Reclaiming Punjab’s voice in history

r Turab-ul Hassan Sargana’s latest Urdu-language book, Muqaddama-i-Punjab: Tarikh aur Tarikh-Naveesi kay Tanaazur Mein (Punjab’s Case: In the Context of History and Historiography), continues his remarkable intellectual pursuit to restore the Punjab to its rightful place in the historical imagination of South Asia. Much like his earlier English-language work, Punjab and the War of Independence 1857–1858, which challenged the long-standing silence surrounding Punjab’s role in the first anti-colonial uprising, this book undertakes a broad critique of how history has been written and distorted, in colonial and post-colonial contexts.

At its core, Muqaddama-i-Punjab is not merely a historical narrative but a meta-historical inquiry. It examines the frameworks through which Punjab’s past has been interpreted; the ideological biases that have shaped those interpretations; and the political motives that continue to sustain them. Dr Sargana asks the fundamental question: how did the Punjab, a crucible of resistance, culture and intellectual ferment, come to be seen, both in colonial records and in much of post-Partition scholarship, as a land of collaboration, conformity and silence?

The author situates this erasure within what he calls the “politics of historiography.” Drawing upon both Western and indigenous traditions of history-writing, Sargana argues that historical production has rarely been innocent of power. The colonial state wrote the Punjab’s past through the lens of loyalty and treachery, rewarding those who collaborated in 1857 and branding those who resisted as rebels, traitors and outlaws. Post-colonial historians, he contends, largely inherited this colonial framework, consciously or unconsciously, by privileging the perspectives of the elite over the experience of the masses.

This argument resonates strongly with the central thesis of his earlier book, where Sargana had challenged the “top-down” approach of historians who reduced the Punjab’s role in 1857 to that of its collaborating princes, jagirdars and tribal chieftains. In Muqaddama-i-Punjab, he extends that critique beyond that event to encompass the entire spectrum of Punjab’s historical representation, from the Mughal period and Sikh rule to colonial subjugation and the partition of 1947. By exposing the ideological scaffolding of such narratives, Sargana seeks to democratise history: to shift attention from rulers and governors to the peasants, soldiers, artisans and scholars who shaped the province’s destiny from below.

One of the most striking qualities of Sargana’s work is his intellectual humility. There is a refreshing readiness to interrogate even his own discipline. Sargana does not present himself as a mere chronicler of facts but as a critic of historiography itself. He insists that to study Punjab’s history honestly, one must first study the history of how that history was written. In doing so, he challenges both colonial historians who sought to justify conquest and many modern historians who remain trapped in Eurocentric paradigms of “modernity” and “progress.”

Sargana also explores the moral and philosophical dimensions of historical inquiry. He reminds readers that history is not only about reconstructing the past but also about reclaiming justice for the forgotten. The historian’s task, in his view, is not passive documentation but active interpretation, to expose the silences, question the categories and recover the humanity of those marginalised by dominant narratives. This methodological self-awareness elevates Muqaddama-i-Punjab from a regional study to a profound meditation on the nature of history itself.

To study Punjab’s history honestly, one must first study the history of how that history was written.

In tone and substance, the book reclaims the Punjab as a living site of resistance rather than a passive frontier of empire. Sargana revisits episodes such as the peasant uprisings, the role of Sufi shrines and reformist movements and the impact of the colonial agrarian order that reconfigured social hierarchies. He emphasises that Punjab’s history cannot be reduced to loyalty to the Raj or to the military recruitment that earned it the colonial label of “the sword arm of India.” Instead, it must be understood through its internal contradictions, between loyalty and rebellion; faith and reform; submission and self-assertion.

Dr Sargana brings a rare clarity to these debates. He argues that the historical “case” of the Punjab is also the case of Pakistan itself. The socio-political patterns established in the colonial era, the dominance of landed elites, the alliance between power and property and the marginalisation of the common people, continue to shape Pakistan’s governance and class structure. By tracing these continuities, Sargana’s work transcends the academic realm and enters the moral-political domain, urging readers to confront the legacies of injustice embedded in the very narratives through which we understand ourselves.

Another powerful strand in Muqaddama-i-Punjab is Sargana’s critique of colonial epistemology; the way British administrators and scholars used “knowledge” as a tool of control. He shows how British historians constructed the Punjab as a loyal province to rationalise their rule and how such portrayals served to divide Punjabis from other Indian populations. The tragedy, Sargana argues, is that post-colonial historiography, instead of decolonising these frameworks, often reinforced them by glorifying the same classes that had once served colonial interests.

He points to how the families who sided with the British in 1857 became the political aristocracy of post-independence Pakistan, a continuity he had already traced in his earlier English work. The historian’s responsibility, therefore, is not just to document this irony but also to challenge the systems of privilege that such historical amnesia sustains. In this sense, Muqaddama-i-Punjab serves as both a history of the past and an indictment of the present.

Writing in Urdu, Sargana reaches an audience often excluded from academic historiography written in English. His prose, while scholarly, is deeply evocative, rich in metaphor, moral insight and emotional force. He brings history down from the lofty towers of academia to the heart of public discourse. Through references to classical Persian chronicles, modern Pakistani historians and Western theorists alike, he situates Punjab’s story in a global intellectual conversation without diluting its local essence.

Muqaddama-i-Punjab invites readers to revisit their past not as inherited dogma but as a living dialogue between memory and meaning. In doing so, it aligns with a growing movement within South Asian scholarship that seeks to “decolonise” history by re-centring indigenous perspectives and recovering subaltern voices. Just as Dr Sargana’s Punjab and the War of Independence 1857–1858 reclaimed the agency of ordinary Punjabis in the anti-colonial struggle, this new book reclaims Punjab’s intellectual agency, its right to interpret its own past.

Sargana’s project is not simply to vindicate a province but to restore integrity to history itself. It is both a defence of the Punjab and a manifesto for honest history. It compels us to see that the struggle for justice in the past is inseparable from the struggle for justice in the present.

Muqaddama-i-Punjab

Tarikh aur Tarikh-Naveesi kay Tanaazur Mein

Author: Dr Turab-ul Hassan Sargana

Pages: 200

Price: Rs 1,180

The writer is a senior journalist associatedwithJang Group ofNewspapers