The point really is the empire: whether of the Mughals, Ahmed Shah Durrani, Ranjit Singh or the British, and its sense of the self. Or even now the way the nation state is constructed by creating enemies. Panjab, and its people—Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims—have been fodder, some glorious, some not-so-glorious, through the ages. What we celebrate depends on which tide of history we choose to stand upon. The real pathos is, after the dynasts, after the empires, after the colonialism, in spite of democracy, Panjab is still at a crossroads with no clear path ahead, as it has been many times earlier in
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