Fractured Foundations: Colonial Institutional Engineering and the Communalization of Muslim-Sikh Relations in Punjab: 1849-1947

Abstract

By providing a radical reassessment of Muslim-Sikh ties in British Punjab, this article challenges both syncretist and primordialist histories. In order to establish religious community as the primary, frequently exclusive, axis of political and social life, British colonialism intentionally destroyed pre-existing fluid solidarities, according to this argument. Through a critical examination of colonial knowledge production (ethnography, census), socio-economic interventions (canal colonies), legal codification that prioritised religious orthodoxy, and the politically toxic system of separate electorates, the article shows how the Raj manufactured the very competition between communities that led to the violence of Partition. By combining postcolonial theory and subaltern studies viewpoints, it highlights the shortcomings of historiography that is centred on the elite and shows how colonial practices interacted with and frequently undermined local agency and resilient daily coexistence. It presents the horrifying violence of 1947 as the inevitable conclusion of this protracted process of officially sanctioned communalisation rather than as an anomaly.