The historical and territorial space of Punjab has been politically and spatially unstable and changing, What Punjab means to different people also varies over time and context. Equally, what one holds dear about Punjab, the sense of ‘Punjabiyat/Punjabiness’, is both emotionally and culturally complex.
Punjabi Centuries highlights some critically important issues. Including India, Pakistan and the diaspora, the volume focuses on the crucial nineteenth and twentieth centuries, leading up to the present. The chapters explore the cultural, social and economic continuities and changes across this time.
Authored by scholars from India, UK, USA and Canada, the chapters study diverse issues:
- economic transformations;
- the politics of the Punjabi language;
- gender imaginations in Punjab and the construction of gender identities;
- diasporic journeys;
- cultural changes in music, literature and religion;
- religious and caste identities; and
- changes from the colonial period to the last three decades of the twentieth century, to our contemporary times.