Folk practices in Punjab
[3] Roger Ballard (1999) classifies Punjab's folk religion into the kismetic (misfortune caused by fate, or supernatural beings) dimension of Punjabi religious life, alongside its panth (inspirational leadership), dharam (divine laws), and qaum (community construction) elements.
[4][5] The kismetic belief holds that misfortune can be caused by both unfulfilled, jealous spirits like bhuts (ghosts), dhags, jinns, and churails (witches), as well as by other people through the use of magic, including spells and incantations, and the evil eye (nazar).
[8] The nazar, causing misfortune and damage via jealous gazes, is most often targeted at one's family members, land and crops, and personal property, and protected against by amulets, customs, and various social mores, including humility.
Saint veneration often revolves around pirs, and along with the patronage of shrines whose lore drew freely from the normative traditions of formalized religions, was practiced syncretically across religious lines.
[12] The shrines of such folk heroes as Gugga Pir and Sakhi Sarwar are made and managed by followers who are often excluded from frameworks of formalized "high" religions in East Punjab, as embodied by the Jat influence on Sikhism, by Brahminical Hinduism, or by Sharia Islam, and fall outside of the scope of such hegemonic institutions, especially as religious identity has become increasingly polarized.
[4] Its transcendence of religious boundaries is manifested in its eclectic integration of Sufi, bhakti, and tradition beliefs in the occult, possession, and exorcisms.
[4][5] According to cultural historian Dr. Anne Murphy, Folk traditions have played a crucial generative role in postcolonial scholarly, artistic and literary worlds, representing a kind of response to colonial hegemony and modernity; at the same time, they represent a continuing subaltern cultural formation that at times resists incorporation by these same forces.
Jats, a large group of former nomads, had begun to turn to settled agriculture around the thirteenth century in central Punjab, facilitated by region's fertility and the use of the Persian water wheel.
[16] Bhatti (2000) states that there are shrines dedicated to various saints, gods and goddesses in Punjab which he has studied by reference to Punjabi folk religion.
[25] Weekes (1984) discussing Islam states that: Various other saints are also venerated in Punjab such as Khawaja Khidr is a river spirit of wells and streams.
Many villages in Punjab, India and Pakistan, have shrines of Sakhi Sarwar who is more popularly referred to as Lakha Data Pir.
A shrine of Sakhi Sarwar is situated in district Dera Ghazi Khan in Punjab, of Pakistan, where an annual fair is held in March.
Other shrines are in honour of Seetla Mata who is worshiped for protection against childhood diseases with notable fair being held annually in Ludhiana district and is known as the Jarag mela;[28] Gorakhnath who was an 11th to 12th century[29]Nath yogi and connected to Shaivism; and Puran Bhagat who is a revered saint in the Punjab region and other areas of the subcontinent.
