SIkh Queerness with Sikh Masculinity
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Masculinity occupies a very important place in the Sikh community. Masculinity is a central (though largely made up) notion in social organization from which gender roles and models of social responsibility are generated. These notions have commonalities as well as differences across cultures. Nietzshce’s übermench is not the same as Jeona Morh. Even Nietzsche’s übermench is not the same, Raskolnikov’s übermench is not the same as Hitler’s übermench.
But why and how Sikh masculinity takes a weird form when supplanted in the West? First, it is necessary to understand that present-day Sikh masculinity took shape in the colonial era. The British peddled the idea of a martial race in order to engage and keep the Sikh’s in the Imperial army. However, this became the hallmark of Sikh (and Punjabi) masculinity. However, this image doesn’t transpose well in the West. There is something in the Western image of South Asians which doesn’t fit into the white masculinity. South Asians are supposed to be passive and often submissive and servile. Yet Sikhs look so much like the Muslim terrorist image circulating in the Western world. That image is hypermasculine and misogynistic by default. It is based on orientalist ideas of paternalism and paternalistic despotism.
Throw into the fray the idea of queerness and the whole system starts to crumble. So just like prabhdeep kehal, it’s hard to figure out where the chips will fall. There is obviously a lot of contradiction in perception of queerness in opposition to masculinity. There is a perceived non-masculinity in queerness. Yet, South Asian cultures have a historic understanding and acceptance (if not support) of non-binary identities. I say all this to point to the point out how difficult it is to understand this issue let alone have any kind of resolution.
Yet, as Thangaraj points out, basketball (and its assumptive blackness) provides a space for some kind of ad hoc resolution. Now, it does nothing for queer South Asians. But it does provide a shallow non-complex space for South Asian men to exercise counter-hegemonic notions of Asian-ness while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals of masculinity. In doing so, queerness gets very little expression and very little space to de-construct the myth of masculinity.