By Ritika Sharma
If there is one Indian state that has been amply documented in popular cinema and literature, though often misrepresented with myopic cliches, it is Punjab. Ask any Indian to paint a picture of the most popular northern state and you will get burly men, animated women, lush farms, earthy lifestyles with a penchant for feasting. Some may name Bhagat Singh and the horrors of Partition, whereas people with interest in history may name Ranjit Singh and his Sikh empire. But such anecdotes often tend to eclipse the great women of Punjab, the Heers who reflected valour and sacrifice with elan.
Recovering Punjab’s Forgotten Women
Popular portrayals often failed to depict the lives of the beloved Heers who were as revolutionary as their male counterparts but were tragically lost in the penumbral zone of stereotypes. Historian Harleen Singh has done a painstaking job to retrieve the ignored Heer for us and has presented women who lived lives on a canvas that spread beyond the two oft-used watersheds for Punjab—Ranjit Singh’s empire and India’s Partition. These women defied discrimination, stood for equality, celebrated womanhood and championed for a just world—without any recognition that their male contemporaries were bestowed with.
Another remarkable woman that this book presents to us is Flora Annie Steel, a Punjabi speaking memsahib from Kasur who spread Phulkari, the art of embroidery on bright coloured clothes, to the world. In 1888, she wrote an ethnographic study of Phulkari in the Indian Journal of Art that popularised the art in the West. She later started Mrs Steel School of Art in Kasur to produce local art with women.
Beyond Partition and Patriarchy
The book aims to offer narratives wherein one sees Punjabi women beyond the prism of wives, daughters or sisters upholding the valour of their men. There are both women of privilege like Ramabai Ranade—wife of the illustrious reformer Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade—as well as the tragic victim 17-year-old Khurshid Bibi, who was abducted during Partition and consequently unfit to return to her new homeland in Pakistan.
The book documents the lives of women who were not merely fighting battles for womanhood on the ground but also documenting the plight of women of colonial Punjab. For instance, an iconoclastic although anonymous work by a woman author in 1882 titled Seemantani Updesh did not even spare the gods who had apparently turned a blind eye to the plight of women. On the other hand, several restrictive customs that marriages enforce only on women were questioned and shunned, be it markers for married women while their husbands were alive or the practice of enforced widowhood for young brides who lost their husbands.
The book tells us that reformers among Punjabi women were not limited to Hindus and Sikh alone. When Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was visiting Gurdaspur, a group of daring purdanashin women led by Zainab Khatun wanted to bring to his attention the plight of women education in their community. They wanted an audience of the illustrated scholar who was a vociferous supporter of education among Muslims. However, she was not even allowed to address Sir Syed Khan directly and it was her husband who read her message to the guest:
“O Khuda, there was a time when Arab and Indian women stood with their men and contributed enthusiastically towards the upliftment of the community and the education of its people. Today, alas, we who are descendants of those great women, don’t even have appropriate words to express our gratitude to our guest.”
What followed was perhaps reflective of what happened to the Heers of the time. Sir Syed shunned their requests with the response that these were the men who needed to be educated first and that women had to contend with stories passed down to them from elderly women of the household.
Perhaps, precisely therefore, as the author remarks in the beginning itself, stories of Punjabi men who survived Partition had valour, politics, intrigue and anecdotes of great escape, but the tales of women centered on household affairs, the homes they missed, the suhag songs they sang and the Phulkari they wove. While we may not be aware of many a fearless Punjabi Heer and the myriad roles she donned, nevertheless her life was as fulfilling and as illuminating as those bright Phulkari designs that are unique to Punjab.
Ritika Sharma works at the Sushma Swaraj Institute of Foreign Service.
Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal and do not reflect the official position or policy of FinancialExpress.com. Reproducing this content without permission is prohibited.
The Lost Heer: Women in Colonial Punjab
Harleen Singh
Penguin Random House
Pp 544, Rs 1,299
