Harjot Oberoi
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Harjot Singh Oberoi is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He formerly held the chair of Sikh studies there and wrote The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition.
The preface to his book read with a quotation by Lucin Febvre "Religion ? What a crude word you are using there ! Are you going to get tangled up in faith, belief and all that ?" The book is described by the publisher as "a major reinterpretation of religion and society in India through a searching examination of Sikh historical materials, he shows that early Sikh tradition was not concerned with establishing distinct religious boundaries. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, however, the Singh Sabha, a powerful new Sikh movement, began to view the multiplicity in Sikh identity with suspicion and hostility. Aided by social and cultural forces unleashed by the British Raj, the Singh Sabha sought to recast Sikh tradition and purge it of diversity. ...A study of the process by which a pluralistic religious world view is replaced by a monolithic one." [1] This book created considerable controversy which culminated in his resignation from the Chair of Sikh studies in 1996 [2].
Dr Oberoi received his PhD from the Australian National University. His thesis earned him the J.G. Crawford Prize in 1987 [3].
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