Iconic Scriptures in Colonial Punjab: Sikh Religion, Print Culture, and Politics

Research project funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

The project examines the historical processes of making religious scriptures iconic when humans create and ritualize the material form of printed books. This is done by documentation and analyses of Sikh religious scriptures and how they were created, negotiated, and changed in colonial Punjab (1849–1947) when printing technologies were introduced and intersected with commercial, religious, and political interests. From a multidisciplinary perspective that brings together religious studies with book history, material culture, and post-colonial theory, the project is divided into three parts that examine the production, the materiality, and the social and political functions of religious scriptures. The first part provides an overview of religious book production in Punjab from the perspective of local actors, and illustrates how rival ideals of technologies and textual legitimacy were negotiated and created new religious beliefs and practices. The second part starts with scriptures as textual artifacts and analyzes preserved historical books in detail in order to see how their materiality and sacrality changed. The third part discusses the effects of the transition to a mass-producing print culture and how scriptures were attributed functions that could legitimize various claims of authority in a colonial context. The project is based on original research with archival studies and documentation of rich and largely unexplored material in European and Indian archives.