Punjabi nationalism
[22]The coalescence of the various tribes, castes and the inhabitants of the Punjab region into a broader common "Punjabi" identity initiated from the onset of the 18th century CE.
[28] He is entirely absent from the recorded history of the time, and the only evidence of his existence comes from Punjabi folklore, and took the form of social banditry.
[30][31] Both his father, Farid, and his grandfather, variously called Bijli or Sandal,[a][33] were executed for opposing the new and centralised land revenue collection scheme imposed by the Mughal emperor Akbar.
[35] Bhatti's class war took the form of social banditry, taking from the rich and giving to the poor.
[38] His efforts may have influenced Akbar's decision to pacify Guru Arjan Dev Ji, and through Guru Arjan Dev Ji's influence the people of Bari Doab, by exempting the area from the requirement to provide land revenues.
Ranjit Singh was proclaimed as Maharaja of the Punjab on 12 April 1801 (to coincide with Vaisakhi), creating a unified political state.
[45][46] In her 2022-book Muslims under Sikh Rule in the Nineteenth Century, Dr. Robina Yasmin, a Pakistani historian who teaches at the Islamia University Bahawalpur, tries to give a balanced picture of Ranjit Singh, between the contradictory images of "a great secular ruler" and that of "an extremist Sikh who was bent upon eliminating Islam in the Punjab", Dr. Robina Yasmin's own assessment after her study being that Ranjit Singh himself was tolerant and secular and that the mistreatment of the Muslim population often ascribed to him based on dubious anecdotes in fact came from his subordinates.
[45][46] After the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, the empire was weakened by the British East India Company stoking internal divisions and political mismanagement.
Therefore to rule, the prime factor for the British rulers was to control the Punjab by dominating or eliminating the Punjabi nation.
[51] For demolishing the nationalism and promoting the religious fundamentalism in the Punjab, British rulers, not allowed the Punjabis to use their mother tongue as an educational and official language.
[67] In August 2015, the Pakistan Academy of Letters, International Writer's Council (IWC) and World Punjabi Congress (WPC) organised the Khawaja Farid Conference and demanded that a Punjabi-language university should be established in Lahore and that Punjabi language should be declared as the medium of instruction at the primary level.
The state of Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh were also created and some Pahari-majority parts of the East Punjab were also merged with Himachal Pradesh following the movement.
