I am well acquainted with the subtle and overt forms of racism. Despite the surface multiculturalism in the very diverse urban Canadian setting I have called home, I have personally experienced, witnessed, read and heard firsthand accounts of racism which have trained me to identify ‘racism’. My feminist consciousness coupled with the social justice orientation of the Sikh faith has helped me develop strategies to react to racism; But this all came from my own exploration of my brown skin. From within those explorations, I also saw the internalized racism that had slipped in, past my conscious invitation of this form of self-oppression, and subsequently worked diligently to free myself from its hold. This fencing match between racism (whether it was internalized or external) and finding self-love, was paved by my hybrid identity, and a new relationship to my brown skin – one where I never doubt its value and cherish every bit of me that is ‘brown’.

With the wedding well under-construction, I began hearing new voices of racism. In order to understand these new articulations, I began recording them in a notebook, on my iphone, on my voice recorder – anywhere where I could ‘park’ these experiences, the words spoken to me, the feelings that emerged within my embodiment, and the dialogue that ensued . Utilizing this substantive data set, I have located the following emerging themes: ‘Traditional’ Wedding; Turbans & Beards: Training for Terrorism; Hyper-Fem meets Bollywood; Guests/Armchair Anthropologists; Personal is Public; and Entering the Veiled Exotic Guruduara. Autoethnographical vignettes have been selected to highlight the emerging themes. A brief discussion regarding ‘belonging’, autoethnography and post-colonial feminist theory will be shared to provide a grounding context for the identified themes.



Tracing the contours of belonging in our home and native land: a bit of history

The geographical land mass that is currently identified as Canada, was once home to many Indigenous communities, many of whom continue to exist within the marginalized space of a white settler society. Sherene Razack identifies white-settler societies as being established through colonialism by Europeans upon non-Europeans (2002), while Lawrence & Dua (2005) highlight that white settler societies within North America continue to be maintained through “policies of extermination, displacement or assimilation” (Lawrence & Dua, 2005, 123). Settling into the lands of Canada’s heterogeneous Indigenous communities, the first ‘settlers’ commonly hailed from the United Kingdom, as Canada was a part of the British Empire, or from Europe. While all British subjects were encouraged to resettle in different parts of the Empire, in practice, this freedom was limited to those who could be identified as ‘white’, and the movements of the ‘Asiatic’ or ‘African’ British citizen were restricted. During Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1896, British subjects from the various British colonies were paraded through Britain and the colonies, including Canada. Sikh soldiers were included in the procession, particularly because of their exotic appearance (turbans, keeping of hair, and symbols of Sikhi). A few of the Sikh soldiers requested leave to settle in British Columbia; but were refused on the grounds that “Hindoos” (Dua, 2000) could not take up residency in Canada. Another example of mobility restrictions placed on British Indians, is the Komagata Maru, a chartered ship, upon which 376 British Indian passengers arrived at Vancouver’s shores on May 23, 1914. When reviewing the list of 376 passengers, there is a noticeable Sikh presence. Unfortunately, the majority of the passengers were not permitted to disembark, despite the legal battle supported by the local Indian ancestry community.

Multiple objections were provided as to why the ‘Oriental other’ should not be allowed to settle in the ‘Occidental’ country of Canada; this newspaper quote illustrates the threat to ‘whiteness’:

Under most conditions it will be difficult to blend the various races now here into a wholesome Canadian citizenship. To admit the Oriental, especially before a political and ethical reserve is built up in Canada, would make the task of Canadian citizenship almost a hopeless problem. (Victoria Daily Colonist, February 20, 1912)

A few weeks later, another editorial comment in the Victoria Daily Colonist states that the writer’s “objection to the Asiatic is that he does not and cannot assimilate with the white race” (March 9, 1912). Chinese and British Indian men, without wives and families, performed most of the early migration to work as labourers (Dua, 2000). Inhabiting this position of ‘temporary worker’ (involved in the actual nation-building processes like laying down tracks for the Canadian railway system), did not provide any benefits to these ‘Asiatic’ men as they were forbidden to sponsor their wives and children; inviting families would be a detriment to the imagined white nation-building project (Dua, 2000).

The question will arise, are the wives and families to come here under the Indian social laws … as they are exercised among various sects, are they to come under our system? … Polygamy is a part of the sociological conditions of the Hindu, so the question comes up as to whether they all or only one or two wives of each person is to be admitted … with the advent of family life among the Indians here how are the laws to be administered among them? Are they to have native leaders and the joint



magistrate system, or will the matter be left in the hands of the police? These are all questions to be considered before Hindu women are to be allowed to come to British Columbia. (Victoria Daily Colonist, February 9, 1912)

The Oriental Others’ non-assimilability is not just a form of resistance they have consciously adopted; it is bound in their (my) cultural and sociological ‘condition’. This ‘condition’ even complicates Canadian administration of laws such as policing.

If they were permitted to come in unlimited numbers, they would in a short time so occupy the land that the white population would be a minority. If British Columbia is not kept “white”, Canada will become Asiatic. (March 9, 1912)

The threat to whiteness launched a heavy media surveillance campaign, leading to headlines reading: “To Rid City of Undesirables” and discussions about cast-iron policies determined “to rid Vancouver of the alien undesirables who are claimed to have been responsible for much of the unrest here” (Victoria Daily Times, February 13, 1912). In conjunction with restrictive migration policies like the continuous journey (required non-stop travel from the source country to Canada which was not feasible from India given the need to refuel and re-stock supplies).

This historical anchoring highlights the development of a white settler society. Despite the rhetoric of current day multiculturalism and diversity, Canada, operates with a ‘white’ normative identity and location (Razack, Smith & Thobani, 2010). As a woman of colour, born in Canada, with Indian ancestry, I have frequently been reminded of this backdrop of institutionalized ‘whiteness’ to my ‘visible minority’ status. Himani Bannerji’s critique provides some context to the marginalization of ‘visibile minority’ bodies in the Canadian nation state:

We cannot be successfully ingested, or assimilated, or made to vanish from where we are not wanted. We remain an ambigious presence, our existence a question mark in the side of the nation … we continue to live here as outsider-insiders … We have the awareness that we have arrived into somebody’s state … (Bannerji, 2000, 91).

Autoethnography, Post-colonial feminist theory and Me: writing from my heart

I first encountered the autoethnograpical writings of Carolyn Ellis while I was working as a Social Science Researcher in the area of health behaviour research. While dislocated from my actual ‘work’, Ellis appeared in a google scholar search, and inspired me to consider “bringing the lived experience of emotions to social science research” (Davis & Ellis,2008,283). Drawing from her personal losses, Ellis began recording her own ‘observations’ of what she was experiencing as her partner was dying, and ultimately compiled her first autoethnography: Final Negotiations: A story of love, loss and chronic illness (Ellis, 1995) that “read more like a memoir or a novel” (Davis & Ellis,2008,283).

What is an autoethnography? Carolyn Ellis defines it as “research, writing story , and method that connect the autobiographical and the personal to the cultural, social and political” (Ellis, 2004, p.xix). While



academic writing often requires the author to remove themselves from the writing process, commonly writing in the third person, autoethnography not only opens the door to enter the writing process, but requires ‘I’ to linger, to be an active agent, a creative force, to share one’s emotions, heart, views, experiences and insights. While autoethnographies have diversified to include multiple voices such as community based autoethnographies or co-constructed narratives, this paper will draw upon the traditional format of the personal narrative showcasing the ‘One Voice/One Self’ (Davis & Eliis, 2008).

My voice, is the voice of a woman of colour who lives in side-line spaces; As someone who is identified as a ‘visible minority’ in my ‘home and native land’ of Canada. I was born to Punjabi ancestry parents, who were just starting their settlement process when I appeared on the scene. I grew up with a clear understanding that I was different than the majority; some of this understanding emerged from racialized verbal assaults; some from subtle spaces of difference; some from overt questions or remarks pertaining to my difference; and some from observing the hegemonic representations of white bodies.

My ‘consciousness’ has been on its own ‘rising’ journey, and a key component to understanding the effects of living as a ‘visible minority’, a woman of colour, an ‘ethnic’ ‘other’, was reading and breathing in critical writings of post-colonial theorists, particularly post-colonial feminist theorists, critical feminist race theorists, Black feminist thought scholars, Borderland-Mestitzaje scholarship, Sikh scholars, personal narratives and poetry by women of colour and fiction.

While all of these influences have been integral to the development of an empowered and critical consciousness, postcolonial feminist theory lit many divas in the dark recesses of my embodied understanding of what it means to be a woman of colour in the Canadian nation state. Birthed out of colonial sites of conquest, post-colonial theory interrogates the hierarchies and power dynamics resulting from colonial constructions. As such, post colonial theory includes “how history shapes people’s lives and makes them more vulnerable to different forms of marginalization” (Kahn, 2011, 19); By “[resisting attempts] at holistic forms of social explanation, it forces a recognition of the more complex cultural and political boundaries” (bhabha, 1994, 173), and thus allows for “subjugated knowledges ... [to] be given voice” (Anderson, Kahn, Reimer-Kirkham, 2011, 23). Post-colonial feminist theory pushes the boundaries further, by explicitly evaluating gender and race, and acknowledges that colonial processes are still actively operating.

For those with voices who have been silenced, marginalized or excluded, autoethnography informed by post-colonial theory offers an opportunity to write counter-narratives, challenging essentializing constructions of the ‘other’, and allows space for voices of difference, of resistance. For me, autoethnography offers an opportunity to delve into those personal narratives that mark my life, my work, and my engagement with the world.



Writing me ‘in’: Autoethnographical Vignettes

For the purpose of the presentation, I will limit the vignettes to the following two: ‘Traditional’ Wedding; and Turbans & Beards: Training for Terrorism.

‘Traditional’ Wedding

A common question that emerged out of wedding dialogues (with work colleagues, acquaintances, fellow feminists, professors, friends, wedding vendors and strangers) was “are you having a traditional wedding?”. While intuitively, I understood this to mean ‘are you having an Indian wedding?’, and answered it from that position; however, the longer I was exposed to this question, I began interrogating the meaning behind tradition. What does ‘traditional’ mean? In this context, it would be defined as “an inherited, established, or customary pattern of action” which could be communicated through “handing down information, beliefs and customs from one generation to another without written instruction” (Webster’s dictionary). So, I began asking “what do you mean by traditional?”. The responses did confirm that it was related to having an Indian wedding, even if the wedding was influenced by contemporary Indian culture, fashion and mores (which were still identified as ‘traditional’). Interestingly, people did not think that Christian influenced weddings were ‘traditional’, they were regarded as ‘modern’, as ‘contemporary’, despite the “inherited, established and customary” actions such as wearing a white wedding gown, or the bride being given away by her father, or having bridesmaids or groomsmen.

The following vignette showcases a dialogue I had with an older Scottish ancestry woman who had known my partner as a child and a teenager, and had just met me:

Mrs. Markham (a pseudonym): So, dear, tell me, how long have you been preparing for this day?Bindy: I am sorry, Mrs Markham, what day?Mrs Markham: your wedding day, of course, you must have trained since birthBindy: sorry, trained from birth?Mrs Markham: well, your weddings are so involved, with all the clothing, jewelry, and all the special customs, of course you can’t just learn that, you must have been trained from birth to do thisBindy: No, it isn’t anymore elaborate than Christian weddings Mrs. Markham: Oh my, yes, your weddings are very elaborate, very different, Christian weddings are so common, but your weddings are full of special customs, special things you must do, how you must do them, your mother must have taught you well Bindy: It sounds like you know a lot about Indian weddings, you must have attended some?Mrs Markham: No, no, dear, your wedding will be our first, it will be so exotic, I have never been to India, so this will be the next best thing, I hope we don’t do anything offensive, you will teach us, how to go to your temples?



While Punjabi weddings do have several events including the Ladies’ party, mehndi party, the myaa, the wedding, the bride’s departure from her house, the couple’s arrival to their home, and the reception, Christian inspired weddings also have a number of events including a bridal shower, stagette/stag, rehearsal dinner, wedding and reception, breakfast or lunch with the bridal party, and finally, the opening of the gifts. Both weddings have an emphasis on special clothing, jewelry and customs.

Mrs Markham identifies the Punjabi Sikh wedding as apart of the grand narrative regarding India; locating the ‘traditional wedding as a fixed, unchanging, monolithic example of an ever-enduring India – one of exotic spices, colourful silks, snakes and scorpions (Narayan, 1985). The resistance to acknowledging sites of similarities between the 2 weddings, and emphasizing ‘difference’ maintains the binary of the ‘us’ and ‘them’; of who belongs and who doesn’t, what is ‘common’, and what is ‘different’; and echoes the early 1900s sentiments that the ‘Asiatic’ cannot assimilate.

Turbans & Beards: Training for Terrorism

When my partner began to grow out his beard for our wedding ceremony, he had friends and acquaintances remark “are you training to be a terrorist”. While the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 have placed ‘terrorism’, and Osma Bin Laden’s turban, as a constant threat to safety; within Canada’s borders, the bombing of Air India Flight 182 to the 2007 Glasgow Airport attack have highlighted representations of turbaned men as violent, bombing making, bomb setting terrorist. The hyper visible images of ‘Sikh militants’ in the media, continue to construct Sikh, turbaned bodies as perpetrators of violence. In the immediate racist backlash post-9/11, the turban became targeted as a threat to national security, as all those who wore turbans were seen as followers of Osama Bin Laden. The fatal shooting of Balbir Singh Sodhi in Mesa, Arizona and reports of turban grabbing led some to abandon their turbans (Puar & Rai, 2002). The terror inherent in belonging to a group of hyphenated others is what Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai articulate:

... a turban is just a turban ... it symbolizes the revived, erect, and violent patriarchy of the East, of Islam, and of the Taliban; the oppression of Afghan women; (Puar & Rai, 2002, p. 137)

Although Puar and Rai speak in context of the American Sikh, the Canadian gaze also symbolizes the Sikh turban as representing a violent, backward Eastern, Oriental, Hindoo and Asiatic patriarchy. It is no wonder that when I shared that my partner would be growing out a full beard and wearing a turban on our wedding date, that Mrs. Markham put her hands on her chest and remarked: “but why would you do that to him? He isn’t like them, he was born here?”. While Mrs Markham’s comment reveals the turban as a far-away symbol for the Air India bombing,of the separatist movement for Khalistan and of an irrational, savage violence seen against the backdrop of Indo-Canadian gangs and South Asian domestic violence, she also identifies that I, the Punjabi Sikh woman, is influencing my Canadian born partner to join the violent, backward, turbaned men.

Conclusion

Locating ‘visible minorities’, ‘ethnic’ communities, ‘others’ as stagnant, as anti-contemporary, speaks to the institutionalized ‘white’ cultural backdrop that frames the lives of many hybrid identity holders.



Hegemonic ‘whiteness’ also acts upon racialized femininity and masculinity whereby Indian women, including Punjabi Sikh women, are read as backward, ‘traditional’ native, exotic and passive, while Punjabi Sikh men are read as violent, potential terrorists, backward, misogynistic and perpetuating oppressive forms of patriarchy. To unhinge these readings, counter-narratives that speak from lived experiences act as powerful luminaries to challenge stereotypes. Indian identities, especially in the context of hybrid identities confront impermeable, unchanging constructions of ‘traditional’ Indian-ness; and reveal that Indian-ness, like the West, inhabits modernity, evolves dynamically into contemporary and progressive spaces. But where does the resistance come from? For example, when Indian femininity does not fit into the stagnant performative bright silk sari clad femininity, then the deviance challenges the notion of who and what can be contemporary and modern. When the ‘bindi’ (worn by Indian women on their forehead) is placed against a pair of jeans, boots and a hippi chic shirt, it is seen as being appropriated by the West, as a new fashion accessory but when that same ‘look’ emerges out of the East, why is it still seen as ‘traditional’, and not as apart of the natural evolution of Indian contemporary culture?

Part of the reasoning may lie in Erving Goffman’s notion of the ‘front’. Goffman describes front as “part of the individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance” and goes onto outline the components of the ‘front’ including the ‘setting’ (the décor, background items, the props); Usually the ‘setting’ is fixed geographically but in some “exceptional circumstances”, the setting follows the performer (Goffman, p. 22, 1959) – such as the case with hybrid identity holders, our ‘Indian-ness’, our Punjabi-ness follows us. Another component of the front is the ‘personal front’ that incorporates ‘appearance’ (age, ethnic identity, socio-economic status, educational status etc) and ‘manner’ (body language, tone of voice, choices of expression, facial expressions etc). When individuals join a ‘social front’, usually this ‘collective representation’ has been well established; so when an individual deviates from the recognizable markers of their social roles , it disrupts the myth of this collective community.

In the case of those living within hybrid identity spaces, particularly individuals of colour, our skin (as a factor of our appearance) announces our “personal front”. In my case, my ‘brown skin’ publicizes my Indian identity. When I marry a man of Indian ancestry, wear ‘traditional’ Indian attire for the wedding events, follow the cultural and spiritual marital customs of the Punjabi culture and Sikh faith, I am conforming to the ‘social front’ of my visibly loud collective community. The part of my hybridity that isn’t strikingly embraced, but rather muted by the social audience that I function within - is my Canadian-ness, my commonality with other Canadians and my relationship to ‘Western’ clothing, English fluency, Canadian culture and Canadian identity. This part of my identity becomes located in what Goffman refers to as the ‘back region’ where the activities that “discredit the fostered impression” are “suppressed” (Goffman, 1959, page 112). What I find interesting is that the activities that appear to conform to my Indian ‘front’ are often the performance pieces I least actively practice in wider public spaces, which in my everyday presentation of myself are located in the ‘back region’. What I persistently perform, what I would believe to be located in the ‘front’, in my everyday presentation of myself is what would be classified as my ‘Canadian’ identity. I speak to these identity performance issues of



what is located in the front and the back regions, not to misalign myself from my Indian-ness but rather as someone who is fiercely proud of my brown skin, my South Asian ancestry, Punjabi affiliation and Sikhi orientation and to highlight how I am continuously re-routed to having my Indian-ness geographically located in the ‘front’ and have my Canadian-ness directed to the ‘back region’. Hybridity for me, locates both aspects in a side by side configuration, without hierarchical rankings.

I offer my story not because I see myself as an exceptional example of ‘hybrid’ identity; but rather, my experiences are the everyday; and it is in the everyday, lived experiences; in the subtle commonplace activities; in the intimate recesses of my understanding, that I have been able to deconstruct the dynamic spaces of race, gender and belonging. Racism is not an easy experience to discuss, or deconstruct, particularly when you are invested in maintaining some semblance of ‘safeness’ in your ‘home and native land’; But racism has a far reaching impact, on the individual, for communities, and for generations – and for this reason, our individual lived experiences can be useful means of critically unpacking the effects of race, and how majority cultures perpetuate a hegemonic ideal of what is normative, what is deviant. Hybrid identity does not conform to the ‘non-assimilating native’ trope, and thus challenges us to include a ‘holistic’ identity for the ever-growing community of hybrid identity holders.

I hope that this autoethnography serves to reposition my Punjabi-ness, Sikh-ness, Indian-ness, alongside my Canadian-ness, and actively contributes to Franz Fanon’s notion of decolonization:

Decolonisation never takes place un-noticed, for it influences individuals and modifies them fundamentally. It transforms spectators crushed with their inessentiality into privileged actors, with the grandiose glare of history’s floodlights upon them. ... In decolonisation, there is therefore the need of a complete calling in question of the colonial situation. If we wish to describe it precisely, we might find it in the well-known words: «The last shall be first and the first last ». Decolonisation is the putting into practice of this sentence. That is why, if we try to describe it, all decolonisation is successful. (Fanon, 1963, p. 30)


Bindy Kaur

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