Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia
The departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and History, the American Studies Program, the South Asian Studies Minor, and the Global Middle East Studies Minor invite you and your students to a book talk by Dr. Rajbir Singh Judge. He will present his recently published book, Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia.
Please join us on September 16, 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM @ Anatol Center, AS 119, CSULB
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? In Prophetic Maharaja, Dr. 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. Rajbir 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. Rajbir shows how a community engaged military, political, and psychological loss through theological debate, literary production, bodily discipline, and ethical practice in order to contest colonial politics. This book 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. Bringing together Sikh tradition, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial thought, Prophetic Maharaja provides bracing insights into concepts of sovereignty and the writing of history.
For more information about the book, or to purchase a copy from Columbia University Press, please go here.
Rajbir Singh Judge is a scholar of South Asia, Postcolonial Theory, and Modern World History. Dr. Judge was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life at Columbia University before joining the Department of History at California State University, Long Beach in 2020. In the 24-25 Academic Year, he will be at the School of Social Science in the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. His publications have appeared in Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Modern Asian Studies, Theory & Event, Cultural Critique, and the Journal of the History of Sexuality, among others. Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia was recently published by Columbia University Press (2024).
Discussants: Dr. Preeti Sharma (Assistant Professor of American Studies, CSULB) and Dr. Randeep Singh Hothi (University of California, Chancellor’s Fellowship Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA)
Sponsors: Departments of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and History, the American Studies Program, and the South Asian Studies Minor and Global Middle East Studies Minor
We hope to see you and your students at the event!
Azza and Jake
Contact: Jake Wilson (jake.wilson@csulb.edu) or Dr. Azza Basarudin (azza.basarudin@csulb.edu)
