Education and Modernity in Colonial Punjab Khalsa College, the Sikh Tradition and the Webs of Knowledge, 1880-1947

This book explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India. As a case study, it focuses on the hitherto untold colonial history of Khalsa College, Amritsar, a pioneering and highly influential educational institution founded in the British Indian province of Punjab in 1892 by the religious minority community of the Sikhs. Addressing topics such as politics, religion, rural development, militarism or physical education, the study shows how Sikh educationalists and activists made use of and ‘localised’ communal, imperial, national and transnational discourses and knowledge. Their modernist visions and schemes transcended both imperialist and mainstream nationalist frameworks and networks. In its quest to educate the modern Sikh – scientific, practical, disciplined and physically fit – the college navigated between very local and global claims, opportunities and contingencies, mirroring modernity’s ambivalent simultaneity of universalism and particularism.

1 Introduction: Gurus, Grades and the Globe: Khalsa College, Education and Colonial Modernity in South Asia

2 The Politics of Education: Socio-Religious Transformation, Politicised Sikhism and Limited Nationalism at Khalsa College, c. 1880-1947

3 Conceiving ‘Modern Sikhism’: Religious Instruction, Scientific Religion and Sikh History at Khalsa College

4 Teaching Development: ‘Scientific Agriculture’ and ‘Rural Reconstruction’ at Khalsa College

5 Disciplining the Martial Sikh: Physical Education, Youth Organizations and Military at Khalsa College

6 Conclusion

Michael Philipp Brunner is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation and a Visiting Scholar at Tufts University, USA. He completed his PhD at the Institute of History at ETH Zurich.