Review by Choice Review
"Sikhs are suffering today because they have subordinated religion to politics." These are the words of Tara Singh Bains as recorded by his collaborator, Hugh Johnston, in the writing of this autobiography. They are testimony of the role religion plays in many traditional Sikh families even when residing in a secular state. Bains's family has lived in Canada for nearly a century but still maintains close ties with its ancestral home in India's Punjab. Bains has shifted back and forth between Canada and India all his life, but in retirement lives in India. Like his community, his family has adopted one country without abandoning another. Bains's story is not dramatic, but it is indicative of how many minorities have dual identities. Immigrant Sikhs have been described as achieving "accommodation without assimilation"; this work is one of a growing genre that documents the multiple identities of minority peoples. Bains's life story describes how devotion to a unique ethnic identity, built around a particular religion, can survive and prosper. All levels.
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
