India&rsquos colonisation by the British changed the face of the subcontinent in varied ways, much of which still lies within the purview of debates and discussion to assess its deep-rooted impact. Our generation is learning, and often unlearning, the stories that we were told. There was, however, a common thread between most of them - the history of colonial India, and its partition was dominated by narratives of men,
In 2014, Harleen Singh, a Delhi-born Toronto-based engineer, spent four months in India interviewing witnesses of the 1947 partition. Over the next three years of collection of these testimonies, Singh, who belongs to a family of Partition refugees, realised the lack of female perspective in our mainstream narratives. This was the starting point for The Lost Heer Project (TLHP), an Instagram collective that aims to understand Punjab's history through the eyes of women.
Harleen, who started TLHP in 2018, is now in the process of turning the stories he unearthed into a book. Currently in India to research on the book, Singh talks about how he picked Heer as the name of the project.
&ldquoI believe there is a dearth of history projects based around Punjab's history, my ancestral land it was very personal. As a grandchild of refugees growing far away from Punjab and not speaking the language, this project was also fundamental to help me understand my origins and archive them for thousands like me. I chose The Lost Heer because for me Heer represents the 'quintessential Punjaban'. She is strong and daring, something unusual for a woman in 15th century Punjab. Her mentions have been ubiquitous in Punjabi culture, folk and lore for many centuries, invoked by Sufis, gurus and feminists alike. Apart from that, Heer transcends all identities and represents all Punjabi women irrespective of caste, creed or religion.&rdquo
As children and grand-children of Partition survivors, we don't really have much that would testify our roots and origins. We don't have ancestral homes to go back to and lack heirlooms and family photographs (which were all left behind). All we have is this wisdom, and this is the key to our past
But this is a treacherous road. Not all information is readily available for verification. Elaborating on the process, Harleen says, &ldquoSince memory can not always be trusted due to biases and other natural complexities, I always use the available archives if I'm covering historic events. I am a big fan of archival newspapers and magazines as they help me to construct a timeline for events and provide a basis for verification of notable events.&rdquo
A conversation with a woman led to Singh learning about the first graduate of a women&rsquos medical college. He ran the name of the college in various newspapers to find contemporary reports of convocation and was able to verify this account. &ldquoThis is particularly true for women's histories, which unlike men, have not been meticulously recorded, especially in Punjab. So wisdom has passed on from mothers to daughters and it is this femninist genealogy that I'm interested in documenting,&rdquo he adds.
One of the stories Harleen has documented is of Sarla Thakral, who was the first Punjabi woman to be qualified as a pilot. She got her licence after flying between Karachi and Lahore in 1936. Many times, the process also takes an emotional toll. &ldquoThere are days when you find a very troubling story in the archives or come across a testimony of a WW2 widow or an interview of a Jallianwala Bagh widow. I think it's only natural in these cases. But then I tell myself, if there are stories of trauma and heartbreak, there are stories of hope and success,&rdquo he opines.
Researching for The Lost Heer Project also brought Singh closer to his family. &ldquoI feel I barely knew my grandmothers before I began this project. I never really thought about my forebears and had taken them for granted. I think after TLH, I have become much closer to them and respect them more for all they did in their lives,&rdquo he says.
Singh hopes to digitise the entirety of his research in order to make the information he has learnt and collected, available to everyone. It is pivotal to his efforts, he says,&ldquoas children and grand-children of Partition survivors, we don't really have much that would testify our roots and origins. We don't have ancestral homes to go back to and lack heirlooms and family photographs (which were all left behind). All we have is this wisdom, and this is the key to our past&rdquo
