Punjab Research Group ‘Punjab: Past, Present, Future’ Punjab Research Group Conference, March 26, 2022 (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
DETAILED PROGRAMME
09.30- 09.45: Registration
09.45- 10.00: Welcome address: Pritam Singh, Prof Emeritus, Oxford Brookes University
10:00-11.05: Session I. Sikh studies
Chair: Prof. Gurnam Singh, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick
10.00-10.20: Application of Life Course Perspective: Understanding Panjab through Life Courses of Sikh Political Prisoners
Baljeet Kaur, Associate – Mitigation, Project39 A, National Law University Delhi, India
10.20-10.40: The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Khalsa Sikhs in the late 1600s
Satnam Singh, Independent researcher, Master of Arts (M.A) University of Copenhagen, and currently Senior Advisor to the Danish authorities in the prevention of honor-based violence against women.
10.40-11.05: Discussion
11.05-11.30: Tea/Coffee Break
11.30-12.35: Session II. Political Studies
Chair: Dr Pippa Virdee, Reader in Modern South Asian History, School of Humanities, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
11.30-11.50: Punjab and the Politics of the 18th Constitutional Amendment in Pakistan
Salman Rafi, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
11.50-12.10: Collaboration, Resistance, and state surveillance in Punjab: Multan’s Role in ‘Munity’ of 1857
Sohail Khan, Visiting Scholar at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London
12.10-12.35: Discussion
12.40-13.00: Honouring of Late Dr Darshan Tatla with Lifetime Achievement Award
13.00-14.00: Lunch Break
14.00-15:35: Session III. Punjabiyat and culture
Chair: Dr Pargat Singh, Sikh Education Council, UK
14:00-14:20: Punjabiyat: An Emerging/reviving Phenomenon in Pakistani/west Punjab
Sadia Masood, PhD scholar at National Institute of Pakistan Studies, QAU, Islamabad
14:20-14:40: Sikhism and Covid-19: Ethics of community service and activism
Nadia Singh, Senior Lecturer Economics, Northumbria University, UK
14:40-15:00: Culture of Punjab in Gurdial Singh’s Parsa: Society and Tradition
Aarti Malhotra, Assistant professor in English, General Shivdev Singh Diwan Gurbachan Singh Khalsa College Patiala, Punjab, India
15.00-15:35: Discussion
15.35-16.00: Tea/Coffee Break
16.00-17.05: Session IV. Gender studies
Chair: Prof. Eleanor Nesbitt, Professor Emeritus, Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, Centre for Educational Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry
16.00-16.20: Medical knowledges and Embodied Identities in late colonial Punjab: The case of Punjabi Masculinity
Nikita Azad, PhD researcher in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology at the University of Oxford
16.20-16.40: Incest Abuse: Stories of shame to be silenced or supported?
Supreet Dhiman, Director – Research & Projects, End Incest Trust, Chandigarh, India
16.40-17.05: Discussion
17:05-17.15: Deliberation on/Announcement of Best Presenter Award
17.15-17:20: Vote of Thanks
Professor Pritam Singh, Conference Director
cfp: ‘Punjab: Past, Present, Future’ Punjab Research Group Conference, March 26, 2022 (St Antony’s College, Oxford)
The Punjab Research Group has been hosting conferences at least twice a year since 1984 and was established as an inclusive and all-embracing forum to provide a platform for discussion and debate on issues pertaining to East and West Punjab as well as the Punjabi diaspora. During the past 37 years, the PRG has provided space for academics to interact with each other regardless of territorial or disciplinary boundaries. This is especially important given the often-strained relationship between India and Pakistan, which has prevented discussion and dialogue between scholars of East and West Punjab.
Our first conference for 2022 will be held as a one-day event on Saturday 26th March at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. We welcome submissions from scholars, academics, young researchers, journalists, artists, and activists for an inter-disciplinary discussion focusing on the theme of ‘Punjab: Past, Present and Future’.
Speakers are invited to give paper-presentations/performances that can cover a broad range of content, including, but not limited to: history, philosophy, politics, gender, religion, environmental studies, economics, diaspora issues, linguistics, literature, poetry, arts, and culture.
We particularly welcome proposals exploring the genesis of Punjab, intersections between the ‘3 Punjabs’, going beyond the 1947 borders: to deepen our perspective on the ‘connected histories’, and to envision interrelated futures, of the region.
Please submit an abstract (200 words) and a brief CV to Raj (RS Mann) at punjabresearchgroup@gmail.com by 20th February 2022. Submissions from grad/postgraduate students are encouraged. Best Presenter Award will be presented to a doctoral student whose presentation is judged to be the best from amongst all the full time doctoral student presentations. The Award includes cash and a certificate.
If you would like to register as a guest for this event, please book a ticket using our online form at (https://tinyurl.com/58xksc5j). The registration fee is £10 per person.
We look forward to seeing you in Oxford soon!
Book discussion: Movers and Makers: Uncertainty, Resilience and Migrant Creativity in Worlds of Flux (in conversation with Prof. Parminder Bhachu (Clark University)
Goddard Library and the Dean of the Faculty are delighted to invite everyone to the first volume of a new series dedicated to celebrating the works of Clark authors. The series will kick off with a conversation with Professor Parminder Bhachu who will discuss her book, Movers and Makers: Uncertainty, Resilience and Migrant Creativity in Worlds of Flux (Routledge, 2021). Prepare to learn not only about her current work but about her life, what inspired this work, and why it is important both to her and to our world.
Please join us via Zoom, 21 September 2021, 7-8pm, https://clarku.zoom.us/j/96014537909.
Exhumation – The Life and Death of Madan Lal Dhingra (Leena Dhingra)
Leena Dhingra
Leena Dhingra’s powerful book about her great uncle’s historic act – and her family’s
displacement by Partition – is now available
Exhumation – The Life and Death of Madan Lal Dhingra
The interview is available till 18 September at the link below:
Obituary: Dr. Darshan Tatla
It is with a very heavy heart that I share the sad news that Dr. Darshan Tatla passed away on the morning of 4th July 2021 in Birmingham.
If I had to name one person whose thoughts, feelings, dreams, excitements and disappointments were all linked to Punjab Studies, it was Darshan. With the exception of economics, there is no field of Punjab Studies – politics, history, literature, religion, diaspora etc., etc. – to which he did not make a contribution. He was a walking encyclopedia on the subject. No one studying the Punjab in any corner of the world escaped his attention. He was a great scholar, and a saintly man with a smile on his face even in adversity. His health had not been good for over two decades, but it deteriorated sharply in the last few months. He will be missed very, very sorely.
The members of the Punjab Research Group (PRG) had decided before the outbreak of Covid-19 to honour him with a Lifetime Achievement award for his distinguished contributions. We had hoped to present this award to him in person at one of the PRG conferences once the pandemic was over and he had recovered. This award will now, unfortunately, have to be awarded posthumously.
Darshan’s vision was the prime mover behind the founding of the PRG in April 1984. From its beginnings as a small group of like-minded PhD students in April 1984, the PRG has expanded and become the most well-respected regional study group from South Asia, where established scholars as well as young researchers come together to share their research in a mutually supportive research environment. The PRG’s work contributed to the organisation of the First International Conference on Punjabi Identity in 1994 at Coventry University, at which the first issue of the International Journal of Punjab Studies was also launched. The journal has continued since (as the Journal of Punjab Studies and more recently as the Journal of Sikh and Punjab Studies). The papers presented at the conference were brought together in a book; Punjabi Identity in a Global Context edited by Pritam Singh and Shinder Thandi and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. In 2016, the PRG launched the Best Doctoral Student Presentation Award, consisting of a cash award as well as a certificate, which is given to a doctoral student whose paper is judged to be the best presented at the PRG conference. To date, seven such awards have been given. The PRG will forever remain as a memorial to Darshan’s contribution to its founding and subsequent multi-dimensional development in the early years.
Prof. Pritam Singh
Director, Punjab Research Group
Obituary: Roger Ballard passes away
For those interested in South Asian, diaspora, human rights, anti-racism and Punjab studies, it is a sad news (learnt only a few hours ago) to share that Roger Ballard, an anthropologist, died two days ago. He had been suffering from Parkinson’s for the last few years. Roger gave a keynote address at the first international conference on Punjabi Identity I had convened on behalf of the Association of Punjab Studies (UK) in 1994 at Coventry University. The development of his address into a paper was published as the opening article in the book Punjabi Identity in a Global Context (OUP, 1999, Second Reprint 2015) I co-edited with Shinder Thandi. That paper ‘Panth, Kismet, Dharm te Qaum: Continuity and Change in Four Dimensions of Punjabi Religion’ remains a seminal paper in the field of religious/Punjab Studies. Roger also spoke at the launch of the book at the British parliament (House of Commons). He was an active participant in the development of the Punjab Research Group in its initial years in the 1980s and 1990s. His book Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain remains a seminal work in the field. He was a very friendly and caring person too. When I was editing the Punjabi Identity book, he wrote to me along with sending the final version of his article: don’t work too hard, do take some rest during the Christmas break. I pay tribute to his many dimensional contributions and will share, if I get, more information about funeral/memorial meeting. We would certainly think of honoring and remembering him at the Punjab Research Group.
Prof. Pritam Singh (Wolfson College, University of Oxford)
Director Punjab Research Group
The Sikh Next Door – An identity in Transition by Manpreet J Singh
The Sikh Next Door – An identity in Transition by Manpreet J Singh was published by Bloomsbury, India (Academic) last month.
It traces the community’s transition into its heterogeneous, mutating, urban identities within India and outside. In doing so it moves out of the agricultural and martial tropes and analyzes Sikhs in their real -life contexts in urban lives. It brings into frame the trader/professional classes, those changed through interaction with other cultures, the Dalit Sikhs, to see how the changing contexts are re-shaping the community dynamics. It also creates a focus on Sikh women to trace their growth into contemporary urban structures.
The work also analyzes how others respond to the community, particularly in urban spheres. It discusses tropes of otherness reflected in humour, cinematic representations and social attribution in normal times, and violent responses like that of 1984 in India in times of crises. The book rounds off with a broad analysis of how the current generation of Sikhs is engaging with their religious and social identities.
Available from:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-sikh-next-door-9789389165579/
How the Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White became the Images of Partition – Pippa Virdee
When we visualise India’s Partition of 1947, we almost always do so through the images of Margaret Bourke-White. For the past seven decades, her images have saturated the cover of numerous books, newspaper articles, magazine features, documentaries et al related to Partition.
via How the Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White became the Images of Partition. — BAGICHA
Facebook Live Webinar: The caste nexus and women’s liberation (in Punjabi) – by Prof. Dr. Meena Dhanda (Wolverhampton University, UK)
Facebook Live Webinar: The caste nexus and women’s liberation (in Punjabi)
Professor Meena Dhanda will engage in a live discussion with a women activists’ group Wajood (Being) on the link between caste and gender.
Saturday 27 June 2020 (1:30pm BST; 6pm IST)
Caste atrocities have intensified and domestic violence is on the increase during the global crisis caused by the pandemic. It was reported a couple of months ago that the Punjab government has found a 21% increase in calls by women to the domestic violence helpline. Is there any link between the caste nexus and the position of women in Punjabi society?
Dr Meena Dhanda (Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics) will explain the complex relation between caste and gender in a Facebook Live Webinar.
The discussion followed by an audience Q&A will be mainly conducted in Meena’s mother tongue Punjabi. The title of the programme in transliterated Punjabi is: Jaat Vyavastha Atay Aurat Mukti. The organisers are a group of energetic social activists. Their group uniquely named Wajood (Being/Existence) is convened by a post-graduate from Oxford University, Nikita Azaad.
Set up during the pandemic, this group has commenced a set of open dialogues on identity, sexuality, relationships and much else.
Tune in to: https://www.facebook.com/punjabandgender/?hc_location=ufi
For further information contact Professor Meena Dhanda by email:M.Dhanda@wlv.ac.uk.
Punjab Research Group 
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