ABSTRACT
This chapter describes devotional and scholarly literature, supplemented by post-2000 autobiography, poetry and drama in the UK. Krause's recognition of the need to deconstruct concepts such as emotion in the light of individuals' own cultural frameworks was foreshadowed by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his analysis of the inside', emotional aspect and the outside', presentational aspect of the Javanese individuals whose lives he studied. Both sociological and psychodynamic approaches to identity aim to link the inner and the outer world, and this outer world includes awareness of the labelling and stereotyping of one's community by other individuals. The adjective Sikh' includes all who identify themselves as Sikh, whether or not they are conversant with religious practice, such as worship in a gurdwara. The chapter concludes by distinguishing between what emotions Sikhs actually feel and what emotions they feel that they can legitimately show, and between emotions sacralised in scripture and emotions enshrined in secular tradition or fantasised in Bollywood films.
