The colonial occupation of Punjab in 1849 sounded the death knell of the sovereign kingdom of Punjab founded by Maharaja Ranjit Singh. After his death in 1839 in the absence of accepted mechanism of transfer of power, a universal situation in the East, the kingdom became highly vulnerable as a result of internecine wars, colonial machinations and ingress.

The bloody Anglo-Sikh Wars (Anglo-Punjab Wars in fact) eventually ended in the East India Company’s victory. Treacherous acts on the part of a segment of courtiers at Lahore Darbar led by Dogras made things less difficult for the Company. Hinting at the role of court intrigues, collaborators and quislings Shah Muhammad in his epic poem “Jang Hind Punjab” [The War between India and Punjab] laments; “The army eventually lost the war it had won due to the absence of the regime [Shah Muhammada ik sarkar bajhon, faujan unt nu jitt ke haarian ne]”.

The British colonialists did two things which had far-reaching repercussions. Firstly, they decided against their previous general policy followed elsewhere in India to introduce a foreign language, Urdu, they and their clerical staff [Munshi class] from India were familiar with, as a vernacular. Punjabi, the native language,was rejected due to political concern, administrative convenience and Hindustani biases. A British officer wrote it would be a political error to introduce Punjabi. Dr. G.W. Leitner, a great linguist and educationist, thought it was “convenience… and Hindustani biases” that prevented the official use of Punjabi. Secondly, they slowly and surely started using religious diversity as a ’tedious argument of insidious intent’ to divide the people along communal lines which served the purpose of preempting the emergence of any kind of united front against the occupation. Use of two or three scripts for writing in the Punjabi further alienated diverse communities from one another.

Communalism had its roots in the past but was further nurtured and strengthened by the Raj as a strategic political tool to a point that it became a stumbling block in the way of unity among Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. The Second World War enfeebled Britain and loosened its grip on the colonies. Irreconcilable differences among diverse communities in the post-war world led to the Partition of India which for all intent and purpose was division of Punjab. Under the shadow of utter uncertainty intensified by colonial administration’s dereliction of its duty to protect the life and property of the subjugated, communal riots precipitated the biggest migration in human history. In a span of a few months more than 15 million people crossed borders of two states and more than one million got slaughtered. The estimate is that from 80,000 to 100,000 women of all ages got raped.

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Scholars are still grappling as to how to describe this apocalypse. It’s been described as a massacre, slaughter, holocaust and ethnic cleansing. Words fail us in our attempt to portray this gargantuan human tragedy. In the immediate aftermath of the Partition the situation was ghoulish to say the least as it presented a scene of all killing all. A verse of inimitably defiant poet Ustad Daman that he recited to a gathering of Indian Punjabis in 1950s is worth quoting: “The bloodshot eyes tell the story; you cried and we cried too”.

The emergence of India and Pakistan as two sovereign states gave boost to nationalism which is quintessentially of revivalist nature. What else could be expected after such an annihilation of ancient culture and total loss of humanity? The purported nationalist needs further reinforced the communal divide. The Sikh minority in India was discreetly coerced and cajoled to ‘Sanskritise’ its Punjabi in the name of mainstream nationalism. Different script [Gurmukhi] along with ‘Sanskritisation’ of language made it almost an alien language for the West Punjabis.

In Pakistan, dominant Punjabis suffering from false consciousness rejected their mother language in the interest of so-called national unity. Not only that, they loaded Punjabi language with Persian and Arabic loan words/ vocabulary under state patronage. Such bastardized Punjabi written in Persio-Arabic script became an alien territory for East Punjabis. A large segment of Sikh scholars undermined Punjabi literature, language and culture consciously and unconsciously by portraying them as exclusively Sikh assets and heritage. Sikh identity was projected as equivalent to Punjabi identity. Against this, owning vague Pakistani identity at the cost of historically evolved Punjabi identity was flaunted an apogee of patriotism by Punjabis in Pakistan. ‘Punjabihood’ was declared jetsam and flotsam of non-Muslim past which was thought to be militating against the spirit of Muslim nationalism, the mainstay of the Pakistani state.