Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in South Asian Studies
Episode: Rajbir Singh Judge, "Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Description: How do traditions and peoples grapple with loss, particularly when it is of such magnitude that it defies the possibility of recovery or restoration? Rajbir Singh Judge offers new ways to understand loss and the limits of history by considering Maharaja Duleep Singh and his struggle during the 1880s to reestablish Sikh rule, the lost Khalsa Raj, in Punjab.Sikh sovereignty in what is today northern India and northeastern Pakistan came to an end in the middle of the nineteenth century, when the British annexed the Sikh kingdom and, eventually, exiled its child maharaja, Duleep Singh, to E...