Punjab, Punjabi and Urdu, the Question of Displaced Identity: A Historical Appraisal

General perception about the colonial state to have impinged only upon the political and economic aspects of the colony is not the whole truth. The author scrutinizes the question of identity and the process of transformation it went through primarily because of the preference accorded to Urdu over the native Punjabi. He therefore interrogates Partha Chatterjee’s postulate of ‘inner domain’ or ‘the domain of the spiritual’ consisting of family and language which remained insular under colonial dispensation. In the case of Punjab, in particular the ‘inner domain’ was hit the hardest. Urdu instead of Punjabi subsequently became the identity marker of Punjab Muslims, marginalizing in the process the native language of the province. The writer also locates the emergence of communal identity because of Urdu’s introduction as the official/court language in the Punjab. Official patronage helped Urdu to flourish tremendously. Organizations like Anjuman-i-Punjab were set up to popularize Urdu among the urban classes. All this was done at the expense of Punjabi. In 1927, Hafiz Mehmud Sheerani in his famous book Punjab Mein Urdu propounded a theory designating Punjab as the earlier form of Urdu. This paper however argues otherwise. ________________________________________________________________