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Peter Johal
My journey with this volume is a very personal and prolonged one. Anandpur Chronicles was initially started as a photographic project. My journeys to India in 2003 and again in 2005 were very spiri...view moreMy journey with this volume is a very personal and prolonged one. Anandpur Chronicles was initially started as a photographic project. My journeys to India in 2003 and again in 2005 were very spiritual in nature and were incredibly inspiring.
It started with my early studies in sociology, which aroused my interest in human conditions. I took a social inequality class at University of Calgary, which defined my progress in sociological studies. It was here where I started to diverge this with my personal life. I began to look at my upbringing, my socialization into society as a Sikh Canadian. Inequality was known to Sikhs at this time because the events in India in 1984 was still a sore spot to speak of. I was also looking into gender issues that occur culturally at this point as well, remembering an interview I did with a lady who was going through a sexual abuse case and the issues she went through not only legally but also in dealing with cultural stigma. It was a moving moment.
Then 9/11 happened. Suddenly, the microstudy of culture become a macro one for me.
Suddenly I was finding Sikhs to being classified into categories, which was totally false and stemmed only from bias. It was hard to watch Sikh people being abused and Sikh shrines being desecrated. My trip to India in 2003 introduced to me how the world has changed for me, mainly referring to my return to airport checkpoints in Canada. I felt very alienated at this point in the country I was born in and was frustrated that Sikhs are somehow being categorized into an ideology we didn’t support.
I started to photograph professionally on my return from this trip, all the while being very aware what was going around me in the world. So another trip to India was inspired as I wished to photograph the historic region of Anandpur. At this point, what I knew about Anandpur was minimal. I knew it was the region where the tenth teacher of Sikhism, Gobind Singh, solidified how Sikhs look and act into a symbolic nature to identify themselves as Sikhs. It was the birth of Khalsa, the Saint-Soldier. Anandpur was first settled by Gobind Singh’s father, Tegh Bahadur, the ninth teacher of Sikhism, who was beheaded in Delhi because of his belief in his values of Sikhism. He was beheaded for not converting to Islam as the ruling government was imposing on the population. Tegh Bahadur takes it upon himself to stand up for people who were not of the same religion. This started tantalizing my sociological brain as it was inspiring that one of the teachers was willing to give his life to protect the right for people to lead their own beliefs.
While in India, picking up historical books of Sikhism become a hobby. After collecting research materials, the study into Sikh History began. After numerous months, I went back for more sociological studies, still trying to find a way to uniquely describes Sikh plight, history, and identity.
It all came together when I dug deeper into symbolism. Sikhism has the 5 Ks to symbolically show their identity. This started with Gobind Singh in Anandpur. Combining history into this, I hope will further continue to identify their uniqueness.
Peter lives in Edmonton, Canada, with his wife and baby boy and works as a photographer most of the time.view less