'From Region to Transnational: Shrines, wilayat and the sacred landscapes of Punjab' a talk by Dr. Yogesh Snehi at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 18th February 2014
Time : 3:00 pm
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Seminar on ‘From Region to Transnational: Shrines, wilayat and the sacred landscapes of Punjab’ by Dr. Yogesh Snehi, Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Abstract : The landscape of Punjab has continuously reshaped itself in varied ways from medieval to contemporary times. Medieval Punjab was never a contiguous region and its physical, political as well as social contours remained in a constant state of flux and dialogue. Across the frontiers of the mega-province evolved identities which were sub-regional and local. There could thus be several imaginations of cultural zones within the space which was identified as Punjab. This long transformation assumed peculiarly complex dynamics with the sudden and catastrophic partition of the province in 1947 when the imagined borders increasingly became non-porous and territorial contours of nation-state boundaries became permanent. An important repercussion of this mammoth transformation was terrible loss of lives and forced migration leading to demographic reconfiguration and social re-imagination of space across the region. This presentation tries to approach this transformation through the practice of veneration of panj pirs from medieval to contemporary Punjab. Panj pirs occupy a special place in the imagination of a province which is also identified with several other ‘five’ elements; panj darya, panjtan pak, panj piyare, etc. What is also interesting is that this tradition and its popular idiom has found resonance in the folk (Waris Shah’s Hir) as well religious literature (Vars of Bhai Gurdas) of the region. This paper will, however, look into the popular imagination of a popular wilayat of a medieval tradition of panj pir shrine at Abohar, now a frontier town on the Indo-Pak border, and will illustrate the ways in which it reconfigures itself in a post-partition environment. Popular images and poster art will be a crucial element of investigation to configure how these traditions survived in the new nation-states and perceived the sacred wilayat of the tradition of saint veneration in contemporary Punjab. The tradition of panj pir cannot be located within the domain of either of major Sufi orders of Punjab and the conception of wilayat in this tradition thus constitutes a significant articulation of popular imagination of tradition and provides an insight into the organic interplay of tradition with everyday lives of people in contemporary Punjab. It will also be important to understand the ways in which panj pir shrine located itself in a non-Muslim environment.
Speaker : Dr. Yogesh Snehi is an Assistant Professor in History at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. He is currently a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. Dr. Snehi’s broader area of research is located in understanding the social formation of greater Punjab. He has researched and published on the notion of reform, sexuality, development and region formation in Himachal Pradesh. The current focus of his research is around popular shrines in Punjab. Snehi started working on shrines in the year 2005 and conducted his first survey at Abohar. With a Tasveer Ghar fellowship in 2010-11, he mapped the broader contours of popular Sufi shrines in (east) Punjab and is working on a monograph on the same at IIAS, Shimla.
Related Events : Talks | Spirituality
Entry : Free (Seating on First-Come First-Served basis)
Place : Seminar Room, Library Building, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML), Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg, New Delhi - 110011
Venue Info : Events | About | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Race Course(Yellow Line)'
Event Description : The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library cordially invites you to a Seminar on ‘From Region to Transnational: Shrines, wilayat and the sacred landscapes of Punjab’ by Dr. Yogesh Snehi, Ambedkar University, Delhi.
Abstract : The landscape of Punjab has continuously reshaped itself in varied ways from medieval to contemporary times. Medieval Punjab was never a contiguous region and its physical, political as well as social contours remained in a constant state of flux and dialogue. Across the frontiers of the mega-province evolved identities which were sub-regional and local. There could thus be several imaginations of cultural zones within the space which was identified as Punjab. This long transformation assumed peculiarly complex dynamics with the sudden and catastrophic partition of the province in 1947 when the imagined borders increasingly became non-porous and territorial contours of nation-state boundaries became permanent. An important repercussion of this mammoth transformation was terrible loss of lives and forced migration leading to demographic reconfiguration and social re-imagination of space across the region. This presentation tries to approach this transformation through the practice of veneration of panj pirs from medieval to contemporary Punjab. Panj pirs occupy a special place in the imagination of a province which is also identified with several other ‘five’ elements; panj darya, panjtan pak, panj piyare, etc. What is also interesting is that this tradition and its popular idiom has found resonance in the folk (Waris Shah’s Hir) as well religious literature (Vars of Bhai Gurdas) of the region. This paper will, however, look into the popular imagination of a popular wilayat of a medieval tradition of panj pir shrine at Abohar, now a frontier town on the Indo-Pak border, and will illustrate the ways in which it reconfigures itself in a post-partition environment. Popular images and poster art will be a crucial element of investigation to configure how these traditions survived in the new nation-states and perceived the sacred wilayat of the tradition of saint veneration in contemporary Punjab. The tradition of panj pir cannot be located within the domain of either of major Sufi orders of Punjab and the conception of wilayat in this tradition thus constitutes a significant articulation of popular imagination of tradition and provides an insight into the organic interplay of tradition with everyday lives of people in contemporary Punjab. It will also be important to understand the ways in which panj pir shrine located itself in a non-Muslim environment.
Speaker : Dr. Yogesh Snehi is an Assistant Professor in History at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi. He is currently a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla. Dr. Snehi’s broader area of research is located in understanding the social formation of greater Punjab. He has researched and published on the notion of reform, sexuality, development and region formation in Himachal Pradesh. The current focus of his research is around popular shrines in Punjab. Snehi started working on shrines in the year 2005 and conducted his first survey at Abohar. With a Tasveer Ghar fellowship in 2010-11, he mapped the broader contours of popular Sufi shrines in (east) Punjab and is working on a monograph on the same at IIAS, Shimla.
'From Region to Transnational: Shrines, wilayat and the sacred landscapes of Punjab' a talk by Dr. Yogesh Snehi at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 18th February 2014
!['From Region to Transnational: Shrines, wilayat and the sacred landscapes of Punjab' a talk by Dr. Yogesh Snehi at Teen Murti House, Teen Murti Marg > 3pm on 18th February 2014]()
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Tuesday, February 18, 2014
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