Telling her tale? Unravelling a life in conflict in Peero’s Ik Sau Saṭh Kāfiaṅ. (one hundred and sixty kafis)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20108142
AutoresAnju Malhotra (0000-0003-0155-3531, University of Delhi, autor correspondente), Anshu Malhotra (University of Delhi)
Ano2009
Volume46
Fascículo4
Páginas541-578
Data de publicação2009-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/001946460904600403
OpenAlexW1983102840
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas20

This article explores the manner in which Peero, a denizen of nineteenth century Punjab, in her 160 Kafis tries to communicate aspects of her own story and life through the diverse cultural resources at her command. The questions of self-representation and self-fashioning are central to this text, and Peero speaks of certain events in her life by relating sagas and evoking moods familiar in the cultural landscape of Punjab. Peero, self-confessedly a prostitute, and a Muslim, came to live in the middle of the nineteenth century in the Gulabdasi dera, a nominally ‘Sikh’ sect. This remarkable move, and her relationship with Guru Gulab Das, probably generated discord that pushed Peero into inserting her ‘self’ into the 160 Kafis. An attempt is made to read Peero’s crafting of her story, along with her silences, and bring out the nuances embedded in her text. The article also examines why Peero writes of her personal trauma and experience in the language of religious conflict between the ‘Hindus’ and the ‘Turaks’. This was particularly surprising as the Gulabdasi dera displayed eclecticism in its philosophical choices, and imbibed radical aspects of Vedantic monism. It also borrowed freely from hybrid religious sources including rhetoric familiar within the Bhakti movement, and the Punjabi Sufis’ anti-establishment mien

Aesthetics · Art · Eclecticism · Epistemology · Islam · Linguistics · Literature · Monism · Psychoanalysis · Representation (politics) · Rhetoric · Sociology · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Psychology · South Asian Studies and Diaspora