Radical Re-tellings of Hir: Gender and the Politics of Voice in Postcolonial Punjabi Poetry

Abstract

This paper explores the feminist poetics of postcolonial Punjabi poetry, focusing specifically on Amrita Pritam and Nasreen Anjum Bhatti. Through a close reading of their poems, “Ajj aakhan Waris Shah nu” [“Today I Call on Waris Shah”] and “Nil karaiyan nilkan” [“Blue Cloth Dyed Blue”], I argue that these progressive poets deployed the contestatory genre of Hir to critique the multiple patriarchies of nation, region and community. Their radical re-working of Hir’s voice attempts to de-center male authorial privilege in the Punjabi literary formation, constituting the regional vernacular as a potent site for engaging with tradition under modernity. Together, their poems offer a historiographical and literary reconstruction of cultural identity to locate women as active subjects and narrators of history.