Punjabi across the India–Pakistan border: writing, scripts and literary networks

Following writing across several locations

Anne Murphy’s Writing Punjabi Across Borders project documents the modern Punjabi language movement and its creative expressions from the 1940s onwards. Its description connects research in India and Pakistan with Canada and the UK, rather than treating the two Punjab regions as self-contained literary worlds. The project asks what choosing Punjabi makes possible socially and politically in these different settings.[1]

The documented work includes interviews with members of Punjabi literary communities, organised on the website by locations including Lahore, New Delhi, the Indian Punjab, Britain and Ireland. The project also identifies the people who edited the recordings. That detail makes the archive’s production visible: an edited research interview is a particular encounter and presentation, rather than the complete voice of an entire literary community.[1]

Reading two scripts within one prize

The Dhahan Prize’s published rules provide a concrete institutional response to Punjabi’s two major writing systems. Separate Gurmukhi and Shahmukhi juries assess eligible books, while members of the central jury must be able to read both scripts. Its rules also require representation of both scripts among the winner and two finalists. The arrangement recognises a shared literary field while giving each script a place in the selection process.[2]

Eligibility is limited to first-edition novels and short-story collections meeting the published conditions. It is therefore evidence about a particular field of contemporary fiction, rather than every kind of Punjabi writing. Poetry, for example, falls outside these book-eligibility rules.[2]

Helping a book reach readers in the other script

The prize’s own account states that support for transliterating winning books into Gurmukhi or Shahmukhi was added from 2024. This addresses a practical reading barrier within Punjabi literature. The organisation describes script transfer, alongside the jury process, as part of bringing writing to wider audiences; it does not require treating all Punjabi readers as equally fluent in both scripts.[3]