UC Riverside

The Sikh world revolves around the institution of the gurdwara (“Door to the Guru”). Though the gurdwara is most commonly referred to as a Sikh place of worship or Sikh Temple, this understanding and definition of the gurdwara drastically undermines the true nature of the gurdwara. By recognizing the gurdwara as simply a religious space strips away the importance of the gurdwara as a social, political, and cultural institution that constructs the Sikh world. Established in 1912, Stockton Gurdwara is the oldest Sikh institution in the United States. As the first scholarly project dedicated to the century-old archive housed at Stockton Gurdwara, this dissertation argues that the Sikh pioneers who established Stockton Gurdwara meant to run it as a sovereign institution catering to national and transnational Sikh religious, political, social, and educational life. Stockton Gurdwara’s ability to be extremely engaged in national and transnational Sikh life, despite the extremely small number of Sikhs in the United States at the time, is credited to their understanding of the gurdwara being the central institution and a vessel for any work relating to the Panth (global Sikh community). By the mid-1900s, United States’ immigration laws and the idea of “becoming American” impacted the sovereignty of Stockton Gurdwara as the idea of “separation of church and state” clashed with the Sikh understanding of the intimacy of religion and politics. By re-centering the margins to bring the Sikh perspective to the forefront, this project tracks the history of the community rather than that of empire and imperial institutions. The gurdwara, its archive, and the community at-large are key to understanding the evolution of Sikhi and Sikh immigration, settlement, and development in the United States.