The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood - Vidhia.com

distinguish the experiences of different groups settled away from their
land of origin, among whom are refugees, short-term labourers, exiles
awaiting their chance to return and migrant groups with varying rights
in the host country. In seeking a common theory for the diverse
phenomena of human migrations, analysts have suggested “diaspora” to
capture the most common experiences of displacement associated with
migration: homelessness, painful memories and a wish to return. Some
writers are reluctant to extend the term “diaspora” to migrant groups,
insisting that a diaspora condition represents a unique and almost
mythical experience of the Jewish exile. Chaliand (1989:xiv), for
instance, has argued that the term should be reserved for groups forced
to disperse, and whose members conscientiously strive to keep past
memories, maintain their heritage and are involved in a survival
struggle. Maintaining that genocide or ethnocide are part of such
groups’ experiences, to the classic example of the Jewish, he adds rather
reluctantly the Armenians, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, the Indians in
the Indian Ocean, South Africa and the West Indies, and the
Palestinians.
But minority groups have experienced a wide range of pressures from
dominant groups among whom they find themselves (Tabori 1972:204;
Marienstras 1989:125). Genocide is the extreme form of such policies
directed at migrants and minorities in various countries. It refers to a
policy of a sovereign state to exterminate an ethnic group. Among
lesser forms of control faced by minorities and migrants is ethnocide, a
forced cultural integration of a small group into a larger entity. Further
down the scale comes acculturation, a less painful route whereby a
group gradually loses its identity, consciously or unconsciously, and is
acculturated to other values imposed by a strong or majority group. The
history of Sikhs, in some measure, attests to a mixture of these elements
of compulsion. Moreover, it illustrates rather vividly how a diaspora
may develop out of an ethnic group’s changing fortunes due to changed
circumstances.
In recent studies, a general scheme classifying various minority
groups settled away from their countries of origin, or homelands, has
been suggested, dividing them into classical, modern and global
diasporas. Classical diasporas satisfy some essential conditions: (a)
displacement from a centre, (b) a troubled relationship between a
diaspora and its host society, (c) a sense of community among the
diaspora transcending the national frontiers, (d) promotion of return
movement and the reconstitution of the national homeland. But the
meaning of the term has widened beyond a victim group to include
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