The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity, and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition

Harjot Oberoi's The Construction of Religious Boundaries is a scholarly study, published by the University of Chicago Press, arguing that sharply bounded religious identity within the Sikh tradition, as distinct from earlier more fluid and shared devotional practice with Hindus in the Punjab, was itself a historical development shaped significantly by the reformist Singh Sabha movement of the late nineteenth century. Oberoi is a recognized historian of Sikhism, and the book's authority rests on close archival research into Punjab's religious history. It is also a genuinely contested book within the Sikh community and Sikh studies specifically, its central thesis about identity's constructed rather than always fixed nature drew significant pushback from scholars and community members who read it as questioning Sikh distinctiveness itself. Cite it as an influential and seriously argued position within a live and continuing scholarly and community debate, not as an uncontested consensus.