What was largesse for the toadies proved to be an impoverishment for the local poor as it denied them their historical rights enshrined in the tradition. Abadkaar (settlers) were mostly small and medium-sized landholders. The farmers and landowners who had the advantage of honed agricultural skills turned the Bar jungle into the most prosperous farmlands of the subcontinent. That’s the reason one witnessed, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mushroom growth of small market towns (Mandi) which handled the sale and distribution of massive agricultural produce.

The whole process of bringing the Bar region under cultivation had twofold effect. On the one hand it gave unprecedented boost to farming and agrarian output but on the other it unleashed profit-driven socioeconomic forces that began destroying the nature irretrievably. Forests were cut and burnt to ashes, causing incalculable environmental degradation which wasn’t immediately visible. Natural habitat of wildlife was destroyed causing gradual extinction of a host of species of birds and animals. The land stood denuded of its natural assets with the vanishing of ‘white lion’ of Damodar Das, ‘parrots and peacocks’ of Hafiz Barkhurdar and the agile ‘gazelle’ of Waris Shah. Traditional but secular and open indigenous culture was the collateral damage of this seemingly profitable ruination of the Bar, the heart of the Punjab, ancient and modern.

The settlers’ ignorance of the ancient culture of the Bar region lulled them into a false sense of superiority that made them look down upon the local people and society. Since a sizeable part of the Bar was a jungle, the newcomers pejoratively called the old inhabitants ‘Jaangli’ (people of the jungle), smugly forgetting that this region of Punjab was the birthplace of glorious Harappa civilisation in ancient times and in the modern era from the 10th century onwards, it produced the greatest legends, inimitable seers, unyielding freedom fighters and unmatchable poets. Paradoxically the settlers themselves would not conceive their historical being in the absence of Heer Ranjha, Sahiban Mirza, Baba Guru Nanak, Damodar Das, Dullah Bhatti, Hafiz Barkhurdar, Nijabat, Waris Shah, Ali Haidar and Ahmed Khan Kharal. The legends and the great characters came out of this ‘Jungle’ on to the stage of history. These ‘Jaanglis’ have been, in fact, more civilised that any other civilised group in the subcontinent as they are heirs to the ancient sophisticated urban Harappa civilisation.

The upside of this big demographic transformation can be seen in the gradual emergence of new socio-cultural and politico-economic patterns infused with fresh vitality as a result of intermingling of diverse groups from diverse areas of Punjab. The newly evolved linguistic expression for instance carries a rich blend of Lahndi, Majhi and Doabi dialects with a smattering of Multani/Seraiki vocabulary.

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Sustainability of newly introduced machine-based capitalist mode of production depended upon the people who were equipped with rational tools, a new kind of technical knowhow, mechanic skills and, above all, a conceptual framework based on the thinking that idealised the European way of life. The European way of life hinged on the premise that modern society wasn’t possible without political, economic, social and juridical institutions underpinned by rational and scientific knowledge. It was a great leap forward in the social evolution because all this developed as a result of the interplay of contradictory historical forces struggling to build a new emancipated world. But this vision of man and society born in freedom created conditions in the colonial context that forced the subjugated to live in utter unfreedom.

Colonialists in their ‘civilising mission’ to create a clone of European man created a self-hating slave in their colonies. European type of education introduced in the colonies with the objective of producing a modern yet servile mind proved to be an intellectual and spiritual disaster for the indigenous people. Punjab stands out as an egregious example that proves the point. According to Dr GW Leitner, the great linguist and scholar, Punjab was the most literate region with high female literacy rate in India when the East India Company occupied it in 1847 after three Anglo-Sikh wars. A few decades later when he published his famous report, ‘History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab’, the literacy rate had significantly gone down. The new schools established by the colonial administration imposed alien languages rejecting the people’s language as fraught with political consequences. An officer wrote that it would be a blunder to teach Punjabi in the schools as it would invariably invoke their sense of identity. Dismantling the old identity and creating a new one in the colonial mode was of crucial importance. The wheel came full circle when boys and girls from the classes created by colonial enterprise got educated in the new schools and colleges that rejected their language causing a disconnect not just with indigenous literary heritage but also with intellectual, spiritual and cultural traditions nurtured by the people of this ancient land. Break with the past through the rejection of their language triggered a process of alienation and self-loathing whose end is not in sight even today as this botoxed legacy is still peddled by the post-colonial state and its lackeys. Loss of language is in reality loss of human identity because hitherto language has proved to be an essential marker of any human group that is endowed with the power of articulation.