The literary tradition of contemporary Punjabi which has had its origins in the tenth century is presented by its exponents as a parade of intellectual wealth pointing to a sign of people’s irrepressible creative urge. Such an intellectual pride is not ill-founded. But when we look at the greats who laid the foundation of our literary tradition brick by brick, it becomes embarrassing to realize that no woman is found among them. It’s all male line-up. But why it’s so? That’s the question that needs to be tackled.

A quick look at the situation may lead us to question some of the myths popularized by well-meaning but ill-informed intellectuals. Some such myths are, (a) matriarchy ruled the roost in the ancient Punjab vestiges of which can still be seen in the presence of Goddesses in the Indian pantheon, (b) greater opportunities for upward social mobility through the change of hereditary profession because of less strict rules of caste hierarchy, (c) men’s tendency to consult their wives on important matters.

Alberuni, an Iranian polymath, arrived in the Punjab with Mahmud of Ghazni. Alberuni’s amazement at the practice of consulting wives by Punjab’s men is often quoted as an evidence of thinly disguised matriarchal norms, carry-over from the matriarchic past.

Let’s take these claims or assertions one by one. Presence of Goddesses in the Indian pantheon proves little as female presence can be seen in pantheons of all patriarchic societies across the world. The simple reason is that till recent times one couldn’t conceive life and its continuation without someone specially endowed with procreative function. It was a biological compulsion that created some space for female in the world of mythology. In mythologies female invariably plays second fiddle or denotes negativity. In Indian mythology like the Middle Eastern religious lore, it’s male that dominates. In the subcontinental pantheon ‘Tirmurti [Three forms/ the Trinity in Hinduism] rules supreme and it comprises Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. They all are male, rather indomitable males. They epitomize more of masculine fury and ferocity than virtues associated with female such as an urge to nurture life and compassion.

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The fury of Goddess Durga, if it comes to your mind, is in fact a veiled expression of wrath against the so-called divinely sanctioned male domination. So there is no solid historical evidence of existence of matriarchy in the ancient Punjab/ Indus Valley which can be taken as a subterranean source of strong and empowered female. If matriarchy was practiced at all in some form, Rig-Veda and early scriptures must have alluded to it but we find no such evidence there.

That upward social mobility was relatively greater in the ancient Punjab is supported by historical evidence found in the great epic Mahabharata and other religious treatises. One could find a farmer, a carpenter and a Pundit in a Punjabi family which for the pious coming from the East was abhorrent for outlandishly flouting the caste rules that dictated sticking to the profession(s) designated for the caste one was born in. But this no way proves that women were allowed to adopt the profession of their choice. They mostly remained weighed down by unending household chores with their dreams gone sour.

“She yearned for the partner when virgin but faced ordeal the moment she got married,” says Baba Farid about the traditional dilemma of woman in patriarchic family.

Alberuni’s observation that Punjabi men consult their wives on important matters looks well-founded as there were plausible material reasons for such an unusual phenomenon to the surprise of Arabs, Turks and Iranians who had rigid patriarchic family structures back home. One of the determining factors could be specific nature of economy and material production. A very large swathe of fertile flat land water by a number of all seasons rivers supported the large scale breeding of livestock and round the year farming. Livestock and agriculture being the mainstay of the economy needed more and more hands in order to flourish. Such a demand was met by women participation in the process of production.

“Here she comes after having done with grazing the lambs and spinning her bit of wool,” says Shah Hussain in sixteenth century.

Pointing to women’s contribution in the productive activities in the nineteenth century Khawaja Ghulm Farid writes in one of his lyrics: “They [peasant women] drive the herds of sheep, lambs and cows to graze in the wild.” So the process is uninterrupted. In textile sector women made a huge contribution with their spinning as we find innumerable allusions and references in the classical poetry from sixteenth to nineteenth century. Spinning wheel emerges as a recurring metaphor. So if man and wife are partners in the production process, they ill-afford not to have mutual accommodation in family matters and social life. Such a relationship born of material conditions makes the man and wife interdependent and thus helps reduce the gender segregation and inequality. Had Alberuni stayed longer in the Punjab, he surely would have discovered the secret of relatively progressive nature of relationship that existed between man and wife.

Even today due to specific social evolution in the Punjab, we witness that repression of woman in the Punjab is not as rampant as we witness in the interior Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa because of such historical factors and a process of rapid urbanization.

One can argue that woman played a major role in creating folk-literature especially folk-songs which express our cultural ethos. But folklore while being reflective of people’s sorrows and aspirations doesn’t represent conscious and holistic forward looking worldview of individual and society. It contains more of the given in view of the fact that being a collective asset it undergoes a process of unhindered addition and subtraction. The question needs a through debate as to why woman has been conspicuously absent from our literary stage from tenth to nineteenth century.

Quoting Pero Preman for instance, who composed quasi spiritual poetry in nineteenth century, proves little by way of historical evidence of woman’s participation in literary production. It’s only in twentieth century in the aftermath of colonialism that we encounter powerful female poets and writers such as Amrita Pritam, Ajit Kaur, Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Farkhanda Lodhi, Afzal Tauseef, Riffat, Nasreen Anjum Bhatti, Parveen Malik, Manjit Kaur and Dilshad Tiwana, to name a few.

Summing up one can say; on the one hand we need to study the nature of historical conditions that kept our women with creative potential on the fringes of literary world in our classical period and on the other how dynamics of colonialism facilitated women in their creative expression.— soofi01@hotmail.com