Bios: Satwinder Bains is the Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and is an Associate Professor in Social Cultural Media Studies, College of  Arts. She has many years of professional work in community development and has worked with many organizations on organizational change. Her academic articles can be found in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Brill,  Women’s Studies International Forum, Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care  and books such as Diverse Spaces: Examining Identity, Heritage and Community within Canadian Public Culture,  Gender Issues and Challenges in Twenty First Century,  Interpreting Ghadar: Echoes of Voices Past as well as in other public spaces.

Dr. Kamal Arora is Co-Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and a Sessional Instructor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. She holds a PhD in Anthropology as well as a graduate degree in Gender and Development. Dr. Arora has more than ten years of experience researching and teaching in the areas of anthropology and South Asia, and brings a strong gendered focus to all her work. Dr. Arora has also worked extensively in the non-profit community health sector. Her research has been published in Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory as well as other publications. An activist at heart with a passion for social justice, Dr. Arora frequently guest lectures on issues related to gender, feminisms, feminist anthropology, race, South Asia, and South Asian diasporas.

Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra is the Coordinator at the South Asian Studies Institute and a PhD candidate in the Department of History at UBC. She also co-curates exhibits at the Sikh Heritage Museum, located in the National Historic Site Gur Sikh Temple in Abbotsford, BC. Sharn is interested in looking at the affective experience of early Sikh migration in 20th century British Columbia. Sharn has a great passion for activist work and engagement in the community through academia and museum exhibits.

Abstract:

The South Asian Studies Institute has a partnership with the Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature and frequently hosts award winners of the prize at the University of the Fraser Valley. In 2018, the SASI invited the award winners to give readings to the local community. The SASI was pressured to cancel the event by a faction opposing one of the award winners’ novels (a historical fiction entitled “Sooraj Di Akh/The Sun’s Eye” about the life of Maharaja Ranjit Singh). This paper will discuss the controversies surrounding the 2018 Dhahan Prize for Punjabi Literature Award winners and our experiences with community and academic engagement as women of colour scholars rooted in both local South Asian communities and academic institutions. In this paper, we ask: how do we negotiate the pressures of community sentiment (or those who claim to represent community) and academic freedom and dialogue? How do we continue to conduct rigorous community-oriented research and academic debate in an engaged way and work through such complex issues? How do we negotiate academic freedom and community sentiments?