Sanjha Punjab – United Punjab: Exploring Composite Culture in a New Zealand Punjabi Film Documentary

Authors

  • Teena J Brown Pulu Auckland University of Technology
  • Asim Mukhtar Auckland University of Technology
  • Harminder Singh Auckland University of Technology

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.11157/sites-id445

Keywords:

Sanjha Punjab, united Punjab, composite culture, Punjabis, Pakistani, Hindustani, Muslims, Sikhs, South Auckland

Abstract

This paper examines the third author’s positionality as the researcher and storyteller of a PhD documentary film that will be shot in New Zealand, Pakistan, and North India. Adapting insights from writings on Punjab’s composite culture, the film will begin by framing the Christchurch massacre at two mosques on 15 March 2019 as an emotional trigger for bridging Punjabi migrant communities in South Auckland, prompting them to reimagine a pre-partition setting of “Sanjha Punjab” (United Punjab). Asim Mukhtar’s identity as a Punjabi Muslim from Pakistan connects him to the Punjabi Sikhs of North India. We use Asim’s words, experiences, and diary to explore how his insider role as a member of these communities positions him as the subject of his research. His subjectivity and identity then become sense-making tools for validating Sanjha Punjab as an enduring storyboard of Punjabi social memory and history that can be recorded in this documentary film.

Author Biographies

  • Teena J Brown Pulu, Auckland University of Technology
    Dr. Teena Brown Pulu is a senior lecturer at Te Ara Poutama, the Faculty of Maori and Indigenous Development at the Auckland University of Technology. She is an anthropologist of Pacific and Maori heritages with twenty years’ fieldwork experience in the Tonga Islands and the largest transnational Tongan diaspora in South Auckland, New Zealand. She has published extensively on the interlinked cultural politics and community life of Tongans at home and overseas.
  • Asim Mukhtar, Auckland University of Technology
    Asim Mukhtar is a PhD candidate at the Auckland University of Technology, and is the General Secretary of the Pakistan Association of New Zealand. His research studies Punjabi migrants in South Auckland and the sustainability of their shared culture, language, and history across the border of Pakistan and India, despite the 1947 partition of British India.
  • Harminder Singh, Auckland University of Technology
    Associate Professor Harminder Singh is an information systems researcher at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law at the the Auckland University of Technology. A Punjabi Sikh by ethnicity and a Singaporean by nationality, Harminder migrated to New Zealand in 2010 after completing his PhD at Michigan State University. His research looks at IT governance and IT ethics.

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Published

04-12-2019

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 2 (2019)

Section

Articles

License

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How to Cite

Sanjha Punjab – United Punjab: Exploring Composite Culture in a New Zealand Punjabi Film Documentary. (2019). Sites: A Journal of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies, 16(2). https://doi.org/10.11157/sites-id445