Prophetic Maharaja

This dazzling work of historical scholarship demonstrates that while history can never be truly and completely narrated, it can be contemplated in ways that open up a space for deeper understanding and insight. * Choice Reviews * Prophetic Maharaja is a remarkable book. In its treatment of a late nineteenth-century moment in the history of Sikh claims for sovereignty in the Punjab, it refuses conventional historical approaches that fix the identities of colonizers and colonized, instead insisting that things like community, religion, politics, and the boundaries between them are always sites of contest and negotiation. In detailing those conflicted processes as they cohere and destabilize political relationships, Rajbir Singh Judge offers a model of how theorized history can be compellingly and intelligently written. -- Joan W. Scott, author of <i>On the Judgment of History</i> Focusing on the results of the British conquest of the nineteenth-century Sikh kingdom in Punjab, Rajbir Singh Judge provides a thought-provoking discussion of what it means to lose a political-religious tradition. This splendid book should be read not only by those interested in South Asia but also and especially by those open to exploring the potential insights to be gained by the mutual provocations of theology and psychoanalysis. -- Talal Asad, author of <i>Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason</i> Beautifully written and expertly theorized, Prophetic Maharaja takes up the image of Maharaja Duleep Singh and its position in Sikh memory as a placeholder for lost Sikh sovereignty. Cautioning against a melancholic attachment to a supposedly authentic past, Judge explores the core relationship between loss and sovereignty, centering a distinctively Sikh understanding of sovereignty. -- Deepti Misri, author of <i>Beyond Partition: Gender, Violence, and Representation in Postcolonial India</i> What scale of time is necessitated by the emergency of loss? In this scintillating book, Rajbir Singh Judge attends to the rhythms of loss and refigures psychoanalysis as a tradition of the oppressed. With Duleep Singh, he invites us to “the impossibility of history,” better known as prophecy. -- Gil Anidjar, author of <i>On the Sovereignty of Mothers</i> Meticulously researched and theoretically rich, Prophetic Maharaja is a haunting postcolonial exploration of the Sikh desire for sovereignty. Questioning, informing, gripping: a revelatory history! -- Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, author of <i>The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity</i>