Ethnic renewal: Identity formations among current generation Hindu migrants of Punjab of 1947 partition

Abstract

The linguistic setup of Punjab was affected in 1947 partition and mass displacement, that changed the way people engaged with their spoken languages as linguistic identities were increasingly seen in political and national terms. It was mainly during the years of Punjabi Suba movement in the 1950s in India that was later followed by Indian Punjab’s trifurcation in 1966, that identities were projected into two rigid and contrasting categories as Hindi-Hindu and Punjabi-Sikh. Hindu migrants distanced from an ethnic-Punjabi identity towards a projection of an identity as Hindus that was followed by a language shift from native dialects to Hindi. The current generation of Hindu migrants in India, however, is interested in reviving an ethnic-linguistic identity, an identity that is linked to partition migrants’ lands and language of origin and one that illustrates an ethnic renewal. Through an analysis of non-fictional testimonies and ethnographic data, we demonstrate ethnic contexts of identity renewal among current generation Hindu migrants. We argue that a movement from ‘ethnic amnesia’ to ethnic renewal is one instance of a projection of identity that is currently revised to fulfil a collective identity void among partition affected families. The article presents a two-fold case study, one that engages with our respondent’s ethnic sentiments and second that engages with ethnic and language activism in community spaces. This paper, thus, elaborates a case of identity formations among current-generation partition migrants in India.