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History of Kashmir is full of tales of terror and oppression. For centuries, despite change of rulers and reigns, sufferings of Kashmiris have continued unabated. Sikh rule under Maharaja Ranjit Singh is particularly, accused of persecution of Kashmiris. This persistent privation forced many Kashmiris to leave their homeland and settle in other areas of the Punjab during Sikh rule. Maharaja Ranjit Singh replaced eight governors one after the other, mainly on account of charges of persecuting Kashmiris however; neither miseries of Kashmiris halted nor their migration to other parts of Punjab. In addition to this 'push', establishment of factory of Kashmiri shawls and several residential colonies in Lahore and other parts of Punjab, also attracted lots of Kashmiris to Punjab where better prospects of employment, habitation and self-esteem existed. The current study therefore, would mainly focus on various 'push and pull' factors that forced Kashmiris to abandon their homes and settle in various parts of the Punjab during the Sikh rule. Additionally, the study will also explore, in the light of primary and secondary sources, the existing narrative against Maharaja Ranjit Singh for persecuting and forcing relocation of Kashmiris, and see if these allegations hold some ground or these are mere stereotypes and part of some larger conspiracy theory to divide the Muslims and the Sikh communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that Salim al-tavarikh, a didactic genealogical history of the Arains published in 1919, was a sophisticated discursive means of claiming high social status for the community in the historical context of colonial Punjab. The interpretive techniques adopted in this text for making these claims go against the grain of existing scholarly literature on social mobility and reformist Islamic thought in modern South Asia. First, it constructed a genealogical history which traced the colonial Arains’ origin to early Islamic Arabia by claiming that they were descendants of Arab soldiers who had participated in the Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim’s early eighth century conquest of Sindh. As the progeny of these valorous Arab-Muslim conquerors, the colonial Arains were a distinctive Muslim community with innately Islamic attributes. Second, drawing upon this inherent Muslimness, it developed a reformist perspective tailored to the Arains’ political classification as one of Punjab’s elite ‘agriculturalists.’ It recast the Arains’ adherence to an inheritance system based on custom and Arain peasant women’s mobility as practices supported by the Quran. In this way, this text upheld the Arains’ ‘true’ Muslim identity while consolidating their agriculturalist status. This narrative also contested contemporary representations of the community as ‘bad’ Muslims of ‘lowly’ indigenous origin.ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHERCopyright of South Asian History & Culture is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Muslim Punjab, massage is an important body oriented practice that highlights the complex relationship between embodiment, sociality, marginality and sexuality. It constitutes a specific culture and technique of the body, not only embedded in systems of indigenous healing and care, but even more associated with feelings of pleasure, ease and wellbeing, with inherent sensory experiences. As such, it is actualised in different situations, milieus and spaces and is open to various dimensions of meaning while retaining a morally ambiguous character. The present paper investigates this discourse on massage as a technique to create a 'bodily synthesis', focusing on the liminal practices performed by occupationally stigmatised male professionals in the urban public domain. Invoking notions of both purity and impurity, the masseurs' service not only conveys bodily enjoyment, but also rids their male clients of polluting waste products and provides sexual pleasure. The emphasis is particularly on the contradiction between the valorisation of massage on the one hand and the inherent moral ambiguity of massage on the other, which becomes especially apparent in the denigration of professional masseurs. These conflicted understandings of massage seem to reflect a dissonance between Punjabi culture and Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the successful negotiations over the restoration and preservation of a holy site in Punjab, India claimed by Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims alike. The author explains how the interreligious dialogue concerning a mosque supposedly constructed by the Sikh guru Hargobind successfully avoided its destruction. The negotiation was considered successful because the overall will of the decision makers and the community was committed to promote understanding and effect a resolution. The article also challenges the notion that mosque are always exclusively Muslim sites.

The comparison of kinship of different South Asian regions with the Muslim Punjab reveals basic invariants, thus denying a fundamental division between the Dravidian South and the Indo-Aryan North, though concepts of kinship reveal themselves in different media: Muslim Punjabi kinship is expressed primarily in gift exchange, but exhibits characteristics commonly associated with the South Indian terminology. The present article argues for an approach which takes meaning embedded in the ‘act’ or ‘person’ as non-separable from ‘culture’, and grasps kinship as structuring the dynamic relation between self and other, regarded as ontological categories. Résumé La comparaison de la parenté entre les différentes régions du sud de l'Asie et le Pendjab musulman révèle des constantes fondamentales et remet ainsi en question la division de principe entre le Sud dravidien et le Nord indo-aryen, bien que les concepts de parenté trouvent des expressions différentes : dans le Pendjab musulman, la parenté s'exprime principalement à travers l'échange de dons mais présente des caractéristiques habituellement associées à la terminologie du sud de l'Inde. Le présent article plaide en faveur d'une approche considérant la signification de « l'acte » ou de la « personne » en tant qu'entité indissociable de la « culture », et aborde la parenté comme un moyen de structurer la relation dynamique entre soi-même et l'autre, considérés comme des catégories ontologiques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]