ABSTRACT
The debate on the existence of syncretic, composite, overlapping boundaries of Panjab has divided scholars into two groups. As opposed to Harjot Oberoi, Nonica Dutta and others who have traced the construction of religious boundaries through the consolidation of formal religious identities highlighting the role of the Singh Sabhas and Arya Samaj, another group of scholars such as Farina Mir, Yogesh Snehi and others confirm the continuity of shared cultures of piety in the villages of Panjab. Filmmaker Ajay Bharadwaj, however, warns against the use of Eurocentric categories like syncretic and composite in describing these shared spaces. This chapter will trace the shared cultures of piety in nineteenth-century Panjab and the fragmentation of religious and cultural identities through the emergence of religious nationalisms that co-opted script, language and culture to split the shared communities of Panjab. It argues that folk and popular culture can serve as sites of memory of these overlapping boundaries of Panjab.
