Voices from Periphery: Punjabi Poetry, Resistance and Anti-Colonial Nationalism

Abstract

This article examines a genre of Punjabi poetry, as a voice from the periphery, a powerful vehicle of the marginalised for the performance of collective expression and resistance against the hegemonic nature of colonial rule, charting a strong relationship between language and articulation of political imagination. The images of rich tribal culture, warriors as sons of the soil, Punjabi valour and mystical symbols were used to portray the punjab’s plural landscape. The socio-economic marginality of disenfranchised individuals, created by a vertically structured patron–client network, operating in a coercive administrative framework, forged a sense of community identity along religious lines. Using religious rhetorics, community identity was converged into Islamic identity to construct nationhood. Anti-colonial nationalism became the language of a meta-project for the attainment of political independence.