Beware of Inflicted & wreaked History of the Punjab Comments on Raj Mohan Gandhi book

Beware of Inflicted & wreaked History of the Punjab

Comments on Raj Mohan Gandhi book

Beware of Inflicted & wreaked History of the Punjab

Comments on Raj Mohan Gandhi book

These days we are seeing many books on the Punjab. Raj Mohan Gandhi’s new book “Punjab: from Aurangzeb to Mountbatten” is latest yet Ishtiaque Ahmad, Babar Ayaz, Zahore Ahmad Ch also wrote books. The common factor in all these books is there Inflicted & wreaked account regarding History of the Punjab. They consciously or unconsciously followed colonial as well as Congress interpretations of past. I tried to pinpoint it as follows

1.       When they analysis situation of sub continental people they called them Indians and usually reject religious division yet when they analysis the Punjab they extensively relied on religious division and instead of calling them Punjabis they called them Hindus, Sikh or Muslims

2.       When they explain anti colonial resistance they used name of Bahadur Shah Zafar who was taking pension from three generations from the empire. Yet they did not mention Lhore Darbar who resisted Colonial power for 50 years (from 1799 till 1849).

3.       When they analyses Unionist party of the Punjab they used class question but when they analyses Congress they called it Secular. They did not use class question while analyzing Congress.

4.       They called Muslim League a religious political party but they did not object congress who had links with Arya Samajies, RSS, JUH

5.       They did not analyze why colonial rulers had imposed URDU in some frontier forward policy regions like Punjab, Kashmir, Qallat in 19^th century.

6.       They have no analyses that why Punjabis disliked Congress during pre-partition elections from 1921 till 1946

7.       They did not object congress policy about banyas

8.       They have no answer of the fact that why Punjabi muslim leader of Khilafat comitee Punjab did not join with congress and formed either their own parties like Ahrar or Itahad e milli or joined Unionists or Muslim League.

9.       Regarding history of the Punjab even so-called post colonialist intellectuals failed to deconstruct colonial scholarship.

These are some stray thoughts which remind us to write an unbiased history of the Punjab. Thanks now u read the piece

http://e.dunya.com.pk/detail.php?date=2013-12-20&edition=LHR&id=784286_98230046