ZEKIYE EGLAR

A PUNJABI VILLAGE IN PAKISTAN

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1960

Reading report

Tahnee Dierauer

EHESS
M1 AMO 2013/2014
Introduction p.2

I The ethnographer in a world in transition p.3

a) Two years after independence: A village in a new country

b) A turning point: Coexistence of tradition and modernity in the village

II An internal perspective? p.5

a) A woman ethnographer in a patriarchal society

b) Muslim ethnographer in a country for Muslims

III A pioneering enterprise and a fundamental reading p.7

a) A first comprehensive study of the village in South Asia

b) Village and folklore: Two inseparable entities

Conclusion p.9

Cover illustration: The Punjab countryside - rice fields as far as the eye can see. Photo: TD

1
Introduction

Zekiye Eglar is probably what could be described in a pop context as one-hit

wonder: a doctoral student under the direction of the famous American
anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead at Columbia University
(USA). obtains in 1959 the prestigious Clarke F. Ansley Award from Columbia
University Press for his dissertation, which is then published under the title A
Punjabi Village in Pakistan in 1960. The second volume of the results of his
research entitled The Economic Life of in Punjabi Village, will only be
published posthumously in 2010 (Oxford University Press, Pakistan). A Punjabi
Village in Pakistan is a difficult work to obtain today, and it is not by chance
that I chose it: Working myself in the Punjab region - on the Indian side, for my
part; see map below - this study, the fruit of five years of fieldwork, seemed to
me an essential reading for my own research, allowing me to better understand
the Panjabi society. I was also hoping that the book will shed some light on
some of the points and details that I myself had come across during my own stay
in a Punjabi village - more than sixty years after Zekiye Eglar! - which has
actually been the case.

Punjab: Cross-border region straddling India and Pakistan.

The village of Mohla is 113km north of Lahore.1

Moreover, it is a revolutionary work - a fact Margaret Mead confirms in her

foreword, calling it "unique" .2 The question that can be asked now is - why?
What makes A Punjabi Village in Pakistan and research work in the village of
Mohla de Zekiye Eglar so exceptional? In order to answer this question, we will
first study the singularity of the object of study of the ethnographer; then, we
will seek to see how his perspective is unique, to finally be interested in what the
study has brought to Indianism in general and, from a more personal point of
view, how this reading allowed me to move forward in my own research.
1
Source illustration: http://wwnorton.com, consulté le 17 janvier 2014.
2
Avant-propos, page x.

2
I The ethnographer in a world in transition

a) Two years after independence: A village in a new country

In order to understand the uniqueness of Eglar's study - and most importantly,

the timing of it - it is necessary to put it in its historical and political context:
when Eglar leaves for Pakistan at the end In 1949, she arrived in a country
barely two years old and created in the bloodiest conditions imaginable. Indeed,
1947 marks not only the year of independence of India and Pakistan from British
colonial rule, but above all the destruction of the subcontinent: the cultural and
ideological conflict between Hindu Muslims and Hindu a century, leads to
Partition, division of British India, and thus in the creation of a state for Muslims
- Pakistan. This geopolitical decision is accompanied by community violence
that takes the form of riots and massacres, particularly in the state of Punjab
which is cut in half and where massive population displacements take place,
Muslims taking refuge on the Pakistani side, Sikhs and Hindus on the Indian
side of the new frontier.

Even though Zekiye Eglar knowingly chose a village that had a largely majority
Muslim population already before the Partition and had not really been affected,
it was clear to her that "the establishment of a new Muslim state and the The
creation of a new Muslim nation [...] would lead to immediate social and cultural
change. " The study of this "society in change" interested him very much "as an
anthropologist", since it would enable him to study "just as much the traditional
culture as the effect of the changes at the moment. even where they take place
".3 Indeed, and this is felt throughout the book, Eglar is found in a country and a
society under construction: Because of the departure of Sikhs and Hindus, many
positions have liberated, there is a great need for cadres and manpower
everywhere and even if the first constitution will be drafted in 1956, new laws
like the legacy in 1948, allowing women to inherit their father, and the agrarian
reforms of 1949, allowing anyone to buy land, burst into daily life and will
quickly change the relationship between genres, and between castes.
It therefore seems obvious that Zekiye Eglar chose a unique moment for his field
study; a period of intense change, during which time seems to be accelerating.
But if this is true from a historical and political point of view, it is also from a
social perspective, because at the same time, we are witnessing the
modernization of Pakistan - technological and cultural - and especially its
campaigns that previously had been left out.

3
Préface, page xii.

3
b) A turning point: Coexistence of tradition and modernity in the village

If the tradition is still extremely alive in the village of Mohla, as evidenced by

the customs and rites described by Eglar, we cannot, however, be insensitive to
the signs of the social changes underway in this society that appear in the
background throughout but especially in his long epilogue, Mohla in a Changing
World, 1949-1955.

Even if the most obvious changes affect mainly the upper social classes, that is
to say the landowners, who have more and more contact with the cities and who
bring back the newest technologies, in order to improve their standard of living
in the village, the less well-off, the kammis (literally "the one who works",
Punjabi "kamm", work), are also forced to adapt to this world in transition:
Traditional trades are now no only in competition with fashionable imported
products - for example fabrics - but also with new means of production coming
from the city, which pushes the craftsman to intense specialization: so we see
carpenters specialize in the production of a single object difficult to obtain
outside the village, but corresponding well to village needs, such as the spinning
wheel. Others choose professional retraining, such as blacksmiths, who used to
make padlocks, chains for buffaloes and repair work on Persian wheels, and now
take care of installation and repair. new hand pumps. Other young men even join
the army of the new state. In a world where one does not choose one's
profession, which is traditionally transmitted from father to son and depends on
the caste in which one was born, it represents a radical social change!
Another important change is the importance of education: while previously only
sons of wealthy families were sent to school, the rich and poor now send their
children to primary school, college and even in high school - boys as well as
girls, since many young men want a wife as educated as they are. The girl's
education is now considered an important criterion for a possible marriage and
this has a direct influence on the lives of these girls who previously did not see
the world outside the traditionally feminine world of the house, with the
exception of Koranic studies, given by the wife of the village Imam.

During his field investigation, Eglar was able to witness - "live", one could say -
social changes, again changing the relationship between castes, but also between
genres. However, these same reports still seem deeply rooted in tradition at the
time of the study - and that is why we can say that Eglar, as a Muslim woman,
was able to enjoy an exceptional overview of this world led by men of high
caste.

4
II An internal perspective?
a) A woman ethnographer in a patriarchal society

At the time of Zekiye Eglar's field survey - and, to a large extent, still today -
gender separation is strongly practiced in Punjabi society, even in the domestic
context: men and women do not share the same neighborhoods inside the house;
children, up to a certain age, frequent both worlds. While Eglar is at the
beginning of her stay in the village of Mohla, housed in the Chowdhry's house,
which is part of the male universe, she is then transferred to the women's
quarters of her family - a move that is indicative of her dual role as a foreign
woman: a researcher from an American university, she is, on the one hand,
exotic enough to occupy the position of an "honored guest" treated in a
respectful way by the men "4, and, on the other hand, sufficiently respectable, as
a Muslim woman of Turkish origin (we will return to it) of a certain age (Zekiye
Eglar is thirty-nine years old when she arrives at Mohla), for to be admitted to
women's quarters and become a confidante. Eglar also reports that children call
him apaji - emotional term used by South Asian Muslims, meaning "big sister",
and thus give him "a place in the family circle" .5

Eglar therefore enjoys a privileged place within the village society that she
studies, allowing her to observe the world of men and to ask questions about
male tasks, but above all to understand the roles of women in this society.
agrarian Muslim - a study that could not have been carried out by an
anthropologist man, who would not have been allowed to attend the women of
the village. Quickly accepted as one of their own, Eglar accompanies women
during customary visits to their families and in-laws and is introduced to all the
daily tasks of Panjabi women: her analysis of vartan bhanji (literally "sweets
exchange"), ritual exchange of gifts and services run by women only, occupies
the entire second part of her study and paints a portrait of Panjabi women as a
key member of the family, on whom rests the responsibility of maintaining good
relations with parents and relatives, as well as to intervene in case of dispute
between people, families or villages.

Indeed, at a time when women anthropologists themselves are rare, this feminine
internal perspective is therefore just as exceptional as it is detailed - and it is all
the more surprising, if we take into account the personal profile - and religious -
Zekiye Eglar herself.

4
Avant-propos de Margaret Mead, page x.
5
Préface, page xvii.

5
Eglar therefore enjoys a place of choice b) A Muslim ethnographer in
a country for Muslims
Born in 1910 into a Russian-speaking Muslim family in the southern Caucasus
of Tsarist Russia, Zekiye Eglar grew up in an environment that identified more
with her religious identity than with her ethnic identity - a point in common with
the new Pakistani society she chose to study afterwards. When his family leaves
Soviet Russia for Turkey, Eglar arrives in a country where, following Kemalist
reforms aimed at to bring Turkey closer to the Western model, a rapid cultural
change is under way - another common point with Pakistan in 1949.

It is these parallels with the worlds she has known, child and teenager, that seem
to have pushed Eglar towards the choice of Pakistani society as an object of
study - she then says she chose the Punjab region because she is considered the
heart of the country and that it is established for a longer time than the other
provinces (it is not for nothing that is still called today, jokingly, Pakistan
"Punjabistan"!).

By choosing a culture partially close to his own, Eglar thus breaks with the
unwritten rule of choosing a culture totally foreign to that of the anthropological
researcher. Margaret Mead herself asserts in her foreword that this is indeed a
"unique" study because it was done by a female anthropologist among a group
of who share with her the faith in which she grew up but who live in a country
far from hers ".7
Keeping however a somewhat hybrid status of stranger not so strange, so she, as
a Muslim Oriental, probably was more easily accepted within the village society
than would have been an American Christian researcher. Thus, she herself writes
that people "appreciated the fact" that Eglar was Turkish and Muslim, "the
Muslims of Pakistan having a great love for Turks and a lot of interest in Turkey
".8

However, being Muslim herself does not seem to have facilitated her task of
understanding the village society of Mohla: the various customs and rituals she
describes seem more rooted in tradition than in religion and, apart from Chapter
VII - The Calendar of Religion - where she describes Ramadan (Ramzan) in
Punjab, the importance of folk poetry when it comes to reaching God or the role
pirs (Sufi spiritual master), nothing would help the reader to identify Mohla as a
Muslim village. Zekiye Eglar's study of the latter is therefore exceptional in that
it chose for its field investigation, reflecting a world in transition, but also by the
profile of the anthropologist herself. But what could she bring us innovative?

6
Préface, page xiii.
7
Avant-propos, page x.
8
Préface, page xvi.

6
III A pioneering enterprise and a fundamental reading a)

A first comprehensive study of the village in South Asia

When A Punjabi Village in Pakistan was published in 1960, the book is one of
the earliest ethnographies on the Indian subcontinent. Field surveys were done
well before independence, but they were essentially censuses by British officers,
for administrative purposes only - with the exception of the work of the famous
Anglo-Irish linguist George Abraham Grierson which publishes, among others,
Bihar Peasant Life ("Life of the Peasants of Bihar", the Bihar being a region of
India close to Nepal) in 1885. The Orientalists and Indianists of the beginning of
the first half of the twentieth century, as for For the most part, they relied on
textual sources - a move that was also preferred by Ruth Benedict, Zekiye
Eglar's first research director. It will be necessary to wait for the next generation,
that of Margaret Mead, regarding the encouragement of the student to become a
participant observer.

At about the same time as Eglar, another student of Ruth Benedict went to South
Asia in 1952: it was Oscar Lewis, Mexicanist and father of the concept of
"culture of poverty", who officiated as consultant to the Ford Foundation in
India, which during his stay brings together some Indian students and directs a
study of a village in northern India. The results of this research will be published
in 1958 under the title of Village Life in Northern India.
However, Eglar's insight seems unmatched by these other studies: his is not only
the first ethnographic study of a Muslim village in Punjab, but stands out above
all, as we have seen above, from his point of view singularly internal to village
society, especially with regard to women's lives. A Punjabi Village in Pakistan
seems indeed to be a landmark, a model for any potential ethnographer: the way
Eglar practiced participant observation, spending five years in a row in the
village - learning not only the national language and vehicle of Pakistan that is
Urdu, but also the Panjabi regional language - and documenting everything that
may have happened in Mohla at this time in an excessively detailed manner is,
indeed, quite exemplary - and unique, at the beginning of fifties!

The reader is indeed faced with a real manual for the understanding of Punjab,
and more generally, of rural South Asia - which makes A Punjabi Village in
Pakistan a fundamental reading for any Indianist, since the vast majority The
Indian population still lives in villages and many rituals and myths originate in
this same environment.

7
b) Village and folklore: Two inseparable entities
Especially for my own research topic - the modern lives of the folk tales of
Punjab - reading Eglar's work seemed to me indispensable: even if these tales
and love stories are now part of the cultural heritage panindian, they were born
in the rural world of Panjabis villages and still strongly impregnated today,
where they are brought to the screens of Hindi cinema and appear in filigree in
many pop songs - which we do not understand sometimes even the first line if
you do not recognize the names of characters or mythical places!

Village and folklore seem, indeed, quite inseparable: it is difficult to interpret a

tale and the relations between the characters if one is not aware of the real
situation of the society in which the myth draws. his origins.

Eglar's study of the ritual exchange of gifts and services, vartan bhanji, and thus
the social relationships between families and individuals, shed light on many
points that may seem incomprehensible to the Western scholar - and even
situations in which I find myself. found myself confronted during my stay in the
village of Talwandi Dogran in Indian Punjab, about thirty kilometers from the
Pakistani border: thus, the gift of a five hundred rupee note from a cousin of my
The host I had met for the first time had left me perplexed and I was eager to
take the money back - I had not yet understood the importance of donations and
reciprocity in Panjabi society. Housed by the family, I was now considered a
"daughter of the house" ("ghar di dhi", in Punjabi) and this gift was my "right"
as such - it will be up to my host to answer it by another.

Reading A Punjabi Village in Pakistan will not only be useful for interpreting
the stories and myths that I will study in the context of my research, but also to
behave in the most appropriate way in a family environment. Punjab, which will
allow me a better integration within the company.

Contemporary representation of the most popular Punjabi tale, the love story of Hir and
Ranjha: we are clearly in a pastoral and pastoral universe out of time.

9
Source illustration: http://dollsofindia.com. Consulté le 17 janvier 2014, auteur non indiqué.

8
Conclusion
We have, therefore, from the previous development, responded well to the
original question that was to justify the fact that A Punjabi Village in Pakistan
can be considered as a single work. We have been able to see that it is indeed, by
the choice of the object of study and the period concerned, because of the
personal profile of the anthropologist herself and also by what she was able to
do. bring to Indianism as well as to the Indian researcher.

The exceptional character of the work is unmistakable; however, Eglar can be

blamed for having knowingly or unknowingly ignored the political and religious
dynamics within the village: in this new state, whose foundation is based on the
ideology that Muslims of South Asia represent. a nation apart and itself
engendered such massacres and horrors, it would have been interesting to share
an anti-Indian consciousness or an Islamization within the people - existing or,
indeed, nonexistent. Housed by the chowdhry family, the village chief, one can
also assume that Eglar's point of view reflects the perspective of the large
landowners and not the artisans and peasants, who make up the majority of the
village population. His observations, would they have been different if Eglar had
shared his daily life with a family of caste - and class! - lower?

It would also be interesting to carry out a similar study today, at a time when,
again, rapid social changes are taking place within village society in South Asia.
Thanks to the development of means of transport and the new technologies, it is
more and more connected to the cities - and to the world: few villagers do not
have a mobile phone and for fifty rupees a month - that is say, about sixty cents -
you can enjoy an unlimited internet connection. More and more young people
are also studying abroad - returning to their villages on holidays, they now wish
to have the same comfort and the same freedoms in Mohla and Talwandi as in
Toronto and Melbourne !
The villages of South Asia between tradition and globalization: here is a subject
for a future survey.

Tradition and modernity in a landlord's house in Talwandi, Panjab, India in 2013:

While the bathroom and the "impure" toilets are traditionally outside (subject of regular dispute between the
father and his daughters), one does not escape the immense flat-screen television which dominates the living
room. Photo: TD.