A Repository of the Histories of Punjab

This book is a collection of essays dealing with cultural aspects of the history of colonial and postcolonial Punjab. The contributors include both established and upcoming scholars located in different parts of the world. The volume talks about it being a repository of ‘histories of Punjab’, and each essay contains seeds for further research and writing. Anshu Malhotra, the editor of the volume, outlines on the first page itself that ‘the historical and territorial imaginary that is Punjab has been politically and spatially unstable and mutating, although from the early times, the region’s identity has remarkably been cast around its rivers and doabs’ (p. 1). She is cognizant of the trajectories of cultural evolution underway in the multiple provinces into which Punjab today finds itself politically divided, and by the Punjabi diaspora outside South Asia. However, the history of Punjab and Punjabis is so rich and convoluted that despite noble intentions, the entire range of cultural and social diversity of its historical formations is hard to be represented in volumes coming out of various post-Partition political units of the region. Thus, the increasing assertion of regions outside the five rivers and doabs, viz., Malwa and Puadh, in politics, culture and economics of Punjab is not fully reflected. The volume finds place for historical developments in the cultural life of various communities of Punjab cutting across location, class, caste, gender and other markers of identity. However, barring contributions by Purnima Dhavan and Yogesh Snehi, one has to point out that upper caste Hindu and Sikh communities of post-1966 Indian province of Punjab are the focus. Indeed, this is a reflection of the state of the field of Punjab studies, and the editor cannot be faulted. Within these confines, a commendable aspect of the volume is the highlight upon women and discourses around gender.