Review of The Lost Heer by Harleen Singh

The Hindu

10 hours ago

There are as many Punjabs as there are its five rivers and their tributaries that course through its rich alluvial plains that have given it its name and fame. The very earth,mitti,or soil, brings with it a richness in the poetry of a Bulleh Shah, who spoke of the churning of the many kingdoms that it nurtured within its fold. Or the tragic refrains of Waris Shah's Heer Ranjha, the ill-fated lovers who merged their destinies with the River Sutlej that runs like a forked tongue on the eastern flanks of the Punjab.
Every decade as the waters course down the rivers that merge with the mighty Indus on the west, a thousand Heers are born again. The same rivers that divided the Punjab during Partition continue to provoke the churning that Bulleh Shah predicted. They awaken a longing for the mythical land that some people like to describe as the Punjabiyat, an exclusive tract belonging to its people.
Resisting the invader
In Harleen Singh's epic re-telling,The Lost Heer: Women in Colonial Punjab, there are a myriad echoes of a storied past that situates the Punjab within the larger frame of the subcontinent's history. An archivist historian born in Delhi but living now in Toronto, Canada, Singh finds his focus in the lives of women in colonial Punjab.
These are the women, mothers of famous sons who ruled and fought over royal fortresses and strongholds that defined the Punjab; their wives, consorts, courtesans and the daughters, who survived what Singh depicts as a stridently patriarchal society; and their hangers-on who made such lives possible. There are many references to the widows emerging from behind their veils sword in hand to exhort their subjects to resist the invader.
There are also equally fascinating portrayals of the English women who arrived there either as the wives of missionaries, or of the 'memsahibs' married to the newly installed administrocacy, if one may coin a word, who arrived often from Bengal, the seat of power. They came bearing the imperial gaze of Empress Victoria, stamped on gold coins that became the status quo of those who could wear it round their necks as jewellery. They introduced their rule books of measurements of land and tenure, of systems of tax collection, with their babus, policemen and cantonments for the soldiers required to keep the whole show on the road.
There's a marvellous sequence that describes the arrival of the first railway engine into Lahore; never mind that this is a set piece routinely evoked along with the telegraph and signalling network, to mark the advent of progress within the colonial era.
The printing press
While the missionary women brought the Bible and founded orphanages for girls, they also brought with them a printing press that would translate the sacred texts of the Sikhs and Muslims using an English script. Singh is most adept at describing how the young women in the Punjab were introduced to reading and writing almost by default, as the more progressive husbands wanted to have partners who could compete with their English counterparts in society. Singh also mentions how many different languages were on offer in those times — Farsi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gurmukhi and Braj.
Singh's thesis is, however, much more complex than these examples might suggest. It's also an oft-trodden path with different outcomes being advanced to explain what happened during the year of the Great Uprising in 1857; the subsequent betrayals and re-alignments of those who took part or resisted the call to action, depending on who is telling the story.
Were the Sikhs willing pawns used to quell the tide that shook the Raj? Would they pay for it during the later tragedies of Jallianwala Bagh and Partition when they lost their ancestral lands and lives?
Partition's shadow
The mass exchange of citizens from either side has been described as the largest population exchange of people — 11 million by some estimates and that's not counting the loss of lives and property. Do we add the loss of pride,izzat, self-respect that defines what it means to be a native of undivided Punjab?
Yet for all that, it's not a victim narrative. That's what makes it so arresting. One would like to imagine him as a carpet weaver who has created a fabulous carpet with different motifs knotted into the weft of our colonial past. Like the gardens of paradise that are evoked by the motifs used by the carpet weavers of Central Asia and Persia, the colours and symbols are the signifiers.
The primary colours here are of the three main communities, Sikh, Muslim, Hindu. With every chapter, he unravels a knot that has at its centre a woman's history that is hidden within the archives.
To some of us, it's the chapter that describes how with the rising demand for freedom there arose several new interpretations to traditional beliefs. Within the Brahmo movement that found more adherents in Bengal, or the Arya Samaj of Dayanand Saraswati we are introduced to figures such as Mai Bhagwati that speak to a universal mind. Reading about the Kaka movement amongst Sikh women who wanted equal representation with the warrior men of their community, we realise how passionate such movements tended to be.
Like the grains of wheat that the Punjab farmers continue to seed in times of drought, of war, or adversity, Singh's collection of fragments torn from the pages of history remind us that there is always love. Heer lives even without her Ranjha.
The reviewer is a critic and cultural commentator.