Issue 58 Vol III, February 29, 2008
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Issue 58 Vol III, February 29, 2008 |
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L E T T E R S I am writing in response to Jagpal S. Tiwana's "Jat and His Village", a flattering and highly informative review of Dr. Gurnam Singh Brard's book "East of Indus: My Memories of Old Punjab". Although I have not yet had the opportunity to read Dr. Brard's book, I am very appreciative that Mr. Tiwana has brought it to our attention through the South Asia Post. It is unsurprising that Brard expresses a great passion for his village, as Tiwana accurately observes that one cannot take the village out of the Jat. Nevertheless, it is striking to read of the pull that Brard's village exercised over him in his early years. Whether or not one is Punjabi, it seems far more characteristic of youth that one wishes to travel abroad from one's home in order to discover the wider world in whatever ways we are able, and yet Dr. Brard was very reluctant to leave his beloved village for the city and the path of education. This is a remarkable attestation of the comforts of village life for Jats, the certainty and surety of being surrounded by relatives, emplaced in a known and meaningful environment, and the ease with one's identity and very existence that would seem to emerge apparently seamlessly in such a setting. In my analysis, rural nostalgia derives from a sense of a lost golden age of village life, and the link to childhood/youth would seem to make this linkage, and the loss it betokens, all the more powerful. Reading of this book as an anthropologist, it seems to promise a wealth of detail on Punjabi village life, while approaching it as a Canadian university instructor, it is important that these details are available in English. Moreover, the history of Brard's family seems to testify vividly to those 20th century processes, that I myself have documented elsewhere, whereby education, progress, development, and other trajectories of modernity carry Jats away from their villages. But, I should say no more of Dr. Brard's book at the present time until I've read it myself. Thank you to Jagpal S. Tiwana, and South Asia Post, for making this work more widely known.
Nicola Mooney Ph.D.,
Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies |
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