"The 18^th century is a watershed in the history of Punjab. The century reverberates with multiple sounds: the clink of the swords of the Khalsa-Singhs, the clatter of their horses’ hooves, and the bold literary voices of Waris Shah and Bullah Shah. From the 1730s invasions from Persia and Afghanistan offered opportunities to Punjabis to see themselves as a historically evolved ethnic community. They confronted the oppression of the Mughal state and the invasions of Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali … During these days of struggle their concern for preserving the sanctity of their socio-cultural space was reflected audaciously in their vernacular literature." -- Ishwar Dayal Gaur

As a country, we remain shy of history. Since we carved a country by dividing the Indian subcontinent, we have had to ‘manufacture’ our own history which is more exclusive than inclusive. We have built our geographical and historical paradigms in a way that they separate us from the rest of the subcontinent. Consequently, we have produced the most dreary and tedious history and official narrative.

Another area that we have neglected is the history of the federating units. No histories of Sindh, Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were written or produced. Although Punjab does have books depicting its history, they were written more than a century ago, such as S.M. Latif’s History of Lahore or Kanhaiya Lal’s Tarikh-e-Punjab.

It is in this backdrop that Ishwar Dayal Gaur’s book Society, Religion and Patriarchy, Exploring Medieval Punjab through Hir Waris must be read. Gaur is a historian who teaches at the Panjab University Chandigrah, India. He employs Hir Waris Shah as a historical document and takes the help of history to discover its uniqueness and validity during the most crucial period of Punjab’s history. The 18^th century is generally remembered for the demise of the great Mughal Empire but within Punjab it was the time to rebel and resist. It is the period of "literary renaissance" as it produced the most indispensable poets of Punjab: Bullah Shah (1680-1757) and Waris Shah (1722-98). Gaur has opened new vistas and dimensions by treating Hir Waris as a source of history, and studying history, society and people through a literary text.

Reading or using literature as historical source material is not something new. In Africa, North and Latin America, oral narrations have been used to record the histories of people who are absent from the written history of the world. We have written texts, starting from Baba Farid (1175-1265) up until Khwaja Farid (1845-1901) the last classical poet. But no attempt has even been made to use literary texts to understand history by our academia or historians. We must know that all other sources are from official Persian books which were either written by historians attached to the court or by an official who was part of the court. Living in an age of the subaltern or people’s histories, it is amazing how we have ignored poets like Waris Shah who are people’s poets and part of the subaltern.

Building a case for using folklore, Gaur quotes the protagonists of the history of subalterns like Antonio Gramsci who suggest the necessity of projecting through history that all men are ‘philosophers’. For the purpose, he looks upon folklore as a source of history. To him folklore needs to be studied as a "view of the world", a reflex of the life of the common folk. The lived experiences of the folk are not necessarily in harmony with the official or elite view. Hir Waris treasures a community memory of Punjab people; it is their collective document, their own expression about themselves.

Gaur paints the social, political and literary background of the life and times of the poet; however he keeps his focus fixed on the qissa. The qissa was completed in 1767 when the Muslim elite in Punjab was being defeated and replaced in the second half of the 18^th century by "emerging local forces". In the same age, Bullah Shah was condemning orthodox religious formalism of Hindus and Muslims. Through a local revolt, which was actually a peasant’s revolution and led by Faridi-Nanaki forces, people were putting up a great resistance to Nadir Shah and Ahmad Shah Abdali. And lastly, it was in the same age when Shah Waliullah (1703-1762) of Delhi was trying to revive Islamic orthodoxy. While Waris Shah was syncretic and fusing the people of Punjab, Shah Waliullah was doing the opposite.

Gaur criticises Sikh historian Joseph Davey Cunningham (1812-1851) who introduced a partisan and communitarian discourse in Punjab historiography in his book A History of the Sikhs. His narrative tends to marginalise the role of the people in defending and expanding the geographical and political horizons of Punjab under the leadership of the Khalsa. According to him, Cunningham disengages the Sikhs from the rest of the Punjabis.

The imperialist approach to Punjabi history created many false conceptions which need to be explored and rectified. For instance, "British looked upon Ranjit Singh’s state as a Sikh state based on close Hindu-Sikh alliance and basically opposed to the Muslims." The imperialist interpretations of the "history of the Sikhs" subsequently influenced both the writing of history, particularly in the 18^th century, and people’s perceptions. The Sikh-Muslim conflict is the dominant, indeed single, narrative of the 18^th century. But this is not the case as "many Sikh sardars were sympathetic to the Durranis, even joined hands with them in fighting against other sardars."

For Gaur, Waris Shah was an architect of the genre, an ethnographer and a historian. He synthesised the traditions of Punjab with Sufism, Islam, the eroticism of bhakti, teachings of Gurus and epics of the great tradition. He says that Waris Shah’s "narrative reflects his ability to ‘write’ the cultural profile of Punjabi Muslims, their great civilizational traditions, their hybrid culture, their inner conflicts, and their lifestyle in general … He produces eventually and successfully a cultural text of Punjab."

In Hir, Waris Shah has fused all religions, movements and traditions of Punjab and there is not a single verse that is biased, sectarian or communal. The same is the case with Bullah Shah. But then how it is that we were left with the mourning poem of Amrita Pritam, Aj Akhan Waris Shah Nun, in the bloodbath of 1947? The answer lies in the colonial history of Punjab. Waris Shah imbibed 1000 years of Punjab’s cultural history, and to get to him we have to traverse back in time, passing through colonial Punjab which laid the foundations for Arya Samaj, Singh Sabha Movement and Anjumans while hijacking the qissa of Waris shah.