RED TURBANS ON THE BUND: SIKH MIGRANTS, POLICEMEN, AND REVOLUTIONARIES IN SHANGHAI, 1885-1945

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the six decades of Sikh existence in modern Shanghai between 1885 and 1945. Taking the translocal approach, it explores the interplay between the Sikh community in Shanghai and the translocal networks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main argument of this thesis is that the cross-border circulation of personnel, institutions, information, and ideologies in the British colonial network as well as the Sikh diasporic network shaped the main features of the Sikh community in Shanghai. The Sikhs in Shanghai too played crucial roles in influencing the patterns of the global Sikh migration and the enterprise of Indian nationalist struggles in Southeast and East Asia in the first four decades of the twentieth century.