Subregional Memories of an Undivided Rural Punjab: Community, Culture and Identity among the Hindus of Bahawalpur

Abstract

This paper revisits Punjab’s ethnic composition at the time of the 1947 Partition of India by tracing the ethnic and cultural experiences of a subregional ethnic group from the princely state of Bahawalpur. This group was displaced from the rural parts of Bahawalpur in 1947 and resettled in remote areas of the Hindumalkot international border in Rajasthan after being allotted land in the region by the Indian state. Through an ethnographic engagement with the community, the paper’s first section traces its experiences of displacement and of the ethnic-linguistic shift after the resettlement in Rajasthan. The survivors’ testimonies illustrate that despite their desire to sustain a vernacular identity as Bahawalpuris, social, economic and administrative pressures hastened an ethnic-linguistic amnesia. However, as the second section illustrates, through a linguistic and cultural renewal among the second and third generations, the Bahawalpuris have tried to dissociate themselves from a homogenised Punjabi Hindu identity and renew a subregional identity as Bahawalpuris. This section traces subregional sites of ethnicity and culture in the later generations that draw their meaning from memories of collective performances of pre-Partition life in rural Bahawalpur.