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Late Lateef:
Look Who Now Also Loves Punjab

A Book Review by NAVTEJ SINGH SARNA

 

 

 

Late Lateef’: an indian-ism used to describe one who is always late, or one who arrives on the scene only when it is of  benefit for him to do so, with no personal price to pay. [Not to be confused with Mohammed Latif, the erstwhile chronicler of Punjab.]



Pakistanis have been busy re-writing the history of their new 66-year old country, mostly by claiming that the land has always been Muslim and no other cultures or religions have had much to contribute to it anytime in history.

The Indians are now getting into the act in a big way, doing the same thing: re-writing the history of their new 66-year old country and reclaiming the land for a fictional ‘hindutva‘.

The latest move is to hire a mercenary, Rajmohan Gandhi -- yes, the grandson of the Hindu demi-god, Mohandas Gandhi -- to re-write the history of Punjab. And, guess what! He’s discovered a new love that Hindus have for Punjab -- the same Hindus who have disowned Punjabi and Punjab consistently, dishonestly  and maliciously throughout the nascent history of the country.

The following is a review of the book recently done by Navtej Singh Sarna:  



Nagged by childhood memories of a Delhi -- [at the time, already almost totally Punjabi in its indigenous population] -- over­run by a tsunami of refugees from West Punjab after the Partition of Punjab in 1947, and burdened by a grandfather’s anti-Partition legacy, Rajmohan Gandhi sets out to write an all-­inclusive history of undivided Punjab, the kind of which he claims has not been written since a work by Latif in 1899.

The intention is to go beyond the well-documented Sikh story of Punjab and bring Punjabi Muslims and Hindus within his sweep, all the while bowing to the famed Punjabi spirit imbued with commonalities of language and culture.

The construct is commendable, if somewhat forced: after all, no serious Sikh history could have been [or has been] of the Sikhs alone, given Punjab’s quilted patchwork of Sikhism, Islam and Hinduism.

Punjabiyat, along with Sufi and Bhakti strains, is deeply integrated into Sikh history. Also, it would have to be a very post-colonial audience to whom the commonalities in today’s two Punjabs have to be explained.

When he writes that “most Pakistanis today do not know that towns like Lahore, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad and Multan in Pakistani Punjab had significant Hindu and Sikh populations before 1947”, and that most Indians are unaware that a larger number of Muslims lived in Amritsar, Jalandhar and so on, he clearly has the great-grandchildren of Midnight in mind. ["Towns"?]

That said, Rajmohan examines the major issues of Punjab’s history with obvious sincerity: the secret of Sikh success over a century; the plus and minus of British rule; the inevitability or otherwise of Partition.

After a competent, though cramped, first chapter that covers all of Punjab’s pre-Mughal history, the coming of Babar, the peaking of the Mughal empire and the Ten Sikh Gurus, Rajmohan presents an interesting account of eighteenth century Punjab: the Mughal Empire was in its waning years; and the Sikhs, first under Banda Singh Bahadar and then under the Sikh chieftains, gathered influence and strength.

Treating the saddle as their home, the Sikhs defied Mughal power and harassed the booty-laden, departing caravans of Nadir Shah and Abdali. There are interesting meanderings in the accounts on Bulley Shah and Waris Shah, two poets who symbolise the romantic spirit of Punjab, as well as in the story of a local chieftain, Adina Beg Khan, who navigated adroitly between the Sikhs, Afghans, the weak Mughal power and the ambitious Marathas to briefly fill the power vacuum in Punjab, against the general failure of the Punjabi Muslim majority to show greater ambition.   

Fired by a strong religious-political impetus and a desire to bring a balance to the land after a prolonged period of severe persecution, the Sikhs emerged as the dominant power under Ranjit Singh.

Rajmohan -- [not one prone to do original research] -- relies broadly on earlier work by Khushwant Singh and others as well as accounts of Britishers like Alexander Burnes and Emily Eden to document the phenomenal rise of this  “unlettered, one-eyed” -- [words often used tauntingly and enviously by Hindu ‘retellers’ of history] - braveheart and the collapse of the mighty Sikh empire after his death, hastened by the treason of the Hindu Dogras, internecine intrigue and duplicitous British ambition.

Rajmohan is overly generous, tempted -- [in typical Gandhi tradition] no doubt by the easy material available in hero-worshipping biographies, in the space he affords to the Britishers who ruled post-annexation Punjab -- Dalhousie, the Lawrence brothers and John Nicholson. Consequently, the narrative wanders, gathering unnecessary girth, to the lives and activities of these men beyond Punjab.

The more historically relevant and tragic story of Punjab’s last boy-Emperor, the exiled Duleep Singh, receives only a brief reference.

In contrast, Rajmohan elaborates on post-annexation British policy -- administrative reforms, military recruitment into communal regiments, establishment of the canal colonies, the divide-and-rule application to provincial politics, the role of Christian missionaries and the emergence of the Arya Samaj and the renaissance brought by the Singh Sabha.

Inevitably, the history of 20th century Punjab overlaps that of the freedom struggle: the Satyagraha and Akali movement, Jallianwala Bagh, the Ghadr revolutionaries, the phenomenon of Bhagat Singh, all reflect the strong anti-Raj feeling in Punjab.

Divisive forces too were at play: the rise of the Muslim League at the cost of the Unionists, the gathering call for Pakistan, the relative failure of the Punjab Congress to become a party of all communities.

The inevitability of Partition is questioned most pointedly by examining the rejection by Mountbatten and senior Congress leaders of Mohandas Gandhi’s last-minute plan to avoid it. British impatience to depart, coupled with the League-Congress failure to achieve a power-sharing agreement, hurtled Punjab to Partition, accompanied by unprecedented loot, ethnic cleansing and rape.

If Punjab had anything to salvage, it lay in the humanity shown by all communities in defending those of other faiths during the savage tempest, what the author correctly calls a most “under-reported story”.

Given the horrors of Partition, it is perhaps not so ironical that this history should be book-ended by two non-Punjabis: one, an emperor who meted out cruel persecution through his governors, and the other a vainglorious naval admiral whose impatient ambition hastened the coming of Punjab’s most tragic hour.


[Courtesy: Outlook. Edited for sikhchic.com]
October 20, 2013
 

Conversation about this article

1: Kaala (Punjab), October 22, 2013, 10:55 PM.

What is the reason for this new found love? They publicly and loudly abandoned the Punjabi language and culture, claiming Hindi to be their mother tongue. Is it the recent phenomenon in Bollywood where films depicting Punjabi songs and culture are an instant hit? Being a Punjabi has become real cool these days. I have seen people who have no connection to Punjab wearing karras and trying to get a Punjabi accent. Many are also suddenly claiming Punjabi and Sikh ancestry.

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Look Who Now Also Loves Punjab"









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