Colonial Punjab Research Articles

World War I and Gendering of the Army in Colonial Punjab

This paper seeks to investigate the impulses that encouraged a ‘gendering’ process and its crystallization in colonial Punjab in relation to the masculine culture propagated by the institution of a military-martial structure by the British Raj. The imperial/colonial gender perceptions led to the creation of gendered spaces in a manner conforming to the masculine ideology of the army. This is highlighted through different aspects of the lives of both men and women – their struggles, works, contributions, dreams and politics – before, during and after the First World War (1914-18). As a result, there emerged amongst the soldiers’ new high-class martial castes, middle-class patriarchal structures, and ideological pillars keen on constructing and upholding ‘ideal masculinity’ and ‘safe femininity’. The paper argues that the process of ‘gendering’ took place at two levels. On the one hand, the army structure of the colonial state paved the way for military-martial culture to exist on extreme masculine lines and, on the other hand, this ‘high’ masculine ideology percolated in the society and presented itself in contrast to the women of the region by further relegating them to the feminine spaces. Thus, the society in colonial Punjab presented a layered martial structure, which, in turn, dichotomized the gender binary. The paper attempts to reveal such ‘gender’ realities and experiences witnessed by the region of Punjab. In this context, the operation of imperial power and the resistance of the colonized to it; the space that was denied to the disadvantaged gender – women – and; the changes they imbibed along with the history of the mutual roles of women and soldiers become crucial to understand the ‘gendering’ process.

Collaborating elite of Kalabagh and patterns of control in colonial Punjab, 1849–1939

ABSTRACT This article discusses the local dynamics of control by the rural elite in colonial Punjab over agricultural land, the informal credit market and labour supply. I argue, the landed elite in collaboration with bureaucratic patronage, developed linkages between indigenous institutions and imperial ideology, controlled and manipulated the means of power and wealth. This led to a one-dimensional flow of capital and profit, towards elite and state, causing a serious check on social mobility and economic development. In a local study of a rural town, Kalabagh, in the north-west of Pakistani Punjab, the article brings forward an understudied aspect of colonial policies which followed a different trajectory from the rest of the Punjab. The colonial state, instead of development, maintained the structure of society under feudal setup. Rais, the ruling elite of the town, as colonial collaborator, managed the moneylending system in his estate and trapped the wage labourers in complex debt bondage, perpetuating jajmani type relationship in the twentieth century. At one level this arrangement invigorated hierarchical differentiation and dispossession of rural proletariat, at another level, the social differentiation acted as an instrument to mobilize the community for collective action towards nationalist discourse.

Shiromani Akali Dal (1920–2020): Ideology, strategy, and support base

ABSTRACT Shiromani Akali Dal, the oldest state party in India, emanated from an ethnic movement launched by the Sikh community in Punjab to take control of their gurdwaras. As an ‘ethnic’ party, it has claimed to be the sole political custodian of the minority Sikh community in India since colonial times. The party has often found itself trapped at the crossroads of region and religion. This explains why it transitioned from pursuing the politics of ‘representation’ in colonial Punjab to the pursuit of ‘a territorial homeland’ for the Sikhs after partition. The Congress’ attempt to deny the reorganisation of the state and subsequently its efforts to weaken the faction ridden Akali Dal, and also the party’s own inability to draw the bulk Sikh votes, compelled the party to pursue cultural and the region-specific autonomist politics which led to the rise of militancy. In the post-militancy era, the party made a comeback as an ‘electoral’ populist party in alliance with the BJP by undergoing a paradigmatic shift from contentious ethnic and anti-centre agenda to peace and development in the state politics based on the concept of Punjabiat. The same period, however, has also witnessed the rise of previously unseen dynastic party leadership .

Epidemic Malaria and Hunger in Colonial Punjab: Weakened by want by Sheila Zurbrigg

Epidemic Malaria and Hunger in Colonial Punjab: Weakened by want by Sheila Zurbrigg

Grow More Food Drive and Secondary Curriculum Developments in Colonial Punjab during Second World War

This article presents the case of the British colonial rule and Second World War affecting secondary school curriculum developments in colonial Punjab. The focus rests on the description of those curricular and co-curricular activities that were directed towards war-centric demands for the Grow More Food Drive of Second World War. While aligning secondary education with the emerging needs of the War, the colonial rulers also maintained the confidence of the local educational administration. With the War approaching towards the end, the Indian leaders made their demands upon the British Government to adopt a broader policy emphasizing agricultural knowledge with more of a scientific orientation.

Languages of Resistance: Women in the Print and Oral Cultures of Colonial Punjab

Languages of Resistance: Women in the Print and Oral Cultures of Colonial Punjab

Nationalism: One or Many

Vikas Pathak, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab, 1880–1930, Primus Books, Delhi, 2018, xvi + 266 pp., ₹1,495.

Book review: Vikas Pathak, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab, 1880–1930

Vikas Pathak, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab, 1880–1930. Delhi: Primus Books, 2018, 266 pp., ₹1,495.00, ISBN: 9789386552792.

Book review: Sheila Zurbrigg, Epidemic Malaria and Hunger in Colonial Punjab: Weakened by Want—The Social History of Health and Medicine in South Asia

Sheila Zurbrigg, Epidemic Malaria and Hunger in Colonial Punjab: Weakened by Want—The Social History of Health and Medicine in South Asia, Taylor and Francis Books, Routledge, Abingdon, NY, 2019, 470 pp, ₹1,337, ISBN 9780367247300

Bhai Vir Singh (1872–1957): Rethinking literary modernity in Colonial Punjab

This special issue of Sikh Formations developed out of a scholarly workshop entitled Bhai Vir Singh (1872–1957): Rethinking Literary Modernity in Colonial Punjab, that was held at the University of...

Bhai Vir Singh and the public sphere in colonial Punjab

ABSTRACTMy paper proposes to assess the contributions of Bhai Vir Singh to the newly emergent Punjabi print spheres in the late colonial period. Critical literature on the print and public spheres in colonial Punjab has described these as imitative of the prototype of western models and as ‘derivative' discourses. It is through the example of Bhai Vir Singh that we can argue otherwise. This paper argues that the print sphere made it possible for newer subjectivities and modes of agency to emerge and it is through this politically critical idea of agency that Bhai Vir Singh’s work can be examined.

Intertextuality and reception history: Connecting Bhai Vir Singh’s Srī Kalgīdhar Camatkār to gurbilās literature

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how notions of intertextuality and reception history unfold in a Sikh literary context by examining interactions between Bhai Vir Singh’s Srī Kalgīdhar Camatkār and gurbilās literature. These texts’ portrayals of an important battle of Sikh history, the battle of Bhangani, illustrate how the various historical circumstances of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries shaped the modes and content of historical representation of the Sikh past at different points in time. It also sheds light on the life and reception of gurbilās texts beyond the nineteenth century and allows us to further interrogate the relationship between the literary premodernity of gurbilās texts and the literary modernity of Bhai Vir Singh’s historical writing in colonial Punjab.

Of Swadeshi, Self-Reliance and Self-Help:: A Study of the Arya Samaj in Colonial Punjab, 1890 –1920s

In response to the colonial economic and cultural subjugation, the ideal of swadeshi (swa: own; desh : nation; translated as: of one’s own nation) in India had begun to gain ground from 1890s onwards ultimately culminating into the Swadeshi Movement. Fundamentally, it encouraged domestic production in opposition to foreign imports and was characterised by attempts to organise technical education and industrial research, revival of traditional industrial crafts, the starting of new industries based on modern techniques and floating of insurance companies and swadeshi banks, and promotion of swadeshi sales through exhibitions and shops. Subsequently, the assertion of self-help and self-reliance appeared in the Punjab province, too. In this vast province with a majority Muslim population and Hindus and Sikhs in a minority, swadeshi manifested itself in several ways. Through a study of the Arya Samaj, a socio-religious reform movement with firm roots among the Hindus of the province, this article traces how, in colonial Punjab, swadeshi soon grew out of its economic basis to encapsulate a larger Hindu nationalistic and cultural paradigm.

‘Hindi–Hindu’ discourse in late colonial Punjab

One of the major spheres in which the communal divide in India especially in the north has manifested itself is that of language, around the controversy over Hindi and Urdu. It raged in colonial Punjab as well, despite the fact that neither language was spoken over the larger part of it. In a sense, therefore, it was imported from the then North-Western Provinces (now UP), where the original dialect had given rise to a common language (Khari Boli, Hindustani) with two scripts, around which Hindi and Urdu came to be created as literary languages. Though Urdu remained in colonial times the main print and school language in pre-1947 Punjab, the language controversy continued to play a communally divisive role. In Punjab, the Arya Samaj was the main torchbearer for Hindi, with even nationalists like Lala Lajpat Rai in its camp.

The complexity of exchange: Wheat markets, petty‐commodity producers and the emergence of commercial capital in colonial Punjab

AbstractThis paper questions the orthodox Marxist view of merchant capital as “unproductive,” by highlighting the importance of traders in subsuming the countryside to the logic of capital. However, it also argues that in order to properly understand the role played by traders in agrarian change, critical Marxist scholarship on merchant capital needs to recognize the complex marketing systems in which traders and farmers operate. These markets have their own internal relations, organizational and institutional logic which in turn is tied to the specificity of the commodity. Using wheat markets in colonial Punjab as a case study, it then utilizes the framework of complex marketing systems to highlight the range of firms and farms that operated in these markets; the importance of personal relations and informal institutions of family, caste, and religion for establishing trust; and the class stratified nature of market participants. It was from within these informally organized markets that commercial capital first emerged in colonial Punjab. By creatively combining the concept of commercial capital with markets as complex systems, it hopes to provide a richer framework for the study of agrarian change in diverse contexts.

Historical Significance of the British Education System in Colonial Punjab: A Study in Perspective of its Consequences on the Native Society and Education

Historical Significance of the British Education System in Colonial Punjab: A Study in Perspective of its Consequences on the Native Society and Education

Book review: Vikas Pathak, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism, and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab, 1880–1930

Vikas Pathak, Contesting Nationalisms: Hinduism, Secularism, and Untouchability in Colonial Punjab, 1880–1930 (Delhi: Primus Books), 2018, XVI + 266 pp., ₹1,495 (Hb).

Grassroots and Provincial Perspectives on Social Changes and Development in Colonial Punjab

The aim of this paper is to describe the primary changes and development that outlined the history of Colonial Punjab and to narrate grassroots and provincial perspectives on the changes. I examine with a blend of grassroots and provincial perspectives by contextualizing actual historical events in Colonial Punjab. On the basis of major trends in the existing literate, a variety of view on the impact of the British rule will be surveyed. To seek for a clearer insight on the effect and influence of British colonial rule on the Punjab, I have divided them into four themes. Inceptively, political control and socio-economic transformation will be addressed with investigating relevant literatures. Main arguments here will be which policy of British rule led social and economic changes in Colonial Punjab, how it transformed the society, and what elements were involved in putting it into practice in such an effective way. Subsequently, the British rule in aspects from military recruitment in Colonial Punjab will be focused on. Central questions will be what patterns of collaboration were implemented and how the British rule influenced recruitment process in Colonial Punjab, and what were the causes and key drivers that brought them into play possible. In the last place, communalism will be surveyed briefly showing the historical origin of communalism within the Punjab and the impact on societies extracted from some case studies. In every discussion about each theme, as suggested above, Provincial and grassroots perspectives will be drawn.

In the Shadow of Ghadar: Marxism and Anti-Colonialism in Colonial Punjab

The Ghadr Party, an eclectic group of diasporic Punjabis, was perhaps one of the most significant political movements led by emigre Indians in the early twentieth century. Designated as one of the biggest threats to colonial rule in the 1910s, the Ghadr Party spread its operations over five continents, and repeatedly committed acts of sabotage aimed at colonial officials from India. By the 1920s, however, the birth of popular movements in India marginalized various groups that believed in the spectacular actions of a vanguard as a strategy for overcoming the stifling impact of colonial rule. Members of the party, eager to find a foothold in the changed political scenario, opened discussions for building a popular front in Punjab, with many returning to the country to participate in such an endeavour. In this article, I study the encounter between the Ghadarite tradition and the communist movement in colonial Punjab through the writings of Sohan Singh Josh, who attempted to bring these two traditions together to produce a viable political project. I argue that Ghadar's encounter with Marxism not only influenced the former, but also radically transformed Marxism itself, particularly on questions of History, violence and volition.

Alternative Literary Modernities: A Voice from Colonial Punjab

Abstract This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.