Call for Papers: Special issue on Imagining Punjab and the Punjabi Diaspora
A Special Issue of South Asian Diaspora will be published in 2014 on: ‘Imagining Punjab and the Punjabi Diaspora’
Guest Editor: Anjali Gera Roy
South Asian Diaspora invites contributions to this Special Issue that will foreground the region within diaspora studies through focusing on Punjab, a land-locked region divided between India and Pakistan in 1947. The special issue will explore the importance of the home village/town/city, language and culture rather than the nation for many Punjabis living in the diasporas as well as for those displaced by the 1947 Partition, and will contribute to broader debates on transnationalism, postnationalism, micronationalism, and
new identity narratives emerging in the twenty first century. Papers will focus on Punjab as an ethno-spatial complex, a social form and a type of consciousness, and will address the ways in which multiple imaginings of Punjab as a site of diasporic nostalgia and longing produce inclusive as well as exclusionary narratives of self, home and community. Drawing on historical and post-colonial understandings of the region across a wide range of locations and disciplines, the papers will explore the importance of Punjab, Punjabi language and Punjabi culture in diasporic imagination, memory, identity, and everyday practices. By investigating the meanings of Punjab and Punjabiyat in the past and the present, the special issue will contribute to understandings of postnational formations within a South Asian context.
All invited and contributed manuscripts to this special issue will be peer reviewed. For guidelines of how to prepare the manuscript, please visit the journal website: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rsad
Manuscripts for the Special Issue should be submitted no later than 31 March 2013. Submission of manuscripts through electronic mail (preferably as MS Word attachment) to Anjali Gera Roy (anjali@hss.iitkgp.ernet.in) is especially encouraged. Alternatively,
please submit three printed copies and an electronic version (MS Word format on a floppydisk or a CD) of the manuscript to:
Professor Anjali Gera Roy
Department of Humanities & Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur – 721 302
INDIA
Phone : +91 3222 283616 (O); +91 3222 283617 (R)
Fax : +91 3222 282270 (O)
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/cfp/rsadcfp.pdf
The Punjab: Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed by Ishtiaq Ahmed
Extract from The Punjab Bloodied Partitioned and Cleansed by Ishtiaq Ahmed, (Rupa & Co, 2011)
INTRODUCTION
(Pages xxxviii-xxxix)
A Sikh Plan to eradicate all Muslims from East Punjab They alleged that the Sikhs had a definite plan to eliminate Muslims from East Punjab and that the Hindu group, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), was behind many heinous bomb blasts and other assaults on Muslims. Notes on The Sikh Plan says:
‘The ultimate goal which the Sikhs had set before them seems to have been the establishment of Sikh rule in the Punjab. Their preparations to this end were aimed directly and exclusively against the Muslims. Whether the Hindus who formed the bigger minority in the Punjab, would ultimately have acquiesced in the fulfillment of Sikh ambitions at their expense, is doubtful; but for the time being they made common cause with the Sikhs. The activities and preparations of the two, therefore, run parallel to each other and even where active conspiracy between them is not evident, the fact that they regarded the Muslims as their common enemy created mutual disposition towards collaboration which virtually amounted to a conspiracy and let [sic] to concerted effort’ (1948: 1-2).
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, who represented Pakistan in the Steering Committee of the Partition Council set up by the colonial government, and was later prime minister of Pakistan (1955-56), alleged in his book, The Emergence of Pakistan, that the Sikh leadership at the highest level, especially the Maharajas of Patiala and Kapurthala, were involved in a macabre conspiracy to wipe out all Muslims from East Punjab.
The former Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme Court, Muhammad Munir, one of the two members nominated by the Muslim League to the Punjab Boundary Commission, admitted in his book, From Jinnah to Zia, that the first large-scale communal attack in Punjab occurred in the Rawalpindi region in March 1947 against Sikhs and Hindus, and its perpetrators were Muslims (1980: 17). He reiterated the charge that the Sikhs had a plan to eradicate all traces of Muslim presence in the eastern parts of Punjab.
Extract: http://books.hindustantimes.com/2011/09/extract-the-punjab-bloodied-partitioned-and-cleansed/
Review in The Asian Age: http://www.asianage.com/books/conspiracies-partition-635
Review in the Deccan Chronicle: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels/lifestyle/books/conspiracies-partition-459
Roots of Love
Told through the stories of six different men ranging in age from fourteen to eighty-six, Roots of Love documents the changing significance of hair and the turban among Sikhs in India. We see younger Sikh men abandoning their hair and turban to follow the current fashion trends, while the older generation struggles to retain the visible symbols of their religious and cultural identity.
“Beautifully conceived and shot…Pleasure to watch… A compassionate portrait of a community in transition…”
— Safina Uberoi, filmmaker and director of My Mother India and A Good Man
Awards: “Best Student Film” – 2011 Society for Visual Anthropology
ORDER NOW! for your university and academic institutions.
More Info: www.TilotamaProductions.com
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Andrew Whitehead – images and interviews
Please follow link to hear some of the radio programmes Andrew Whitehead made in 1997 which feature the memories of those who lived through Partition.
Also on the website are details of the interviews conducted for the series, which have been deposited in the SOAS archive.
http://www.andrewwhitehead.net/partition-voices.html
Dalit Chetna : Sarot te Saruup by Ronki Ram
Ronki Ram’s Dalit Chetna : Sarot te Saruup (Dalit Consciousness: Sources and Form) in Punjabi is out. This book is a detailed account of how Dalit consciousness emerged in Punjab, what turns it has taken over the last nine decades since the beginning of glorious Ad Dharm movement led by Babu Mangu Ram Mugowal and the rise of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar movement in Punjab spearheaded by Seth Kishan Dass of Bootan Mandi. The Book also provides an exhaustive account of some of the pioneer Dalit poets, prose writers and Dalit autobiographies as well as activists. Dalit Deras and the question of emerging Dalit identity figures prominantly in this field study based book in Punjabi.
The book is published by Lokgeet Parkashan, S.C.O. 26-27, Sector 34 A, Chandigarh-160022 (India) Ph. +911725077427, 5077428 e-mail and is very reasonably priced Rs. 200. Total Pages: 264.
Joint Seminar PRG & Punjabi University, Patiala – 19 Dec 2009
It gives me great pleasure to announce that the Punjab Research Group in collaboration with Punjabi University, Patiala, will be organising a joint seminar on 19 December 2009. Prof. Harvinder Bhatti, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology has very kindly offered to host the event and it is a great opportunity to bring together research on Punjab. For this reason we have kept the theme of the seminar open in order to encourage wide participation and it would be good to have a mixture of young researchers, as well as established scholars. If you are interested in attending or presenting a paper please contact us as soon as possible.
Pippa Virdee: pvirdee@dmu.ac.uk
Harvinder Bhatti: hsbhatti@gmail.com
Virinder Kalra: virinder.kalra@manchester.ac.uk
Links between uranium and birth defects
Published in The Asian Age, June 11, 2009
URANIUM IN CHILDREN’S HAIR Scientists trace source to pre-historic Granites
By ASIT JOLLY
June 10: Geophysicists have traced the source of the high concentrations of radioactive uranium amongst mentally disabled Punjabi children to the massive outcrop of granite rocks exposed on the Haryana-Rajasthan Border.
Earlier this April, tests conducted on hair samples of 149 special children (all under 13 years) at a charitable home in Punjab’s Faridkot city had revealed “toxic concentrations of uranium.” Trace Minerals – the German lab that carried out the assays – reported nearly 90 per cent of the young patients at the Baba Farid Center for Special Children had “pathological levels of uranium in their bodies.”
The shocking revelations prompted investigations by the Department of Atomic Energy and scientific experts from Amritsar’s Guru Nanak Dev University who have been studying unexpected uranium presence in Punjab and contiguous areas since the early 1990’s
“We are now certain the uranium has been leaching out from the extensive granite rocks exposed in the Tosham Hills (Bhiwani District),” the GNDU geophysicist and seismologist, Prof. Surinder Singh told this newspaper.
The professor and his team of scientists have methodically sampled the soil, water and plant life across southwestern Punjab and Haryana to actually demonstrate how the radioactive metal has traveled to deposit on the plains of Punjab. Literally thousands of samples were collected and assayed over the past decade, he said.
More recently, prompted by reports of Faridkot’s ‘uranium kids,’ Dr. Singh also tested milk, wheat, mustard and commonly eaten pulses to explore how uranium in Punjab’s soil was making its way to play havoc with human health.
The results, he says, are even “more startling.” The milk contains up to 3.33 micrograms per liter; pulses 47 micrograms and wheat up to 115 micrograms of uranium. “The total average daily intake of uranium, including from water, is nearly 140 micrograms per person which is completely unacceptable given that the global dietary intake standard is around just five micrograms,” said Dr. Singh.
Health experts believe there could be far greater human health risks from chemical toxicity rather than possible radiation hazard. Apart from the nerve defects already witnessed amongst the children in the Faridkot center, uranium is a widely known carcinogen also capable of causing a range of birth defects.
They say, the abnormally high incidence of cancers in two Bathinda Villages – Jajjal and Giana – earlier believed to be linked to prolonged, heavy pesticide usage, could actually be a consequence of the uranium hazard.
Dr. Singh said, “I have conveyed my findings to the Punjab Government and believe these are being taken up alongside other evidence by the state health authorities.”
The professor has also suggested detailed human health surveys around the source of the uranium at Tosham “where the exposure could be much higher given that most of the homes are built using granite quarried locally.”
Also see the following articles on the same topic:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7979022.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/30/india-punjab-children-uranium-pollution
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4952783.cms?frm=mailtofriend
Digital library on Sikhs launched
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, August 20
Pages of rare manuscripts, books, magazines , newspapers and photographs on the Sikhs and Punjab will be available at www.PanjabDigiLib. org on the Internet at Panjab Digital Library launched by the Nanakshahi Trust and the Research Institue ( SikhRi) today.
Since 2003 PDL has been selecting , collecting, preserving digitising texts regardless of script , language, religion , nationality etc.
“ Preservation of heritage, research and education have been victim of apathy in Punjabi. PDL is humble offering to people’ said Harinder singh , executive director SikhRI. Information in rare manuscripts and literature of the region can be accessed with the click of mouse.
A document on being digitised will be accessible long after the original ceases to exis . PDL developed Central digital archive in six years which allows electronic access to browsing data in seconds.
The digital library do away with barriers of conventional library.
PDL has been preserving over 25 lakh folios from 3,400 manuscripts, 2,200 book , 1,990 issues of periodicals ,3153 photographs 248,000 legal documents ‘ , said Gurvinder Asingh PDL’s US coordinator ,
Information on institutions like the SGPC, the DSGMC, Government Museum and Art Gallery , Chandigarh , Chief Khalsa Diwan Punjab Languages Department, Kurukshetra University , critical works of Prof Pritam Singh , Dr Man Singh Nirankari, Dr Kirpal Singh , Dr madanjit Kaur, and Prof Gurtej Singh are accessible at PDL.
It is non- profit , non- governmental set- up, devoted to preserving Punjab archives, said Gurnihal Singh Pirzada a director.
At least 50,000 pages were being added every week to the websit , said Davinder Pal Singh co- founder.
http://www.panjabdigilib.org/webuser/searches/mainpage.jsp If you have used the digital library, do leave some comments about it functions and usability.
Britain’s Sikhs continue to plague Punjab By Rahul Bedi
Around India young women are becoming victims of a crime that is robbing them of their virtues and their wealth.
Every year parents from Britain take their ‘looser sons’ to India and allow them to destroy the lives of innocent girls who crave for a life in Britain – or so they think
Many of these culprits are Sikhs, they have plagued the Punjab, with thousands of girls who have become bride and signed their lives to misery and pain, as they allow themselves to be robbed of the ‘virginity’ become objects that give these bachelors a ‘whore’ on command whilst they are on holiday, with never a thought to these women once they return to Britain.
Full article: http://www.emgonline.co.uk/news.php?news=6764
Punjab needs the will to bounce back…
In conversation with economist Autar Dhesi. Read full article: punjab needs the will
Published in Hindustan Times July 5, 2009, Chandigarh Edition, Sunday Magazine
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