‘I find them very helpful, courteous and friendly’: Irish women’s encounters with Sikhs and Punjab

With the aim of correcting a gender imbalance in western observers’ commentary on Sikhs and their religion, this article examines the writing of Irish and Anglo-Irish women over a period of 150 years. Their comments on religion, significant places, Sikh women and marriage, and on men, warfare and Indian nationalism are reported. As is the case with other western writers, their view of Sikhs is generally positive, although the attitude of some Irish writers to British rule in India is more critical than that of most English writers on Sikhs and Punjab.