Punjab Panorama

From Punjab, with love

2011-12-16T07:01:00.000-08:00

The smell of fresh earth mixed with oxygen-laden air, plucking fruits off trees, the sight of homemade butter melting on hot aloo parathas — Shivya Nath brings you a slice of rural life writing in The Hindu

As a kid, I’ve often heard my grandmother talk about growing up in our native Punjab. I pictured little boys and girls running across big fields, plucking sour fruits and wild flowers, returning home at noon to the aroma of curries made with veggies fresh off the farm and paranthas laden with home-made white butter. I never imagined waking up to these images someday, given how they seemed only to be romanticized in the memories of people I knew.

In a desperate attempt to break the monotony of Delhi’s city life, we’ve impulsively decided to board a train to Abohar, a small town in Ferozepur district of Punjab, a town that Google could tell us almost nothing about. Eight hours and a short drive later, I’ve found myself in the midst of a 400-acre fruit farm. I now sit by a gurgling stream, watching the first rays of sunrise through the white, thin barks of Eucalyptus trees. I extend my hand towards what look like snowflakes dotted on dark green shrubs, only they don’t melt at my touch. I am in the most fertile cotton belt of the country and November happens to be the plucking season.

The smell of fresh earth mixed with oxygen-laden air reminds me of A.R. Rahman; this must be the aroma of our soil he refers to in his music. Just like in my grandmother’s stories, a whiff of freshly cooked aloo parathas and homemade butter floats in the air as we approach the farmhouse we are staying at. Our host Kishan, from the nearby pind (a village in the native Punjabi), ensures that we have a hearty breakfast. Heftily built with a thick Punjabi accent, he was a little intimidating at first, but breaking the ice came naturally to him. After greeting us at the Abohar train station, he immediately offered that we drive his jeep to the farm, which, for the sake of survival, our half-asleep selves politely declined!

As we busily devour the yummy parathas, Kishan rolls his long moustache and invites us to dinner at his own house in the pind. We’ve all heard stories of Punjabi hospitality, but to experience it first hand is different altogether.

We walk along a narrow clearing with tall Eucalyptus trees on either side, past ripening guavas, brown fields of Basmati rice, bitter gourds hiding away in their roped enclosures, water chestnuts growing out of mucky green ponds, and women in saris expertly plucking cotton off the shrubs. I am tempted by the half-ripe kinnows that glow with an orange-green tinge atop short trees. Kishan, as though reading my mind, plucks a few and tosses them towards me, only to smile as he sees me cringe at their tanginess.

That night, we make our way to Kishan’s house in the pind. I have been to villages in other parts of India, but Punjab is different. Kishan’s house might be very basic, but it is soothingly airy and spacious, much more than the cramped little flats of Delhi that I’ve grown used to. Kishan offers the men drinks, while the women pass around a bottle of Coke, and conversation begins to flow at a homely pace. He talks about life in the pind, the future of his two sons, his romantic encounter with his wife in Jammu, and captivating tales about his extended family.

A few drinks later, Kishan’s wife, who had slipped away into the kitchen after exchanging a brief greeting with us, announces dinner. Laid on the table are saag and baingan ki sabzi, made from veggies fresh off the farm, and an assortment of other vegetables and lentils. In less than five minutes, we have forgotten our city manners; we are licking our fingers, sharing our plates, gossiping about people we barely know, and laughing at a friend who can barely understand Kishan’s alcohol-tinged Punjabi accent. While my friends struggle with the language, I am glad for bits of it I’ve subconsciously picked up while living in a Punjabi household, perhaps my only surviving Punjabi trait.

Evening turns to night, and as we part ways, Kishan offers to accompany us to the Indo-Pak border at Sadqi the next afternoon, with some homemade lassi for the way. He also promises to invite along his friend who lives close to the border and would make a good guide for all our questions. A single weekend in Punjab has convinced me that we, city-people, have much to learn about egalitarianism from our counterparts in rural India.

I suddenly understand what my grandmother meant when she said that living in Punjab is like being part of one big family, and I long to live in the world she grew up in.

The author specialises in digital marketing for rural tourism initiatives in India.

Bengali brides for Punjabi men

2011-08-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

Men from Punjab's Malwa region, notorious for its skewed sex-ratio, are bringing girls from Bengal to marry, for a payment, reports Jatinder Preet in The Sunday Guardian

Nishabar Singh of Lehra in Sangrur district paid Rs 50,000 to arrange for a bride from Kolkata for his 35-year-old son Dulla. Tek Ram from the same village, who arranged the match, insists this does not amount to purchasing the bride. The money was for arrangements on weddings and other expenses, he claims. Among other expenses he includes the money that has to be paid to the person arranging the match in Kolkata.

Known as Teku in the area, he himself is married to a girl from Kolkata. Teku says he is just helping others who cannot find suitable brides in Punjab.

Take the case of Dulla, he explains. Dulla was a drug addict and was known to be a petty thief. His father Nishabar Singh, knowing well that he would not find a match for his "ageing" son in Punjab, approached Teku. Teku, who has his wife's family in Kolkata and has the experience of arranging many such inter-cultural matches, found a girl for Dulla.

"There is so much poverty there," he observes when recounting his first trip to Kolkata 15 years ago as an assistant to a truck driver. "It's not only about Dulla, I also helped a needy family who could not afford to spend on their daughter's marriage," he says.

A girl from another poor Bengali family was brought to Punjab by Mithu Singh of Lehragaga when his first wife died at childbirth. 35-year-old Mithu refuses to talk about it.

Puran Singh from village Khokhar found a Bengali bride after he could not find a suitable girl here. Similarly, another girl, Rinki from Kolkata is married to a truck driver from village Jawanda. Her sister Tikli is married into another Punjabi family in Malerkotla.

Teku says he has arranged around 25-30 such marriages in the area. There are many girls ready to be married to anybody who can pay for it, he claims. Teku talks of a girl in Kolkata whose family has approached him to look for a man in Punjab to marry her off. All he knows of the girl is that she is fair and is around 22-23 years of age. "It's my responsibility," he says, vouching for the girl as he cites his own marriage as a successful experiment.

His wife Pinki plays down the scope for any problems because of cultural differences. She was married to Teku 15 years ago and like any other girl who adopts her husband's family and their ways, she too has adapted herself, she says in fluent Punjabi. She asserts that she is happy here and adds, "Men are alike everywhere."

Kashmiri separatists’ and Khalistanis lobby together

2011-08-06T08:04:00.000-07:00

Kashmiri lobbyists continue with their anti-India propaganda, often working in tandem with Khalistan protagonists in US, Canada and in many European countries, writes Jatinder Preet in The Sunday Guardian.

Kashmiri lobbyists have made common cause with Khalistani protagonists in the United States, Canada and European countries for long. While the arrest of Ghulam Nabi Fai in the US for getting funds from Pakistan's ISI is in the spotlight, many more similar Kashmiri and Khalistani lobbyists are still working, often together, against India.

The Khalistan movement is believed to be almost over in India, but the Khalistani propagandists continue with their activities in friendly countries. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, self-styled president of the Council of Khalistan has been more prominent of this lot. In a US Congressional hearing in 2004, speaking as one of the main witnesses, he called for cutting off aid to India and asked for "support to the cause of freedom in the subcontinent" to help end what he called "the repression of Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and other minorities in India". Supporting him was Ghulam Nabi Fai, although he kept himself confined to Kashmir.

Earlier in 2000, Fai led a delegation from the Kashmiri American Council to the Guru Nanak Foundation Gurudwara in Silver Spring, Maryland. Fai's joint statement with Dr Paramjit Singh Ajrawat, founder of Anti-Defamation Sikh Council for Khalistan, was released later which called for the US and the United Nations to intensify their efforts to facilitate a peaceful solution to the "liberation of the Sikh Homeland, Khalistan and the 52-year-old Kashmir conflict".

The propaganda continues, with Kashmiri activists often featuring in Khalistan groups' statements, besides participating in common protest activities. Last month in Canada, Kashmiri and Sikh activists oragnised a joint protest in opposition to the death sentence of Davinderpal Singh Bhullar in India. Similarly, in June last year, a joint protest was organised in Toronto, the venue of the G20 Summit. A similar joint protest was held in Brussels in December last year, timed for the European Union-India Summit when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was on an official tour of the EU. Gurmit Singh Aulakh represented the Khalistani cause in the rally comprising mainly of Kashmiri groups from across Europe.

Habib Yousafzai, the spokesperson of Canada based World Kashmir Diaspora Alliance (WKDA), is one of the more active members of the web group Khalistan where he regularly posts on alleged human rights violations in India. The Khalistani lobby returned the compliment when in a memorandum submitted to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights last month it quoted WKDA on Kashmir, while listing alleged cases of human rights abuses of Sikhs and other non-Hindu minorities in India.
(The picture has been taken from the website of World Kashmiri Diaspora Alliance)

Read the Revolutionary

2011-03-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

What our beloved mere-23-at-death symbol of nationalism deserves is a little more attention, love not infatuation. Reading what he read and wrote could be the first meeting, suggests Aarish Chhabra in Hindustan Times

No matter what the difference between what they achieved and didn't, what Che Guevara is to the world, Bhagat Singh is to our country. The ideology is besides the point. What a young man of this generation seems more interested in is using these revolutionaries to feed his own self-image of a rebel, non-conformist.

And that's about it. Coasters, T-shirts, lifesize posters with a Bhagat Singh motif are in. I am a rebel, they cry out.

So, was Bhagat Singh a revolutionary in just that one, vague sense?

His love of anarchism and Marxism is well-documented; how many of us have actually read what he thought of the freemarket economic system? A college-goer walking in designer jeans bought with his land-baron daddy's money, topped with a fashionable Inquilab Zindabad T-shirt, is a picture of utter irony. Bhagat Singh stood for peasants' rights, for the rule of the proletariat. Never in a million years would he have desired to be the poster boy of trigger-happy, rich brats.

Also, the last I read him, he had clearly stated his lack of belief in god, and at times even expressed mild disappointment at prayers by people facing the gallows. Then why is it that even newspapers these days insist on using pictures of him only with a turban, never with the hat that was as much a trademark of his as the loosely tied turban. That he was born a Sikh can't be doubted, but whether he chose to die one has a different answer.
It's not that hard to figure out unless you want to use his picture alongside that of a right-winger who wanted a separate state based on religion. Using their pictures together is, again, reducing the Shaheed to a mere gun-toting extremist, revolutionary only in action, not thought, and certainly not a nationalist. It's his martyrdom day today, and there would be rallies at his native village Khatkar Kalan. Speaking from the daises would be leaders from different parties, with the single-minded goal of painting a one-dimensional picture of Bhagat Singh in the voter's mind. It's easy to see that these politicos would be feeding the young majority that loves its own rebel self-image.
But there's a Bhagat Singh much beyond that, whose family has said they are sickened by the use of his image on every political party's poster.

But blaming politicians alone proves no point; the whole generation shares the blame. What our beloved mere-23-at-death symbol of nationalism deserves is a little more attention, love not infatuation. Reading what he read and wrote could be the first meeting.

Don't be tempted to pick up placards and raise slogans demanding inclusion of all his writings in all textbooks. Why involve those who want to use your hero for votes?
Go to a library, use the internet. He is ours more than theirs, he is everyman's hero.
Just don't reduce your admiration to mere hero worship.

(The Bhagat Singh's picture above is of an unfinished painting by Australian artist Daniel Connel)

Bringing Punjabiyat Back

2011-03-03T05:09:00.000-08:00

Modern Punjabi culture remains remarkably little known outside the noisy clichés of Bollywood and music videos. Now, more than 60 years after Partition, this cultural heritage is beginning to move forward, writes Schona Jolly in Caravan

“Punjabi is my mother-tongue, my blood, my soul, my language. I think, dream and feel in it. I will also die in it,” proclaims Amarjit Chandan, an acclaimed poet born in Kenya. “In pardes (abroad),” he explains of his adult life spent in London, “I invented the Punjabiland."

For a land that has been home to some of the world’s richest civilisations, modern Punjabi culture remains remarkably little known outside the noisy clichés of Bollywood and music videos. As the Indian state of Punjab grapples with complex social and economic issues, the Pakistani province of Punjab collapses due to political woes, and a large diaspora stays settled all over the globe, Punjabi poets and storytellers of old seem to be disappearing along with the water levels in the land of the five rivers. But Punjabis are nothing if not adept at handling change—it is the legacy of their own turbulent history, after all—and there are small but significant signs, that this vibrant melting-pot culture is on the verge of reemergence.

History has not been kind to the people of Punjab. The brutal division of the state during Partition led to both carnage and to one of the biggest mass population movements during the 20th century. Amidst the riots, butchery, rape and devastation, Punjabis of all religious persuasions suddenly found that they had to create new identities. In Pakistan, those identities had to be established through a new, Urdu-speaking nationalist ethos that sought to reimagine the country’s history and culture by severing ties with its neighbour. In India, those identities had to be reshaped by millions of refugees whose culture, possessions, love and longing belonged to another place. In the decades after Partition, hundreds of thousands of Punjabis from both East Punjab, in India, and West Punjab, in Pakistan, left their homelands to seek sanctuary and a new life abroad. For all of these people, the historical and cultural ties to their motherland had to be reforged. The multi-hued complexion of both states had become altered radically overnight.

Lahore, the united Punjab’s former capital, had long been considered the jewel in the crown of North India and had been developed as a cultural capital under both the Mughals and Maharaja Ranjit singh. “Jis Lahore nahi dekhya, oh jammia nahi (Those who have not seen Lahore, have not lived),” proclaimed popular lore at the time. With Lahore as its capital, Punjab’s multilingual, multireligious culture had flourished in poetry, art, music and literature in Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi, weaving smoothly in and out of religious boundaries and between both rich and poor alike who patronised the baithaks and shrines of the “City of Gardens”. In 1901, the first Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, India’s first music university funded by public support and donations, was started there by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar. The famous Takia Meerasian at the city’s Mocchi Gate played court to a myriad legendary musicians, such as ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, who, although from Lahore district, eventually sought Indian citizenship in 1957, having become disenchanted with the Pakistani government’s official attitude towards music. He is reputed to have said: “If, in every home, one child was taught Hindustani classical music, this country would never have been partitioned.” In order to begin to understand what the loss of Lahore meant to Indian Punjab, one must try to imagine either France without Paris or England without London; a sense of the cultural desolation begins to resonate.

“The land of the five rivers became a land of two and half rivers each,” says Nirupama Dutt, an eminent Punjabi journalist, writer and activist based in Chandigarh. Although a strong body of Partition literature inevitably emerged, with courageous writers such as Amrita Pritam depicting the pain of their upheaval in heartfelt poetry and prose, the destruction of a once-unified Punjab meant that it would take decades before a new Punjabi identity could begin to be reborn.

Punjabi poetry and literature begins in the realms of Sufism. The first Punjabi poetry dates back to the 12th century with Baba Farid, some of whose writings later made their way into the Guru Granth sahib along with those of Kabir. spirituality, from both the nascent Sufi and Sikh traditions, is a strong Punjabi literary theme which has often sought to straddle the practicality and earthy qualities of village and agricultural life and tales of tragic love. The celebrated Punjabi kissas such as ‘Heer-Ranjha’, an ancient story of two ill-fated lovers that became famous when penned by Waris shah, a fêted Punjabi Sufi poet, and others such as ‘Mirza-sahiban’, ‘sassi-Punnun’ and ‘sohni-Mahiwal’ have been passed down and written, rewritten, sung and recreated over history by different artists with different religious backgrounds. Today, the words of Bulleh shah, born in 1860, have been revitalised both by the Pakistani rock band Junoon and the rising Indian singer Rabbi shergill. Those versions have been runaway successes in India and Pakistan, and it is perhaps entirely fitting to Bulleh shah’s humanist legacy that both Muslim and Sikh artists have reignited his lyrics.

Salman Ahmad, the well-known frontman of Junoon who has a fanatical following in both India and Pakistan, says, “I’m interested in the culture of my forebears because culture humanises what politics demonises. Arts and culture open the doors for people to walk through. That is why I wrote my book Rock & Roll Jihad, so that it could act as a viewfinder for a culture which is being hijacked and distorted by politics and violence.” Now living in the us, Ahmad uses his fame to spread the message of cultural fusion, blending qawwali, bhangra, rock and jazz.

Punjabi writers and artists have consistently engaged with politics in their works, whether in attempts to embrace or escape the developments around them. The rising Naxalite and separatist movements of the latter 20th century contributed to the growing body of literature and art emanating from East Punjab with revolutionary poets such as Avtar singh ‘Paash’, a Naxalite whose works, such as Loh-Katha (Iron Tale) and the literary magazine Siarh (The Plough Line), led him first to jail and then towards his assassination during the height of the 1980s ‘troubled’ years in Punjab. Now the revolutionary songs and poetry of another iconic figure, Bant singh, an agricultural labourer from Jabbar village in Punjab, have been immortalised in a Goethe-Institut-supported documentary project titled Words, Sound and Power. This musical collaboration with three other musicians, samrat Bharadwaj, Taru Dalmia and Chris McGuinness, has attempted to spread Bant singh’s political message about intercaste violence and equality through the modern mediums of electronic fusion, ska and dancehall music.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Punjab’s troubled politics has inspired the work of leading contemporary artists. They include Amrit and Rabindra singh, known as the singh Twins, whose award-winning paintings are recognised as constituting a unique genre in British art and credited with initiating the revival of the Indian miniature tradition. The two describe their work as “PastModern”, a blend that seeks to engage with critical issues of serious debate, which have a meaningful impact in challenging pervading social, political and cultural attitudes. In paintings such as ‘Nyrmla’s Wedding’ or ‘Mr singh’s India’, the Twins depict the multiple layers of their own personal identities as British Asians, interspersed with more global concerns of ecological exploitation and multinational domination. They do not shy away from the political troubles that have rocked their motherland. In ‘1984’, one of their most famous works, they examine the storming of the Golden Temple through the eyes of Sikhs, depicting their profound sense of sadness and injustice, as well as their critical reflections on the media’s role in the tragedy. “The bias of the media and the damaging effect it has had on the reputation of Sikhs is symbolised by the group of blindfolded reporters who stand as ‘partners in crime’, shoulder to shoulder with Indian troops,” they explain. “There is a sense of horror and panic as pilgrims scramble over one another to find refuge from the bullets and armoured tanks. The diagonals created by the composition by the steep line-up of soldiers and the specific orientation of the square temple complex lend themselves to the visual disturbance and chaos of the scene. The surrounding borders of the painting hem in the fleeing crowds, enhancing the feeling of claustrophobia and revealing the futility of its attempts to escape.” The pair says their work is a tribute to the past as well as a celebration of a new reality.

Those from other mediums continue to reap meaning from the Punjabi tradition as they innovate and break through boundaries. Navtej Johar, one of India’s top male dancers in both classical and contemporary mediums as well as the founder of Delhi’s yoga studio Abhyas, says the poetic and spiritual ethos of his Punjabi Sikh background has inspired his creativity. “I find Punjabi thought to have always been very political and progressive, if not subversive,” he reflects. “When I was growing up, almost all Punjabi literature was leftist. I find the creative Punjabi mind very questioning and not easily satisfied with the status quo. Beginning with Sufi poetry as well as Gurbani, the common strain that I find in serious Punjabi art, literature and even music is that apart from endorsing inclusivity and abandon—be it spiritual, romantic or political—it always comments upon and questions, if not opposes, the sociopolitical system of the time.” Johar also says that neither the Sufi poetry nor the Sikh Gurbani of Punjab can be considered spiritual texts, because both were written by people who took very strong political stands and make very strong sociopolitical assertions. “The Punjabi-self,” he says, “is closely tied to these expressions that are from and of the land. Gurbani is and should remain to be perceived as a pan-Punjab voice of an assertion that is first human and then spiritual.”

Johar has been involved in a number of cross-border initiatives: He collaborated with composers Madan Gopal singh and Elangovan Govindarjan in the 2007 production of Fana’a: Ranjha Revisited. The dance-theatre piece fused the predominant Punjabi Sufi love legend ‘Heer-Ranjha’ with Kutrala Kuravanji, a genre of dance-drama from Tamil Nadu. The production, which is accompanied by a powerfully stirring musical composition by singh, a Sufi musical genius, took Johar to Lahore. “I love the Punjab of Pakistan,” he says. “It is in fact ‘my land’, my people, my dialect, I palpably identify with it. The first time I crossed the border, I had tears streaming down my cheeks; the first time I performed in Lahore I was choking.”

Other Indian artists who cross the Punjabi border reveal that same deep affection for the culture and people there. For Amarjit Chandan, Lahore is the muse. “A decade ago, when I first visited Lahore, I wrote down more than 13 poems in a single day walking the streets. I was possessed,” he says. His vision of the two states is melancholy and appropriately poetic. He says that his only desire “is the reunification of the Punjab”.

Beyond the imaginative stirrings of literary Punjabi legend, however, there are valid questions as to whether the artistic love shared across the border translates into a reunified and revitalised Punjabi culture. Professor Rajesh sharma, from the Punjabi university in Patiala, is downcast. He believes that there is a crisis of identity, driven by globalisation, which generates the need for “culture”, in a commercial sense alone, to fill the gap. History, he believes, has had a tremendous impact on Punjabi culture today. “Culture is a process, marked as much by gaps, ruptures and breaks as by continuities. ultimately, neither Punjabi culture, nor any other can be sliced off from its historical moorings, and then celebrated,” he says.

Navtej Johar describes this rupture of historical moorings mournfully. He says Partition left Punjabis “in perpetual longing for each other on either side of the border. ‘Lang aajaa patan Chana da yaar’ (Come across over to the banks of the Chenab, o beloved) says it all. In East Punjab, the biggest loss has been the loss of dialects. Dialects probably are a product of the physical landscape and cannot survive transmigration.” Johar says he longs for the ethos of saraiki, his parents’ dialect, in which Sufi saints wrote. “It has been a huge loss to lose out on a whole treasure of multiple oral cultures, the idiosyncrasies and nuances of which kept our imaginations and our sense of self alive and afloat. The brevity and profundity of the tappas and maiyas (traditional forms of rhyming couplets and verse) of the Rawalpindi area are unparalleled; they are simple, poignant, human, direct and, most of all, inclusive. With Partition, I feel we are in a way orphaned. of course, we are very good at keeping our chins up, but we are a deeply wounded people. And our truths lie in our wounds, which we are still struggling to address and heal.”

Language, after all, is both the root and tool of any literary voice within a culture; without it, the life experiences which build, reveal and unlock the culture become lost, fading into memories, unrecorded or unexplored. Amarjit Chandan, writing in London, sums up his fears that the loss of Punjabi as a language will contribute towards a cultural desecration in his poem ‘The Peacock in Walpole Park, Ealing’:

…The heart sinks when the peacock screams
The body shivers and the world rejoices
The heart sinks when the peacock screams
It yearns for mango flowers lost long ago ..

Notwithstanding his deep concern over the gradual loss of a language which, for Chandan, represents both life itself and the lens through which he comprehends all other languages, his energetic participation in the literary world outside India is some cause for celebration. Punjabi is, after all, statistically the second most widely spoken language in Britain today. Recently, for example, he took part in the British Library-sponsored ‘Poet in the City’ event in London, marking the centenary of the birth of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, one of the most prominent poets of the subcontinent who wrote in both Punjabi and Urdu, and whose work was filled with egalitarian themes of love, dignity and resistance to injustice. Last year, Chandan’s readings from his bilingual Sonata for Four Hands were well-received at London’s iconic Whitechapel Gallery. The increasing interest in Punjabiyat by younger generations of all religious persuasions amongst the diaspora suggests that Punjabi cultural heritage is beginning to move forward, more than 60 years after Partition.

The Lahori view on the impact of language loss to Punjabi culture, however, is less than optimistic. Punjab accounts for some 55 percent of the population of Pakistan, but the heavy use and encouragement of Urdu as the standard language has led to a major decline in the use of Punjabi there. Punjabi publishing in Pakistan has, inevitably, shrunk to minimal levels. Nadir Ali, a retired lieutenant colonel, has spent much of the past 30 years developing Punjabi culture in Pakistan under the mentorship of Najm Hosain syed, a major Punjabi scholar, poet, critic and playwright who created a study group of Punjabi poetry in 1976, which continues to the present day. Meeting several times a week, the group studies Punjabi poets from the 12th to the 19th centuries, including Waris shah, Baba Farid and Guru Nanak. Members also publish a regular Punjabi magazine previously called Ma Boli (Mother Tongue), but now renamed Pancham. In a deliberate act of bridging the border, the magazine features major writers from both East and West Punjab.

The retired lieutenant colonel is passionate about Punjabi literature and language and bemoans the fact that Kashmiri Bazaar, the publishing capital of Pakistan’s Punjab, does not have a single Punjabi bookshop. syed’s group, Ali says, had to set up its own shop in order to publish the works of Punjab’s great poets. Ali also complains that the national mood and ideology has swung so violently towards religious defi- nition alone that the very nature of free speech, encouraged and contemplated by art and literature, is no longer available in Pakistan. He wistfully recalls hearing a Punjabi discussion on the very existence of God by a semi-rural group at the shah Hussain Mela in Lahore some 50 years ago. That, he says, is simply not possible today because in the current climate, it could lead to death or assassination. He recalls that, pre-Partition, his religious teacher would quote Guru Nanak whilst teaching Islamiat. That generation, he claims with both sadness and anger, is dead and gone along with the vigour of the Punjabi language in Pakistan, without which, literature is doomed. Ali is adamant that, perhaps unlike in India or amongst the diasporic communities, there has been no resurgence of interest in Punjabi culture in Pakistan. “Punjabi was considered subversive to the very ideology of Pakistan,” he says. “All Punjabi literary groups were banned in Pakistan by Ayub Khan in the 1960s. The handful of diehards who remained were leftists, who themselves were denounced in Pakistan during the Cold War era. Language became treated as a question of class in Pakistan and today, Punjabi language and singing survives only in the villages and small towns of the province. Even in the village where my grandparents lived,” he laments, “I have to teach them old marriage songs; they make do instead with movie songs.”

Music, though, may be the great glue in the Punjabi tradition which holds it all together, and a new generation’s interest in Punjabi music could be key to sustaining its revival.

In Pakistan, pop singer Meesha Shafi’s rendition of an old Punjabi song, ‘Chori Chori’, on Coke Studio, a television series featuring diverse musical influences in Pakistan, was met with critical success but also caused a major stir. “I belong to a Punjabi-speaking household,” Shafi says, “but I think it surprised people to see a young girl dressed in modern, Western attire singing a regional, folk Punjabi classic. It was a milestone for me as an artist and as Reshma’s fan to be able to do her song some kind of justice.” In India, Madan Gopal singh has become a fixture at major festivals, appearing at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year and regularly enchanting Delhi, international crowds and cinema audiences with his mesmeric renditions of Punjab’s hauntingly evocative Sufi music.

Further afield, music has forged a link between the children of immigrants who are finding new ways to combine their parents’ language with the street outside. The bhangra genre, developed in the 1980s and 1990s mostly in Britain, has hit new heights of popularity, and today British and Canadian bhangra artists are bringing their music ‘home’ to Punjab, shifting and extending the boundaries of musical expression and understanding. With record sales often exceeding those of the mainstream pop charts in the uK, bhangra and Asian fusion music has provided a strong sense of pride and identity to Asian youth in the West. Artists like Talvin singh and Nitin sawhney exploded onto the British underground music scene in the 1990s, creating a lasting impact on novel and exciting forms of British Punjabi and Asian music. The ‘Nusrat effect’, too, brought a new pride to Punjabi musical culture as the surge of international recognition for songs like ‘Dam Mast Qalandar’ began to recast the modern realities of a globalised Punjabi culture.

Sheniz Janmohamed is a second-generation Canadiansouth Asian poet. Her recently published book Bleeding Light (TsAR Publications), is a composition of ghazals written in English, one of which (‘Allah Hu’) was inspired by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Janmohamed herself is not Punjabi but acknowledges that her work is heavily influenced by the Punjabi poetic tradition. Her ghazal, ‘Roses are stones’, begins with a subtle reference to the life of saeen Zahoor, the Punjabi folk musician whom she describes as “a living repository of Bulleh shah’s poetry”. Back to ‘Heer-Ranjha’ again, Janmohamed also incorporates its themes and specific concept of ishq-e-majazi, a metaphorical love that transforms into true love or the love of the Beloved. Bleeding Light was written under the tutelage of her mentor , the late Kuldip Gill, one of the first Canadian-south Asian poets to write ghazals in English. Gill’s last book, Valley Sutra, is a strong tribute to her dual homelands of Punjab and Canada. With each new variation on older themes, Punjabi cultural heritage is morphing and moulding with the movements of its people all over the world.

Self-evidently, the Punjabi diaspora does not speak with a single voice. Having settled in many different places and spaces, the contributions they offer reflect their personal and unique experiences in foreign lands. Gurpreet Chana, also known as “The Tabla Guy”, is a talented Canadian Sikh musician who was born in Toronto. His formal training with ustad Professor Parshotam singh in the Punjab Gharana has led him into novel and exciting collaborations with a wide variety of musicians, including Nelly Furtado and Wyclef Jean. Chana acknowledges the strong influence of Punjabi culture on the creation of his music. He says that “music is integrated in almost every part of Punjabi culture, whether it is celebration, contemplation or sorrow”. Instead of the émgirés’ culture becoming frozen in time upon their leaving their homeland, Chana says the diaspora plays a big part in rejuvenating Punjabi culture. Even more, the new Punjabi generations growing up in Canada and elsewhere, he says, expand the tradition as they incorporate other in- fluences from their new contexts.

The complex modern-day realities scarring the peoples of Punjab notwithstanding, these individual stories of artists who are spread across the world represent the moulding of modern Punjabi identity. The forms of art, literature and music which they create may not have been born or even recognised in Jalandhar or Ludhiana, but they are no less integrally Punjabi than the heritage of the previous generations. In a culture which has known both invasions and integrations, fluidity and change may come to represent its strength.

Junior, not the weaker sibling

2010-10-31T22:16:00.000-07:00

On Haryana Day, Ramesh Vinayak writing in Hindustan Times, compares Punjab with the neighbouring state to take stock of what it was that made Haryana click and why Punjab didn't

On November 1, 1966, Haryana emerged on the map of India as a separate state, carved out of Punjab. The two neighbours have ever since shared prickly ties, fighting protracted politico-legal slugfests over river waters and territorial issues. While the jury is still out on the contentious issues, the two have also been engaged in another battle -this one, on the development front.

Four and a half decades on, the verdict on this race is clear: Haryana, once dubbed as the poor cousin of Punjab, has outpaced the senior state on most key parameters. Be it per capita income or average growth rate, fiscal buoyancy or manufacturing and realty boom, even foreign direct investment, Haryana has scripted a trailblazing success story, surging ahead of Punjab, which is caught in a leader-to-laggard syndrome.

In fact, the border state's historic head start -the Green Revolution-powered growth of the Seventies -has almost petered out and Punjab now finds itself bracketed with the slowest growing states.
Haryana, in contrast, continues on a rapid-fire progress mode, with the Gurgaon skyline its leitmotif.

That was for the differences. What is common is their dark underbelly -the poor human development indices, most dubious being the highly skewed sex ratio, the worst in the country, because of rampant female foeticide. Haryana also has a blind spot from inequitable growth, which is confined mostly to cities and towns.

As Haryana steps into its 45th year, Hindustan Times tracks the growth trajectory of the two states to answer the oft-asked questions -who is ahead, in what and why? It's true, Haryana has benefited as much from its proximity to the National Capital as from better-managed economy, while Punjab has the lost decade of the '80s to blame for it losing out on virtually every “revolution“ -automobile, IT or retail -that swept across the country. Yet, in the 21st century, there's no denying the overarching factor remains quality of governance.

Why Punjab can’t afford pork

2010-10-18T04:04:00.000-07:00

Punjab has been playing bad economics for long, P Raghavan writing in The Indian Express cites figures to show that score-sheet reflects poorly on those governing the state

Clashes between powerful politicians over policy is not unusual, but the fight between Punjab’s former Finance Minister Manpreet Badal and his party on the issue of curbing wasteful spending on populist schemes stands out. It’s rare for Indian politicians to stand up against political largesse or pork-barrel politics as the Americans call it. Growing subsidy bills and debt burdens, issues raised by Manpreet Badal, are usually low-priority matters.
But the big question is: how has Punjab’s profligacy impacted its debt burden and fiscal management? Long-term trends show that the Shiromani Akali Dal government has been lax about containing expenditure, and pushed up the state’s deficits. For instance, the numbers show that during the third stint of the Parkash Singh Badal government, the revenue deficit shot up from Rs 1,485 crore in 1997-98 to Rs 2,336 crore in 2000-01. However, Amarinder Singh’s Congress government that replaced Badal’s was more restrained in its spending. The revenue deficit even declined from Rs 3,781 crore in 2001-02 to Rs 1,749 in 2006-07. But the gains made were reversed sharply in the fourth stint of the Badal regime when the revenue deficit of the state doubled in just three years from Rs 3,823 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 6,234 crore in the budget estimates for 2009-10.
The deteriorating trends in the revenue deficit under SAD rule is also reflected in the fiscal deficits. While the fiscal deficit almost doubled from Rs 2,478 crore to Rs 4,958 crore during the term of the third Badal government in 1997-2002, the Congress government during 2002-07 pushed down the deficit from Rs 4,401 crore in 2002-03 to Rs 4,384 crore in 2006-07. And the fourth Badal government has been even more profligate, with the fiscal deficit doubling in just three years from Rs 4,604 crore in 2007-08 to Rs 9,660 crore in the budget estimates for 2009-10. All this has pushed up the total borrowing of the state to Rs 64,924 crore by early 2010, and the amount is expected to go up by another Rs 5,700 crore in the current fiscal year.
One reason for the growing deficits in Punjab is the poor resource mobilisation efforts. The tax-to-GDP ratio of the state is just 7 per cent, mainly because of the small industrial base. The share of the industrial sector in the state economy is just 13 per cent. Resource mobilisation efforts will only get a boost once the GST rollout allows the state to tap into the huge consumption spending in the state.
However, apart from the sins of omission there are also the sins of commission, which place a large burden on the state. The biggest outgo is on the electricity subsidies in agriculture, where the expenditure has gone up from Rs 2,602 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 3,144 crore in 2009-10, which accounts for almost half the revenue deficit of the state. The reason for such a large electricity subsidy bill is the zero tariff for electricity used for agriculture which accounts for close to a third of the total electricity consumption in the state. The agriculture tariff charged in Punjab stands out in stark contrast to the Rs 3.68 per unit charged as agriculture tariff by the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh.
The direct consequence of the growing deficit is the bloated debt burden of Punjab which is now far beyond the 30.8 per cent target fixed by the Twelfth Finance Commission. Most recent numbers show that the debt GSDP ratio of the state was 40 per cent in 2008-09, which far exceeds the all-state average of 26.2 per cent and more than double of that of neighbouring Haryana.
A further increase in debt levels would only further squeeze the resources now available for development programmes and widen the growing gap between Punjab and other states. Most recent numbers show the state’s growth rate has hovered around 7per cent, far below that of the leading states, which grow in double digits. So a reallocation of state resources by cutting down unproductive expenditures should now be the first step.
But despite spending far beyond its means, the state has fallen short of meeting the annual plan targets. By the chief minister’s own admission, the actual expenditure of the plan outlay by the state fell from 98 per cent in 2007-08 to just 58 per cent in 2009-10, mainly due to the large outgo on the implementation of the Pay Commission recommendations and the slowdown in the economy which impacted revenues from the real estate sector and the vat collections.

Putting Punjab first

2010-10-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

Punjab needs to look beyond the infighting in the Akali Dal. Other states, including Bihar, are marching ahead, undertaking administrative and economic reforms. There are issues even former Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal has seldom taken up, writes Nirmal Sandhu in The Tribune

The politics of the bickering Badals has at least cast the spotlight on Punjab’s economic deterioration. Politics often dominates the Punjab scene and economics tends to take a back seat. Manpreet Singh Badal has brought the issue of ballooning, unmanageable subsidies to the centre-stage. Subsidies do drain the scarce resources, no doubt. But there are other equally serious issues which need attention.
Even the sacked Finance Minister has never pointed a finger at the reckless spending ways of the Chief Minister and his colleagues, political extravagance and bureaucratic burden the government bears, all of which contribute substantially to the state’s mounting debt.
India’s economic scene is changing fast, while Punjab is still caught in a bind, thanks to lack of a visionary leadership. States are fast developing infrastructure and compete for foreign direct investment. Why foreign investment has bypassed Punjab is an issue that needs wider discussion.
The economic reforms undertaken by the Centre and some of the progressive states aim at limiting the role of government to essentials like health, education, law and order. Governments are withdrawing from areas where the private sector can perform better. Yet Punjab has not seen any reduction in the role of the state. Shrinking the size of the government has never been an issue in the state.
The Centre has passed a law limiting the number of ministers to one-tenth of the strength of the assembly. But the Punjab leadership has sought to adjust party MLAs as parliamentary secretaries. The Himachal Pradesh High Court has observed that if a parliamentary secretary functions as a minister, it would tantamount to perpetrating a fraud on the Constitution. In Punjab parliamentary secretaries function as ministers.
Sukhbir Badal’s traditional politics, like that of his father, aims at sharing the spoils of office with supporters. His proposal to revive the Upper House of the Vidhan Sabha should be seen in this context. Regardless of the burden on the near-empty treasury, key political leaders, required to win elections, have to be adjusted. The Badal government has made serious efforts for ending political unemployment. When was the last time any Akali leader even spoke, let alone do anything, about unemployment among youth?
There are over 60 boards and corporations, which have political heads. The Chief Minister heads the 11-member Potato Development Board. There is pressure now to saddle boards with vice-chairmen as well. There is even a cow protection board.
The reforms suggest every state must close or disinvest in all loss-making public sector units. As the Finance Minister, Mr Manpreet Singh Badal has seldom pushed for administrative reforms or downsizing the government. Instead Punjab is creating new wasteful bodies. A Punmedia Society has been set up to handle publicity and adverting wings of the state.
A state is supposed to have one Chief Secretary and one Director General of Police. Punjab politicians often pick up juniors or bring someone from outside for the two top posts. Then those senior to them are also promoted to the same rank and get the same benefits. There are about half a dozen officers of the rank of Chief Secretary and an equal number of the rank of DGP. Every minister, MLA, IAS and IPS officer has VIP security.
For Akali leaders being in power means having the most expensive car with the red beacon, a maximum number of gunmen regardless of the security threat and issuing commands to the DCs and SSPs. One VC complained that ministers and MLAs approach him for the transfer of even class IV employees.
Political interference in administrative affairs and poor decision-making lead to needless litigation the cost of which is borne by the government as well as the employees concerned. ASI Dilbagh Singh’s increments were stopped in 1979 and he challenged it in court. The case reached the Supreme Court where too the state plea was dismissed. For 31 years he fought for justice.
It is amazing how the state wastes its time, energy and the taxpayer’ money on small cases. The state has a large army of lawyers on its rolls often engaged in trivial legal battles. If decisions are based on transparent rules and principles instead of the whims and fancies of ministers and officials and if high costs are imposed on erring decision-makers litigation costs can be reduced. It is not that just that the taxpayer bears the high cost of governance; the quality of service provided is also substandard.
To be fair, the politics of extravagance is not confined to the Akali Dal. The BJP has been vociferous in defending its own vote bank in urban Punjab. Whenever, the state regulatory commission recommends a hike in the power tariff the party opposes any additional burden on the urban and industrial consumers. Once it forced the government to absorb the power tariff hike, thus reducing the state’s ability to raise resources.
The record of the previous Congress government was no better. It too had resorted to liberal subsidies, including free power to farmers, maintained the idle force of parliamentary secretaries and made lttle effort to limit the state expenditure. At that time too the government was run by taking loans and no administrative or economic reforms were pursued.
Capt Amarinder Singh too as Chief Minister did not have the courage to take on the power employees and unbundle the state electricity board. The bane of state politics is that hard decisions, which are in the long-term interests of the state and its people, are either not taken or are delayed due to the fear of losing elections.
It is, therefore, understandable that Manpreet Singh has found only feeble support from the BJP and Congress leaders. In such a self-defeating and self-seeking political culture leaders like Manpreet Badal feel out of place and lose out to the majority despite being right. If he has got wider public and media support, it is because he is seen as a well-meaning leader capable of taking difficult decisions, which may not be good for winning the next election, but good for the next generation.
The Badal government has made serious efforts for ending political unemployment. When was the last time any Akali leader even spoke, let alone do anything, about unemployment among youth?

Punjab, a state in decline

2010-10-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Wednesday’s sacking of Punjab’s reform-minded finance minister shows it is now one of the most malgoverned states in the country opines Mint

Decades ago, when the going was good, Punjab was the envy of the country. With the highest per capita income level and the highest growth rate among the states, there was much to be learnt from the land of five rivers. All that ended in 1979 when a separatist movement gripped the state. A decade of bloodshed followed. While peace has returned, Punjab is now one of the most malgoverned states in India.
The sacking on Wednesday of state finance minister Manpreet Badal, the only reform-minded member of the cabinet, should be seen as another negative milestone in Punjab’s journey of decline. It is an open secret that Manpreet Badal and his cousin Sukhbir Badal, the state’s deputy chief minister, cannot stand each other. Had the issue been one of a personality clash alone, the matter could have been dismissed as a small incident.
There is, however, more at stake here. Since the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD)-led coalition government took charge in early 2007, finance minister Badal had tried hard to end ruinous policies such as free electricity for farmers and other consumers in the state, virtually free provision of various services and, in general, a populist bent in the SAD-led government.
Before 1991, Punjab’s economic model made much sense. In an autarchic economy, the single biggest supplier of foodgrains in the country could pretty much demand what it wanted from the Union government. Ever-rising minimum support prices for wheat and rice ensured a constant monetary surplus in the hands of its farmers. But once India opened up, that money looked more like rent income due to a monopolistic provider of foodgrains. Other states—Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra—had much more sound and organic sources of growth. Punjab never tried to catch up.
In the absence of inventing a new economic model for itself, the least the state could do was manage its finances better. Punjab’s politics, dominated as it is by rural oligarchs, has structural barriers that prevent a turn to rational economic policies. One could say that most states have similar problems, but it acquires a different, more insidious, dimension in a high-income and erstwhile high-growth state. Manpreet Badal’s exit shows that Punjab is not even aware of the problem.

Guru Granth Sahib too is a 'juristic person'

2010-10-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

There are precedents of courts according Hindu deities the status of a person in law. Jatinder Preet writing in The Sunday Guardian recalls, Guru Granth Sahib too was held 'a juristic person' by the Supreme Court.

While there have been sharp reactions to Ayodhya verdict over it holding Ram a juristic person, it would be instructive to recall that Supreme Court had held Sri Guru Granth Sahib too a juristic person in 2000.
The SC elaborated in the judgment “the very words ‘Juristic Person’ connote recognition of an entity to be in law a person which otherwise it is not. In other words, it is not an individual natural person but an artificially created person which is to be recognized in law as such.”
Interestingly the predominant Sikh concern at that time was ‘Has Guru Granth Sahib been equated with Hindu idol or deity?’ or ‘Has it made the Holy Sikh scripture subject to the jurisdiction of worldly courts?’
Sikhs consider Guru Granth Sahib, a compilation of hymns by Sikh Gurus and other saints of the time, not only a sacred book but a living guru. Upholding this in a judgment entitled Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee Amritsar versus Som Nath Dass and others delivered on March 29, 2000, the Supreme Court of India held that Sri Guru Granth Sahib is indeed a juristic person.
A section of Sikh community wary of threats to its separate identity from those who called Sikhism a part of Hinduism were apprehensive of the judgment too. They wondered whether the judgment made the Holy Sikh scripture subject to the jurisdiction of worldly courts and facilitated to drag its name irreverently before the courts just like ordinary property holders or is it appropriate to call Guru Granth Sahib a person or a juristic person instead of Guru?
While concerns were being raised in many Sikh quarters on its implications Kashmir Singh, an eminent legal expert called it a landmark and historic judgment of far-reaching consequences and great significance. According to him, the holy scripture of Sikhs was accorded the status of a juristic person for the first time while asserting that Hindu Idols and Maths have always been recognized to be juristic persons in Hindu Law. He cited a Privy Council ruling of 1925 that said “a Hindu Idol is, according to long established authority founded upon the religious custom of Hindus, and recognition thereof by the courts of law, a juristic entity.”

Mosque is ‘not’ a juristic person
Incidentally another case which can be cited as a precedent in the Ayodhya case also involved SGPC. In the case dating back to 1935 the issue of mosque as a juristic person had come up. It involved claims over a mosque known as Masjid Shahid Ganj and its adjacent land over which a Gurdwara had been built in Lahore. The mosque existed in the place since 1722 but on occupation of Lahore in 1762, the Sikhs took over the possession and built a Gurdwara. Following upholding of their claims by Sikh Gurdwaras Tribunal the mosque was demolished in July 1935 by Sikhs leading to riots. A suit was filed in October 1935 in the Court of District Judge Lahore against the SGPC which was dismissed. The case went up to Privy Council that held that a mosque is not a juristic person. According to Kashmir Singh the contention that ‘a Hindu idol is a juristic person and on the same principle a mosque as an institution should be considered as a juristic person’ was rejected. It was held that there is no analogy between the position in law of a building dedicated as a place of prayer for Muslims and the individual deities of the Hindu religion.

The Poverty of Plenty

2010-09-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

It’s not stones. It’s not land. Something else is eating away India’s most robust state. Vijay Simha tracks in Tehelka, what it calls, the unnoticed story of the year

The 25 crore man stepped in like a thief, eyes wary, searching for a sign that he must run. Jagbeer Singh. Farmer. Bus conductor. Father. Heroin smuggler. Jailbird. Nobody. After months of being a recluse, Jagbeer, one-time shining hope for friends and family, emerged into a Punjab he didn’t like. When he was caught with 25 kilos of heroin in 1997, worth Rs. 25 crore in the international market, Jagbeer became an instant celeb: his was the biggest heroin haul then. “They used to come to see what a Rs. 25 crore man looked like,” he says. Now, when he’s out after 12 years, only two kinds are interested. The sleuths, who come every fortnight to see if Jagbeer has anything to snitch on, and the peddlers, waiting to see if he is game for another shot. “I stay in and wonder how it happened to me. When I went into jail, there were a dozen drug offenders. When I was released, there were 65. There are a thousand peddlers in Punjab today,” he says. He doesn’t know it yet, but experts have begun to put an expiry date on Punjab, once the sentinel state of India. And it’s not just drugs that’s doing it.
I am too scared,” says Jagbeer. He has a high pitched voice, a curiously feminine touch. He is about six feet tall, and sports a beard and short hair, both of which he colours black. We are in a resort on the outskirts of Amritsar where a marriage party is on, loud and expensive. No one knows him there. It’s the only place he’ll talk. “My father died when I was two. He didn’t wake up one day after he drank too much the previous night. When I was 16, I began to farm. My brother-in-law used to drive a mini bus. I joined him as conductor. Slowly, I began to drive as well. I used to take the bus to Jithaul, a village near Amritsar. There were smugglers in that village who used to travel in my vehicle. I became friends with one of them. For five years we were good friends. Then, in 1995, he asked me to go with him to pick up gold.
“We carried dollars worth 2 crore and went to Samba in Jammu. Our Pakistani counterparts were to give us the gold there. We reached the spot and the lights went on. The Border Security Force (BSF) had trapped us. There was an informer among us who didn’t want me getting close to the boss. I had to help my friend with money for bail. I sold my bus and got him the money. He said he would repay me. One day in 1997, he asked me to go with a vehicle. He said just go and take your share of the money. It was a Tata Sierra and there were 25 kilos of heroin in it. I got greedy. I needed money and I thought I’ll get my due. When a Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) team stopped me at Ajmer, I was shocked. They knew who I was and what I was carrying. I was sentenced to 12 years. I lost respect. Even an addict is pardoned but not a peddler. When they released me, I didn’t know what to do. When I returned home, I found my daughter had got married in my absence. I am now caught between the police and the drug runners. My past is my present and my future. I can’t be anyone else,” says Singh. He leaves the room, a man with no esteem.
In Punjab today, almost every conversation has a mention of someone ruined by alcohol and drug abuse. In schools, hotels, malls, business deals, farms, industries, police stations, hospitals and homes. There are also concerns that the yield from the farms is dropping; there are concerns that industry is moving out of the state; and there are concerns that the Khalistan demand might be revived. All of them are adding to a general sense of alarm that catastrophe is on the way. Principally because everything Punjab does, it overdoes.
In 2009-2010, they drank nearly 29 crore bottles of Punjab Made Liquor (PML), Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and beer. This is apart from illicit brew, liquor brought by foreigners, defence sales, and stuff brought in from other states. Punjab has about 2.5 crore people, which equates to around 10 bottles of 750 ml liquor per person a year. From this, take away the children, the old, the ailing, and the followers of various sects who are required to be teetotallers. The consumption of liquor then rises dramatically for the drinking population.
Even this is loose change compared to narcotic and psychotropic substances. In 2010 so far, the Special Operations Cell has seized 80 kilos of heroin and smack, 14 kilos of opium, two quintals of poppy husk, and, in a first, 18 kilos of methamphetamine. This is apart from the seizures of the BSF, DRI, Customs, and the Punjab Police. For perspective, the normal rate of seizures is about five to 10 percent of the stuff in transit. In addition, there are thousands of chemists and pharmacies that sell pills at two to three times the official price without prescription. In all, that is a staggering amount of booze and drugs in Punjab. The result: a dramatic increase in admissions into drug and alcohol rehabs.
“We have found drug addicts from the age of 13. Forty percent are below 50 years, 15 percent are above 50 years and half are women. For all of them, Punjab has only 89 de-addiction centres, of which only 23 are recognised. I would say that 75 percent of Punjab’s youth are addicted to drugs. If this continues, the story of Punjab will end by 2030,” says Ranvinder Singh Sandhu, Professor of Sociology in Guru Nanak Dev University. Sandhu has written the only official study of addiction in Punjab, Drug Addiction in Punjab: A Sociological Study. The 2009 publication was such a hit with officials starved of information on addiction in Punjab that it went into reprint.
Almost all the heroin comes from Punjab’s border with Pakistan. It is a fascinating process. There is a border fence on the Indian side, about a kilometre and a half from the villages, which cuts through farms owned by Indians. This means that portions of Indian farms are across the border, up to 500 metres into Pakistan. After this is zero point, from where the Pakistani side begins. The BSF, which mans the fenced border, issues permits to Indian farmers and their labourers to cross over and work on their farmlands on the other side. This is allowed from 10 am to 4 pm Curfew begins at 6 p.m. This means no one is allowed near the fence after that. There are BSF posts every 500 metres. The guards have powerful binoculars with night vision. They also carry INSAS rifles. The fence is electrified at 6 pm every day. The lights also come on, so powerful that the whole place is dazzling. You can see an ant crawl in the blazing lights. Theoretically, it should be impossible for anything to be dumped over.
It’s close to 5 pm in Ratoke village in Tarn Taran district. There are only two more villages after this between India and Pakistan. In an hour, curfew would be in place at the border. In one of the homes in the village, a man is preparing fodder for cattle. The home belongs to a heroin smuggler who has just returned after serving 12 years in prison, like Jagbeer. His son was caught with heroin separately and he too has served time. It’s the best place to understand how it works. This is the version of a drug courier. “The chain starts when a drug kingpin in Delhi calls his counterpart in Pakistan and orders a drop. The Pakistani smuggler calls his couriers in Pakistani villages near the border. These couriers call their Indian counterparts and give them the place and time for the drop. This is possible because the Indian couriers have Pakistani SIM cards, which work near the border. This also means that Indian security agencies can’t trace the calls because they are on Pakistani networks.
“Delivery is at night. The heroin comes in packets of a kilo each. A 40-kilo consignment will have 40 packets, and so on. The packets are mostly hurled over the fence by men with strong arms. They land in the farms on the Indian side, from where they are picked up. At times they are slid across in plastic pipes, which are assembled near the border and can be up to a kilometre long. Or, they make their way through the places where there’s a waterway and no fencing is possible. Two packets would have markings, which indicate they also contain mobile phones with SIM cards inside. They are marked 1 and 2, for two cell phones. The first Indian courier who picks up the consignment near the border switches on the first mobile phone after he has gone 5 km into Punjab. He gets a call giving him directions on where to go. They’ll ask you to go from one spot to another until they are satisfied you are not being trailed.
“Sometimes we have to travel 20 km or more before the heroin and the mobile phone are collected. The second courier, who collects the consignment from the first courier, then switches on the second mobile phone. He gets a call asking him to deliver the consignment in either Delhi or Mumbai. The stuff reaches Delhi by 11 am the next day. It is easier during winter because of the heavy fog. Big consignments are delivered in winter. Prices are fixed ahead. The first courier gets Rs 20,000 per kilo of heroin. Forty kilos would mean Rs.8 lakh. This is divided among the number of men employed by the first courier to collect the whole consignment. Counterfeit currency is sent the same way.”
This is the principal activity at the border in Punjab. Most border villages are swarming with sleuths from various agencies like RAW, IB, Punjab Police or BSF. Yet, it goes on. Some sleuths estimate that 350 packets of heroin reach Punjab every day. It makes Punjab one of the busiest drug transit points on earth. Sleuths say every village at the border has at least two couriers, who each employ about a dozen men or so. There are 245 villages in Punjab near the border. So, there are about a thousand men who have at some point smuggled heroin into India from Punjab.
But despite the boom in the drug trade, it is still not the core activity of Punjab. The state lives in its fields and that’s where the next concern is coming from. Punjab has 1.5 percent of India’s area, producing almost 25 percent of India’s wheat and close to 15 percent rice. Almost all of Punjab is cultivable. Everything is so green here that it’s like a blessing. So what do the farmers do? They plant rice and wheat, and rice and wheat. The moment they are done with wheat, they get on to rice. This creates a monoculture, planting the same thing and eroding soil quality. “There’s nothing new going in, so the soil has problems. The water table has also gone down because of this,” says Manjit Singh Kang, Vice- Chancellor of the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) in Ludhiana. “They are burning seven kilos of nitrogen, a kilo of phosphorus and 11 kilos of potash for a tonne of paddy. They are burning Rs. 200 crore from their pockets. This causes asthma and other pollutionrelated health problems.”
Yield is also dropping. In 2000-2001, 45 quintals of wheat was produced per hectare. In 2005-2006, this was down to 40 quintals. It could drop further this year. Then, there’s the urge to feel good. Some estimates say Punjab has 12 lakh tubewells, where six lakh are enough. Most of them use high power pumps, which keep drawing water from the ground. There’s such a huge wastage of water and electricity in Punjab that the government is being forced to consider curbs on the use of tubewells and free power to farmers. In many farms, the water pumped out is used to bathe livestock. On top of this, is the mania for tractors. There are nearly four lakh tractors in Punjab, almost five times the required number. Many small farmers buy expensive tractors on loans and are then unable to clear the debt. In this year’s kisan mela at the PAU, farmers converged on brand new machines worth 16 lakh though none of them probably needed them. There’s only 1,000 hours of work for a tractor in a year in Punjab. This, experts say, can easily be done by renting tractors instead of buying them.
All of this may have contributed to two lakh farmers leaving farming in Punjab over the past few years. While this is in keeping with the international trend where many are leaving farming, in Punjab there’s no thought on how to deal with it. Land holdings are reducing progressively as the land gets divided within families. There is also a huge concern on the massive use of pesticides, which began with the first Green Revolution. Punjab uses the maximum amount of pesticides in the country and it’s got to a stage where it is more like an addiction. More and more chemicals are needed to produce the same amount of grain.
Such is the amount of pesticide in the groundwater that it is believed to be the principal cause of cancer in the Bhatinda belt. Hundreds of cases of cancer occur here, including even Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s wife, who has just returned after treatment from the US. While Badal’s wife is able to get decent treatment, the rest of the villagers catch the Jammu Tawi Express between Jammu and Jaipur, which leaves Bhatinda at 9.30 pm every day. So many people take this train for cancer treatment in Bikaner that the train is called the ‘Cancer Train’ in Punjab. Every village in the Bhatinda belt has scores of cancer patients, in some cases several in a family. Cancer deaths are common too.
Those who escape cancer are down with Hepatitis C. There are scores in the villages of Punjab, again with little access to medical care. Organic farming, touted as an alternative to chemical farming, is in its infancy here. Estimates say that all the manure in Punjab can only meet 30 percent of the demand for fertiliser. This is not bad to start with, but there is huge resistance among the farmers to make the shift. This is the backdrop in which talk of a second Green Revolution has begun. “Green revolutions don’t come when you say they should. Nobody has defined a second Green Revolution. We are looking for something we don’t know anything about. India produces 234 million tonnes of food grain. We will need more than 400 million tonnes in 2050 when we will be the No. 1 in population. That would be a Green Revolution, nothing else,” says Kang.
While this is the case with agriculture, industry in Punjab too is in trouble. There is virtually a process of de-industrialisation happening. For instance, there were 127 textile processing units in Amritsar in 1990. There are now only 20. Ludhiana, the industrial hub of Punjab, is in the process of shifting small-scale industries out of city limits. This has resulted in a sealing drive similar to the one in Delhi some time ago. Large-scale units have held on, mainly Hero in the cycle industry and Oswal in the woollens sector. But industry in the rest of Punjab is shifting out. Says Amarjit Singh, President of the Corduroy Manufacturers Association of India: “First, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh have a tax holiday and several subsidies. Punjab is like dry roti. They are like bread and butter. I don’t need a passport to cross over. Those who can, have gone.
Second, Punjab has acute shortage of electricity. There will be no shortage of power in Himachal for the next 50 years. Third, the infrastructure is poor in Punjab. The roads are bad and pollution clearance is extremely difficult. Fourth, land prices are exorbitant in Punjab. Why should anyone waste money on it?”
So, the decline in agriculture and industry has a clear cause and effect equation. In agriculture, there is an attitude issue and it is beginning to hurt. The Punjab farmer overspends on pesticide, tubewells and tractors, and overdraws on water. He is in a hurry and hurts the soil and environment in the process. In industry, there is an issue of investment and profit so they are moving to better options in neighbouring states. The larger industry is able to hold on but the medium and smaller units have moved on. These are reversible trends. It’s the dependence on alcohol and drugs though that is the killer.
It has taken years of indulgence for Punjab to reach a crisis situation in alcohol dependence. It’s taken far fewer years for drug abuse. This is mainly because the rich have too much money and nothing to do. Many have sold land in villages to cash in on the land boom. The poor in any case have nothing to do because there are far fewer jobs. So the rich do IMFL and heroin. The poor do PML, pills and poppy husk. It’s such a given that farm owners buy strips of painkillers as part of the deal with the labour. In many cases, farm labour settles for Rs. 200 a day and two strips of pills. And it’s all part of the great gregarious Punjabi. They have convinced themselves that they are tough and funloving. So, it’s not a problem. This is what worries Ravneet Singh Bittoo, president of the Punjab Youth Congress and Lok Sabha member. Bittoo came through a tough election process, the first initiated by Rahul Gandhi in the Youth Congress. He is the grandson of Beant Singh, who was assassinated in office.
“Part of the problem is that this is the new war. In future, armies will not fight, so this could be Pakistan’s gameplan to weaken Punjab. Then, our system is totally corrupt. They do nothing though they see that every village has at least two chemists though there is no hospital for miles. Half a village leaves for the US and the other half has earned money through sale of land. They get into drugs. It’s so serious that Rahul Gandhi has asked us not to ask people for votes and reach every home instead. He has asked us to drop everything and get on the drug front. I believe a whole race is under threat going by the levels of impotence caused by drugs. We may have lost this generation but I am intent on saving the next one. We want an end to indiscriminate medical shops. We want villages where no one below 35 dies. We want to socially boycott drug dealers. We want the elders to sit in protest outside pharmacies. We want to put the names of peddlers on the walls. If we do this, we may still save Punjab. Else, I think Punjab won’t reach the year 2050,” says Bittoo.
This volatile mix is putting life into a section of people who’ve largely been dormant for 20 years or so, the militants who fought in the Khalistan movement. Simranjit Singh Mann is busy canvassing for Khalistan in a series of public engagements. His party, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), hopes to win some seats in the next Assembly poll 18 months away. “We have been left holding the baby. Others who were with us, like Parkash Singh Badal and Amarinder Singh, have joined more profitable parties like the Akali Dal (Badal) and the Congress. We will not rest until we get Khalistan, but this time I am fighting a peaceful and democratic battle,” says Mann. Sandeep Kaur, widow of slain Babbar Khalsa International terrorist Dharam Singh Kashtiwal, keeps the memory of Operation Bluestar alive in a trust she runs in Amritsar. “Our wounds are still raw,” she says, “how can we be at peace?”
Concerns are more immediate in a small school in one of Punjab’s more notorious colonies, Maqboolpura in Amritsar, a wasteland of families ravaged by drugs and alcohol. Parvjot, a precocious four-year-old, is conversing with Sarbjeet Gill, a teacher. The conversation is easily the most important in Parvjot’s life. Her admission into school depends on what she says. Suddenly she turns to the teacher. “Would you like a drink? My grandmother makes liquor at home. Many people drink it every night and give money,” she says. It was 9.30 am and Sarbjeet wasn’t thinking of a drink. She looked at Parvjot and asked: “Would you take money from me also?” The reply was instant. “No. For you, we’d give it free.”

Punjab exposes its children to toxicity

2010-09-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

A study published in a scientific journal has confirmed that children in Punjab are exposed to toxic metals, writes Jatinder Preet in The Sunday Guardian

Five year old Kashish Setia and his elder brother Mohit Setia, 12, from village Khuban in Ferozepur district, both suffer from neurological disorders. Chemical tests revealed both had high levels of uranium exposure.
Sumitra Narang, a 13 year girl from border town of Punjab, Abohar is all of three feet and is mentally challenged too. A chemical analysis of her hair sample found abnormally high exposure to lead.
These children are just three of 149 from various parts of Punjab and adjoining Rajasthan, test results of whom formed the basis of a study now published in Librtas Academica, a New Zealand based journal.
A study conducted by Post Graduate Institute of Medical Research, Chandigarh in the year 2003-04 too had showed levels of heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, selenium and mercury were generally higher in drinking water.
But now evidence has come in of presence of not only these heavy metals but radioactive uranium and strontium also.
The study shows 113 of children who were tested, were found to have high levels of uranium in their hair samples besides varying degrees of toxic metal exposure like that of aluminium, cadmium, lead, barium, magnesium, silver, strontium and tin etc.
The tests were done at Trace Mineral, a laboratory in Germany, on hair samples sent by Baba Farid Centre for Special Children, a Faridkot based charity.
Dr Pritpal Singh, who runs the centre, said they had first sent the samples of hair of under-treatment children for heavy metal toxicity tests in 2008. Chemistry of the hair is known to be a direct reflection of the chemistry of the environment in which the individual is living, he explained. While preliminary results confirmed their fears, to be doubly sure they sent additional water samples from the residences of these children along with the sample of their normal kin.
Dr Carin Smit, a South African neurotherapist, associated with the centre, helped get the expensive tests done by raising donations on her own and formed the mainstay of the study.
Besides Dr Smit the authors of the study included E. Blaurock-Busch, Research Director, Micro Trace Minerals Laboratory; Albrecht Friedle, CEO, Labor Friedle, Regensburg, Germany; Michael Godfrey, Director, International Board of Clinical Metal Toxicology, New Zealand and Claus E.E. Schulte-Uebbing, Professor at Age Breaking Center in Munich, Germany .
The authors have expressed the view that India has become a dumping ground for the toxic materials and that Punjab has become particularly vulnerable to environmental toxicity because of excessive use of agriculture based chemicals. About the presence of excessive amounts of uranium in the ecosystem of Punjab, the authors suspect coal based power plants could be a possible source.

Partitions, memories and reconciliation

2010-08-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

Bitter memories of partition, whether lived or learnt through narration, continue to haunt the survivors, perpetrators and their descendent generations, writes Satya P. Gautam while hoping that in the new millennium the common Punjabi heritage in its composite totality will guide our future destiny

(photograph by Margaret Bourke-White for Life magazine)

I am one of the post-midnight, post-partition generation, born during the early fifties of the last century. My infancy and childhood were spent in our village Masaania, almost a kilometre’s walk from the railway station, Shaam Chauraasi. The railway station on the Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur railway track was named after the famous but relatively distant village, a pilgrimage sight for the lovers of classical music. The families, living with the tradition of classical music for generations, had to leave the village with the partition of Punjab. However, the brothers Salaamat Ali-Amaanat Ali from the Shaam Chaurasi Gharana carried the family tradition with them to West Punjab in Pakistan.
My grandfather told me that before the partition of the Punjab in 1947, most inhabitants of the villages in our rural neighbourhood were Muslim. I was also told that till the eve of the partition, none of the three major religious groups of Punjab – the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs – had ever expected its partition or fragmentation. The partition came without being sought or asked for by the Punjabis. And yet it brought with it a baffling lunacy manifested in the worst forms of mystification, chaos, arson, turmoil, calamities of rape, eviction, dislocation and refuge. The bitter memories of this madness, whether lived or learnt through narration, continues to haunt the survivors, perpetrators and their descendent generations.
The people of Punjab passed through a rather slow but gradual transition from being a predominantly oral community to becoming a marginally literate one during the late 19th and earlier decades of the 20th century under the colonial regime. Of course, it must not be forgotten, and indeed we constantly need to remind ourselves time and again, that this historic period of transition had presented complex and unprecedented challenges for which we could not prepare ourselves. The opportunity created by the spread of literacy could have been a significant step for the development and enrichment of Punjabi language and culture. Unfortunately, our ancestors unwittingly collaborated to metamorphose this possibility into a disaster.
During this period, the religious and social elite of each of the three denominations tried their utmost to get their own preferred (religious) scripts accepted or imposed as the exclusive official script of the Punjabi language and as the medium of instruction in schools. This contest and rivalry resulted in a widespread mutual unfriendliness and acrimony to the point that both the Muslim and Hindu elite unwisely disowned Punjabi and made the mistake of professing Urdu and Hindi as their respective languages. In the name of the democratic principle of respecting the majority view, the colonial administration decided on the use of Urdu as the medium of instruction in schools and local official language for administrative purposes in the colonial Punjab. Thus the teaching and learning of Punjabi became marginal in the formal education system.
With the departure of the British and the partition of Punjab, the question of choosing an appropriate Punjabi language script resurfaced among the Hindu and Sikh leaders in East Punjab. It served as a source of fallacious claims on the part of a majority of the Hindu social elite and resulted in the reorganisation of the state into Punjab and Haryana in 1966. In West Punjab, Urdu continued to be the medium of instruction and administration as it had been declared the official language of Pakistan despite dissenting voices raised in East Pakistan.
The issue of the significance of Punjabi language and culture resurfaced in West Punjab only after the formation of Bangladesh as an independent nation state. The other Pakistani sub-nationalities, such as Sindhis, Baluchs and Pushtoons too had started demanding the recognition and use of their respective languages for educational and administrative purposes in their provinces. Soon Sindhis, Baluchis and Pashtoons had mustered courage to launch struggles for the protection of their respective national languages and cultures. It may sound ironic that Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, was the language of muhajirs (migrants from Delhi and United Provinces), and not of any local people in Pakistan.
It was in such a scenario that the Punjabis in West Punjab realised that they had unwittingly allowed themselves to letting their own language almost vanish by default. This belated concern for Punjabi language and culture gathered momentum and inspired the launching of the Lok Virsaa movements during the early ’70s in western Punjab for rehabilitating Punjabi language to its rightful place. This struggle though moderate was effective in slowly achieving its main goals by the beginning of the present century. It is no longer an offence to speak Punjabi in the Punjab Legislative Assembly. Steps have also been initiated to teach Punjabi in the Shahmukhi script in schools from class three onwards in West Punjab.
It may not be wrong to conclude that the 20th century was a century of tragedies for Punjabi language, culture and people. The Punjabis not only divided themselves on the question of a script, but sections of Muslims and Hindus went to the extreme of disowning their language for privileging their preferred scripts. The negative fallouts of this scripted acrimony continue with us in a variety of facades and pretexts even today. Punjabis, across the borders and religious denominations, will have to make a concerted effort to protect Punjabi language and culture from future erosion and decline, particularly given the privileging of other languages in the processes of globalisation and economic development.
With an unanticipated partition of the Punjab, western Punjab became part of the newly constituted state of Pakistan while eastern Punjab remained in India, forcing a devastating dislocation of populations in a manner that further intensified the bitterness and lingering hostilities. The violence of partition generated deep feelings of terror, fear, hostility, hatred and other negative emotions among its victims and perpetrators. At the depths of despair and madness, on both sides of the divide, the ‘Other’ was seen and projected as the greatest and possibly the most dangerous enemy, one that had to be pulled down as effectively and as soon as possible.
On our side, we were taught in schools that the Muslims had partitioned the great country, fragmenting it into antagonistic pieces which could survive only with the decimation of the other. That the partition had become a reality as a result of an agreement between leaders of the Indian National Congress and Muslim League was rarely mentioned. It was the people of Punjab who had to actually live with the reality of the partition of their land, culture and language. Perhaps the same can be said about Bengal and Kashmir. Of course, a large number of people from other parts of the Indian subcontinent too had been dislocated and brutalised as a result of the partition. The officially and socially designed image of the Pakistani Muslim was a negative stereotype of a lurking brutal trespasser waiting to kill and reduce to rubble whatever came his way.
I had shifted from my village to the city for further education after completing class three in the village school. Our house, in the city of Jalandhar, was located in Bazaar Nauhariyan. At the end of the bazaar were the tall and impressively elegant minarets of Imam Nasser’s mausoleum. Till the mid-sixties, every alternate year an enormous number of devotees would come from across the border to pay homage to the saint during the urs of Imam Nasser. Among the devotees were my grandfather’s friends and acquaintances who invariably visited our house to share their old feelings of friendship, affection, nostalgia and delightful gifts. Their warmth, zeal and friendliness left me confused, as their behaviour was in total contrast to what we were taught at school and through the newspapers.
The designed image of the average Pakistani Muslim in the mainstream media in Punjab was extremely negative but the people I met were worth admiration and emulation. These conflicting images and feelings generated an intense desire to some day go across the border and see things for myself. I had grown up without any narratives of my kith and kin having been forcibly displaced from West Punjab. Consequently, my desire was never rooted in the feeling of going back to the land of ancestors that so many of the descendants of displaced families from West Punjab have shared with me.
Also, without experiencing the misfortune of being displaced, I had heard the horrifying stories of the circumstances in which the Muslims were made to depart East Punjab at the time of the partition. I often wondered whether fellow Punjabis from across the border carried similar negative ideas about us. During the early sixties, a relative was the medical officer incharge of a veterinary hospital at Jhabaal near the Indo-Pak boundary. Unlike the subsequent barbed wire fencing the then boundaries were invisible but for the presence of the militia doing guard duty besides manning the check posts. The villagers from the other side would bring their cattle for treatment to our side as that was more convenient. There was little evidence of the hostility or hatred that I had feared. There was no difference between them and us except in dress and accent.
Having inculcated an interest in literature and music during my school days, I came to learn that our literary, musical and cultural heritage was inconceivable without celebrating the composite culture of pre-partition Punjab. The Sikh Gurus and Sufi saints had shown the path of a constructive synthesis, drawing on positive elements from diverse sources and traditions for celebrating the ideals of equality and unity among human beings. They had questioned the restrictive and exclusionary boundaries of caste, creed, gender and religion. Their message, articulated in the form of musical poetry, had sustained the spirit of collective well-being among Punjabis for centuries. This spirit is likely to remain not only impoverished and weak but perpetually threatened unless a large majority of the people of the two fragments of Punjab start appreciating and celebrating the magnificence of the common heritage across political boundaries.
As of now, the political boundaries have come to stay. We have to learn to live with them. Any talk of breaking the boundary, like the breaking of the Berlin Wall, is neither intelligible nor acceptable to the forces that have become dominant across the borders. This was well articulated by a member of the Pakistan National Assembly whom we met when we went to Kasoor to pay our tribute to Baba Bulley Shah.
‘As Punjabis, we may like the opening of borders and the free movement of people, goods and services across the borders for the mutual benefit of Punjabis. But this will be resisted tooth and nail by all those whom it does not suit. Forces in Mumbai, Karachi and Dubai, having their vested interests to protect, will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Delhi and Islamabad to allow the winds of mutual cooperation and constructive support to blow between Patiala and Lahore, Amritsar and Kasoor, the two sides of Punjab.’
During the World Punjabi Conference held at Lahore in January 2004, a leading member of the East Punjabi delegation made an enthusiastic but indiscreet speech about the dismantling of borders and breaking of walls. In response, the chief minister of West Punjab aptly pointed out that, ‘Once the brothers fall apart and split their ancestral property, they find it hurtful or embarrassing to face each other. The walls that they construct to break up what their ancestors had built together, make them alienated and inaccessible. If they are gentle, they sidestep one another to avoid confrontation. Otherwise, antagonistic confrontation is the constant concern on both the sides.
‘With the passage of time, as the past memories of antagonism begin fading, they may start meeting each other but would hesitate to knock at the door of the other for seeking help or support. If they are fortunate, such an eventuality would encourage them to begin thinking of opening a window in the wall, which they may now see as a common one, for making interaction and exchange convenient and easier. But if one of the brothers, in his hurry or rashness to undo the unfortunate split, starts speaking of breaking the wall, it brings only apprehensions, fears, ill-will and bitter enmity rather than restoring old amity.’
The cautionary remarks of Parvez Elahi need to be seen in the light of another significant aspect of social life that we found in Lahore during our visit for this conference. Though the anglicised Lahorians have named the old Gwal Mandi as Food Street, we were guided by the receptionist at our hotel Shah Taaj that we first go to Luxmi Chowk and then ask the way for Dharampuri to see the all night eating shops for ourselves. On the way we came across buildings and institutions which continue to carry their pre-partition non-Muslim identities. I was curious whether any attempt had been made to change the old names. I was told that though new Islamic names had been given, public memory and habits proved to be more resilient than the votaries of change. It is not surprising that the fate of attempts to change the names of Ropar and Mohali on this side of the border as well was similar. Let us wish and hope that in the new millennium it will become possible for us to make our common Punjabi heritage accessible to all of us in its composite totality to guide our future destiny.

Here come 'Putt Chamaran De'

2010-08-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

The growing Dalit assertion in Punjab is now finding voice in Punjabi music too with singers coming up with songs of confidence and even pride in their Dalit identity, writes Jatinder Preet in The Sunday Guardian

For a state that has the highest level of concentration of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in any one state of India (28.9 per cent, as per Census 2001) this should not come as a surprise. But what has been revelatory is the passion and intensity of this celebration of the identity. According to conservative estimates as many as 2000 music albums celebrating Dalit identity have come out in market in last two years complete with music videos making a song and dance of it.
So we have Punjabi singers singing of ‘Majhbi, Valmiki, Chamaran de munde (Boys of Majhbi, Valmiki, Chamar castes)’ and audiences are lapping it up. So popular have these songs become that these are now being played in marriages and on festive occasions.
“We have danced enough on the songs that talked of pride of Jatts but now we have our own songs to dance to,” says Rajkumar, a young fan.
It is to this section of the Dalit youth that the songs are being belted out that talk of ‘Ankhi Putt Chamaran De (Proud Sons of Chamars)’ and ‘Gabru Sher Chamaran De (young Lions of Chamars)’. Most of these songs limit themselves to talk of the pride that sometimes border on conceit and vanity. A popular duet by Satveer Jyoti and Raj Dadral ‘Mai taan suneya mundean chamran de full charche (I’ve heard that there is talk of Chamar boys everywhere)’ is one in that category. At the same time Diljaan sings ‘Saddi Jaat Chamar Hai Sanu Sab Naal Pyar Hai (We are Chamars and we love everyone)’.
But with the catching up of the trend of such songs, ante is being upped. Vijay Momi’s song takes almost threatening tone ‘Panga soch samajh ke payo naal chamara de (Think before messing up with a Chamar).’
However, what remains common in these songs is the assertion of a separate identity like that in the song of Roop Lal Dhir - ‘Ikmuth ho kaum de sheran ne wakhri hond banayi (Together lions of the community carved a separate identity for themselves).’
Raj Dadwal, a popular singer who writes his own songs, sees nothing wrong in making a song of the status of the community. It is not against any other caste or community, he emphasises adding “Through this assertion of our identity we are only trying to exhort our fellow-community people to shed their self-consciousness as only that can lead to their true emancipation.”

Diamonds that were not forever

2010-07-20T03:16:00.000-07:00

Heera Mandi of Lahore is no longer the same. Nirupama Dutt writes about the forbidden yet most sought-after bazaars where women sold their many talents then and now

(Photograph by Noor Mohammad Khan)

Come evening and they would be out in their balconies in the finest of silks and jewels. Their eyes would be lined with kohl and their lops red with dandasa, bark of the walnut there and the most fragrant of eastern perfumes or itars would fill the air. They were known as diamonds and such was their glitter that the whole street would seem studded with stars. These were the courte sans of Heera Mandi of Lahore in the years before Partition in 1947.

Heera mandi was to Lahore what Chowk was to lukcknow, Sonagachi to Calcutta and Bhaindi Bazar to Bombay. These forbidden yet most sought-after bazaars where women sold their many talents were known as kothas. In these abodes lived women, many of them very talented artists, who were nevertheless social outcasts living on the fringes of the society. Interestingly, this place was first known as Tibbi Bazar. And this name is recorded in a Punjabi tappa : Tibbi waliye la de paan ni Teri Tibbi de vich dukan ni

Next it came to be known as Shahi Mohalla and only later did it get the name which lasts till date--heera mandi.

Not all the women on the street traded in flesh. There were three distinct categories: the singers, the dancers and then the most unfortunate ones who sold their bodies for a living.

Selling their produce in Lahore happened to stray into Heera Mandi on their way back. Looking at the beautifully turned out belles, one said to the other: Je rab dhian deve tann aithe deve. Kinj ranian ban baithian ne (if God is to bless one with daughters it should be here. Seen how they sit like queens).

The tale is touching for it reflected the paradox of the society. No one would wish their daughters to reach Heera mandi, yet the lives of daughters of respectable homes were not so evidable either. It was a restricted dumb existence. In some ways the women on the street were more liberated-- they could dress well, dance, sing and live. The patriarchal society divided women thus.
There are still a few old-timers of West Punjab who remember heera mandi in its days of splendour and recall tales which they had heard. Bhag Singh, a Punjab writer and man of culture, goes nostalgic recalling that famous bazaar. He says: "I belonged to Peshawar but when in Lahore for hockey matches with my college students, a few of us would sneak into Heera mandi. It could not be told then for I may have been thrown out of the house in disgrace. I remember having seen the dance of Jaana Mashooq’’.

M.L. Koser, founder of the Pracheen Kala Kendra, also recounts a secret visit or two to the marketplace of diamonds. Men would put cotton buds soaked in itar behind their ears, wear a bracelet of fresh jasmine flowers and go to the kotha allowed to them by their status. I was young and attracted to the arts, being a dancer in the making myself, I never had the courage to enter a kotha. But the cinema halls in these areas used to present the dances of nautch girls during night shows’’, recalls Koser.
An advertisement for the special film shows which would include live song and dance performances, by cinema houses like Minerva, Grown and Rose would read thus: "Adhai aane mein teen maze’’. The performers would be from the lower rungs because the high class tawaifs never played to the gallery. Their mujra was only for the royalty, nobility and rich business class.

The well-known tawaifs were women of learning, culture and dignity. Many of them were trained in music by the best ustads of the time. In turn these women made great contribution to music and dance. Sardar Bai of Lahore was a famous singer who had learnt music from Ustad fateh Ali Khan. Pointing out their dignity as women, Bhag Singh says: "They were queens of etiquette or saleeka as we call it. If a customer passed out after having one too many while listening to ghazals, they would put him in a giest room and the lady of the house would keep his purse with her, lest the servants took away some money and it would be returned to him the next day.’’

Tawaif was a word in Persian synonymous with ganika in Sanskrit. The oriental system was one of codification and the world’s oldest profession was no exception even here there was an order of merit and excellence. A ganika was a woman who had achieved excellence in arts, intellect and etiquette. The fames Amrapali, the nagar-badhu of Vaishali, was a ganika at her best.
A ganika came from the Hindu tradition and a tawaif from the Muslim tradition with patronage coming from Mughal courts. It was Aurangzeb who tried to bury forever the arts of music and dance. In Punjab the religious reformist movements lent a harsh blow to the dignity and profession of singers and dancers. The Arya Samaj and the Singh Sabha lehar condemned them. And so even Hindu and Sikh women who joined this profession took up muslim names. The decline of princedom and withdrawal of royal patronage was responsible for royal patronage was responsible for many of these artists being forced to sell their bodies.
Heera Mandi of Lahore was the cultural centre of Punjab, the very hub of performing arts in their glory, but other cities and towns top had tawaifs. Patiala, Amritsar, Malerkotla, Ludhiana, Jagraon, Ambala and even the small town of Balachaur had some of the legendary tawaifs.

With partition, most of these women migrated. Flesh trade continues in Punjab but kothas are no longer there. A low-level of entertainment continues by disco dancers of orchestra groups but these artists have no roots in the classical traditions of dance and music.

These women from different parts of the country were pioneering artistes on the radio, the stage and films. Among them were Begum Akhtar, Noorjehan, Malika pukhraj, Zohrabai Ambalewali, Amirbai Kamataki, Kamla Jharia, Shamshad Begum, Khurshid and even the greatly acclaimed Girija Devi.

A sarangi player of Chandigarh, Ismail Bechain, had the privilege of playing sarangi in his early youth with some of the well-known bais of Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Among them was the great singer Mushtari bai of Agra Gharana. She could sing the three saptaks and play magnificently the harmonium and the tabla. And such was her status that if an ordinary man tried to get to her, she would waive him off by saying "pehale meri baal banana wali se baar karo aur phir mujh tak aao" (first talk to my hair dresser and then come to me).
At barimam, near Rawalpindi, there used to be an annual cultural festival of tawaifs for which preparations would be made all year round. The best of music and dance would be available to all as these performances were not restricted to nobility.
Prof yashpal, Reader, Department of Music, panjab University, Chandigarh, Says: "The kotha tradition made the most significant contribution to contemporary Hindustani music and dance. There were patrons of great musicians-Munnijan bai of Heera mandi, Lahore, financed and supported ustad Amir Khan in his early career. Ustad Amir khan is known as the famous exponent of the Kirana Gharana of Indore. He later married Raeena, daughter of Mushtari bai. In the entire music world if anyone is asked who was the woman behind his success, the answer is : Munnija of course."

Then and Now
Heera mandi still exists in Lahore but the glory of the old world is gone. The diamonds that were traded here were not forever but the legends remain.

From a cultural hub that nurtured many an artiste, Heera Mandi has changed into a ghetto that thwarts the spirit of women.

For centuries, Heera Mandi in Lahore nurtured some outstanding performing artistes, including the famous Noorejahan, Khurshid, Shamshad Begum, Mumtaz Shanti and many others. Most of the early film actresses for pre-Partition Lahore cinema came from the kothas of Heera Mandi. The art of music in Punjab was confined to the streets of the courtesans with Heera Mandi taking the lead as the largest settlement in the cultural capital of the state in undivided Punjab.

Looking back and recalling a well-known courtesan Tamancha Jaan, Pran Nevile, a chronicler of Lahore, says, "My maiden visit to Tamancha Jaan’s salon at Heera Mandi was in 1945 with my friend Saeed Ahmed. We were seated on white sheets spread out on carpets with gaav takias (bolster pillows) supporting our backs. The room was fragrant with fresh flowers and incense sticks. The music played and Tamancha Jaan sang in her sonorous voice enchanting our young hearts."

However, those days are gone by for classical arts are no longer to be found in the kothas of Heera Mandi. It is a leg shake and more to popular music and flesh trade that have become the hallmarks of these streets in the shadow of the imposing dome and minarets of the pink stone of the Badshahi Masjid.

The only reason for the elite to visit the area unabashed is the restaurant that painter Iqbal Hussain has made in the haveli, which was the salon of his mother, aunts and elder sisters. Called the ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’, it is decorated with the paintings of the Heera Mandi done by Hussain and also quaint arty knick-knacks as well as statuettes of Virgin Mary, Buddha and Hanuman.
During a recent visit to Pakistan, we visited one of the salons in the company of some Lahoris. No longer are the white sheets, gaav takias nor incense sticks to be found there, neither the melodious unfolding of the ghazal. What one finds is very different and sad.

In the first salon behind the ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’, we find four girls with painted faces sitting on a sofa facing the outer door vacant eyed. Our escort says in embarrassment, "These ladies have come from Hindustan and want to talk to you." We are quickly pushed in and the door banged shut. The four young girls with made up faces spring and line themselves against the wall. The oldest of them must be just 25 and the youngest is barely 14. The musicians sitting on the floor start singing a loud pop-Punjabi number and the oldest joins them in the not-so-melodious singing. The second oldest quickly wears anklets on her feet and starts doing a cabaret number of sorts in her back body-clinging synthetic shirt and straight pajama. The two younger ones with garishly made-up faces stand glued to the wall, afraid and awkward. It is a moment of relief that the song ends and the haggling for money ends and a toughie opens the door. Outside a crowd of the street boys have gathered to see the strange women coming to watch mujra.

Little wonder that sadness marks the paintings of Hussain even when his subjects are wearing red and gold. A set of paintings under the title of "Silent Fears" have been made into cards by a Lahore-based NGO that is doing work against AIDS. In another very telling painting "Privacy", two women in rose-pink nightgowns lie in repose on a rumbled blue bed-spread. "Reflection" is another sad painting in which girls are shown against a mirror, depicting a perpetual wait for better times. Many of these women are called out to dance parties where they do a striptease and are often raped and even their earnings are stolen from them.

Hussain paints the plight of these women with despair and despondency. "Many land here from rural areas because their parents couldn’t marry them off for the reason that they didn’t have money to give them customary dowry," the painter says, "Some try to break out of their vicious lives of poverty to make more money as sex workers only to find a stark and harsh reality of such an existence."

Hussain’s own mother Nawab and aunts migrated from the Nimmanwali Haveli in the Dharampura Bazaar of Patiala to Heera Mandi. He would have been yet another street boy of the notorious colony if he did not have a talent for drawing. Now he looks after all the women of his family and his own children are getting good education. But such breakthroughs are rare. Hussain says, "I think if I hadn’t been painting, I would have committed suicide."

Hussain has been active in getting women to escape these environments if they can. He also plans to open a food street like the one in Gwalmandi that women have options to start other business.

His paintings at first created controversy but now these are appreciated and one of his works fetched phenomenal amount at an auction at Sotheby’s. At the ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ hangs a portrait of a local woman with her wrists and ankles bound in penitence at Muharram. Hussain says that his subjects always break into tears as he paints them.

Deprived of support from other men, they often turn to him for help because he is the one who flew over the ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’. Iqbal Hussain has done for this red light area in visuals what Saadat Hasan Manto had done in words.

How Punjab was won

2010-05-17T05:07:00.000-07:00

Akalis leds a virulent agitation seeking a Punjabi speaking state as the boundaries of provinces were being redrawn after independence but it took a tragic course as here language was inextricably mixed with religion, writes Inder Malhotra in The Indian Express

While language as the basis for redrawing India’s political map was accepted generally — even if it was enforced belatedly in the case of Maharashtra and Gujarat (IE, May 3) — Punjab remained a conspicuous exception to the rule. Since Partition in 1947, it had been a tri-lingual state, embracing what are now Haryana and Himachal Pradesh, and so it remained in 1956, in accordance with the recommendations of the States Reorganisation Commission that had rejected the demand for a Punjabi Suba (Punjabi-speaking state), backed by a vigorous, often virulent, agitation by its sponsors. There was, however, a powerful reason for the SRCs, and even more Jawaharlal Nehru’s, refusal to accept it.
For, this was the only case in which language was inextricably mixed with religion. The demand was confined to the Akali Dal, a party only of the Sikhs that claimed to be the “sole spokesman” all Sikhs even though a large number of them, especially those converts from the Scheduled Castes, called Mazhabis, supported the Congress which had no difficulty in defeating the Akalis at the polls. On the other hand, the Akali party and its towering leader, Master Tara Singh, had an impressive hold on the caste of Jats, dominating the Sikh community. No less formidable was their unshakeable control of the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee that runs all the Sikh shrines with their vast income. Before 1947, the Akali doctrine was that the danger to the Sikh faith was from Muslims. After 1947, the Hindus became the main threat to the Sikh Panth.

As his frustration increased, Tara Singh upped the ante. His movement became more and more violent, even militant. And then he gave it unabashedly secessionist overtones, confirming the opinion of those who had always said that Punjabi Suba was but a cover for a Sikh-majority state as a prelude to an “independent Sikh state”. However, if Akali communalists were inflammatory, Hindu communalists (largely though not entirely belonging to the Jan Sangh, the forerunner of the BJP), also acted irresponsibly and accentuated the communal divide. To undercut the demand for a Punjabi-speaking state, they persuaded the Hindu Punjabis to declare Hindi their mother tongue in the 1961 census — an issue complicated by complete disagreement between the two communities over the use of gurmukhi script.

After the bifurcation of bilingual Bombay in 1960, Akali fury escalated. Many others also felt that Punjab’s exclusion from the pattern prevalent in the rest of the country was unfair. Ajoy Ghosh, the last general secretary of the undivided Communist Party of India, went to see the prime minister and argued that the denial of a Punjabi-speaking state “smacked of discrimination”. “I envy you, Ajoy”, replied Nehru. “You don’t have to run the country and keep it in one piece. It is my responsibility to do so. Sikhs are a fine people but they are led by separatists and fanatics. I can’t hand over a state to them on Pakistan’s border. But such things are not permanent. As national integration proceeds, we will surely have a Punjabi-speaking state”. (Source: Ghosh to Nikhil Chakravartty, Nikhilda to this writer.)

It was clear that Nehru had decided to dig his heels in even while Tara Singh and other extremist Akali leaders were fuelling Sikh discontent and anger. The prime minister was happy that in Pratap Singh Kairon he had a chief minister in Punjab who was both competent and secular and thus able to contain the Akalis, if necessary by coming down heavily on them. By the start of the Sixties, however, Kairon had started losing his shine because of the greed and high-handedness of his sons (a blight that has felled many a politician in the subcontinent). Nehru earned some opprobrium for his constant defence of Kairon but eventually had to order a judicial inquiry against his favourite chief minister. Soon after Nehru’s death, Kairon had to resign because of the inquiry commission’s findings against him. The consequent political chaos in Punjab was the Akalis’ opportunity.

As it happened, another crucial change was also taking place in Punjab around the same time. From 1931 until then Master Tara Singh had been the uncontested, incontestable leader of the Akalis and, at one remove, of the Sikhs. No one could flourish in Akali politics without his patronage. Intriguingly, few of the protégés survived for long, though it usually remained debatable whether the follower had rebelled against Tara Singh or Masterji had cut him to size. In the early years of the Sixties, a new figure appeared on the Akali firmament that was different. As usual, he began as Tara Singh’s devoted disciple (the two went on alternate fasts for Punjabi Suba), later claimed near-equality with him and eventually replaced the redoubtable Master. His name was Sant Fateh Singh.

In 1965, Fateh Singh sent shock waves across the country by announcing that if Punjabi Suba were not conceded by a certain date, he would burn himself to death in the precincts of the Golden Temple. Well before the appointed date, the India-Pakistan War of that year loomed. Fateh Singh was persuaded to abandon his resolve. In return, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nehru’s successor, appointed a cabinet committee to re-examine the issue, with Indira Gandhi as its chairperson. There is plenty of evidence to show that her mind was already made up in favour of accepting a Punjabi-speaking state. She appointed B.S. Raghavan secretary of the cabinet committee only after, in reply to her question, he had argued that the Sikh demand be accepted. Before the committee could complete its work Shastri died at Tashkent. As prime minister, Indira lost no time in deciding to trifurcate Punjab. She was much praised for her “boldness” and “maturity”. But the problem of dream city Chandigarh’s future remained.

She ruled that it would be the joint capital of both Punjab and Haryana, and itself be a Union territory. This was also welcomed as a “shrewd move”. In fact, it was to become one of the most explosive ingredients in the tragedy that overtook Punjab in the Eighties, and eventually took her life. Twenty-five years after her death the problem of Chandigarh persists.

Saraswati Samman for Patar

2010-04-30T04:52:00.000-07:00

In a state which is struggling to ensure that its people do not forget their mother-tongue, the announcement of a Punjabi poet, Surjit Patar having been chosen for the prestigious Saraswati Samman, came as a welcome news.
The Saraswati Samman instituted by the K. K. Birla Foundation, is an annual award for outstanding prose or poetry literary works in any Indian language and carries cash prize worth Rs 5 lakh and citation.
Fittingly, Patar announced to dedicate his award to the mother-tongue and ‘the tradition of Punjabi poetry and language that began with Sheikh Farid and Guru Nanak. “I hope that through my work, I can return small part of this debt during my lifetime,” said the soft-spoken poet.
Congratulatory messages poured down from Chief Minister to readers from all over the country and abroad. His phone did not stop ringing till the battery conked down and his fan page on Facebook was choc-a-bloc.
The suave poet takes all the adulation with a grace and poise that is contrary to the image of a boisterous Punjabi. He portrays this image through the dulcet tones in which he sings his poetry and the lyrical language he employs even in his ordinary day to day talk. This is reflected in his poems, obviously. Replete with imagery drawn from nature as well as local metaphors and motifs he interweaves in his poems contemporary concerns and personal impressions effortlessly.
This has ensured a distinct literary identity for Patar who enjoys immense popularity with general public and high acclaim from critics at the same time.
He is the third Punjabi writer after Harbhajan Singh and Dalip Kaur Tiwana to get the Saraswati Samman, other recipients of which include Harivansh Rai Bacchan, Vijay Tendulkar, Sunil Gangopadhyay among others.
65 year old Patar, who retired as Professor of Punjabi from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, has six books of poetry to his credit. He has also translated into Punjabi three tragedies of Federico García Lorca besides adaptations of plays from Jean Giradoux, Euripides and Racine. The celebrated poet has also been the recipient of Sahitya Akademi Award and Panchnad Puruskar by Bhartiya Bhasha Parishad, Kolkata in '99 besides having been conferred DLitt by Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar.

-JATINDER PREET

Portrait of Guru Nanak Dev

2010-03-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

An oil on canvas sold for 50,000 USD (Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium) at INDIAN & SOUTHEAST ASIAN ART auction held in New York on March 24. Signed "Arjan Singh/ 1937".

ਭਾਰੇ ਭਾਰੇ ਬਸਤੇ

2010-03-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

A little known aspect of the legendary poet Surjit Patar is his poetry for children. He has been writing poems for children all these years as he moved us with his more serious poetry but none of those have been published as yet. He is, however, planning to come up with an anthology now that he has sufficient poems to publish a book. Here is a sneak peek:

ਭਾਰੇ ਭਾਰੇ ਬਸਤੇ
ਲੰਮੇ ਲੰਮੇ ਰਸਤੇ
ਥੱਕ ਗਏ ਨੇ ਗੋਡੇ
ਦੁਖਣ ਲੱਗ ਪਏ ਮੋਢੇ
ਐਨਾ ਭਾਰ ਚੁਕਾਇਆ ਏ
ਅਸੀਂ ਕੋਈ ਖੋਤੇ ਆਂ ?

ਟੀਚਰ ਜੀ ਆਉਣਗੇ
ਆ ਕੇ ਹੁਕਮ ਸੁਣਾਉਣਗੇ :
ਚਲੋ ਕਿਤਾਬਾਂ ਖੋਲ੍ਹੋ
ਪਿੱਛੇ ਪਿੱਛੇ ਬੋਲੋ ।
ਪਿੱਛੇ ਪਿੱਛੇ ਬੋਲੀਏ
ਅਸੀਂ ਕੋਈ ਤੋਤੇ ਆਂ ?

ਚਲੋ ਚਲੋ ਜੀ ਚੱਲੀਏ
ਜਾ ਕੇ ਸੀਟਾਂ ਮੱਲੀਏ
ਜੇਕਰ ਹੋ ਗਈ ਦੇਰ
ਕੀ ਹੋਵੇਗਾ ਫੇਰ
ਟੀਚਰ ਜੀ ਆਉਣਗੇ
ਝਿੜਕਾਂ ਖ਼ੂਬ ਸੁਣਾਉਣਗੇ

ਤੁਰੇ ਹੀ ਤਾਂ ਜਾਨੇ ਆਂ
ਅਸੀਂ ਕੋਈ ਖੜੋਤੇ ਆਂ ?

Bhare bhare baste

Lame lame raste

Thakk gaye ne gode

Dukhan lag paye modhe

Aina bhar chukaya ae

Asin koi khote aan?

Teacher jee aange

Aake hukam sunaonge

Chalo kitaban kholo

Picche picche bolo

Picche picche boliye

Asin koi tote aan?

Chalo chalo jee chaliye

Jake seatan maliye

Jekar ho gayee der

Ki hovega pher

Teacher jee aange

Jhirkan khub sunaonge

Ture hi tan jane aan

Asin koi khalote aan?

Satish Gujral

2010-02-16T04:53:00.000-08:00

A mural by Satish Gujral on the side-wall of the administrative block building of Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana. pic by jaypee

All At Sea!

2010-01-14T08:25:00.000-08:00

"This was taken at Al Seef in Dubai, and I think I would have liked the shot anyway, but the fact that they're all standing on one leg meant that this was a shot I couldn't resist."

-David J. Nightingale
http://www.chromasia.com/

Xenophibic Punjabis versus rioting migrants

2009-12-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

An eyewitness account of the happenings in Ludhiana on Friday, December 4 as migrants went on rampage and police assisted by locals retaliated with vengeance. The spine-chilling violence unleashed by the police aided by locals went entirely unreported in the mainstream media. Here is what I saw...

We were told migrant labourers, pejoratively called Bhaiyas here, were rioting in the industrial area in Focal Point.

At around 11.30 we reached there.

A burnt car at the Dhandari flyover and some buses and trucks smouldering with dying out fire further up, stood out as burning testimonies of what had gone there earlier in the morning. Stones lay splattered all around.

It was supposed to be a curfew clamped there. But people roamed around openly wielding lathis, axes and swords. The migrants who were supposed to be the riotous mobs were on the other side of the railway track in the thickly populated Dhandari Khurd area.

The bhaiyas were in attacking mode and local populace was holding them up, we were told.

We soon learnt what was actually going on.

It was plain and simple xenophobia manifesting itself in its ugliest form.

It was started by migrant labourers but they didn’t know what they had bargained for.

Local youth from nearby areas, with police backing them up in background, unleashed a fury, repercussions of which would be felt for long time to come.

Cornered in the village, the unarmed labourers in substantial numbers, came from different sides to pelt stones. The policemen including the officers were the first ones to run. The armed locals withstood the onslaught and retaliated. They picked those they could lay their hands upon, raining blows and lathis mercilessly. Police took over after that. Continuing with the thrashing they dragged the bleeding labourers piling them up in their vehicles.

As the beating continued media was threatened openly not to shoot or click pictures. Media, incidentally, was more than obliging.

By evening the outnumbered and outmaneuvered migrants had retreated into background.

-Jatinder Preet

What kind of government is this?

2009-09-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a strange spectacle of a state finance minister telling people in media interviews about what needs to be done to revive state economy but pleads helplessness in doing it.

“Yes. I am not having my way (...as Finance Minister)” he said explicitly in the interview to Ramesh Vinayak in Hindustan Times.

But what the hell is he doing in the ministry then?

The interviewer asked him that a bit more politely. “Why not opt out of the government in which you have no say?”

“I don't know if that will serve any purpose,” he responded as he carried on:

We are short of 32,000 school teachers. (don't have Rs 300 crore to pay their salary for a year)
Spending Rs 4,600 crore a year on subsidies
A farmer is getting power for six to eight hours a day. He ends up spending Rs 2,400 a month on running a diesel pumpset.
Village school has no teacher and hospital has no medicine or doctor because we have no money for that.

Besides these figures reeled out by the Finmin himself here are some more to ponder:

89% of farmers in state are under heavy debt.
In the period 2000-08, there were 2890 suicides in Sangrur andBathinda (1757 farmers and 1133 agricultural labourers)
Mandi Gobindgarh followed by Ludhiana are the most polluted cities in the country
Subsoil water of 108 blocks has been declared grey
Punjab farmers use 184 kg/ha of chemical fertilizers
State Infant mortality rate is 42 per 1000 live births
high prevalence of anemia among children between 6-35 months - 80.2% and pregnant women -41.6%
Sex ratio of only 874 (in 2001, the state ranked 27^th among the 28 states of India)
Ranks 16th in terms of literacy among Indian States and Union Territories
Out of 100 children enrolled in class I, only 22 reach senior secondary level

So what do you do?

Admire the minister for his “plain-speak”?

Or, ask him to get working?

A Dalit's Car

2009-08-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

A car parked outside Indus Groceries in Berkeley, USA, on June 25, 2009, according to Insight Young Voices Blog, a dalit youth magazine, from which this picture was taken. It is credited to Prof Shiva Shankar who forwarded this photo clicked by SK Dutt.

Password

2009-07-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

After a long wait, Shameel has come up with new poetry book O Miyan, being hailed as watershed book as far as the growth of new Punjabi poetry is concerned. Though Punjabi poetry started showing new trends of thought and expression in the early years of this century, this is the first book which clearly defines the new face of Punjabi poetry. This is poetry of cosmic consciousness, different colours of divine love, philosophical questions and quest for beyond written in a refreshingly contemporary idiom. Here is one of his poems translated by Jatinder Preet

He sends every Being

With a locked heart

And leaves it's password

With someone, only One

And then

He gets them to play a game

People call it love.

One whose password is found

Is liberated

Rest keep wandering
Keep on taking births
To find their passwords

You can listen to the footsteps

Of the One, who has your password
From afar

Thousands of colourful birds
In the universe of body
Start chirping
When you come to know of his arrival

Before he arrives
His invisible being comes to you
That can be seen by birds

That One
Remains with you forever
Like spirit in body
Like sweetness in words
Like moisture in eyes

This One has mathematics of its own
Your One added with it
Doesn’t make it Two
Like zero added to a zero
Infinite with infinite

This One
Is never lost
Lives forever
Like a memory in mind
Like relaxation in the body
Like mother tongue in your voice
Like the grind of breath

East Punjab, wild west?

2009-06-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

With a brutal forthrightness that has never been seen in the media in the region, Ramesh Vinayak, Resident Editor of Hindustan Times, takes on the issue of misgovernance in Punjab. In a crackling take on the lumpenisation of power politics in Punjab, the senior journalist dares to call the bluff of the Badals, something the obsequious media has failed to do for long.

Jis Ke Sir Upar Tun Swami, So Dukh Kaisa Pave
This divine caller tune on the mobile phone of Sarabjit Singh Makkar apparently rings aloud about his political godfathers. Otherwise, it’s inconceivable for the controversial Shiromani Akali Dal MLA to have got away with a grudging apology for his thuggish act of publicly abusing senior BJP Cabinet Minister Manoranjan Kalia that instantly plunged the ruling alliance partners into a fresh round of Tom and Jerry sparring
Having orchestrated a kiss-and-make-up ges- ture with the estranged saffron ally, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal would have the people believe that the crisis has blown over. But, this political patch-up coupled with Badal’s much-delayed piece-meal action against the Akali perpetrators of an assault on Ludhiana revenue official Major G.S. Benipal has in no way mitigated the public outrage and opprobrium that these shocking incidents on the trot have evoked across Punjab
Ironically,a huge wave of sympathy and solidarity pouring in for the Tehsildar and his credentials as an upright officer have come as the most scathing indictment of the SAD-BJP Government for its singular failure on its most basic duty: to enforce the rule of law. By their superfluous damage-control protestations,both SAD and BJP have conveniently glossed over the serious issue starkly driven home last week — lumpenisation of power politics in Punjab
While the Kalia-Makkar spat is symptomatic of the bad blood between the coalition partners despite their made-for-each-other pretensions, the strip-and-savage episode in Ludhiana has exposed the brazen audacity of rogue Akali elements, widely perceived to be cohorts and cronies of SAD president-Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. Incidentally, both incidents stemmed from the same mindset in the ruling class — indulge in lawlessness with impunity and get away with it
More shocking was the Chief Minister’s trademark procrastination. Far from taking a swift and stern action against the unruly Akalis, he came across as an indecisive ruler absolutely blasé to the gravity to both episodes. The same pusillanimity was on display during the Dera Sach Akhand blow-up last month when the state shamelessly abdicated its responsibility on enforcing the writ of law,while allowing the hordes of goons to hold the state to ransom with their wanton vandalism. That was the state government’s weird trade-off — turn a blind eye to lawlessness for the sake of peace! That it took Badal a good five days and a curt ‘sort-it-out-on-your-own’advice by the BJP high command to paper over the Kalia-Makkar spat has only bared the deepening discord between the alliance partners.The least that was expected of Badal was to suspend the wayward MLA and order an inquiry into his murky mall project in which he was armtwisting the BJP minister to extract favours
Worse,Badal put up a namby pamby response to the reprehensible Ludhiana incident,which also brought out the new depth of politicisation of the administration. Scared of taking even a normal punitive action against what they perceived as “Sukhbir’s men”, the local authorities delayed, dithered and even extended VIP treatment to the Akali attackers, waiting for instructions from the top. Which came only when the public outcry reached a crescendo. If Sukhbir, currently vacationing abroad, has come to be associated with a less than glorious brand of politics, the reasons are not far to seek. It all started in the face of Capt Amarinder Singh’s pioneering politics of vendetta in the garb of exposing the opponents’ corruption.Sukhbir only perpetuated this overly tribal politics
Desperate to fight off the Amarinder offen- sive and establish control over SAD, Sukhbir raised a phalanx of street-fighters and drumbeaters, roping in many a lupmen element.He did all this by systematically sidelining the traditional Akali stock and in the name of inducting young blood into the party. His brigade, motivated by the ‘power-at-any-cost’ credo, tasted first blood during the panchayat and civic polls,marred by blatant muscle power. Clearly, the chickens have now come home to roost
Today, Punjab’s power politics has become the first refuge of scoundrels, law-breakers and power brokers. The moneyed, the merrier
Not surprisingly, the episodic lawlessness has made it look like ‘jungle raj’in Punjab.And, the SAD-BJP government’s actions hardly inspire confidence. Instead, the alliance partners are seen to be fighting for the spoils of power. Good governance seems to be a forgotten priority
The Badal-brokered rapprochement is the beginning of new power struggle between the squabbling partners whose mutual distrust and disharmony has only become more pronounced after the Lok Sabha poll debacle.While SAD increasingly views the saffron party as a liability, the state BJP has a litany of grievances — “we are part of the government but not governance,” is the standard sulk
The BJP is no more willing to play second fiddle to SAD, which has so far treated the state BJP leadership with cavalier disdain due to Badal’s direct equation with the party high command.This,despite SAD being in power on the BJP prop.BJP’s tough stand in the Kalia episode is only a pointer to the party’s new-found assertion to extract its pound of flesh. In reality, the ruse of being “powerless”has become a fig leaf for the BJP ministers’ poor performance
Clearly, while correcting the imbalances in their power-sharing deal, both SAD and BJP have a more pressing task on hand. That is to rein in the law-breakers in their ranks.Punjab is not the wild west.The gory photograph of a stripped,horrified and bloodied Major Benipal has become the defining — and disconcerting — image of this government.It would certainly return to haunt the rulers. Sukhbir’s promise of ‘zero tolerance’ for law-breakers will on a test in the coming days. People’s patience is wearing thin faster than he could imagine from his holidaying resort abroad.

The Ravi Dasis of Punjab: Global contours of Caste and Religious Strife

2009-06-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Based on an empirical study of the Punjabi Ravi Dasis, the paper by Surinder S Jodhka of the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, tries to provide a historical perspective on caste and religion in Punjab today

The recent attack on two visiting religious leaders of Ravi Dasis in Vienna presumably by a group of local militant Sikhs sparked off widespread violence in towns of Punjab. Though most of the violence by Ravi Dasi dalits was directed against public property and reflected their general anger at the Vienna incident, the popular media in India was quick to interpret it as yet another instance of caste conflict within Sikhism, viz, between dalit Sikhs and upper caste Sikhs. This was not only a wrong interpretation of the unfortunate incidents of violence in Vienna and Punjab, it also misrepresented the complex realities of caste and religious identity in contemporary Punjab. Though the Ravi Dasi dalits of Punjab treat the Sikh holy book Guru Granth with reverence and their temples are also often called Gurdwaras, a large majority of them do not identify with the Sikh religion. Ravi Dasis have emerged as a strong and autonomous caste-religious community, an outcome of vibrant dalit identity movements in Punjab over the last (more than) eight decades.

Their reverence for the Guru Granth is primarily because it also contains the writings of Guru Ravi Das. Over the years Ravi Dasis have also evolved their own symbols and practices of worship, which distinguish them from the Sikhs of Punjab. While caste is certainly an important source of social dissension in Punjab and a reason for the Ravi Dasis to evolve an autonomous religious identity, they do not see their faith as being in an antagonistic relationship with contemporary Sikhism.

Drawing from my ongoing work on dalit religious movements, this paper attempts to provide a brief historical introduction to the Ravi Dasi community of Punjab and their evolving caste- religious identity. Seen in this historical context, the street violence in Punjab following the Vienna attack on 24 May 2009 leading to the death of a senior Ravi Dasi religious leader would appear more like a case of assertion of the Ravi Dasis’ political strength and a statement of their united identity than a case of caste conflict, as it has been popularly (mis)interpreted by the popular media.

Caste Numbers in colonial punjab

The religious demography of Punjab has always been very different from the country as a whole. A majority of its population (nearly 60%) identifies with Sikhism, a religion that theologically decries caste. Prior to the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947, more than half of the Punjab identified with Islam, which similarly decries caste. However, caste-based divisions and differences have been quite prominent in the region. More than one-fourth of its population has been treated as “outcaste” by the historically dominant sections of the Punjabi society. Caste was not simply an ideological reality. It also shaped land relations and conditioned entitlements and rights of communities. Dalits were invariably among the most deprived, materially, and excluded, socially and culturally.

Interestingly, of all the states of the Indian union, Punjab has the highest proportion of scheduled castes (SCs). Against the national average of around 16%, Punjab, according to the 2001 Census, had nearly 29% of its population listed as SC. The SC population in Punjab has also been growing at a rate much higher than the rest of the population. In 1971 the proportion of the SC population in the state was 24.7%. It went up to 26.9% in 1981 and further to 28.3% in 1991. However, in the following decade it grew at slower rate, adding only around 0.6 percentage points to the proportion of the SC population of the state. Another interesting feature of the SC population of the state is that its concentration is much higher in some pockets/districts of the state. In the prosperous Doaba subregion, for example, their population is over 35%, much larger than the state average. In the district of Nawanshahr in Doaba region, the SC population during the 2001Census was 40.46%.

Beginning with the early 20th century, the Punjab, particularly the eastern, or the Indian Punjab, has also been a witness to active dalit politics. The trajectory of dalit politics in Punjab can be located in the changing socio-economic and political scenario of the region after the establishment of colonial rule at the middle of the 19^th century. Though British colonial rule came to Punjab late, its influence on the ground grew quite rapidly. The British established canal colonies which helped in the growth of agriculture in the region. Colonial rule also led to the development of urban centres. Jalandhar was one such town which experienced significant growth during the period after it was chosen for the setting up of a military cantonment for recruiting soldiers from the region. The colonial army provided new opportunities of employment to the children of Punjabi peasants and also opened up avenues for social mobility for a section of local dalits, particularly the Chamars who worked with leather.

The cantonment raised demand for leather goods, particularly boots and shoes for the British army. As elsewhere in the subcontinent, much of the leather trade in the region was controlled by Muslim traders. However, at the local or village level, it was the “untouchable” Chamars who supplied the raw animal skin. Some enterprising members of the caste also tried to move to the towns. Some of them were quick to exploit the new opportunities being offered to them by the changing world. Not only did they move out of the village but they also ventured out to other parts of the subcontinent and abroad, to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The social and economic mobility that some individual untouchables experienced during this period prepared grounds for political mobilisations of dalits in the region.

The introduction of representational politics by the colonial rulers also produced a new grammar of communities in India. The colonial administrative structure deployed new categories of social aggregation and classification. The British thought of their populace in terms of religious communities and looked at them accordingly in the process of governance. They “encouraged the members of each community to present their case in communitarian terms” (Grewal 1989). As is well known to students of Indian history, the colonial census and classifications of population into categories that made sense to the alien rulers played a critical role in converting the fuzzy boundaries of difference into well defined communities (Cohn 1996; Dirks 2001; Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993). Though the British came to Punjab only around the middle of 19th century, this process of new identity formations and restructuring of communities became pronounced in the region fairly early through social reform movements among the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims (Fox 1985; Oberoi 1994).

The anxiety about numbers among the neo-religious elite of the Hindus and Sikhs also had important implications for the Punjabi dalits. Through the newly launched social reform movements, the Hindu and Sikh leaders began to work with dalits. The Arya Samaj in Punjab started the shudhi movement wherein they encouraged the “untouchables” to “purify” themselves and become part of the mainstream Hinduism. It also encouraged dalits to send their children to schools being run by the Samaj. Similarly, the Sikh reformers began to decry caste publicly and it was mainly through a claim to castelessness that they argued for a distinctiveness of Sikhs from the Hindus.

Ad Dharm Movement

It was in this context that the Ad Dharm movement emerged in Punjab. Though the idea had already begun to take shape during the early 1920s, it took off only with the arrival of Mangoo Ram on the scene. Mangoo Ram was the son of an enterprising Chamar of village Mangowal of the Hoshiarpur district of Doaba subregion of Punjab. As was the case with dalits in rural Punjab during the early 19th century, his family had to bear the stigma of untouchability and social exclusion. However, his father was very enterprising and had been able to make some money through leather trade.

Like some others of his caste community, Mangoo Ram a cquired secular education in a school run by the Arya Samaj. Migrationto the west had already begun to be seen in the Doaba sub-region of Punjab as a desirable source of social and cultural mobility. His father mobilised some money and sent him to the US for better paying work. While in California, Mangoo Ram was influenced by left-wing ideas of his contemporaries from Punjab

and got involved with the Gadar movement. He came back to Punjab in 1925, motivated to work with his people. On returning home, he set up a school for lower caste children with the help of the Arya Samaj, but very soon distanced himself from the Samaj and joined hands with some other members of his community who were trying to initiate an autonomous identity movement among the local dalits.

The Ad Dharm movement saw itself as a religious movement.

Its proponents advocated that the “untouchables” were a separate qaum, a distinct religious community similar to the Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs, and should be treated as such by the rulers.Invoking the then popular “racial-origin” theories of caste, they argued that Ad Dharm has always been the religion of the dalits and that the qaum had existed from time immemorial. Despite stiff opposition from the local Hindu leadership, the colonial Census of 1931 listed the Ad Dharmis as a separate religious community. In the very first conference of the organisation, they declared:

We are not Hindus. We strongly request the government not to list us as such in the census. Our faith is not Hindu but Ad Dharm. We are not a part of Hinduism, and Hindus are not a part of us.

The emphasis on Ad Dharm being a separate religion, a qaum, was to undermine the identity of caste. As a separate qaum, Ad Dharmis were equal to other qaums recognised by the colonial state, the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Mangoo Ram also expected to bring other untouchable communities into the fold of Ad Dharm and emerge as a viable community at the regional level.

A total of 4,18,789 persons reported themselves as Ad Dharmis in the 1931 Punjab Census, almost equal to the Christian populace of the province. They accounted for about 1.5% of the total population of Punjab and around a tenth of the total low-caste population of the province. Nearly 80% of the low castes of Jallandhar and Hoshiarpur districts reported themselves as Ad Dharmis.

The Ad Dharm movement succeeded in mobilising the Chamars of the Doaba region and in instilling a new sense of confidence in them. The Ad Dharmis are today among the most prosperous and educated of the dalit communities of the country and far ahead of other dalit communities of Punjab.

However, despite its success, the movement could not maintain its momentum for very long and began to dissipate soon after its grand success in 1931. According to the popular understanding, the causes of the decline of Ad Dharm movement lay in its success. Its leaders joined mainstream politics.Mangoo Ram himself, along with some of his close comrades, became members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly. The caste issue was gradually taken over by the emerging pan-Indian movement of the dalits and it

finally merged with it. The Ad Dharm Mandal began to see itself as a social and religious organisation and in 1946 decided to change its name to Ravi Das Mandal, “entrusting the political work to All India Scheduled Castes Federation in conformity with rest of India”.

From ad Dharm to Ravi Dasi

A closer understanding of the Ad Dharm case would require a critical look at the evolution of Indian state, and the manner in which it dealt with caste and religion. The beginning of the decline of the Ad Dharm movement can perhaps be located in the famous Poona Pact of 1932 between Gandhi and Ambedkar and the formation of Scheduled List in the Government of India Act 1935. The clubbing of the SCs with the Hindus left no choice for the Ad Dharm movement in Punjab but to accept the nationalist and official mode of classification. They had to either forgo the benefits of “reservations” or claim a separate religious identity. Given the socio-economic status of the community at that time they chose the former and reconciled to a softer approach to the latter. As a senior dalit activist explained to us:

Ad Dharm lost its meaning after we got eight seats reserved for us when the elections were first held in the province. Our candidates won from seven of the eight seats. Mangoo Ram too was elected to the Assembly during the next election in the year 1945-46.

Another activist put it more emphatically:

In 1931 we were recognised as a separate religion by the colonial census but by the Act of 1935 we became one of the scheduled castes, one among others in the same category. Communal award had recognized our autonomy, which had to be surrendered by B R Ambedkar under the Poona Pact. Under the Poona Pact we were given reservations but only if accepted to be part of the Hindu religion. ...However, even though we legally became a part of Hinduism, it did not stop discrimination against us. Even now it continues though it is less pronounced and more subtle.

Though most of our dalit respondents remembered the Ad Dharm movement with a sense of pride and some of them also regretted its decline, we did not observe any kind of strong feeling for the movement or resentment among the Ad Dharmis at being clubbed with the Hindu religion. Neither could we locate any writings by its erstwhile leaders expressing distress/anger at its decline or attributing it to conspiracies. The Ad Dharm movement and its leaders were perhaps also swayed by the mainstream or dominant politics of the time, ie, the freedom movement and its hegemonic influence. As one of our respondents, who is currently president of the Ravi Dasi Trust, said to us:

…at one time Ad Dharm movement was very popular in Punjab. However, slowly, with growing influence of Congress politics, its leaders started leaving. Master Balwanta Sing was the first to leave Ad Dharm Mandal. He joined the Congress Party. Similarly some other leaders also left the movement to become part of the mainstream national politics. Eventually even Mangoo Ram joined the Congress Party. The movement was over.

Those with more radical views on the dalit question were swayed by B R Ambedkar and joined the Republican Party of India (RPI) and the Scheduled Castes Federation, both set up by B R Ambedkar. Some of them eventually turned to Buddhism for spiritual autonomy and religious identity.

Equally important for its decline is perhaps the fact that though Ad Dharm articulated itself as a religious identity and demanded official recognition as a religious movement, it was essentially a political movement. As a prominent member of the community told us during an interview:

It had no holy book or scripture of its own, it had no rituals of its own, it had no pilgrimage places, or sacred symbols…. How could it have survived as a religion?

While the identity of Ad Dharmi simply became a designation of a Hindu caste group for official classification, the Chamars of Doaba did not really go back to Hinduism. They began to develop their autonomous religious resources under the identity of Ravi Dasis.

Ravi Dasi identity s mentioned earlier, it was, in fact, during the Ad Dharm movement that the Ravi Dasi identity had begun to take shape. Leaders of the movement also saw Ravi Dasi identity as their own resource. Long after dissolving the Ad Dharm Mandal and being in retirement for many years, Mangoo Ram summed up the achievement of the Ad Dharm movement in an interview with Mark Juergensmeyer in 1971 where his focus was more on having given the local dalits a new community and religious identity than their political empowerment:

We helped give them a better life and made them into a qaum. We gave them gurus to believe in and something to hope for.

After having changed its name to Ravi Das Mandal in 1946, the movement activists shifted their focus to social and religious matters. They had realised long ago that in order to consolidate themselves as a separate qaum, they needed a religious system of their own, which was different from the Hindus and Sikhs. However, in order to do that they chose a caste-based religious identity:

Chamar = Ad Dharmi = Ravi Dasi.

Even though during its early days the Ad Dharm movement had aspired to bring all the “ex-untouchable” communities together into the new faith, their appeal had remained confined mostly to the Chamars of Doaba. After its listing as one of the SCs in the Scheduled List, it became obvious and official that Ad Dharmis were a section of the Chamars. Guru Ravi Das appeared to be an obvious choice for the Ad Dharmis as a religious symbol for the community. Though he was born in Uttar Pradesh, he belonged to the Chamar caste. The fact that his writings were included in the Sikh holy book, Adi Granth, which had been compiled in Punjab and was written in the local language, made Ravi Das even more effective and acceptable.

Thus the Ad Dharm movement played a very important role in developing an autonomous political identity and consciousness among the Chamar dalits of Punjab and its renaming itself as a religious body, Ravi Das Mandal in 1946, was an important turning point in the history of dalit movements of Punjab. However, it is important to mention here that the Ravi Dasi religious identity had already begun to take shape, independently of the Ad Dharm movement in the region. In fact, some of the Ravi Dasi deras had, in fact, played an active role in the late 1920 when Mangoo Ram was campaigning for separate religious status for Ad Dharmis. Mangoo Ram often visited the Ravi Dasi deras during his campaign.

Interestingly, even when the community reconciled itself to the idea of being clubbed with Hindu SCs for census enumerations, the identity of being Ad Dharmis continued to be important for them. As many as 14.9% (5,32,129) of the 70,28,723 SCs of Punjab were listed as Ad Dharmis in the 2001 Census, substantially more than those who registered themselves as belonging to the Ad Dharmi qaum in 1931. In religious terms, as many as 59.9% of the Punjab SCs enumerated themselves as Sikhs and 39.6% Hindus. Only 0.5% declared their religion as Buddhism.

However, notwithstanding this official classification of all SCs into the mainstream religions of the region, everyday religious life of the Punjab dalits is marked by enormous diversity and plurality. Apart from the popular syncretic religious traditions that have been in existence for a long time in the region, the dalits of Punjab, and elsewhere in India, have also developed an urge for autonomous faith identities, particularly for getting out of Hinduism. They view Hinduism as the source of their humiliating social position in the caste system. This urge became much stronger with the emergence of a nascent educated middle class among them during the later phase of British colonial rule. The Ad Dharm movement of 1920s (discussed above) was a clear example of this.

Historically, dalits have chosen two different paths to this move away from Hindusim. The first of these was conversion to other religions such as Christianity, Islam or Sikhism, which do not theologically support caste-based inequalities and divisions.

The second path has been to look for indigenous egalitarian faith traditions that emerged in opposition to the system of caste hierarchy. The Ravi Dasi movement can be seen as an example of this path.

Guru Ravi Das

Ravi Das was born sometime in 1450 AD in the north Indian town of Banaras in an “untouchable” caste, the Chamars and died in 1520 according to Omvedt. Like many of his contemporaries, he travelled extensively and had religious dialogues with saint poets in different parts of the north India. Over time he acquired the status of a saint. However, his claims to religious authority were frequently challenged by the local brahmins who complained against his “sacrilegious behaviour” to the local rulers.

His followers believe that every time the king summoned Ravi Das, he managed to convince the political authorities about his genuine “spiritual powers” through various miraculous acts. He is believed to have also visited Punjab and met with Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, at least thrice. He also gave most of his writings to Guru Nanak, which eventually became part of the Sikh holy book, Guru Granth.

Though historians of Indian religions tend to club Ravi Das with the Bhakti movement, a pan Indian devotional cult, his ideas appear to be quite radical. He built his own utopia, a vision of an alternative society, articulated in his hymn “Begumpura”, a city without sorrows, “where there will be no distress, no tax, no restriction from going and coming, no fear”. It is worth presenting the English translation of the poem:

The regal realm with the sorrowless name:

they call it Begumpura, a place with no pain,

No taxes or cares, nor own property there,

no wrongdoing, worry, terror or torture.

Oh my brother, I have come to take it as my own,

my distant home, where everything is right.

That imperial kingdom is rich and secure,

where none are third or second – all are one;

Its food and drink are famous, and those who live there

dwell in satisfaction and in wealth.

They do this or that, they walk where they wish,

they stroll through fabled places unchallenged.

Oh, says Ravidas, a tanner now set free,

those who walk beside me are my friends.

– (Hawley and Juergensmeyer 1988: 32)

As is evident from the poem he is not simply talking about his love for god and his limitless devotion. His utopia is quite “this worldly”, aspiring for a life without pain and not emphasising on “other worldly” peace or moksha. Equally important is the fact that his message is constructed by his contemporary followers in quite a modernist language where question of caste oppression and his fight against the prevailing structures of authority and brahmanical modal order is foregrounded. Writing on the social milieu in which he was born, his biographer Sat Pal Jassi writes:

Since the advent of Vedic Age, caste system and untouchability have been prevalent in India. In passage of time, the socio-religious inhibitions became more strict and cruel. The untouchables were given an ignoble place. They were debarred from acquiring knowledge, own property and worship of God…. These conditions prevailed in India for more than 3,000 years.

It was in this “degenerated environment” that Ravi Das was born. What did he preach and propagate? Jassi continues:

He was a protagonist of equality, oneness of God, human rights and universal brotherhood….He was a suave socio-religious reformer, a thinker, a theosophist, a humanist, a poet, a traveller, a pacifist and above all a towering spiritual figure… He was a pioneer of socialistic thought and strengthened noble values.

Ravi Das’ utopia was also significantly different from some of the later writings on “a desirable India” produced by people like Gandhi. As Gail Omvedt rightly comments, Ravi Das…was the first to formulate an Indian version of utopia in his song “Begumpura”. Begumpura, the ‘city without sorrow’, is a casteless, classless society; a modern society, one without a mention of temples; an urban society as contrasted with Gandhi’s village utopia of Ram Rjaya…..

Though born in a dalit family, Ravi Das indeed became a part of the larger movement of protest against the brahmanical control over the social and religious life of the people and was a ccepted as a leader across the entire region. His identification with Guru Nanak, who was from an upper caste, clearly proves this point. As mentioned above, Guru Nanak added 40 of his hymns and one couplet into his collection of important writings of the times, which were eventually compiled into the Adi Granth by the fifth Sikh Guru.

It is perhaps this connection with Guru Nanak and Sikhism that explains the emergence of major centres of Ravi Das in Punjab, and not in Uttar Pradesh, where he was born.

Ravi Dasis Today

Though the message of Ravi Das had been integrated into the Sikh holy book and was routinely read and sung at the Sikh Gurdwaras as part of the gurbani (religious singing), it was only in the early years of the 20th century that separate Ravi Dasi deras began to emerge in Punjab. The reason for this sudden mushrooming of Ravi Dasi deras can perhaps be found in the growing prosperity of Chamars in the region after the British set up a cantonment in Jalandhar. Reform movements among the majorreligious communities of the Muslims, Hindus and the Sikhs would have also played a role in opening-up of opportunities for secular education among them.

Perhaps the most important of the Guru Ravi Das deras in Punjab today is the dera located in village Ballan, around 10 km from the town of Jalandhar. It is locally known as Dera Sachkhand Ballan. Though the Dera was set up by Sant Pipal Dass sometime during the early 20th century, it is identified more with his son, Sant Sarwan Dass. In fact, among its followers, it is also known as

Dera Sant Sarwan Dass. As per the popular myth narrated to us by various respondents during the field work, which we also found in published leaflets, the history of the dera goes like this:

Sant Sarwan Dass was born in a village called Gill Patti in Bhatinda district of Punjab. He lost his mother when he was five years old. To help his son overcome the loss, his father, Pipal Dass, decided to travel with him. After visiting a few places, they came to village Ballan. The elder brother of Sarwan Dass had earlier lived in the same village. On the outskirts of the village Ballan, they found a Pipal tree that was completely dry and dead. However, when Pipal Dass watered the tree, life returned to it and its leaves turned green. This, for him, was an indication of the place being spiritually blessed. The tree also made the child Sarwan Dass happy. The father and son decided to build a hut close to the tree and began to live there.

After the death of his father in 1928, Sant Sarwan Dass expanded his activities. He opened a school and started teaching Gurumukhi and the message of Guru Granth to young children. He also persuaded his followers to send their children to the school. “Parents who did not educate their children were their enemies”, he used to tell to

his followers.

Impressed with the work that Sant Sarwan Dass was doing in the village, a local landlord gifted him one kanal (about one-fifthof an acre) of land close to the hut, where the dera building was eventually constructed. Sarwan Dass remained head of the dera from 11 October 1928 until he died in June 1972. He was succeded by Sant Hari Dass and Sant Garib Dass. The dera is currently headed by Sant Niranjan Dass.

Though Dera Ballan is a religious centre with a focus on preaching universalistic values and spirituality, it actively identifies itself with local dalit issues and dalit politics. Not only do they foreground Ravi Das’ message of building a casteless society, they have also been actively identified with dalit activism.

Sant Sarwan Dass kept in active touch with Mangoo Ram during the Ad Dharm movement and Mangoo Ram too visited the dera to communicate his message to dalit masses of the region.

During one of his visit to Delhi, he also met B R Ambedkar, who “showed great respect to Sant Sarwan Dass Ji”. In one of his letters to Ambedkar, Sant Sarwan Dass described him as “a great son of the community”.

In the emerging national context, the dalit political leadership had begun to connect itself across regions. This ambition was not confined to dalit political activists but could be also seen in the efforts of religious gurus like Sant Sarwan Dass.

The message of Ravi Das had thus far reached the Punjabi dalits primarily through the Sikh Holy Scripture, the Guru Granth. However, the religious institutions of Sikhism were mostly controlled by “upper castes” among them. The continued presence of caste differences and hierarchy in the region made Sant Sarwan Dass look for internal resources, within the caste community, for further expansion of the dera activities. Ravi Das was the obvious symbol for the Chamar dalits for building a community of believers.

Having established a separate religious centre in Punjab Sant Sarwan Dass decided to travel to Banaras in 1950, hoping to visit the shrine at the birth place of his Guru, Guru Ravi Das. However, to his surprise and disappointment, he could not find any shrine or place in his name. Nothing existed in the name Guru Ravi Das in the holy city of Banaras. He took it upon himself the task of building a temple in the name of Ravi Das in the city. With the help of his followers at the Dera Ballan, he purchased a piece of land on the outskirts of Banaras where on 16 June 1965 he laid the foundation stone of the Ravi Das temple. The first phase of construction of this temple was completed in the year 1972.

Though the leaders were excited about building the Ravi Das temple in Banaras, the disciples, who are mostly from Punjab, were apprehensive. How were they going to visit Banaras?

“When the subject came up for discussion with the Sant Sarwan Das Ji, he said we will hire a special train which will go all the way from Jalandhar to Banaras once every year, at the time of the birth anniversary of Ravi Das. This train will be called Begampura Express.”

Dera Ballan has continued to be an important centre of dalit political activity in Punjab. Leaders, writers and intellectuals of the community often meet at the dera and discuss emerging political and cultural challenges before the community of Ravi Dasis. Kanshi Ram, another leader of dalits of north India, who belonged to Punjab and was born in a Ravi Dasi family was a frequent visitor to the dera. He did so not only to pay his respect to the dera chief but also to discuss strategies with other leaders of the community for making dalit politics more effective.

The Diaspora effect

The second, and perhaps more important and interesting, phase in the history of Ravi Das movement in Punjab begins during the 1990s, with the phase of globalisation. Along with other Punjabis, a large number of Chamars of the Doaba region had migrated to countries of the western hemisphere during the 1950s and 1960s.

Though there are no exact figures available, but quoting the Indian consular office, Juergenmeyer claims that in the United Kingdom “the percentage of scheduled castes within the total Punjabi community was as high as 10%. The rest were largely Jat Sikhs”.

In the alien context, with no systemic justification for caste ideology, the Punjabi dalits did not expect to be reminded of their “low” status in the caste hierarchy. While they did not have any such problem at the workplace and in the urban public sphere in UK, they often experienced caste prejudice when they tried to be part of the local Punjabi community in the diaspora.

Juergensmeyer sums this up quite well in the following words:

The Chamars, who came to Britain expecting to find life different, take offence at the upper caste Sikhs’ attitude towards them. They earn as much as the Jat Sikhs, sometimes more, and occasionally find themselves placed by the British in command over them – a Chamar foreman superintending a Jat Sikh work crew – much to the displeasure of the latter…The scheduled castes can afford to act more bravely in Britain since they have now entered a new context for competing with the Jat Sikhs. In the Punjab the cards were stacked against them, but in Britain they have a fresh start, and the ideology of Ad Dharm has prepared them to take advantage of it.

The migrant dalits felt this bias in the gurdwaras which were mostly controlled by the Jats and other upper caste Sikhs. Given their numbers and position in the local economy dalits did not find it difficult to assert for equal status and dignity. They began to set up their own autonomous associations in the name of Guru Ravi Das. The first two came up in the UK, in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, in 1956 (ibid: 248). While initially, over the first 20-25 years of their migration, they simply built their own community organisations and separate gurdwaras wherever they could, over the years they also began to influence the “homeland”.

The growing availability of new communication channels such as internet and satellite television during the early/mid-1990s made it easier for them to renew an active relationship with Punjab and the Ravi Dasi community at home.

By the early 1990s, diaspora dalits had also experienced considerable economic mobility, which made it easier for them to travel back home and they began to do so more frequently. When they came, they also brought with them money for the religious deras and this new money and diasporic energy played a very important role in the further growth of the movement. This was summed up well by a dalit businessman who has been involved in mobilising the Ravi Dasi sants into a pan-Indian association:

It is the brethren from the west who first understood the value of our deras and the need to strengthen them. They gave huge donations when they came to pay a visit. The number of visitors from abroad and frequency of their visits also increased during the 1990s. They invited the local Sants to their countries. All this gave a boost to the Ravi Dasi movement.

Over the last 15 years or so, the dera at Ballan has expanded significantly. A new building was inaugurated in 2007 where nearly 20,000 people could be accommodated to listen to the teachings of Guru Ravi Das. It has a langar hall where 2,000 people can eat together. Among other things, this hall has the technology for live telecast and recording of VCDs. In collaboration with the Jalandhar channel of Doordarshan it telecasts a programme called Amrit Bani every Friday and Saturday morning.

Not only has Dera Ballan expanded over the years, deras, gurdwaras and temples in the name of Guru Ravi Das have flourished in Punjab, particularly in the Doaba region where Ad Dharmis and Chamars have been numerically predominant among the dalits. We were told that there are some six or seven major sants who can be considered as leaders of the community and more than 250 deras/gurdwaras in the name of Guru Ravi Das in the state of Punjab. Some of these deras have become quite affluent and influential. However, they are all patronised exclusively by the local Chamars and Ad Dharmis.

Conclusions

Despite the cultural influence of Islam and Sikhism, caste has survived in Punjab and has worked as a disabling institution for those located at the margins of Punjabi society, the dalits. However, over the years caste relations have undergone some major changes. Not only has the ideological hold of caste nearly disappeared, structurally also dalits have moved away from tradition-based caste occupations, and in some regions, even from the local agrarian economy. Their growing economic autonomy also finds its expression in their urge for cultural and religious autonomy.

Though as a religious system Sikhism is opposed to caste-based divisions and denials, its social and religious institutions have come to be dominated by the traditionally and economically dominant caste groups. It is in opposition to this dominance that Ravi Dasis have tried to carve out an autonomous identity for themselves. Though nearly half of all the dalits of Punjab enumerate themselves as Sikhs and some of them have risen to positions of power within the religious establishment, the Ravi Dasis prefer to be outside. However, Ravi Dasi gurus maintain cordial relations with the Sikh religious leadership and some would even claim to be Sahajdari Sikhs. A large majority of the Ravi Dasis of Doaba region identify with Dera Sachkhand Ballan. To them the Guru Granth is sacred but they equally respect their living guru.

Their places of worship look like the Sikh gurdwaras and are sometimes also called as such but there are subtle differences. Their prayers, rituals and slogans too sound quite similar to those of the Sikhs but with subtle changes to distinguish themselves from mainstream Sikhism, which is by now a well-codified religious system in itself. A large majority of Ravi Dasis in Punjab also list themselves as Ad Dharmis, technically Hindu SCs who always wanted to organise themselves as a separate religious community.

The contemporary realities of caste and religion also raise some other, perhaps more fundamental, questions about the way we have understood and conceptualised the processes of social change in modern times. Historians have been emphasizing that the fuzzy boundaries that existed across communities in south Asia were made more concrete during the later years of colonial rule. However, on the ground, at the popular level, religious practice continues to be characterised by syncretic fuzziness and diversity. It is perhaps the failure to comprehend and accept this fluidity and diversity that on the one hand leads to violent conflicts as it happened in Vienna, and on the other hand to misleading interpretations of public action, as the popular media did after the violence in Punjab during the second half of May 2009.

(The paper has emerged out of the work being done for the Religions and Development Research Programme of the University of Birmingham, funded by Department for International Development)

Dalits and the Emancipatory Sikh Religion

2009-06-20T10:06:00.000-07:00

Theoretically and theologically characterized as ‘emancipatory’ Sikhism has failed in practice to do away with the caste prejudices. Raj Kumar Hans from History department of MS University of Baroda examines

Dalits constitute about 30 per cent of Punjab population that happens to be largest propor¬tion in the country, when compared with other provinces, but they occupy the lowest share in the ownership of land (2.34 per cent of the cultivated area). Mazhbis and Ramdasias, the two dalit castes among the Sikhs, particularly the Mazhbis, remain the most deprived. Evidence of untouchability against dalit Sikhs is well established. They have been forced to live in separate settlements, contemptuously called ‘thhathhis’ or ‘chamarlees’, located on the western side and away from the main body of the villages. All the Sikh organisations from Sikh temples to the political party are under the control of the Jatt Sikhs. The Jatt Sikhs refuse to consider them equals even after death, by disallowing cremation of their dead in the main cremation ground of the village. Over the years such harsh caste attitude has forced the dalits to es¬tablish separate gurdwaras, marriage places and cremation grounds. This seems to be the biggest paradox of Sikhism which theoretically and theologically has been characterized as ‘emancipatory’ and even sociologically as ‘revolutionary’. In its true egalitarian spirit, Sikhism had succeeded in integrating the lowliest of the low, the former untouchables, the dalits, into its fold.
From dalits’ perspective the evolution of Sikhism can be seen in two phases: a) from seventeenth century to Ranjit Singh’s rule, when dalits played remarkable role in Sikh political struggles and religious movements; b) post-Ranjit Singh phase, when Brahmanical values and attitudes resurfaced with caste and untouchability afflicting the Sikh body politic in such a way that there was danger of its re-absorption into Hinduism. Though dominant literary tradition has denied the significance of ‘caste’ and ‘untouchability’ in Sikhism, it has also ignored and neglected the dalit contribution to the flourishing of Sikhism in the first phase. The rise in consciousness in the twentieth century has enabled the Dalits to raise questions on the dominant historigraphical praxis by attempting to recover the lost ground. The paper would first look at the modern moment, the rise in the dalit consciousness as manifest in Dalit creative writings. In seeking an answer to as to what made the powerful Sikh movement drift the paper would look at the ‘brahmanisation’ of Sikhism in the nineteenth century with ominous implications for dalits as well as for Sikhism.

I
Dalit consciousness begins with the cerebral activities and is best reflected in the literary expressions. It is important how in the dalit literary writings, ‘being a Sikh’ has taken a precedent over ‘being a dalit’ till the mid-twentieth century. It is only when the caste discrimination and untouchability within Sikhism came to be seen by Dalits from either the socialist angle or from Ambedkar’s perspective that a new process of looking at the self begins. Our first three dalit poets had subsumed their dalit identity in the broader ‘Sikh’ identity.

Bhai Jaita (d. 1705), who was rechristened by Guru Gobind Singh as Jeevan Singh in 1699, happens to be the first dalit poet from Punjab. Earlier, young Gobind Singh was overwhelmed with emotions and had embraced Bhai Jaita when the latter had brought the severed head of Guru Tegh Bahadar under the most violent circumstances from Delhi to Anandpur in 1675 and called him ‘Ranghrete Guru ke Bete’ (Ranghrete, the untouchables, are guru’s own sons). Jaita had turned out to be a fearless and daring Sikh warrior who had endeared himself so much to the Tenth Guru that he was declared as the ‘Panjwan Sahibjada’ (Fifth Son) in addition to his own four sahibjadas. He was killed in a fierce battle with Mughal armies in 1705. Even though he is now given some space in the Sikh iconography, it is hardly known or acknowledged that he was also a scholar poet. He had composed a long poem ‘Sri Gur Katha’ which is an eyewitness account of important events surrounding Guru Gobind Singh. It is worth noting that this composition has eluded the notice of scholars of Sikh literature and history whose efforts to unearth the literature and materials pertaining to the Sikh tradition is otherwise remarkable. The way Bhai Jaita had been integrated not only in Sikh religion but also in the family of Guru Gobind Singh, it is understandable any other identity would have been meaningless to him. His identity as Ranghreta has been subsumed by his identity as a Sikh as he says:
Jayayte taranhar gur, taar diye ranghretde
Gur paras ne kar diye, ranghrete gur betde
(O! Jaite the savior guru has saved the ranghretas
The pure guru has adopted ranghretas as his sons)

Our second dalit poet and writer is Ditt Singh Giani (1852-1901). About the age of 17, he shifted to the main Gulabdasi centre at Chathianwala, near Kasur, in Lahore district. It was here that he composed his first two books of poetry; the love-lore Shirin Farhad in the established Punjabi genre kissa and Abla Nind. Not long afterwards, under the influence of Jawahir Singh, formerly a follower of Gulabdasi sect, he joined the Arya Samaj. But after entering into dialogue with Swami Daya Nand on his visit to Lahore in 1877, he was drawn into the Sikh fold by Bhai Gurmukh Singh, then an active figure in the Singh Sabha movement. Ditt Singh’s scholarly talents came in handy for the Sikh movement. Lahore Singh Sabha floated a weekly newspaper, the Khalsa Akhbar in 1886. He assumed editorship of the paper in 1887 that he continued till his death in 1901. Meanwhile, he was also appointed as a professor of Punjabi at the Oriental College. To Bhagat Lakshman Singh, erudite Sikh educationist and reformer, “Bhai Dit Singh Gyani wielded a powerful pen and was a literary giant.” He wrote more than fifty books and pamphlets on wide-ranging subjects, from love-lore to Sikh traditions, from history to ethics, from heroes to charlatans as he also produced polemics. Even being a leader in the limelight he could not escape the overt and covert assault of untouchability from his fellow and follower Sikhs. And it seems despite being reminded that he belonged to an untouchable family he was suffused with Sikh consciousnesses.

Our third such dalit poet Sadhu Daya Singh Arif (1894-1946) was born in a landless Mazhbi Sikh family of Firozepur district. Contrary to the material as well as cultural condition, Daya Singh developed a keen interest in learning letters as a child for which his father Santa Singh threw him out of family on former’s persistence against several warnings by the latter. Living independently, Daya Singh was absorbed in reading and contemplation. After learning Gurmukhi and studying the Adi Granth, he learnt Urdu from a local teacher in his village madrassa Maulvi Ibrahim and Persian from Sunder Singh Patwari and Master Munshi Ram Khatri. The desire to learn about Islam led him to the local Sufi scholar Shadi Khan who laid a condition of accepting Islam if he wanted to learn the Quran. Daya Singh agreed on the condition that he would do so after the education if he finds Islam superior to Sikhism in principles and ideas. The result was that Daya Singh emerged as a sound scholar of Arabic, Persian and the Quran. Learning Sanskrit from Baba Sawan Das who lived at Dharamkot was not very difficult as the Sanskritist was bowled over by Daya Singh’s knowledge in religious studies. He studied Vedanta from Baba Sawan Das’ younger brother Baba Prabhati Das who had studied Vedas at Kashi for 10 years. After gaining insights into the theological aspects of religion, he turned to the secular literature of Punjab especially the kissas. Passionate readings of series of works on traditional Punjabi love-lore seem to have ignited his creative potential. His first poetical work Fanah-dar-Makan was published when he was 20. The work which made Daya Singh a household name through the width and breadth of Punjab was Zindagi Bilas completed when he turned 22. It is in this work where his vast religious, spiritual and secular knowledge is manifest. It is moving didactic poetry that caught imagination of masses which became the most read or heard poetic creation next only to Waris Shah’s ‘Heer’. Sadhu Daya Singh wrote his next major published poetic work Sputtar Bilas in 1922. Written in the same genre, this is also a didactic work of great aesthetic value addressed as it is to his eldest son Kultar Singh. This is also said to have been printed in hundreds of thousands of copies.

Daya Singh succeeds in reinforcing the moral thrust of the medieval spiritual saints in a fast changing objective reality when there was a rise in the acquisitive tendencies irrespective of the means adopted. His introverted self made him seek answers in the subjective human makeup rather than in the objective material conditions. He was well grounded in the philosophy of Advaita-Vedanta. He moves from particular to the general, quintessential human life. Daya Singh’s poetry is free from any kind of sectarianism and is thoroughly secular in the prevailing communal environment. He not only produces good poetry but emerges as an intellectual of his age. But soon after he turned to composing poetic material for the Sikh traditions, legends and anecdotes which he would render as a kavishar in a jatha (band) that he had formed for this purpose. This was also his material need; after settling down as a family person, with five sons and a daughter, to run the family unit he found the vocation that he was best at, composing and singing at religious and other popular festivals. He excelled in this art as well; travelling across Punjab with his band earned him so much popularity that he was invited by Sikhs settled in Malaya and other parts of South-East Asia in 1929. After his coming back to Punjab, he is said to have played some role in the political developments as a representative of Mazhbi Sikhs. At the time of 1937 formation of provincial ministries, the untouchables were to be enlisted separately in the voters’ lists but Sadhu Daya Singh along with other Mazhbi Sikh leaders had refused this separation saying they were Sikhs and there was no ‘caste’ in Sikhism.
Gurdas Ram Aalam (1912-1989), who was born in a poor Dalit family of Bundala village in Jallandhar district, happens to be the first Punjabi poet with dalit consciousness. Aalam was not able to go to school and learnt basic Gurmukhi letters from his friends. Even though illiterate, Aalam had emerged as one of popular folk-poets of stage before the partition. All the four books of his poems were full of social and economic issues of the deprived and oppressed caste-communities. On political and social issues, Aalam wrote like a revolutionary. No wonder, even Pash (who has become symbol of Punjabi revolutionary poetry) considered Aalam the first revolutionary poet of Punjab. A few lines from his poem ‘Achchut’ where the untouchable cries about his chronic ailment to which the Pandit, Maulavi, Bhai (Sikh preacher), pastor and Congressman prescribe for him their respective religious and political solutions and finally the poet offers his:
O! the untouchable, open your eyes and see
I will write a prescription that I have stolen
Possess three things: strength, unity and education
And don’t bother about anyone else
Faith here is made of SHOES and religion of STAVES
Caste too is of SHOES, of force
None is high nor is one low here
Untouchability is nothing but your weakness
You are as human as others are
Differences are because of vested interests
Temples and mosques are traps, O! Alam
Fools like you are trapped

In his poem ‘Ulahma’ (Complain) he gives a call to his ‘dalit brother’:
Rise, O Dalit brother, why are you wasting your time
Only you have to do your work, whether today or tomorrow
Your neighbours have moved ahead while you are happy left behind
You are human like them, if you are one, be ashamed

Alam had his poems ‘Inqlabi Aagu’ (Revolutionary Leader) on Bhagat Ravi Das, ‘Dr Ambedkar’, ‘Mandi’ (Market) and several others which directly address the dalit issues.

Hazara Singh Mushtaq (1917-1981) was different from his predecessor dalit poets. He was an ardent nationalist, flag-bearer of Indian National Congress and was also jailed a few times during the late-colonial rule for his nationalism. Of his seven books published, Kissa Mazhbi Sikh Jodha (1955) directly reflected his dalit concerns. Though he does not chide ‘Independence’ in the context of the poor dalits like Aalam, he expresses his disillusionment with the post-Independence developments, brings in socialist ideology to disparage the social and economic disparities, and calls the dalits for a revolutionary rise in his 1977 Noori Gazal.

The revolutionary rise that Punjab witnessed in the form of Naxalism in the late 1960s produced two dalit poets with revolutionary as well as dalit consciousness. These were Sant Ram Udasi (1939-1986) and Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007). Sant Ram Udasi was born in a dalit Mazhbi Sikh landless labour family. He grew up with a strong dalit consciousness and had tried to see dignity in Sikh religion, but soon he experienced how caste discrimination and untouchability present in the Sikh religion. During 1970s he emerged as one of the powerful radical poets and published three books of poetry, viz. Lahu Bhije Bol (Blood-soaked Word), Saintan (Gestures) and Chounukrian (the Four-edged). Another dalit Naxalite poet Lal Singh Dil was born in a Ramdasia Sikh (Chamar) family in 1943. He was training to be a basic school teacher when Naxalbari sucked him in. In the dream of a society free of caste and class, Dil saw a new dawn for the oppressed. Dil was a sensitive poet and his poetry was true to life and the experience of poverty, injustice and oppression was so real and told so well that he was hailed as the bard of the Naxalite movement in Punjab. A great poet he was undoubtedly, and his collection of poetry Satluj di Hava (1971), Bahut Saare Suraj (1982), and Sathar (1997) as well as his autobiography, Dastaan (1998), enjoy an exalted place in Punjabi letters. It is remarkable that Dil’s Dalit consciousness and identity was free from feelings of hatred, vengeance and malice. Dil has come to be acknowledged as the one of the few best poets of last half a century. Both of them were arrested, incarcerated and tortured, more tortured because they came from dalit families while thier tormentors belonged to the dominant high castes.

The two powerful revolutionary dalit poets were an upsurge on the Punjabi literary stage which had remained dominated by the upper-caste, upper-class litterateurs and they became a major source for the bursting of dalit literary energy in 1990s. If their poetry was looking for a revolutionary class change, it had the vivacity of dalit identity which was capable of challenging the hegemonic discourses. Sukhdev Singh Sirsa puts this change in perspective:
The question of dalit identity has given a new ideological context to the contemporary Punjabi literature. The new Punjabi poetry has given a new expression to the dalit concerns of existential and social identity. This new perspective disentangles itself from the class-conflict approach to the understanding of dalit identity in the varna system and looks at the changing dalit philosophy. Hence, this poetry does not only reject the established assumptions and hypotheses but also produces an alternative.

Contemporary poets include Balbir Madhopuri, Siri Ram Arsh, Sulakhan Mit, Gurmeet Kalarmajri, Madan Vira, Manjit Kadar, Bhagwan Dhilon, Buta Singh Ashant, Dr Manmohan, Mohan Tyagi, Mohan Matialvi, Jaipal, Iqbal Gharu, Harnek Kaler, Sadhu Singh Shudrak. They are no-more shy in accepting their dalit identity as the dalit political assertion in the past few decades empowered them to re-read historical traditions and situate themselves by providing a pride of space in the otherwise historical trajectory denied to them. This is obvious from the following lines of two contemporary dalit poets.

Dr Manmohan raises his voice:
It is said to me
The colour of my poem is black
Flat features
Tattered dress
Full of patches
Asymmetrical rhythm....
Sorrow appears before pleasure does
Pains peaks before peace....
Tell me now
If I don’t write poems like this
What should I do?

Listen what Balbir Madhopuri has to offer in his ‘Bhakhda Patal’ (Smouldering Netherworld):
For smoked skinned people like me
I do want
My poems
Should be part of that anthology
That contains
Stories of Eklavaya and Banda Bahadur
Struggle of Pir Buddhu Shah
Sensitivity of Pablo Neruda

It is interesting that while the first three eminent dalit poets foreground their Sikh identity, the rest of the poets assert their dalit identity but do not necessarily deny their Sikh identity. They are proud of their both or multiple identities. They seem to be aware that Sikhism had/has played important role in their ancestors’ as well as their lives though there is disenchantment with the turn Sikhism has taken. This should take us to that turn to see the contours of the Sikh movement.

II
The regional history of Punjab in general and of Sikh tradition in particular seems to be richest in the Indian subcontinent. The Punjab attracted the scholarly attention for a variety of reasons but also because of the rise, growth and survival of Sikh religion despite having been under the danger of being absorbed by Hinduism. If Kahn Singh Nabha had to assert in his polemical treatise Hum Hindu Nahin [We are not Hindus] in 1898 as an answer to a publication by a Sanatan Sikh, Thakur Das, entitled Sikh Hindu Hain (Sikhs are Hindus), Khushwant Singh in 1953 was still apprehensive of its survival beyond the twentieth century. Also being a ‘religion of the book’ from within the Indian tradition, it has been able to multiply books about itself whether produced by its followers or by others. A strong and sturdy body of knowledge about Sikh religion, history, polity and society has been produced in the last fifty years. Religion being an emotive issue this knowledge has not been free of controversies and contestation. Besides academic historians, social scientists, and litterateurs a large number of scientists, doctors, engineers, bureaucrats, retired army officials and others have entered the fray and enriched the knowledge on Sikhism. Yet another factor that has contributed to the vast built of literature on various facets of Punjabi life and Sikh religion is the strong Punjabi and Sikh diaspora especially in the west.

As the sociological and other empirical studies have highlighted the presence of ‘caste’ and ‘untouchability’ among Sikhs, it is no-more possible to avoid or hide this ‘embarrassing question’ from the historical discourses as had been the case in the last 50 years’ production of historical knowledge. W. H. McLeod, who has been engaged in the study of Sikh religion for half a century, recently admitted such a tendency:
To understand Sikh history and religion adequately, one must first grasp the true nature of Sikh society. It is here that caste becomes significant. To understand Sikh society, one must comprehend the nature of caste as it affects the Panth. An understanding of the future development of the Sikh religion makes an understanding of caste as practised by Sikhs absolutely imperative. Social scientists already recognize this, although some of their books or articles may skate round it or omit all mention completely. For those of us who are historians, it is likewise imperative. Without it our understanding of both the Panth and its religion must inevitably be flawed.

As most of the literature on Sikh history and religion has failed to take account of dalits, John C. B. Webster’s formulation on the ‘dalit history approach’ as a pioneer in the field is quite instructive. Ever since he wrote his book entitled The Dalit Christians: A History in 1992 he has been deepening his thought on the concept and has recently come to see its validity for the Sikh history in an important article. To him:
The Dalit history approach is based on two assumptions. The first is that of Dalit agency. In this case, Dalit Sikhs move to centre-stage to become the chief actors in and shapers of their own history; the historian will therefore focus upon them, their views, their struggles, their actions. The second is that a conflict model of society, with caste as not the only but the most important contradiction in Indian society, provides the most appropriate paradigm for understanding their history.

There is no work on Sikh history and tradition in English which has been produced from the dalit history approach. Major historical works by W. H. McLeod, J. S. Grewal, Ganda Singh, Khushwant Singh, Pashaura Singh, Harjot Oberoi, Jagjit Singh, Indu Banga, Gurinder Singh Mann, Jeevan Deol, Arvidpal Singh Mandair and Louis Fenech reflect what Webster call the ‘Sikh history approach’. Only a few books available, not necessarily by the ‘professional historians’, written in Punjabi could be seen as written from the ‘Dalit Sikh approach’. While denouncing the established histories as nothing but high-caste histories, S. L. Virdi emphasises the need of dalit history when he says:
India needs such a history that generates revolutionary consciousness for a social change as history plays very significant role. The society assumes such character and shape as moulded by its history. From this perspective dalit history can play an important role. The ‘revolution’ for Indian society has another name only in the ‘dalit history’.

While Shamsher Singh Ashok wrote his History of Mazhbis as commissioned by a dalit Sikh K. S. Neiyyer, settled in London, Naranjan Arifi who was a dalit officer in a central government department wrote a bulky first volume of the ‘History of Ranghretas’ after a great deal of research. He gives us a comprehensive account of Ranghretas/Mazhbis joining the Sikh fold as early as during the period of the Sixth Guru, Hargobind (1606-1645). Arifi very diligently filters the dalit information from the Sikh writings available since the mid-eighteenth century. In this volume he brings very fascinating details about Ranghretas till mid-nineteenth century by giving them names and voices by highlighting their individual and collective participation in the growth of Khalsa. They had offered numerically critical support in the Guru Gobind Singh’s battles. So much so that by the mid-eighteenth century when amidst sustained persecutions by the Mughals, the Sikhs organised themselves into five dals (warrior bands) one of these was composed entirely of Mazhbi/Ranghreta dal under the command of Bir Singh Ranghreta who had a force of 1300-horsemen. The ‘dalit reinterpretation’ of the eighteenth century argues in detail how the rising power of Bir Singh Ranghreta who had become an influential commander was put a stop to by the treachery of the Jatt commanders. According to Naranjan Arfi the Sikhs had succeeded in establishing their independence by early 1760s and some of the commanders aspired for their individual rules in different parts, which Bir Singh was opposed to. Bir Singh insisted following Guru’s injunction that the power shall lie in the Panth (the Khalsa collectivity). Charat Singh, father of Ranjit Singh and Baba Aala Singh, founder of Patiala State, hatched a conspiracy to invite Bir Singh from Peshawar to Amritsar, treacherously disarmed Bir Singh’s soldiers that they should not pay obeisance at the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) with arms and then slaughtering them inside the sacred place in batches of five in which they were advised to move. They also wounded Bir Singh in such a way that taken as dead, his body was put in a wooden box and thrown into river Beas. Thereafter Mazbhis were not allowed any commanding position but their military prowess was used under different Misals as subordinates.

Though substantially diminished in their power yet the dalit Sikhs continued as soldiers and fighters. They were still in such a position during Ranjit Singh’s rule to get constructed ‘Mazhbi Singhan da Bunga’ quite close to ‘Ramgarhia Bunga’, near ‘Dukh Bhanjan Beri’ in Harimandir Sahib (Golden Temple) Complex in 1826 by raising twenty-one thousand rupees. Later on it was demolished and incorporated in the ‘Guru Ramdas Langar’ building. Mazhbis had their bunga at Taran Taran Darbar Sahib as well. The kind of status and prestige the dalits came to raise for themselves in the tumultuous times of the eighteenth century was quite enviable for any upper-caste Sikhs. Hence, concerted efforts were made to reduce them after the establishment of Ranjit Singh’s rule. Thereafter, one sees a gradual hold of brahmanical Sanatan Sikhs over religious institutions of Sikhs that they had come to purge the egalitarian traditions of gurus from the Sikh religion by the last quarter of the nineteenth century in such a way that what started emerging as printed record then, thanks to the just emerged press, was taken for the entire history of Sikhs which, in fact, had clearly been an ‘invented tradition’.

If the Sikh tradition started failing the dalits’ warrior skills, they found some opportunities in the British imperial services. The 1857 Revolt offered them an opportunity to be enrolled in great number in the British Indian Army and the Mazbhis formed the First Pioneer Sikh Regiment. And soon there were three such ‘pioneer units’ and they were also deployed in China, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Despite the generally favourable commentary on their quality, low-caste units were gradually reduced in size and number between 1870 and 1914-18. Besides the fact of relatively peace times, “they were the unwilling victims of the theory of the “martial races” which had become a dominant discourse in the British administrative circles. They came to be recruited once again heavily during World War I but were later ‘retrenched’ and gradually reduced in numbers until in 1932 the last unit was disbanded. The greater intensity and scale of combat in World War II had the effect of drawing even larger number of dalits into the conflict. Over 10,000 Mahars and 33,000 Mazhbi and Ramdasia Sikhs were taken into the combatant forces. On the basis of these figures Stephen Cohen makes an interesting inference that “High intensity demands greater number, and lower castes eventually get an opportunity to serve in the military which is denied to them during peacetime.” They continued to be treated as underdogs even in their units where officers generally came from the upper-castes breaking the confidence of dalits. In his testimony, a Mazhbi Sikh MP put the caste position in perspective in 1964:
We are discriminated against both in and out of the army; there are no Mazbhi generals or even colonels.... I would not want the Mazbhi Sikh unit to be broken up, or the Jats mixed in with us or we with the Jats. It is good to have separate units of Scheduled Caste Sikhs together, this way we can show our martial qualities to the Jats and to the rest even better.

What had happened to that Sikhism that had provided a dignified space to the lower castes and especially to the dalit communities that the dalit MP had to lament their treatment by the dominant Sikh castes? What had happened was the ‘caste’ and ‘untouchability’ had come to afflict the Sikhs, and afflict them badly in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. There was a slow rise of Sanatan Sikhism, a fine admixture of Brahmanism and Sikhism, in the early nineteenth century which by the close of the century had assumed a vicious form. This is best reflected in an authoritative manual Khalsa Dharam Sastar (1914) of Sanatan Sikhism as quoted below:
From Braman to Nai, including Chhippe and Jhivara, all those belong to the fourfold caste system are not allowed to partake food cooked or touched by outcastes. This implies that just as the four Hindu castes can be polluted by the untouchables, similarly in the Sikh Khalsa religion all persons belonging to the four castes can be polluted too. Those Sikhs who belong to the untouchable groups (like the Mazhbi, Rahita and Ramdasia Sikhs) constitute a separate caste. These untouchable castes do not have the right to proceed beyond the fourth step in Sri Amritsar [at the Golden Temple]. Members of the high castes should take care not to mix with persons belonging to the lower castes. If someone seeks to do so he forfeits his claim of belonging to the high castes.

But such attitudes had already started showing reverse returns. I have some accounts from the Sikh/Akali papers in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The Sikh Dalits started moving either to Arya Samaj or to Christianity forcing the Sikh reformers to step up efforts to stem the tide. Singh Sabhas had initiated the process and yet the castist attitudes were so deep-seated to make any difference. The Sikh Press started pushing the cause forcefully. In the editorial entitled “Isaai hon de Karan” [Reasons for becoming Christian] of Punjab Darpan of 10th October 1917, the Sikhs were warned to mend their ways:
In the last eight months 1600 hundred Hindus have become Christians… For this mission, the pastors have relinquished professorships in the Mission colleges as they have also abandoned the comforts of Churches. Compare this with the Sikh community; there are thousands of those baptized Sikhs rendering Gurbani with musical instruments that are called Mazhbis, Ramdasias or Bishth. But high caste Sikhs always oppress these who simply labour for their sustenance…Because these illiterate Sikhs hate them more than they hate Muslims, it is necessary to inspire the Sikh Sardars, Numberdars and Zaildars in the villages to embrace their brethren-in-faith rather than making them the enemies of their religion by rebuking them all the times.

The growing anxiety about the virus of untouchability among the educated Sikhs is reflected in most of the community oriented newspapers and magazines. One Sewa Singh BA wrote a letter to Khalsa in 1923 under the title ‘One most necessary Duty: for the attention of Chief Khalsa Diwan’ in which he drew attention towards the problem of ‘untouchability’. While referring to Arya Samaj he urged the Diwan to shoulder ‘the improvement of untouchable castes’. We get a graphic picture of the concern in Jagat Singh Pardesi’s news filed from Khashab in Shahpur district (now in Pakistan). He writes:
Rahitiyas, Mazhbis and Ramdasias in northern Sargodha have become pray to our practicing untouchability. The rest are also not allowed to drink water from wells…it is strange that the Sikhs allow Muslims to draw water from the wells but these amritdhari Sikhs with 5 Ks are thrown out. Moving from village to village the writer on asking the Sikh brothers the reason of their hatred answered that (i) their ancestors smoke hukkas (tobacco pipes) and ate carrion. (ii) These people carry our garbage on their heads as also they carry away the dead animals. That’s why we hate them….

The Khalsa of 24th June 1923 published a report on a divan (assembly) about shudhi (purification) at Jallianwala bagh held on 21st June 1923 which was devoted only to discuss the agenda of removal of untouchability. Teja Singh Samundari presided over the session. The report says:
Sardar Dalip Singh, the Secretary of Divan, while introducing the purpose of the divan said that even now Guru Gobind Singh’s baptised Sikhs who are called Ramdasia, Mazhbis and Chuhras, are thrown out of langars (community kitchen) and their Prasad is not accepted in the gurdwaras. That’s why today’s divan is organised to find out remedy of this malaise....
Later on Bhai Mehtab Singh ‘Bir’ lamented how due to our indifference hundreds of our so-called untouchable brothers are being swallowed by other religions. He told that twenty-five Rahitiyas became Aryas in 1903 and after that 10,000 Rahitiyas joined the Arya Samaj.

The Khalsa of 2nd July 1923 reported ‘A Divan in Gurdaspur’ held on 27th June of the same year when thousands of Mazhbis had marched as led by Pastor Gordon Sahib to a big ground to listen to the Christian discourses. Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) had despatched its own band of missionaries to the site to counter the Christians. Interestingly one high caste Sikh, Sardar Khazan Singh was facilitating the Mazhbi Sikhs towards conversion. On observing the Christian enthusiasm, the SGPC monitors sent an SOS telegram to the headquarters. Accordingly Mehtab Singh, Teja Singh, Bhag Singh, Secreatry SGPC, and Bhai Labh Singh, Granthi Darbar Sahib swooped on the Christian conference. They forced time to speak from the organisers and promised the assembled Mazhbis to remove their objections. The next day Gurmukh Singh Musafir extracted time to address the gathering but the audience soon started leaving the venue. The report concludes with a lament:
Dear Khalsaji, this is the reason of Mazhbis’ moving to Christianity. The untouchability that has drowned Hinduism for such a result and you also don’t allow your brothers to touch your wells. Let us learn a lesson and not allow them to be devoured by these vultures…If you want freedom for yourself, free the others.

The Sikhs by that time got so lost in the struggle to liberate gurdwaras that the agenda to liberating the minds from brahminical attitudes was set aside. Moreover, the minds were not ready to accept social equality in reality, otherwise who would work for them for free. No wonder, the helpless situation on this count made Bhai Pratap Singh, the Head Granthi of Drabar Sahib (Golden Temple) to write a treatise on the issue. Besides looking into the theological and practical high points against untouchability in the Sikh tradition, Giani summarises the efforts of SGPC for the removal of untouchability between 1921 and 1933.

What becomes clear is that the efforts to remove untouchability by the Sikh reformers were not just the result of inner calls. A number of factors resulting from objective conditions were making them think if they had to survive as respectable option for the much harangued Dalits. One of these factors was Dr Ambedkar’s powerful moves to see a dignified life for Dalits. In 1936, when Dr Ambedkar was trying to see the religious alternative for Dalits of India in Sikhism, the Akali papers became more sensitive to the issue. Sardar Amar Singh, Secretary, Shri Guru Singh Sabha Shillong (Assam) wrote two articles on ‘The Need of Sikhi Preaching among the Untouchables and Some Suggestions for that’ in the Khalsa Sewak of 17th and 22nd March 1936. Master Mota Singh wrote a scathing article ‘Khalsa Brotherhood and Gurdwara Elections: Existence of Caste as the bigger cause of Community’s Death’. On the scenes of elections he wrote rather with anger:
There was vanity, jealousy and ego clashes all around. Vote-seeking agents did not have anything to sell except the commodity of caste. Caste names as Saini, Jutt, Rore(for Aroras), Tarkhan (carpenter), Chamar etc were being used quite derogatorily. How can you expect a social and community reform from Shrimoni Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee whose recruitment is on the caste lines?

In the editorial of ‘Khalsa Sewak’ of 7th March 1936, it is mentioned that it is known that Dr. Baba Sahib Ambedkar had been writing letters to SGPC but the Committee was not replying with any satisfaction. It wrote with sarcasm that “With all this the Sikhs are so indifferent that they would not lag behind boasting of their reforms on paper, it is just a show, but in practice not a single step forward has been made.” The charge was not without substance. All the big talks were just being used for the vested interests of the powerful power brokers. The Khalsa Sewak reported in its 26 March 1936 edition that a conference was organised at village Bham in Gurdaspur district under the aegis of Baba Jeeon Singh Dal where SGPC members had reached and seventy people were baptised. Among several lectures against untouchability, Bhai Teja Singh Akarpuri also spoke forcefully. After the conference, a dalit boy was asked to serve a glass of milk to Teja Singh. He got very angry and said that “I have been insulted for being served milk in Chuhra’s glass.” The fellow retorted: “You say something and do something else.” Teja Singh immediately fled the scene.

The discussion in this section fairly highlights the gravity of the situation among Sikhs as for as the question of untouchability is concerned and even in the moderating twentieth century. It has been a structural malaise whether determined by economy or society; the power relations defined the relations of domination and subjugation. The command over resources had been so dear to the high castes and upper classes that they did not want to give any relaxation to the people at their mercy. Demoralising the Dalits by constant insults, humiliations and deprivation ensured almost free labour supply. The Sikh mind was not ready for the egalitarianism to act as an agent of change to thwart its own class interests. So, in the face of mounting pressures in the first half of the twentieth century, half-hearted measures at the level of rhetoric were shown to be taken but in reality the situation remained as grim for Dalits as it was in the nineteenth century.

As ‘caste’ and its resultant inhuman practice ‘untouchability’ have been the cardinal principle of Brahmanical ideology, and the central pillar of social order any individual, organisation or ideology, questioning it was always seen as enemy and all efforts were made to finish the challenge. Barstow put it pithily:
Hinduism, to its wonderfully assimilative character, had thus reabsorbed a good part of Sikhism, as it had absorbed Buddhism before it, notwithstanding that much of these religions is opposed to caste and the supremacy of the Brahmans.

Bhagat Lakshman Singh (1863-1944), a Sikh scholar and intellectual, who was the newly convert to Sikhism believed that the Sikh creed was ‘Hinduised’ after the establishment of Sikh rule. The high caste Hindus had made advances for reconciliation with the new power and a compromise was effected by which the Sikhs abandoned their ‘revolutionary programme’. Sikhism began to lose its distinct identity. He especially talks of the Brahmans’ ‘peculiar aptitude for adapting themselves to changed conditions’. In the days of Buddhism they had become its Bhikshus (Buddhist monks) only to leave when Buddhism declined.
In more recent times in our own province, when political power passed into the hands of the Sikhs, they did not find it difficult to discard their temples and idols, their yagyopavit and other paraphernalia, wore Keshas [uncut hair] and dastars (turbans) and became custodians of Sikh places of worship and interpreters of Sikh scriptures.

Khushwant Singh is also objective on this central question:
Sikhism did not succeed in breaking the caste system.... The untouchable converted to Sikhism remained an outcaste for purposes of matrimonial alliances... and Sikhs of higher castes refused to eat with untouchable Sikhs and in villages separate wells were provided for them.
Within a hundred years of Guru Gobind Singh’s death, ritual in Sikh gurdwaras was almost like that in Hindu temples, and more often than not was presided over by priests who were usually Hindu rather than Sikh. Sikhs began to wear caste marks; Sikh weddings and funerals followed Hindu patterns; ashes of the dead were carried to the Ganges and offerings were made to ancestors.

The dalit voices are more clear and vociferous about ‘caste’ and ‘untouchability’ in Sikhism. Pandit Bakshi Ram who was born in a Balmiki family towards the close of the 19th century recalls in his autobiography how untouchability was rampant and how because of this the dalits could neither seek education nor were acceptable for a public service. It was only on his father’s approaching the Lahore court that schools were opened for dalits in 1905. He narrates two incidents from his village how the dalit Sikhs were treated by the dominant Jatt Sikhs. Once, a Rahitia (dalit Sikh) boy on drawing water from the school well was beaten up by the Jatt boys. Another time, when the Rahitia marriage party used the village pond for cleaning their backs in the morning they were thoroughly beaten up by the Jatts. “Untouchability has become deep-rooted in the Jatt-dominated villages. Isn’t practicing caste and untouchability against gurmat (Gurus’ message)? In fact, the Guru says “Khalsa is my image as I reside in the Khalsa”. Saying that how after Independence the Jatts have come to completely control the politics and economy in Punjab and oppose the dalits’ demands he argues:
If Jatt Sikhs demand higher prices for their produce don’t the labourers have right to demand higher wages? And if the latter struggle for their right the former boycott them. Isn’t it a height of injustice? If Akalis have their morchas (pickets) for their demands why can’t dalits exercise their right to raise their demands?

Balbir Madhopuri “gives a graphic account of the situation of the Dalit community living on the periphery of the village called ‘Chamarali’ vis-à-vis the interaction with the upper caste ‘Jatt’ community. The scene of the distribution of ‘Prashad’ in the Gurdwara made a mockery of all the subtle teachings and the tall claims of the practice of equality among the Sikhs in a Punjab village. The author has exactly reproduced the piercing degrading remarks laced with un-uttered abuses hurled at the low caste children by the Sikh priest.”

Prem Gorkhi, an eminent Punjabi short-story writer, who graduated from a day-labourer to peon to a ‘respectable journalist’, has bitter experiences. He says:
I have seen that if Punjabi writers are intimate friends they also carry deep casteist ideas within... I have close relations from high to the low...they respect as well...I go to everyone’s house, eat and sleep there...but over taking sides on any vital issue, the cobra within would spread its fangs.... There is no drastic change in the caste situation from what it was a hundred year ago...only the ways of untouchability have changed. Today if you eat in the same plate, you also kill the same person—and whom you call dalit today is not a century-old thoughtless, egoless, without identity. He has reached a stage to decide for himself what is of good to him.

Gurnam Aqida, Punjabi writer, is forthright about the hegemony of Jatts though he says it with pun:
Jatts control the organisations and institutions which decide about the fate of society. They dominate the bureaucracy. They have replaced the traditional minstrels, the Mirasis, in the field of singing; the traditional thieves, the Sahnsis; the Jatts have replaced even the famous woman brigand Phoolan Devi in pillages. The Jatts are responsible for dalitism in villages, they are the police officers, professors and principles and even the ruling politicians. So much so, that a crime committed by them becomes an entertainment.

Hazara Ram Bodhi, former General Secretary of Punjab Unit of Republican Party of India and editor of ‘Bhim Patrika’, says
Caste discrimination in Punjab is of dangerous nature. While in other provinces, dalits face physical torture but here torment is psychological. A normal person is reduced to a pigmy because of caste. Psychological oppression is unbearable.... ‘Caste’ is so important in Sikhism that there are caste-based gurdwaras. Nihangs are different, Ravidasias, Mazhbis and Julaha (weavers) Sikhs are different; the question of inter-marriages in Sikhism does not arise. The minds are full of differences. Even when the sapling of Sikhi [Sikh religion] was watered by dalit perspiration, they had to carry their own utensils to the gurdwara langar earlier. And if by mistake a dalit would eat in gurdwara utensils, they were purified in fire. Now it is over. But in several gurdwaras dalits cannot cook.

III
If Sikhism, which was the finest religious force and movement with ideas of emancipation for the downtrodden especially for the outcaste untouchables after Buddhism, was failing in its mission what alternative courses were open to dalits of Punjab? Finding solutions within the religious paradigm, one course that was tried with great success was the Ad Dharam movement in 1920s. Asserting that dalits and adivasis were the original inhabitants of the subcontinent, it drew its inspiration from Saint Valmiki, Ravidas, Kabir and Namdev. The movement aimed at securing a respectable place for dalits through cultural transformation, spiritual regeneration and political assertion, rather than seeking patronage from above. Its founder, Mangoo Ram Mugowalia’s appeal that the Dalits were the real inhabitants of this land made an enormous psychological impact on the untouchables of Punjab. The appeal inspired them to come out of their slumber and fight for their freedom and liberty. It laid stress on distinct Dalit identity independent of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and Christians. Within a short time it became a Dalit mass struggle for their separate Dalit identity. In the 1931 Census, 418,789 dalits recorded themselves as Ad Dharmis. Though after the Independence it slowly petered down but its success lies in the fact that those who continued identifying themselves as Ad Dharmis have made far greater progress in all fields as compared to those dalits who continued following the established religions including Sikhism. The non-religious course open to the emancipation was a socialist revolution. The communists had a few successful movements in Punjab since 1920s but never addressed the dalit question explicitly. The only exception happens to be young revolutionary Bhagat Singh who wrote a lengthy article “Achhut da Sawal” [The Question of Untouchability] in 1928 when he was 20 years’ old. Pointing out at the current competition between different religions to pull the untouchable in their respective folds for just political ends and vested interests, he gives a clarion call to dalits to unite:
We clearly say! ‘Rise’. O real servants and brothers- otherwise called untouchable, Rise. See, your history. You were the real army of Guru Gobind Singh. Shivaji became unforgotten because of you. Your sacrifices are written in golden letters... You stand on your feet by organising yourself and challenge the entire social set-up. Then see, who would deny your rights. Don’t become others’ fodder and don’t look up to others... You are the root of the country, the real power. Rise! O sleeping lions; start rebellion or social revolution.

But we hardly see Bhagat Singh’s approach followed after him. Assuming that the end of class rule would automatically resolve the cultural issues, the communists failed to see the significance and relevance of caste and untouchability. Even the best dalit poets and activists in the Naxalite movements had to undergo the casteist insults as we found in the pages above.

It is beyond doubt that Sikhism emerged as an emancipator for the lowest of the low. Nanak, the first Guru, was clear on this as he says:
Neechan andar neech jati, Neechi hun ati neech
Nanak tin ke sang sath, Vadian siyon kya rees
Jithe neech sanmalian, Tithe nadr teri bakhshish
(I am the lowest of the low castes; low, absolutely low;
I am with the lowest in companionship, not with the so-called high.
Blessing of god is where the lowly are cared for.)

The same spirit was maintained by his successors and we have seen above how dalits came to play an important role in Guru Gobind Singh’s battles and throughout the eighteenth century till they came to be once again subjugated and excluded economically, socially, politically and even religiously in the nineteenth century. Sikh religion carried a great promise and succeeded in igniting dalits’ imaginations and aspirations in practice but with the rise of Jatts as political and economic power, the powerful emancipatory message of the gurus have come to be drowned, and it looks, beyond recovery as far as dalits are concerned. What dalits of Punjab gained in religion, socially lost it in the long run because of denial of their participation in the economic power by the dominant castes. But despite this setback with diminishing returns in the last hundred-fifty years, the Sikh dalits have not ceased to entertain hope in the religion. As slowly they improve their life conditions they are ready to reclaim their lost past, the past when they enjoyed social equality and dignified space in the religious institutions. This aspiration is best voiced by Naranjan Arifi, the dalit Sikh historian:
Only those people can construct their histories who remember their history. In other words, those who forget their history cannot create history. It is rightly said; if you want to kill a people destroy their history. This is what has been done to Ranghretas… The two-volume work is intended to raise the psychological strength and self-respect among all the inheritors of Sikhism.

(Based on a Draft Paper presented at University of Pennsylvania at the Conference on Dalit Challenges toAcademic Knowledge: The Great Paradoxes)

Of Babas and Deras

2009-05-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

The phenomenon of Deras, in centerstage following the Vienna killings, is fascinating for the space occupied by these in the socio-cultural and religious milieu. Eminent sociologist Surinder S Jodhka in this piece edited from a longer article in the Seminar writes on the peculiar institution of Babas and Deras in Punjab

The satsang hall at village Ballan near Jalandhar, the headquarter of Dera Sachkhand

Babas, sants, gurus, peers and their deras have been an important part of the religious landscape of Punjab for a long time. As institutions of popular or folk religion outside the more organized structures such as mosques and temples, they represented the enchanted universe of pre-modern religiosity. It was perhaps through these rather loose and open structures of faith traditions that the Sikh Gurus were able to communicate their message to the wider society of the region. The inherent plurality of Sikh tradition, and of the times, is clearly reflected in the holy Granth compiled by the Sikh Gurus.

The religious geography of Punjab has seen many changes over the last century. It saw the emergence of new institutions of religious authority and crystallization and construction of newer boundaries across communities. The partition of Punjab in 1947 and its reorganization into a Sikh majority state in 1966 further sharpened the sense of difference, or even antagonism, across communities. However, notwithstanding this sharpening of religious and political identities, or well worked out academic formulations in terms of epistemic shifts, deras and babas have continued to survive and, some would venture to say, thrive in Punjab. Though many deras are old, not all of them are ancient. Newer deras and babas keep emerging even today.

There are considerable differences of form and substance among the different deras. A large majority of deras are simply Sikh gurdwaras being run by an individual baba/sant or have been built in memory of a baba/sant and run by his descendents and/or followers. Many of these deras adhere to the conventions of Sikh preaching as they have evolved over the years. The SGPC recognizes them as gurdwaras without any hesitation. Some of the prominent Sikh personalities of the recent past have come from these deras. Bhindranwale, who became a symbol of Sikh militancy during the 1980s, came from one such dera. Similarly Bibi Jagir Kaur, who was previously president of SGPC, heads a dera of her own.

In the second category would be those deras that continue to practice Sikhism but do not follow the model evolved by the SGPC in its entirety. They are closer to what has been called Sanatan Sikhism by historians of Sikh religion. A third category of deras would be those where the institution of a living Guru is still practised. Though invariably locating their origin in Sikh history, they can be described as having evolved into separate sects. These include the deras of the Namdhari Sikhs and Nirankaris. Some Dalit Sikhs also have separate deras of their own where centrality is given to the Guru Granth. For example, though Ravidasi Dalits are listed as Sikhs, they have their own separate deras. Ad-Dharmis and Ravidasis worship Guru Granth because it contains the writings of Ravidas. Finally, there are also deras which have nothing to do with Sikhism. These include Sufi shrines, many of which are managed by local Sikhs and/or Hindus. Similarly, some of the deras closely resemble Hindu temples and have Hindu gurus and managers running them.

Why do people go to the dera? Without undermining the spiritual value that a visit to a dera has for a devotee, some of the more mundane reasons too are by no means insignificant. The most frequently stated reason for going to the dera is the fact that it fulfils one’s mannat, literally meaning a wish or desire. ‘If you have pura vishwash (complete faith and trust), your wish will certainly be fulfilled.’ The most important of these mannats is the desire to have a male child. The patriarchal ethos of agrarian Punjab not only helps prenatal sex determination clinics to flourish, but also seems to sustain the babas and deras.

An equally important reason is the code of conduct that the gurus at deras insist upon for their followers, the most attractive of these being the insistence on giving up consumption of liquor and other drugs.6 It is invariably the women of the house who insist on visiting the dera and given the spiritual sanctity of the act, they manage to take their husbands and other male members of the family along. However, once they are sufficiently motivated, the men are encouraged to take naam from the guru. Taking of naam would require a pledge from the devotee to a life of discipline, which may include giving up consumption of alcohol and, in some cases, even caste identity. Incidentally, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest that the growing popularity of such babas has made any difference to the alcohol and drug culture of rural Punjab.

Apart from the mythic value and the personal charismatic appeal of the babas, the deras also offer a sense of security to their followers, a personal touch, something completely missing in the mainstream gurdwaras or temples where one feels anonymous, a part of the crowd. As Professor Jagroop Singh, a scholar who has been working on deras, mentioned: ‘Deras give their followers a sense of security and belonging. Once you are inside the dera you feel like you belong to the community. Somehow they feel that the dera is a secure space. It belongs to everyone. No one will bother us here. This is particularly important in the context of growing insecurity all around.’7

Deras are invariably non-sectarian in nature. Even when they have acquired the status of a sect, they do not insist on being part of an exclusive normative system for the adherents. Dera identity has traditionally been more like an ‘add-on’ identity. One continues to be a Sikh or a Hindu or a Muslim and still gets blessings or naam from the guru or the pir at the dera. Not only would a typical devotee of a dera continue to visit the more ‘mainstream’ shrines of their respective faith systems, s/he would invariably visit more than one dera and could in fact have multiple gurus.

Notwithstanding the spiritual self-image and identity of the babas and their deras, they are not free from more mundane concerns, such as land, money and power. Some of the deras own substantial amounts of land. One of the deras I visited in a village called Dhianpur in Gurdaspur district owned nearly 600 acres of land, the entire land of the village. Local cultivators were all tenants of the dera. Another dera in the same district reportedly owned nearly 4000 acres of land. One of the residents there said, ‘This dera is like a mini empire. All the land that you can see from here belongs to the dera. Land was given to us first by some Mughal rulers and later by Maharaja Ranjit Singh.’ Bigger deras such as the Radhasoamis and Sacha Sauda would have even more land. The land ceiling laws do not apply on dera lands.8 The Radhasoami Dera actually has a land acquisition officer. And given their spread across the country, these assets are indeed substantial.

Apart from the fixed assets, deras also get regular income in the form of offerings and contributions from visitors. ‘Once a dera acquires a name, money comes without much effort. Though the followers are invariably poor, the deras are mostly rich’, reported Professor Sohal, a historian at the Guru Nanak Dev University. Even a relatively unknown dera could attract substantial donations. Devinder Kaur, a student of political science at the Guru Nanak Dev University who is writing her dissertation on one such dera of a sufi pir called Dera Baba Shekh Phatta, estimated that the daily remuneration of the dera is around one lakh rupees. The dera is being managed by a group of local entrepreneurs who pay an annual sum of Rs 80 lakh to the Wakf Board as contract money. The right to manage the dera is auctioned every year by the Wakf Board and the highest bidder gets the contract.

Given their material resources and persuasive power, deras have begun to influence the political process in the state as well. Bhupinder Singh Thakur, another scholar working on the deras in Gurdaspur district reported that, ‘Though most of them do not openly support any political party, they indeed convey their preferences to their followers.’ It has become almost mandatory for the political elite of the state to visit prominent deras at regular intervals and seek ‘blessings’ from the babas. This obviously gives the babas a sense of power and influence.

It is this growing influence of the babas that worries the mainstream Sikh leadership which identifies with the SGPC.

The rise of the Singh Sabha movement during the late nineteenth century and the gurdwara reform movement in the 1920s marked an important turning point in the religious history of Sikhs and contemporary Punjab. The formation of SGPC not only brought the historic gurdwaras of the region under the control of one body, it also codified what it meant to be a Sikh. In his well-known, though controversial book, The Construction of Religious Boundaries, Harjot Oberoi describes this as an epistemic shift.9

The new Sikh elite that emerged under colonial patronage transformed a rather loose faith tradition into a well-structured religious system and rewrote the social grammar of Sikhism. The peasants and common people in Punjab practised an ‘inherently contaminated and plural’ way of life which was undermined and a new identity emerged where the Sikhs began to see themselves as a religious community endowed with their specific history, sign, space and tradition. Through different sets of activities, this elite succeeded in injecting a new definition into ‘the everyday life of the faithful.’

Oberoi’s book was widely criticised for presenting an exaggerated view on the historical shift during the colonial period. Some took it as an insult to the faith and Sikh sensibilities and criticized Oberoi for being anti-Sikh.

How does one look at the contemporary reality of popular religiosity in Punjab in the context of the rather impressionistic ethnography of the babas and the deras that I have presented above? Does one see it as a reality that always existed? Were the historians wrong in their formulation about the change in religious geography of Punjab during the colonial period? Did the pluralistic traditions disappear or even decline substantially? Or should we look at the current popularity of the babas and deras as reflecting a resurgence of popular religiosity in post-modern times, where deras become attractive and fashionable in a context where community life is fast disintegrating? Should we look at deras as open and casteless spaces where Dalits and the marginalized peasantry experience a sense of security and relief, away from the hostile realities of caste violence and agrarian crisis?

The secular institutions and social movements that once articulated the discontent and aspirations of the marginals have simply disappeared from the soil of Punjab. The civil society of Punjab has still not come out of the deleterious effects of the Khalistan movement of the 1980s and the state’s violent response to it. There are virtually no civil society organizations or NGOs active anywhere in Punjab! It is possible that some or all of these processes have been in operation to produce the current state of affairs.

In the absence of any serious engagement with ground realities, these formulations remain at best loose hypotheses. The attempt of the three Sikh organizations to reach out to the people of Punjab through cooperation of the sants, babas and the deras certainly reflects a growing recognition of the plural and complex religiosity of the common people of contemporary Punjab. However, without the backing of serious anthropological engagements with everyday religion and the rapidly changing cultural life, such activist posturing could end up becoming mere sloganeering and sermonizing.

'Every third male student in Punjab drug addict'

2009-05-22T03:29:00.000-07:00

Vibrancy of Punjab is virtually a myth according to an affidavit submitted in HC which reads that 66 per cent of the school-going students in the state consume gutkha or tobacco; every third male and every tenth female student has taken drugs on one pretext or the other and seven out of 10 college-going students abuse one or the other drug.

Harjit Singh, Secretary, Department of Social Security and Women & Child Development, Chandigarh submitted these details in a reply to a petition filed before the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

The secretary, on behalf of the Punjab Government, submitted that “the vibrancy of Punjab is virtually a myth.... many sell their blood to procure their daily doze of deadly drugs, even beg on the streets for money to continue their addiction... The entire Punjab is in the grip of drug hurricane which weakens the morale, physique and character of the youth. We are in the danger of losing the young generation. The vibrant Punjab that had ushered in the green revolution is today living in a dazed stupor as 67 per cent of its rural household has at least one drug addict.”