The Time of Literary History: Rethinking Temporality and Modernity in Punjabi Literary Culture

This paper considers two temporalities embedded in the writing of modern Punjabi literary history: one I call an “even temporality” and another that relies on narratives of rupture. Both have been central to the story of Punjabi literary modernity. On the one hand, literary critics and historians have naturalized literary modernity as an inevitable stage in the evolutionary process of Punjabi literary culture. On the other, they have relied on the rupture of colonialism as the catalyst that produced Punjabi literary modernity. This paper questions both modes of writing literary history, and particularly the reliance in both on genre—and the novel in particular—as a key marker of literary modernity. Rather, through an examination of how Punjabi poets embedded notions of literary history within their texts, whether in the form of critical genealogies or other literary devices, it suggests that Punjabi literary modernity is better understood through a shift in sensibility that marks the rise of a self-consciously regional literary tradition. This was a shift that did not require new genres of literary production, using what would most readily be called “traditional” genres for conveying new forms of subjectivity. The implications of this argument, which may be relevant to the writing of Indian vernacular literary history more generally, include a shift away from such a heavy emphasis on genres as markers of modernity and “newness,” and a reconsideration of the role of colonialism in producing modern Indian vernacular literatures.