This collection of original essays focuses on various aspects of gender in Sikhism. Divided into three sections- text and scripture, Sikh women in India, and women in diasporic contexts- it deals with women's lives and religious experiences. The first part discusses the way aesthetics and religion merge together in the unitary experience of the sacred in the Sikh tradition. It also explores the understandings of gender in Sikh theology and society. The second and the third sections are largely ethnographic studies grounded in historical and textual analysis. First work of its kind, this volume engages with issues like religion, rituals, literature, sexuality, and nationalism and their link with identity-formation of Sikh women. It analyses current significant issues of gender and religion and provides an empirical as well as theoretical structure to an area hitherto unexplored.

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Jakobsh is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada.