시크 종족성의 성격

This study aims at explaining Sikh ethnicity and ethnic group solidarity in Today's Indian society. Social scientists who have attempted to explain ethnicity have tended to use either the primordial or the circumstantial approach. The first approach accounts for strong ethnic attachments on the basis of their ineffable affective significance. The second approach views ethnicity as resulting from certain social circumstances, both internal and external, under which the members of the group exist. This paper suggests that neither approach alone offers a sufficient explanation about the scenarios of today's Indian Sikh ethnicity and attempts to synthesize two approaches according to the synthetic model applied by Edward Spicer and George Scott. It is incorrect to state that the Sikh ethnicity is based only the cultural content(religion, language, dress etc.) of Sikhs. The ethnic identity of Sikhs is the result of social interations between Sikhs and major groups like Congress party dominated-Indian Government in terms of political and economic contexts in local and national levels. In particular, the oppositional processes like killing of some Sikh extremists and large-scale massacres of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere produced intense collective consciousness and a high degree of internal solidarity of Sikhs in India.