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Textures of caste, across religious communities, in Punjab, mid-18th to early 20th centuries

Submitted to Program Units
1: Sikh Studies Unit and South Asian Religions Unit

Robin Rinehart, Lafayette College, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

How and where did varnasrmadharma and caste manifest in texts in the early modern and colonial periods in Punjab, and what can this tell us about caste formations across this period? This question guides this panel, which brings together work from the mid-eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries to consider the articulation of caste, and the impact of caste identities, on the production and content of Punjabi texts – those produced by and/or about Punjabi peoples, in that region – across religious traditions and across the pre-colonial/colonial transition. As such, the panel embraces the AAR 2024 Presidential Theme “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Margin,” to consider the articulation of the structural violence of caste across religions and over time, as a historical process, and to interrogate both the construction of “the margin,” and the rejection of this construction.  By working across religions and across the colonial transition, we hope to consider the ways continuities and ruptures on the one hand, and reimagining of caste on the other, emerged in the representation and impact of caste in the writing of texts in Punjab.

Papers

  • Jvala Singh, University of British Columbia

    Caste in the Gurpratāp Sūraj Granth (1843)

    Abstract

    This paper explores issues surrounding caste mobility and perception during the early 19th century by examining Santokh Singh (1787-1843), a Sikh commentator, historian, and poet, notably a member of a marginalized caste, the chīmpā caste, who were cloth dyers. The paper discusses Santokh Singh’s background, thinking through what it meant for a Sikh of a marginalized caste to be enlisted as a student under an important scholar in Amritsar at that time. This examination into Santokh Singh’s background also will focus on his interaction with royal courts, particularly Patiala, and how he married outside of his caste, and what that tells us about caste formations at this time. While Bhai Vir Singh argues that Santokh Singh and his writings were influenced by Brahmins who were also patroned under the same king, this paper will explore the role of caste within his magnus opus, the Sūraj Prakāś (1843).

  • Anne Murphy, University of British Columbia

    Configurations of caste identities in Waris Shah's Hir (mid-18th century)

    Abstract

    Caste is a vivid feature of Wāris Shāh’s Hīr, a Punjabi Sufi text attributed to the mid-18th century, which recounts the tragic love story of Hīr and her lover Rāṅjhā. Farina Mir has noted caste as a recurrent feature of later colonial-era versions of the romance of Hīr-Rāṅhā, where “zāt (caste or kinship group)... figures in these texts as the most salient category of social organization” (The Social Space of Language 2010, 123). This was a feature of Wāris Shāh’s earlier version as well. This paper will explore the multiple dimensions of the articulation of caste in Waris Shah’s Hīr – in relation to Jaţness as well as other community definitions – to understand the meanings of caste discourses at this time, in this text. 

  • Anshu Malhotra, University of California Santa Barbara

    Born Male and Khatri: Power and Privilege in Khatri Men’s Auto/biographies

    Abstract

    In the first-half of the twentieth century many upper-caste Punjabi Khatri men (or of cognate castes), most born in the second-half of the nineteenth century, wrote their auto/biographies reflecting on their life and achievements. They celebrated making it big from humble beginnings, noted successful professional careers or underscored contributions to public life. They addressed the significant changes they witnessed in their lifetimes, particularly the transmutations under colonial rule, and their often exhilarating experience of inhabiting colonial modernity. They started their life-writing by indexing their Khatri antecedents, some aware of the advantages it bestowed, others through invoking their ancestors’ lives. As an increasingly popular genre, the auto/biography became the medium through which these men inserted themselves in history-making and history-writing, insidiously becoming the inheritors of the nation-in-making. As historians of South Asia write of the subalterns outside the charmed circle of power, it is worth exploring how power and privilege buoyed others into dominance.

  • Julie Vig, York University

    Imagining caste mobility and social order in early modern Sikh texts

    Abstract

    This paper examines how caste mobility and social order are imagined in Kuir Singh's Gurbilās Pātshāhī Das (1751), an early modern text in Punjabi-Brajbhasha about the lives of the Sikh Gurus. More specifically, it interrogates how Kuir Singh's positionality as a Kalal, a marginalised caste group, informs his discourse on caste and social order. While Murphy and Dhavan have discussed Kuir Singh's criticism of caste hegemony, there has not been much discussion on how Kuir Singh’s caste positionality informs his discourse on caste and social order of his imagined early Khalsa community. Through a close analysis of literary vignettes in Kuir Singh’s Gurbilās, my paper argues that Kuir Singh discourse on caste, and his choice of locating himself within an elite cultural field of courtly Brajbhasha literature contributed to creating a literary and social space to imagine upward social and caste mobility in early modern Punjab.

Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer
Podium microphone

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

2 Hours

Schedule Preference Other

Due to teaching obligations, please do not schedule on November 26
Schedule Info

Sunday, 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Session Identifier

A24-130