Chronicling Heers of Punjab from the pages of colonial history

A historic encyclopaedia, the book “The Lost Heer: Women in Colonial Punjab”, introduces us to the countless women who broke the glass ceiling, and carved their own path for the future generations to follow. The book chronicles women while mapping the cultural and political history of Punjab. As the young Toronto-based first-time author of the book, Harleen Singh, who calls himself a researcher, talked about these women of ambition, vision and courage at a Majha House session, he also shared a few discoveries about the social and political conditions of Punjab in the period 1890s to 1940s.

Like Puran Devi, a Punjabi socialite and activist from Sialkot, who started the first Parda Club in Lahore as an act of defiance against the Europeans, and Indian elite men not allowing women in their exclusive clubs! Then there is Hardevi Roshan Lal who started Punjab’s first women-run magazine, ‘Bharat Bhagini’. She was a travel writer who went from Punjab to London in 1887. We also get a taste of defiance and feminism, when women in Punjab countered Ramabai Ranade, questioning what was wrong with bathing naked in public bathhouses in Lahore. Ranade, a social activist and wife of Justice Ranade, one of the founders of Indian National Congress, realised how common it was to bath naked in public bathhouses by women in Punjab.

The book has numerous stories of resilience, rebellion and reformation of women, who discarded the patriarchal narrative of history and resisted living in a box. “These women were not much talked about, not written about and when I started researching on it in 2018, what I drew from was the fact that these women actually shaped the course of history of Punjab while never being given their due space,” said Harleen Singh. He sourced these stories and documents from archives for over three years, before compiling them into a book. “Writing itself is an act of resistance, I believe. And so, writing about these women, who resisted social norms, conduct and patriarchy in their own way, is my way of celebrating them,” he said.

One such woman was Rani Noor-un-Nissa, who ruled the riyasat of Ludhiana. A widow of the chieftain of Raikot, she governed the big domain of Ludhiana. When the Sikh misl chief Sahib Singh Bedi, who was a direct descendant of Guru Nanak, threatened to overtake the riyasat, she bargained with George Thomas, the Irish chief in Punjab, to allow an escape for her and her sons. She was the first women chieftain of Punjab to strike a parley with the British and was later given a pension by the British.

The book also features Mukhtar Begum of Amritsar, undivided Punjab’s first star in 1930s, Bibi Raghbir Kaur, a freedom fighter and social worker, Punjab’s first woman member of the legislative assembly from Amritsar for the period 1937-45; Hafiz Abdullah, a Jalandhar-based writer who used to pen seditious content; Hukmi, a woman sooba of the Kuka movement who revived rebellion when the British arrested Ram Singh, the chief inspiratory of Kuka Movement and Sadat Bano, wife of Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew, who sold her jewellery to continue her contribution to the freedom movement, post-Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Amritsar