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Punjabi nationalism [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] is an ideology which emphasizes that the Punjabis are one nation and promotes the cultural unity of Punjabis around the world. The demands of the Punjabi nationalist movement are linguistic, cultural, economic and political rights. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
In Pakistan, the ideology is used to stop the state-sponsored suppression of Punjabi in favor of Urdu, [12] [ full citation needed ] while in India the goal is to bring together the Sikh and Punjabi Hindu communities and promote the Punjabi language in regions of Northern India. [13] Supporters in the Punjabi diaspora focus on the promotion of a shared cultural heritage. [14]
Punjabi Nationalism also has close links to Sikh Nationalism due to the religious significance of Punjabi and Gurmukhi script in Sikhism. [15] With the advent of the notion of Devanagari script and Hindi or Sanskrit as a language associated with Hindu nationalism and Arya Samaj advancing the cause of Devanagari in the late 19th century, the cause of Gurmukhi was advanced by Singh Sabha movement. [16] [17] [18] This later culminated in Punjabi Sooba movement where Sikhs who mostly identified Punjabi as their mother tongue, whilst Hindus identifying with Hindi in the census, leading to trifurcation of state on a linguistic basis in 1966 and the formation of a Sikh majority, Punjabi speaking state in India. [19] During the Khalistan movement, Sikh militants were known to enforce Punjabi language, Gurmukhi script and traditional Punjabi cultural dress in Punjab. [20] SGPC in its 1946 Sikh State resolution declared the Punjab region as the natural homeland of the Sikhs. [21] [22] Anandpur Sahib Resolution also links Sikhism to Punjab as a Sikh homeland. [23]
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The coalescence of the various tribes, castes and the inhabitants of the Punjab region into a broader common "Punjabi" identity initiated from the onset of the 18th century CE. [24] [25] [26] Historically, the Punjabi people were a heterogeneous group and were subdivided into a number of clans called biradari (literally meaning "brotherhood") or tribes , with each person bound to a clan. With the passage of time, tribal structures became replaced with a more cohesive and holistic society, as community building and group cohesiveness form the new pillars of Punjabi society. [26] [27]
The Punjab region's history of warfare and foreign invasions has contributed to a culture of engaging in warfare to protect the land. [28] During the Mughal rule, Dulla Bhatti, a Punjabi folk hero led the Punjabis to a revolt against Mughal rule during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. [29] He is entirely absent from the recorded history of the time, and the only evidence of his existence comes from Punjabi folklore, and took the form of social banditry. [30] According to Ishwar Dayal Gaur, although he was "the trendsetter in peasant insurgency in medieval Punjab", he remains "on the periphery of Punjab's historiography". [31] [32]
Both his father, Farid, and his grandfather, variously called Bijli or Sandal, [lower-alpha 1] [34] were executed for opposing the new and centralised land revenue collection scheme imposed by the Mughal emperor Akbar. [35] [34]
His general anti-authoritarian, rebellious nature is described to "crystallise" with the Akbar regime as its target, although not as a means of revenge specifically for the deaths of his relatives but in the wider sense of the sacrifices made by rural people generally. Bhatti saw this, says Gaur, as a "peasant class war". [36] Bhatti's class war took the form of social banditry, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. [37] [lower-alpha 2] Folklore gave him a legendary status for preventing girls from being abducted and sold as slaves. [39]
His efforts may have influenced Akbar's decision to pacify Guru Arjan Dev Ji, and through Guru Arjan Dev Ji's influence the people of Bari Doab, by exempting the area from the requirement to provide land revenues. [37]
The end for Bhatti came in 1599 when he was hanged in Lahore. Shah Hussain, a contemporary Sufi poet who wrote of him, recorded his last words as being "No honourable son of Punjab will ever sell the soil of Punjab". [40] [41] The memory of Bhatti as a saviour of Punjabi girls is recalled at the annual Lohri celebrations in the region to this day, although those celebrations also incorporate many other symbolic strands. [42]
During the rule of the Mughal Empire in India, two Sikh gurus were martyred. (Guru Arjan was martyred on suspicion of helping in betrayal of Mughal Emperor Jahangir and Guru Tegh Bahadur was martyred by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb) [43] As the Sikh faith grew, the Sikhs subsequently militarized to oppose Mughal rule.
In the late 18th century, during frequent invasions of the Durrani Empire, the Sikh Misls were in close combat with the Durrani Empire, [44] but they began to gain territory with the capture of Lahore, by Ranjit Singh, from its Afghan ruler, Zaman Shah Durrani, and the subsequent and progressive expulsion of Afghans from the Punjab, by capitalizing off Afghan decline in the Afghan-Sikh Wars, and the unification of the separate Sikh misls. Ranjit Singh was proclaimed as Maharaja of the Punjab on 12 April 1801 (to coincide with Vaisakhi), creating a unified political state. [45]
Despite the religious diversity of the Sikh Empire, the people of Punjab were united by a shared identity as Punjabis and a growing sense of Punjabi nationalism. [46] [47]
In her 2022-book Muslims under Sikh Rule in the Nineteenth Century, Dr. Robina Yasmin, a Pakistani historian who teaches at the Islamia University Bahawalpur, tries to give a balanced picture of Ranjit Singh, between the contradictory images of "a great secular ruler" and that of "an extremist Sikh who was bent upon eliminating Islam in the Punjab", Dr. Robina Yasmin's own assessment after her study being that Ranjit Singh himself was tolerant and secular and that the mistreatment of the Muslim population often ascribed to him based on dubious anecdotes in fact came from his subordinates. [48]
This sense of identity was bolstered by the secular rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, a Sikh Punjabi who had successfully expelled the Afghan invaders from Punjab and established a powerful Sikh kingdom in the region. As a result, Punjab was a secular nation with a strong sense of Punjabi nationalism. [46] [47]
After the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the empire was weakened by the British East India Company stoking internal divisions and political mismanagement. Finally, by 1849 the state was dissolved after the defeat in the Second Anglo-Sikh War. [49] [50]
During the British Raj, after the Bengalis and Hindustani speaking people, Punjabis were the third biggest nation in South Asia and for the British, Punjab was a frontier province of British India. Therefore to rule, the prime factor for the British rulers was to control the Punjab by dominating or eliminating the Punjabi nation. [51]
The British rulers imposed martial law in Punjab to govern Punjab and due to a fear from Punjabi nationalism, started to eliminate the Punjabi nation into fractions by switching over the characteristics of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs from “Affinity of Nation to Emotions of Religion”. [52]
For demolishing the nationalism and promoting the religious fundamentalism in the Punjab, British rulers, not allowed the Punjabis to use their mother tongue as an educational and official language. Therefore, the British rulers first introduced the Urdu as an official language in Punjab for the purpose of Punjab administration. [53] [54] [55] As a result, the Punjabi nation became a socially and politically depressed and deprived nation due to the domination and hegemony of Urdu-Hindi language. [56] [57] [58] [59]
As a consequence of preferring Hindi language by Hindu Punjabi's by declaring the Hindi as a language of Hindus [60] and preferring the Urdu language by the Muslim Punjabi's by declaring the Urdu as a language of Muslims, the characteristics of assimilation to accomplish the sociological instinct started to switch over from “ Affinity of Nation to Emotions of Religion” and “A Great Nation of Sub-Continent Got Divided on Ground of Religion with Partition of Punjab and Got Emerged into Muslim and Hindu States, Pakistan and India”. [61] [62] [63] [64] [65]
Punjabi nationalism in Pakistan largely emerged in the 1980s due to the emergence of the Saraiki language movement that looked to separate the Saraiki-speaking areas of the Punjab from the rest of the province. [66] Alyssa Ayres, a cultural historian, suggests that many Punjabi intellectuals considered the Saraiki movement as "yet another attack on Punjabi." [66] [67] Punjabi nationalists accuse the elite sections made up of fellow Punjabis of neglecting the Punjabi language and forgetting the Punjabi culture to maintain their personal influence and power. [68] [69] Punjabi nationalism is a more recent phenomenon, and compared to other ethno-nationalisms in Pakistan, it is often overlooked due to the dominance of the Punjabi ethnic group in the country. [66]
In August 2015, the Pakistan Academy of Letters, International Writer's Council (IWC) and World Punjabi Congress (WPC) organised the Khawaja Farid Conference and demanded that a Punjabi-language university should be established in Lahore and that Punjabi language should be declared as the medium of instruction at the primary level. [70] [71] In September 2015, a case was filed in Supreme Court of Pakistan against Government of Punjab, Pakistan as it did not take any step to implement the Punjabi language in the province. [72] [73] Additionally, several thousand Punjabis gather in Lahore every year on International Mother Language Day.
The Punjabi Suba movement was a long-drawn political agitation, launched by Punjabi speaking people (mostly Sikhs) demanding the creation of autonomous Punjabi Suba, or Punjabi-speaking state, in the post-independence Indian state of East Punjab. [74] The movement is defined as the forerunner of Khalistan movement. [75] [76]
Borrowing from the pre-partition demands for a Sikh country, this movement demanded a fundamental constitutional autonomous state within India. [77] Led by the Akali Dal, it resulted in the formation of the state of Punjab. The state of Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh were also created and some Pahari-majority parts of the East Punjab were also merged with Himachal Pradesh following the movement. The result of the movement failed to satisfy its leaders. [78]
From 1938 to 1947, Akali Dal led by Master Tara Singh proposed the whole Punjab region (Azad Punjab) as the ‘natural homeland’ of the Sikhs. [79] This demand was raised throughout this period along with the 1946 SGPC resolution declaring the Punjab as homeland of the Sikhs. [80] The image of Punjab region as an independent Sikh Homeland continues to exist in sections of the Sikh, particularly being advocated by Sikhs in the diaspora post 1947. [81]
Bhajan Lal proposed the idea of the Punjabi Reunification, in which the modern Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh would reunify into a single Punjab state within India, with its borders corresponding to the former East Punjab state. [82] The idea of the reunification of these states with the area corresponding to West Punjab has not been one that has been heavily contemplated apart from the context of Indian reunification in general. [83] [84]
Punjab is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is specifically located in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern-Pakistan and northwestern-India. Punjab's major cities are Lahore, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala, Multan, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Sialkot, Chandigarh, Shimla, Jalandhar, Patiala, Gurugram, and Bahawalpur.
Punjab, known historically as Panchanada and Pentapotamia, is a province of Pakistan. Located in central-eastern region of the country, Punjab is the second-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the largest by population. Lahore is the capital and the largest city of the province. Other major cities include Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Multan.
Sikhs are an ethnoreligious group who adhere to Sikhism, a Dharmic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term Sikh has its origin in the Sanskrit word śiṣya, meaning ‘seeker’, 'disciple' or 'student'. According to Article I of Chapter 1 of the Sikh Rehat Maryada, the definition of Sikh is: Any human being who faithfully believes in
Nankana Sahib is a city and capital of Nankana Sahib District in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is named after the first Guru of the Sikhs, Guru Nanak, who was born in the city and first began preaching here. Nankana Sahib is the most important religious site for the Sikh religion. It is located about 91 km (57 mi) west of Lahore and about 75 km (47 mi) east of Faisalabad. According to the census of 2017 the city has a population of 110,135 inhabitants. Until 2005, it was a part of the Sheikhupura District.
The Punjabis, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group associated with the Punjab region, comprising areas of eastern Pakistan and northwestern India. They generally speak Standard Punjabi or various Punjabi dialects on both sides.
The Punjabi Suba movement was a long-drawn political agitation, launched by Punjabi speaking people demanding the creation of autonomous Punjabi Suba, or Punjabi-speaking state, in the post-independence Indian state of East Punjab. The movement is defined as the forerunner of Khalistan movement.
The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee is an organization in India responsible for the management of Gurdwaras, Sikh places of worship in states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh and the union territory of Chandigarh. SGPC also administers Darbar Sahib in Amritsar.
Lohri is a popular winter Dogra and Punjabi folk festival celebrated primarily in Northern India. The significance and legends about the Lohri festival are many and these link the festival to the Duggar region and Punjab region. It is believed by many that the festival marks the passing of the winter solstice. Lohri marks the end of winter, and is a traditional welcome of longer days and the sun's journey to the Northern Hemisphere by people in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent. It is observed the night before Maghi.
Attock, formerly known as Campbellpur, is a city located in Punjab, Pakistan, not far from the country's capital Islamabad. It is the headquarters of the Attock District and is 36th largest city in the Punjab and 61st largest city in the country, by population. The city was founded in 1908 several miles southeast of the historical city of Attock Khurd, which had been established by the Mughal Emperor Akbar in the 16th century, and was initially named in honour of Sir Colin Campbell.
Gurdaspur district is a district in the Majha region of the state of Punjab, India. Gurdaspur is the district headquarters. It internationally borders Narowal District of Pakistani Punjab, and the districts of Amritsar, Pathankot, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur. Two main rivers Beas and Ravi passes through the district. The Mughal emperor Akbar is said to have been enthroned in a garden near Kalanaur, a historically important town in the district. The district is at the foothills of the Himalayas.
The Sikh Empire was a regional power based in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent. It existed from 1799, when Maharaja Ranjit Singh captured Lahore, to 1849, when it was defeated and conquered by the British East India Company in the Second Anglo-Sikh War. It was forged on the foundations of the Khalsa from a collection of autonomous misls. At its peak in the 19th century, the empire extended from Gilgit and Tibet in the north to the deserts of Sindh in the south and from the Khyber Pass in the west to the Sutlej in the east as far as Oudh. It was divided into four provinces: Lahore, which became the Sikh capital; Multan; Peshawar; and Kashmir from 1799 to 1849. Religiously diverse, with an estimated population of 4.5 million in 1831, it was the last major region of the Indian subcontinent to be annexed by the British Empire.
Gujrat is a district in the Pakistani province of Punjab. It is geographically located between the Chenab and Jhelum rivers and headquartered at the city of Gujrat.
Rai Abdullah Khan Bhatti popularly known through his Punjabi moniker, Dulla or Dullah Bhatti, is a Punjabi folk hero who came from the Pakistani Punjab region and led the Punjabis to a revolt against Mughal rule during the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He is entirely absent from the recorded history of the time, and the only evidence of his existence comes from Punjabi folk songs.
Majha is a region located in the central parts of the historical Punjab region split between India and Pakistan. It extends north from the right banks of the river Beas, and reaches as far north as the river Jhelum. People of the Majha region are given the demonym "Mājhī" or "Majhail". Most inhabitants of the region speak the Majhi dialect, which is the basis of the standard register of the Punjabi language. The most populous city in the area is Lahore on the Pakistani side, and Amritsar on the Indian side of the border.
Gujranwala District, is a district that is a part of the Majha region in Punjab, Pakistan. Gujranwala District is bordered by the districts of Wazirabad, Sialkot, Hafizabad and Sheikhupura. Gujranwala district has 5 National Assembly and 12 Punjab Assembly constituencies.
Pakpattan, often referred to as Pākpattan Sharīf, is the capital city of the Pakpattan District, located in Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the 48th largest city of Pakistan by population according to the 2017 census. . Pakpattan is the seat of Pakistan's Chisti order of Sufism, and is a major pilgrimage destination on account of the shrine of Fariduddin Ganjshakar, the renowned Punjabi poet and Sufi saint commonly referred to as Baba Farid. The annual urs fair in his honour draws an estimated 2 million visitors to the town.
The Sikhs are adherents to Sikhism, the fifth largest organized religion in the world, with around 25 million adherents. Sikh History is around 500 years and in that time the Sikhs have developed unique expressions of art and culture which are influenced by their faith and synthesize traditions from many other cultures depending on the locality of the adherents of the religion. Sikhism is the only religion that originated in the Punjab region with all other religions coming from outside Punjab. All the Sikh gurus, many saints, and many of the martyrs in Sikh history were from Punjab and from the Punjabi people. Punjabi culture and Sikhism are mistakenly considered inseparably intertwined. "Sikh" properly refers to adherents of Sikhism as a religion, strictly not an ethnic group. However, because Sikhism has seldom sought converts, most Sikhs share strong ethno-religious ties, therefore it is a common stereotype that all Sikhs share the same ethnicity. Many countries, such as the U.K., therefore misconcievingly recognize Sikh as a designated ethnicity on their censuses. The American non-profit organization United Sikhs has fought to have Sikhs included on the U.S. census as well, arguing that Sikhs "self-identify as an 'ethnic minority'" and believe "that they are more than just a religion".
Punjab, historically known as Panchanada or Pentapotamia, is a state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh to the north and northeast, Haryana to the south and southeast, and Rajasthan to the southwest; by the Indian union territories of Chandigarh to the east and Jammu and Kashmir to the north. It shares an international border with Punjab, a province of Pakistan to the west. The state covers an area of 50,362 square kilometres, which is 1.53% of India's total geographical area, making it the 19th-largest Indian state by area out of 28 Indian states. With over 27 million inhabitants, Punjab is the 16th-largest Indian state by population, comprising 23 districts. Punjabi, written in the Gurmukhi script, is the most widely spoken and the official language of the state. The main ethnic group are the Punjabis, with Sikhs (57.7%) and Hindus (38.5%) forming the dominant religious groups. The state capital is Chandigarh, a union territory and also the capital of the neighbouring state of Haryana. Three tributaries of the Indus, viz., Sutlej, Beas, and Ravi, flow through Punjab.
Punjabiyat means "Punjabiness" and is the language revitalization movement of Punjabi.
Punjabi Muslims are adherents of Islam who identify ethnically, linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Punjabis. With a population of more than 109 million, they are the largest ethnic group in Pakistan and the world's third-largest Islam-adhering ethnicity after Arabs and Bengalis. The majority of Punjabi Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, while a minority adhere to Shia Islam. They are primarily geographically native to the Punjab province of Pakistan, but many have ancestry from the Punjab region as a whole.
The forerunner to the Khalistan movement the Punjabi Suba movement of the 1960s also stressed the right of control over territory and water.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Mr Bhajan Lal's "reunification" scheme would turn Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, together with Chandigarh, into one enlarged State.
Even after seven decades of Partition, it is difficult to comprehend and grasp the trauma in its full essence. 'May be it is for this reason that the writers are still obsessed with this theme, but hardly any writer has contemplated the reunification of Punjab,' pondered Amarjit Chandan.