The Materiality of the Past-History and Representation in Sikh Tradition
Oxford University Press (2012)
Author: Anne Murphy    (Part 1)

A Review by Dr Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon
Formerly Professor of History, Panjab University, Chandigarh
Recently, the field of Sikh Studies has generated a lot of interest in the West. But most of these studies tend to be influenced by the late W H McLeod who was the most ardent proponent and forerunner of the materialistic school of thought.  He introduced and propagated new methodologies, new themes and new models of history writing based on materialistic interpretations of history. He introduced some fundamental changes in history writing and shaped the direction of Sikh Studies in the West from what came to be called, ‘a post colonial perspective’ on the modern secular lines.  Chairs of Sikh Studies in America and Canada also tend to be dominated by McLeodian model of history writing.  Anne Murphy, Assistant Professor of Sikh Studies at British Columbia University is on the same bandwagon as McLeod and is adopting the same model for history writing. 
Literature produced by scholars, operating from the ‘ivory towers’ of Western academia have generated a storm of controversy in the academic circles. Unsavoury debates and cultural and intellectual tensions on account of contrasting approaches to historiography have led to a virtual impasse between the Eastern and Western scholars and chaos in the field of history.  Western scholars, with their ‘one-size-fits-all’ explanations and brazen self-congratulatory sophistry attempt to prove the validity of materialistic versions of history and go on to make eloquent claims of self-righteousness, liberalism and objectivity. Scholars, attuned to traditional historiography in the non-Western cultures, are strong dissenters of the new approach. They find this highly irksome in as far as the Western writings encroach on their religion, culture and identity under the cloak of presenting ‘new versions’ of history, which are based on their lop-sided Western world-view and materialist methodology.