Punjab Notes: Rai Nasir with amazing stories from Sandal Bar.

Byline: Mushtaq Soofi

Bar has been a magic word for our older generations for its paradoxical features; it has been the cradle of the civilisation of the entire subcontinent as well as a primeval jungle.

Despite having Harappa Bar has also been in the collective memory of Punjab as an arcane world, an unending circular path like Draupadi's saree. It was also a grassland, rustlers' den, hustlers' refuge, lovers' haunt and outcasts' hide-out. In Bar personages made history. Heer Ranjha and Sahiban Mirza left indelible marks on our culture. Inimitable Guru Nanak changed our vision of everyday living and spirituality. Dulla Bhatti and Ahmed Khan Kharal resisted the mightiest. Damodar Das, Nijabat, Hafiz Barkhurdar, Ali Haider, Sultan Bahu and Waris Shah created what emerged as our grand literary landscape. But still Bar has been a mystery, transparently opaque and opaquely transparent for its indigenous inhabitants. The people's relationship with Bar has been an emotional roller coaster.

A fundamental transformation took place in the Bar in the late 19th and early 20th century after Punjab was colonised by East India Company in 1849. The colonisers laid a huge and intricate network of canals with a view to kick start agricultural production. Previously agriculture in the Bar had been along the rivers or depended on water from Persian wheel and seasonal rains. When all was set, the colonial administration decided to bring in farmers and Zamindars from East Punjab especially from Jalandhar Doab.

There were mainly three reasons for this internal migration: 1, people of Bar had risen in rebellion against the Company in 1857 and did not accept the new administrative set-up at the expense of their longstanding formal and informal and political and cultural institutions. 2, People from Jalandhar Doab were considered better farmers exposed to new agricultural techniques and know-how. 3, flow of people from densely populated eastern part of Punjab to the colony area was supposed to preempt any social upheaval dimming the chances of open political rebellion against the colonial stranglehold. When the settlers [Abadkar[ arrived in the Bar to move into new villages with the arable and parceled for cultivation, they felt surrounded by jungle like Bar and tribes which were suspicious of new comers motives and so-called reform.

The settlers patronised by the colonial administration and puffed up with a sense of self-importance started calling the inhabitants...