Historical Dictionary of Sikhism.

• Author: Lorenzen, David N.
• Position: Review

By W. H. MCLEOD. Religions, Philosophies, and Movements, no. 5. Lanham, Md.: THE SCARECROW PRESS, 1995. Pp. 323.

Anyone remotely interested in the study of Sikh religion will be familiar with at least some of W. H. McLeod's many books and articles about the history and literature of this movement. Among liberal Sikhs and outside scholars, these works are generally regarded as examples of solid, cautious, objective, historical scholarship. Among many religiously conservative Sikhs of the Khalsa, on the other hand, they are regarded as highly controversial. Among Sikh fundamentalists, they are even accused of being blasphemous.

One of the principal unintended consequences of the June 1984 attack by government troops on the Jarnail Bhindranwale and his armed followers in the Golden Temple compound in Amritsar was a rise in status of the fundamentalist and conservative camps within the Sikh community. In academic contexts, this has led to a situation in which any serious criticism of the "official" Tat Khalsa interpretation of Sikh history has met with active hostility not only from conservative scholars, but also from others in the community at large. Revisionist historians who are themselves Sikhs have been branded as heretics, while those who are not Sikhs have been attacked as infidel enemies of the faith. The hostility against McLeod has been particularly acute, not only because of his continued refusal to accept the official history, but also because of the high quality of his academic work and his role as guide and inspiration to other revisionist historians.

In his new Historical Dictionary of Sikhism, McLeod explicitly defends his positions on the major points on which he and his conservative critics have differed so sharply. As the title indicates, the book contains alphabetically arranged entries on most of the major personalities, events, and issues in Sikh history from the time of Guru Nanak to the present. The longest entries are about a page in length, and most are much shorter. They are well chosen, clear, and concise. The book also includes a short narrative introduction and a hundred-page bibliography, mostly of English language books. Two minor drawbacks are the minimal use of diacritics and the absence of any maps.

The more controversial topics taken up in the book...