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Is it a scholarly work, or is it a travelogue? It's a bit of both, with historical, ethnographical, and geographical strains thrown in for good measure. This is one book that cannot be slotted easily. But then, it is difficult to classify the author too. He is a Punjabi who spent most of his working life in Bombay and Calcutta, studied in the US, and now makes Chandigarh his home. This is his first book, and he has been working on this subject for a long time.
Kahlon is fascinated with early Sikh immigration, and he has reached out to an area which has not been the focus of any such study, Latin America. As the author says, "One is unable to fathom how and from where they got the information way back in the end of the 19th century about the existence of some of the countries they migrated to," yet off they went, in search of a better life for themselves and their families. These immigrants were largely men and most often they married local women, thus their families spoke local languages, maybe some Punjabi for a generation of two, and little or no English.
It was during the British Raj that the Sikhs spread out all over the world, often as a part of the British Army, or police forces. Often, they migrated to various British colonies. But this was not always the case. I remember seeing a picture of a turbaned Sikh supervising building the Panama Canal, in an exhibition in the New York. Apparently, many spread out from there and for at least a section of them, all they could do was to walk along the railway track till they found food, shelter and eventually work. Many got employment on the railroad, and often set up small business when they had saved enough money to be able to do so.
The author travelled to these Latin American countries. He did a tour of Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil in 2005. A year later, he did another one in which he covered Belize, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, and Ecuador. He met descendants of the original inhabitants in these countries and has examined the Sikh diaspora in each of these nations by giving each a chapter. It is in reaching out to these primary sources that the author strikes his distinctive note. He has got oral accounts, documents, newspaper clippings, passports, etc. which have been appended with the book and which provide fascinating vignettes of pioneer's lives.
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